The desert didn't forgive.
It just waited for you to slip.
Asher trudged across the broken ridges, every breath hot inside his helmet. His sword still dripped black ichor from the last massacre, drying into tar across the blade. The air smelled like rust and ozone, even through the filters.
He paused, hunched low behind a shattered dune-crest. His chest burned. His legs felt heavy. He opened the UI with a sharp blink-command.
---
Asher Veylan
KC (Kill Credits): 87
Strength: 1× Peak Human (Cost: 50)
Agility: 2× Peak Human (Cost: 100)
Endurance: 1× Peak Human (Cost: 50)
(Max: 50×)
Body Modifications: —
Bind Subjects: —
---
"Eighty-seven…" Asher muttered. His throat was raw. "Could put it into strength… but---" He stopped himself, fingers tightening around the hilt of his blade.
The truth gnawed at him: he was already tiring fast. His arms ached, his legs shook. His upgraded agility carried him, but his body lagged behind. If he dropped from exhaustion in the middle of a swarm, that was it. Game over.
He swallowed, then jabbed the air with his finger.
"Endurance then."
The HUD flickered. His lungs filled deeper, as though the air carried more oxygen. His heart stopped hammering against his ribs, settling into a steady rhythm. His fatigue dulled, like a hot blade cooling in water.
---
Asher Veylan
KC (Kill Credits): 37
Strength: 1× Peak Human (Cost: 50)
Agility: 2× Peak Human (Cost: 100)
Endurance: 2× Peak Human (Cost: 100)
(Max: 50×)
Body Modifications: —
Bind Subjects: —
---
He leaned against the stone wall, whispering.
"Better. Yeah… much better."
The UI blinked again, overlaying his visor with a faint waypoint marker. His mission. The nest. It was still far. Too far.
He clicked his tongue.
"Still quite far… need more kills."
And so he walked. Sand crunched beneath his boots. The wasteland stretched endless, carved with old bombardment craters, corpses of armored vehicles half-buried in dunes, picked clean of flesh and metal alike.
Then he heard it.
Chittering.
Asher ducked instantly, sliding behind a sandstone spire. He eased his head around the edge.
Gnashlings. At least fifteen, clustered along a shallow ridge, tearing apart a carcass that looked like one of the survey drones, dragged down and stripped. Their tiny claws clicked as they carved into synthetic plating like it was bone.
He exhaled.
"Fifteen. Manageable. I just need to not let the suit take too much hits."
He drew the sword and crept down. Every step was deliberate, silent. The moment his boot hit loose rock, three heads snapped up, jaws clattering.
"Shit."
The swarm shrieked and came at him.
"Alright! Let's go then!"
Asher surged forward. His blade hacked through the first two cleanly, ichor spraying across his chestplate. He backed away at once, keeping distance. Their bodies were small, but their teeth were scalpels. If they swarmed his suit, they could rip seals and flood his lungs with desert air.
Another came in low. He kicked it, sending the creature spinning mid-air before cutting it in half as it fell. His breath hissed through the comms.
"Keep back… I just need to not let them cling!"
A lunge to his left, he pivoted fast, blade whipping sideways, severing three legs in one stroke. The thing screeched, dragging itself forward, before he stomped its skull into the sand. Black ichor burst beneath his boot, spraying shards across his visor.
They came at him from all sides. His sword worked faster, carving arcs in brutal rhythm. Slash. Step back. Stab. Kick. Always moving backward, always denying the swarm a chance to pin him.
His muscles burned, but his lungs didn't. The new endurance carried him. His strikes didn't falter.
In less than a minute, the sand was littered with twitching bodies. Asher stood among them, chest heaving, visor dripping.
"Fifteen down…" He swallowed, voice shaking. "That's… fifty-two total now?"
"Yeah… good but... not enough though."
Then the ground trembled.
Asher's eyes snapped up. A deeper chittering rolled across the rocks, echoing. Shapes rose over the ridge.
Bigger. Meaner.
Three Chitterspawn, armored and grotesque, their forelimbs fused into chitinous cannons that pulsed with wet heat. Behind them, more Gnashlings poured over the sand, a flood of legs and teeth. Dozens.
"Fuck. Not good."
Asher snapped his rifle from his back. His finger squeezed the trigger. The weapon barked in furious bursts.
The first Chitterspawn's head erupted in black spray. Its corpse collapsed, twitching. The second fired a sizzling bolt that slammed into the stone behind Asher, shattering the ridge. He dove, rolled, and came up firing. Bullets punched through its chest. It toppled backward with a screech.
The third tried to flank, charging with jaws snapping wide. Asher swiveled, emptied the last of the mag into its face. The monster's skull burst open, splattering shards across the sand.
"Three down!" He barked, voice ragged. "That's right, you bastards!"
But the Gnashlings were already on him. Sixty. Maybe more. He cursed, slammed a fresh mag in, and opened fire. The rifle spat round after round, ripping holes through chitin and meat. Twelve fell. Twenty eight. But they were endless.
The weapon clicked empty.
"No, no, no---"
They swarmed.
Asher flung the rifle aside, drawing his sword in one furious motion. He swung wide, carving three in half in a single arc. Ichor splattered his helmet, running down in hot streams.
Another leapt for his chest. He slashed upward, splitting it in two mid-air. Another clamped onto his shin. He snarled, kicked hard, sending it flying, then crushed it beneath his boot as it scrambled back.
The fight blurred into blood and motion. His blade hacked left and right, splitting shells, breaking skulls, severing limbs. He slammed one into the rock wall until its body collapsed into paste. He ripped another from his arm and hurled it into the swarm, cutting down three more in the follow-through.
His suit screeched warnings, armor integrity dropping. Scratches gouged across his left arm, hissing where acidic ichor burned into the plates.
"Not… fucking… yet!" Asher roared, backing away step by step, his blade a whirlwind of steel.
Fifteen left. Ten.
His body moved smoother now, faster. His endurance burned steady, feeding his muscles. His arms swung harder, unbroken.
Finally, the last Gnashling lunged. Asher caught it mid-air, slammed it into the ground, and stomped until it burst apart.
Silence.
The desert floor was black with ichor. Piles of torn limbs twitched across the sand. Asher stood in the center, panting, visor dripping. His suit hissed with damage alarms, but he was still breathing.
He staggered to a rock and collapsed against it, sword dangling from his grip.
"Holy… shit…" His voice cracked. He laughed once, bitter and raw. "I'm still alive…"
The HUD blinked open.
---
Asher Veylan
KC (Kill Credits): 112
Strength: 1× Peak Human (Cost: 50)
Agility: 2× Peak Human (Cost: 100)
Endurance: 2× Peak Human (Cost: 100)
(Max: 50×)
Body Modifications: —
Bind Subjects: —
---
Asher stared at it, chest heaving. His lips cracked into a grin.
"One-twelve… yeah… that's it."
His hand twitched over Strength, hovered but then pulled back. He knew better. More agility meant more survival. Faster reflexes. Fewer hits on the suit.
"Agility. Pump it."
The HUD flickered.
---
Asher Veylan
KC (Kill Credits): 12
Strength: 1× Peak Human (Cost: 50)
Agility: 3× Peak Human (Cost: 200)
Endurance: 2× Peak Human (Cost: 100)
(Max: 50×)
Body Modifications: —
Bind Subjects: —
---
The change was instant. His arms felt lighter, his legs coiled like springs. The world slowed around him, each grain of sand drifting sharper in his vision. His body hummed, tuned for violence.
He exhaled, long and steady.
"I can feel it. Three times faster. Gnashlings… won't be a problem anymore."
He checked his mags. Two empty, discarded. Seven left. He slid one into the rifle with a metallic click.
"Sigh… seven left and I'm not even at the entrance yet."
The waypoint flickered north, over dunes and ridges. Asher pushed himself up, tightened his grip, and kept walking.
The desert stretched, endless. His boots crunched over stone and bone alike. The stench of ichor clung to him like a second skin.
Then he saw it.
The ground split ahead, a yawning crack in the desert floor, black and wet with organic resin. The nest entrance.
And guarding it---
Dozens of Chitterspawn, carapaces gleaming in the half-light. Their cannons pulsed with sick glow, dripping acid. Among them moved other shapes, longer, sleeker. Their limbs bent like blades, their heads narrow with fangs that clicked in restless hunger.
Leapfangs.
Asher froze. His throat worked.
"Fast ones…" he muttered. "Too fucking fast."
He tightened his grip on the rifle, muttering again, almost to himself.
"Alright… one step at a time. I've come this far. No turning back now."
And he walked toward the nest.