His "domicile" was a joke. A single, damp room in a crumbling stack-unit, its walls stained with water damage and the ghosts of previous tenants' despair. It was at the very top of the building, a climb that had always left the old Fexl wheezing and light-headed.
Tonight, he took the stairs two at a time, his body humming with an energy that made the ascent feel trivial. The reinforced door, scarred from past break-in attempts, was locked with a cheap keypad. His fingers, now steady and sure, punched in the code.
The familiar, cramped space greeted him. A narrow cot. A small cooler that held the bare essentials. A single shelf with a few worn-out books. It was everything he owned in the world. It had always felt like a prison. Now, it felt like a cage—far too small for what was now inside him.
The moment the door hissed shut, sealing him in, the adrenaline that had been fueling him finally ebbed. The full weight of the night crashed down. His legs gave way, and he slid down against the door, drawing his knees to his chest. The silence was deafening, broken only by the frantic, rabbit-quick rhythm of his own heart.
He could still smell the alley. The blood. The wolf. The cheap synth-serum on the enforcers' breath. It was all trapped in his nose, a horrifying perfume.
He was a monster.
The thought wasn't a question. It was a cold, hard fact, as real as the new scar on his face. He had been remade into something the world hunted. Something he himself had been taught to fear. The Kings and their Awakened armies existed to exterminate things like him.
A tremor ran through him. It started deep in his core, a vibration of pure, undiluted terror. He wrapped his arms around himself, but the shaking wouldn't stop. He was a werewolf. A creature of myth and nightmare, hiding in a pathetic little room at the top of a slum.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the System interface was there, burned onto the back of his eyelids.
[Quest Complete: Survival Instinct.] [Reward: 50 XP awarded. Interface Familiarity increased.] [New Title Available: 'Alley Brawler']
The text was a mockery. It treated his world-ending transformation like a completed task in a child's game. 50 XP. For surviving a death sentence. For becoming an abomination.
He focused on the Status screen again, his golden eyes scanning the data in the dark. Prime Werewolf. What did that even mean? The System had called him that when the other wolf had recoiled. Was he different?
His gaze fell on the Evolution Tree function. He focused on it.
The interface shifted, presenting a vast, intricate, and mostly greyed-out web of interconnected nodes. It was a constellation of potential, shrouded in shadow. At the very bottom, a single node pulsed with a soft blue light: Omega.
Branches spread out from it, leading to names that made his breath catch: Gamma, Beta, Alpha. But there were other paths, stranger ones, leading to terms he didn't understand: Dire Wolf, Shadow Mastiff, Winter Wolf.
This was his future. A roadmap of the monster he would become.
A new, sharp hunger twisted in his gut, different from any hunger he'd ever known. It was a deep, cellular craving. His eyes darted to the cooler. He scrambled over and yanked it open, pulling out a packaged nutrient bar—his standard, bland meal.
He tore the wrapper off and took a huge bite.
And immediately gagged, spitting it onto the floor.
It was like trying to eat ash. It tasted of nothing. Worse than nothing. It was repulsive. His body, his new biology, rejected it utterly.
[Alert: Nutrient Deficiency Detected.] [Current sustenance is insufficient for Lycanthropic metabolism.] [Recommended: Raw proteins. High-density calories.]
Raw proteins. Like... meat.
The reality of his situation closed in another inch. He wasn't just a monster in mind and power. He was a monster in body. He couldn't even eat normal food anymore.
A wave of hopelessness threatened to drown him. What was he supposed to do? How did he even live?
The System pinged again, relentless.
[New Quest Received: First Hunt.] Objective: Consume suitable sustenance to sate metabolic needs. (0/1) Reward: 100 XP. Unlock: [Keen Smell: Active Tracking].
First Hunt.
The words were primal. Terrifying. They spoke to the new instinct coiled in his chest, the one that had enjoyed the crack of the enforcer's jaw. The one that wanted to chase the fleeing thug.
He couldn't stay here. He would starve to death surrounded by food he couldn't eat. The walls were already feeling like they were pressing in, the ceiling lowering.
He had to go out. Back into the city that had just tried to kill him.
With a resolve that felt brittle, Fexl pushed himself to his feet. He went to the small sink and splashed water on his face, the cold doing little to calm the storm inside. He avoided looking into the small, cracked mirror above it.
He needed a plan. He couldn't just wander the streets looking for a… a steak. He had no money for that, even if he could find one. And the thought of what the "raw proteins" implied made his human mind recoil.
His eyes fell on the cooler again. An idea, desperate and insane, formed. The delivery system he worked for had clients all over the city. Including in the nicer sectors. They imported real food. Fruits. Meats.
The central distribution warehouse for his sector. It was heavily guarded, but not impenetrable. Especially not to someone who could see in the dark and hear a guard's heartbeat from fifty feet away. He'd made deliveries there enough times to know the basic layout. The cold storage units…
It was a suicide mission. But staying here was a slower, hungrier suicide.
He was an Omega. The lowest rank. But he had a System they didn't. He had a will to survive they had underestimated.
He moved to the door, pausing with his hand on the latch. He took a deep breath, trying to quiet the fear, to listen to the new instinct. It was still there, the hunger, the rage. But beneath it, something else. A sharp, calculating coldness.
He was no longer just Fexl, the victim.
He was a hunter.
He opened the door and stepped back out into the night. The city sounds washed over him, no longer just noise, but a web of information. A siren three blocks away. A argument two floors down. The scuff of a rodent in the walls.
The Quest Marker glowed in his vision, not pointing home, but out into the concrete jungle.
[Objective: Locate Sustenance.]
Fexl melted into the shadows, his golden eyes scanning the darkness. The first hunt had begun.