From the newly joined group, one figure stood out, someone who drew eyes almost automatically, even now, even in the middle of all this chaos.
A man with a small mole beneath his lower lip, still oddly well-groomed despite the grime on his clothes. The kind of face that, before the apocalypse, would've looked perfect on student council posters or glossy flyers promoting campus events. He ran beside a petite student who kept sneaking glances at him, the same unmistakable crush in her eyes Leon had seen a hundred times "back then", only then it had been over coffee lines and freshmen mixers.
His name was Krzysztof Mazur.
Vice-president chair of the student council.
Just a few days ago, he'd been one of the "model" types, always at meetings, smiling, articulate, and attractive enough that some girls listened a little more closely than the topic warranted. He had a reputation as someone who handled things, who could make problems disappear, who could adapt to any situation.
And, paradoxically, that was exactly why he hadn't panicked in the first hours after the Essence Record appeared.
He fought.
Not well. Not cleanly. But well enough to kill a lone zombie, sometimes a second, and drag himself up to level three, something most people on campus hadn't achieved at all. The problem was that his experience ended precisely where real danger began.
Leon had seen him earlier.
He'd watched Krzysztof drop two zombies, surprisingly effective for someone with no combat background, then freeze when four more came from the sides. Not because he ran out of courage.
Because his body simply couldn't keep up.
A lack of agility was a wall his "initiative" crashed into headfirst.
If Leon hadn't stepped in back then and carved through the group in a few seconds, Krzysztof would've ended the same way as everyone else who overestimated what they were capable of.
Now, running with the group, Krzysztof actually helped. He watched the rear, finished off lone zombies that broke away from larger packs, reacted quickly when someone stumbled or slowed. It was real support, small, but tangible, and Leon noticed, even if he didn't comment on it out loud.
Even so, the weight didn't go away.
If anything, it grew.
Every minute, every student they saved, made Leon feel the fatigue more clearly, not critical yet, but building relentlessly, made worse by the awareness that he wasn't responsible only for himself anymore.
Over twenty people.
Over twenty lives whose pace, fear, and mistakes he had to account for.
And then the air was cut by a low, unnatural buzz.
Leon lifted his head almost on instinct.
In the distance, above the line of buildings, a green shadow flashed past, fast. Too fast. Moving in bounding jumps that had nothing to do with a zombie's chaotic shuffle.
"Damn it…" he muttered.
It was the same mantis.
The same one he'd fought earlier.
He cut down the nearest zombie with a single short motion without even slowing, then moved ahead of the group and planted his feet wide, placing himself between them and the oncoming beast.
The mantis changed course at the last moment, angling straight for Krzysztof.
The vice chair went pale.
He stumbled back a step, then another. Zombies, slow, predictable, he could still handle. But something that moved faster than his eyes could track? He didn't even have the chance to react.
And it wasn't about bravery.
It was pure math.
Krzysztof had mostly killed zombies, and zombies had mostly given him Strength and Vitality. His Agility hadn't budged much at all, still hovering around an ordinary human's level. Against something fast, he was simply… too slow.
Leon stepped forward.
When the green mantis lunged at Krzysztof, Leon's blade was already moving. The block met the scythe exactly where it would've split the air, and Krzysztof along with it.
Metal struck chitin with a dull, ugly impact. Leon didn't slow for even a fraction of a second, he twisted his wrist and severed one of the mantis's scythe arms at the base. The cut limb flew aside and clattered against concrete. The beast shrieked, a high, piercing sound that wasn't pain so much as pure animal rage.
Leon slipped under its body, using the moment it lost balance. The shadow under the mantis's feet moved, wrong, stretching upward as if someone had yanked it by an invisible thread. It wasn't clean chains anymore, not exactly. More like something in-between: a thickened shadow that stole a fraction of a second from its movement, long enough for Leon's blade to find the soft gap between armor segments.
One thrust.
The mantis convulsed, then dropped heavily to the ground.
Krzysztof blew the air out of his lungs so violently it was like he'd only just realized he hadn't been breathing for the last few seconds.
And then he saw it.
A purple shadow.
Not green. Not brown. Not massive like the mantis, sleek, fast, almost smeared, like the light around it couldn't keep up. Something burst from a side passage, too quiet for anyone to scream a warning.
Krzysztof reacted on instinct.
He didn't think. Didn't analyze.
He simply grabbed the girl who'd stayed close to him the entire run, looking at him like he was an anchor, something solid in the chaos, and yanked her forward, shoving her body between himself and the incoming blur.
A violet flash.
For a fraction of a second, it was silent. Unnaturally silent, like the world held its breath.
Then the girl's body split in two.
No explosion. No impact throwing her away, just a perfect, clean cut, as if an invisible blade had passed straight through her. Blood sprayed in a wide fan, splattering the concrete, the building walls, and the clothes of the people closest to her.
Her eyes, wide open, still stared forward. And in that stare was something that hit harder than death itself: pure shock. Absolute disbelief. Not fear of the monster.
Just that final understanding that the person she trusted, the person she'd believed was safe, had used her like an object.
Her body hit the ground with a wet, heavy sound, and the group, watching one of them get sliced in half in an instant, erupted into raw, chaotic panic.
Someone screamed.
Someone else bolted without direction, running between buildings without even looking where they were going.
A few people froze in place like their legs had stopped existing, staring at the blood on the ground.
And then there were the ones who understood faster, who turned and began shifting toward Leon, instinctively, without a word, knowing the only place that still held any chance was the few meters around him.
Leon was still standing over the mantis's corpse, his blade lowered, when he caught the group breaking apart from the corner of his eye.
[Essence Record , Kill Confirmed]
[Target: Mutated Mantid (LVL 12)]
[Reward: +1 VIT | +1 STR]
Leon didn't even glance at the system notification.
His eyes were glued to the chaos exploding in front of him, people running in every direction, others locked in place like mannequins with open mouths and empty stares, and Krzysztof standing a few meters away, pale as a wall, arms hanging at his sides like he'd only just realized what he'd actually done.
"What the hell just happened…" Leon whispered, more reflex than real question, his brain still trying to organize what he'd seen, trying to force it into something like logic in a world where logic was dying faster than people.
And then he felt it.
A sudden, icy shiver ran down his spine from the base of his skull to his lower back, a primal warning you can't learn or train, because it only comes when something is truly wrong.
Instinct took over.
Leon didn't have time to turn. He didn't even have time to think.
He just snapped his sword up, at the exact same fraction of a second something powerful slammed into the blade.
The impact was a dull, heavy boom, completely unlike anything he'd heard so far. The force almost ripped the weapon from his hands, sending a violent tremor through his arms into his shoulders, like someone had struck metal with a sledgehammer.
Leon staggered back half a step, boots grinding into the asphalt, hands going numb as the sword let out a strained, ringing groan under the pressure of something he still hadn't even seen.