Leon moved the moment the screams reached that point, the point where it was already obvious that in a few seconds it would only get louder, and then all that would remain would be the same thing left behind by hundreds of others on campus: blood, abandoned belongings, and a silence that didn't mean safety, only the absence of prey.
There was no decision in it. No heroism. It was closer to an automatic response. No thought like I have to save them crossed his mind, only a cold, clinical assessment of the situation: fifteen zombies packed into a tight space, people trapped from both sides, screaming that was already drawing in more shapes, and the simple fact that if he did nothing now, in a minute he'd be forced to watch them die.
He accelerated.
Not to his absolute limit. Only to a pace his body could sustain without his coordination falling apart. Valeria had been right, speed without control was just as dangerous as having no speed at all. Even so, that "controlled" pace was still something none of the people there could follow with their eyes.
To the students standing in the middle of the square, Leon simply vanished from sight. In the next instant, he was among the zombies, sliding sideways, half-stepping, moving in short, inefficient motions that didn't look like swordsmanship so much as heavy, dirty work done up close. The blade slipped into necks again and again, sometimes meeting resistance, sometimes gliding through smoothly, depending on how badly the bodies had already warped.
There was no finesse.
Leon didn't cut "cleanly." He didn't pick angles with a master's precision. He swung the sword in a way that simply worked with his current stats. Agility over forty meant his hands moved faster than the zombies could react, and strength nearing thirty meant that even an ordinary, normal-grade sword was enough to slice through flesh and vertebrae without needing follow-up strikes.
Heads fell one after another, not in spectacular arcs, but heavily. Some bounced off the asphalt. Others lodged between collapsing bodies. Blood sprayed outward, splattering shoes, pants, and the building walls, forming a chaotic, sticky ring around the group of students that steamed faintly in the cool air.
The whole thing lasted maybe three seconds.
Maybe a little more, if you counted the moment the last body slumped to the ground and Leon's blade finished its motion, dropping down, heavy with blood.
Michael Kopiec stood frozen, his hands clenched around the straps of his backpack, staring at what remained of the zombies that had been seconds away from tearing him apart. Only after a few moments did he manage to move his lips.
"Did you… did you see that?" he rasped, not really directing the question at anyone in particular.
The student beside him looked first at the corpses, then at Leon, and finally at the group of people who had gathered behind them over the last few minutes. Only then did it hit him that the guy in the long coat hadn't saved just the five of them, but a dozen people, maybe more.
"He… he used to be a student here, right?" he asked quietly, more to himself than to anyone else, as if trying to force the image of pre-apocalypse normalcy to line up with what he had just witnessed.
Leon didn't listen.
He didn't look at them. He didn't count bodies. He didn't analyze reactions.
His gaze fixed instead on the dry, system text that appeared before him exactly as it always did, emotionless, indifferent to how many people were still breathing because of what he'd done.
[Essence Record - Kill Confirmed]
[Target: 15x Normal Zombie (LVL 5)]
Only after a moment did he lift his head, not to look at the people he'd saved, but to check whether the screams had drawn something bigger. In this world, there was no time to stand still, not even after something that looked like a miracle to others.
Leon remained among the bodies for a moment longer, feeling his heart still pounding fast, not chaotically, but in that familiar post-exertion rhythm, when the body hasn't yet returned to normal and instinct is already warning that this isn't over, that he'll need to move again soon.
Then he noticed something, almost absentmindedly.
No new system window.
No familiar surge that accompanied level-ups. No sense of the body "jumping," the feeling that had always been there before whenever his level increased.
Despite killing fifteen level-five zombies while he himself was only level six, it hadn't been enough to gain another level or receive any additional stats.
A cold, unpleasant realization settled in.
From this point on, not every fight, even a large-scale one, would mean rapid progress. The higher he climbed, the more work, risk, and effort it would take to advance even a single step. In practice, that meant running at the edge of his limits, killing at maximum speed, and relying on stats to "handle the rest" would eventually lead to exhaustion.
And exhaustion, in this world, was one of the simplest ways to die, just as Valeria had warned him.
He could already feel it.
Not as sudden weakness. Not as lack of breath. But as growing tension in his legs, a slight heaviness in his arms, and that uncomfortable pressure in his chest, the feeling that came when the body was working faster than it should for too long, even if the mind still wanted more.
That was why, almost instinctively, he stopped moving the way he had before.
Instead of using the full speed he'd relied on against the dog or the giant wasp at the start of the campus fights, rather than "closing" distance in a single flash and betting everything on ending it in a fraction of a second, he began to match his pace to his opponent. He shortened his movements, conserved steps, allowed himself an extra half-second if it meant using less energy. Even with agility above forty, he still had only thirty stamina, which meant he burned out far faster when pushing his absolute speed.
Only then did he turn toward the five students who were slowly getting up from the ground, still shaking, smeared with blood and dust, their faces filled with relief that was only now fully sinking in as their minds caught up with the simple fact that they were alive.
One of them opened his mouth, clearly about to say something, maybe to thank him, maybe to ask who he even was, but Leon didn't look at him.
His gaze stopped on the boy standing slightly off to the side, the same one a zombie had caught near the corner of the building earlier.
A torn hoodie. Several long scratches across his arm, shoulder, and neck. Bloodstains that looked freshly made.
Leon stepped closer, stopping right in front of him. When he finally spoke, his voice was cold, calm, and stripped of emotion, as if he were stating something obvious, not delivering a sentence.
"You're not coming with us."
The boy froze.
"What?" he croaked after a moment, staring at Leon in complete confusion, as if he hadn't heard properly, or had misunderstood the words entirely. "What are you even talking about…?"
Leon didn't answer right away.
Instead, he took a half-step to the side, leaned in, and without asking or warning, pulled aside the torn fabric of the hoodie, exposing red, uneven claw marks running from the shoulder downward. Then more, shallower scratches on the neck, already starting to dry but still clearly visible in the daylight.
"Here," Leon said calmly, pointing to the first spot. "And here. And here."
The boy instinctively recoiled a few centimeters, as if only now realizing that someone was actually looking at his wounds up close, truly examining them, not just glancing in passing.
"It's nothing," he said quickly, voice tight. "Seriously, they're just scratches. It didn't even hurt, I… "
"One is enough," Leon cut him off, his tone unchanged, voice never rising. "One scratch. One contact with their claws or teeth, and it's over."
Leon slowly straightened.
"I've already seen someone like you," he added. "One scratch. After a few hours, the woman had a massive infection. She started losing control of her movements, growling, losing awareness of her surroundings. And then…"
He didn't finish the sentence as he looked at the boy.
"This isn't about me not wanting to save you," Leon said after a moment. "You're already infected. Now it's just a matter of time before you turn into one of them."
The words landed heavily, like a stone dropped into water.
The other four students sat in absolute silence. No one moved. No one argued. No one even tried to speak. Every one of them was staring at the boy's wounds, then at his face, as if they were truly understanding for the first time what the word infected meant, and that there was no room for negotiation.
Michael Kopiec, who was sitting closest, slowly got to his feet, his legs moving as if made of lead. He looked at his friend with an expression that couldn't be mistaken for anything else, grief mixed with pure, paralyzing fear.
"Is there really no way to save him…?" he asked quietly, swallowing hard. "Maybe… maybe you're wrong. We don't know for sure. There has to be some way. Some way to cure him."
After Michael's words, silence fell again, heavy and deep, as all eyes turned to Leon.