Chapter 1: The First Cull
The world was supposed to end with fire, with radiation, with the silent, drifting ash of a dead civilization. Kael knew the playbooks. He'd been drilled on every scenario.
He was not prepared for a chime.
It was a soft, crystalline sound that bloomed directly inside his skull, dissonant and utterly alien. He froze, mid-motion, on the rooftop where he was running a surveillance detail. His hand went instinctively to the weapon concealed beneath his jacket, his eyes scanning for a source. There was none.
Then, the air in front of his eyes *rippled*.
A translucent blue screen, sleek and impossible, resolved into his vision. It was a HUD, but not one from any tech he knew. Cold dread, a sensation he was trained to suppress, coiled in his gut.
**System Initializing...**
A progress bar filled. From the streets below, the first screams began. Not screams of panic, but of pure, uncomprehending terror, cut short with wet, final sounds.
The screen changed.
**System Initialization Complete.**
**The Culling Has Begun.**
**Level Up or Die.**
Beneath it, his own data, laid bare like a target profile:
**Name: Kael**
**Level: 1**
**Health: 100/100**
**Stamina: 100/100**
**Class: [None]**
"Aegis…" he whispered, the word a curse. This was it. The protocol they'd whispered about in black-site bunkers. The final, unthinkable contingency. They'd actually done it.
A crash from the alley below. A shriek of tearing metal. Kael looked over the ledge. A delivery van had plowed into a storefront. But the driver wasn't trying to escape. He was… *changing*. His body contorted, skin splitting to reveal glistening, chitinous flesh beneath. His limbs elongated into multi-jointed claws. A status bar appeared above its twitching form.
**Name: [Fresh Corrupted]**
**Level: 1**
**Health: 120/120**
The Culling wasn't just a command. It was a transformation. The weak weren't just dying; they were being repurposed into the instruments of death.
The creature, the Corrupted, sniffed the air and then its bulbous head swiveled, locking onto a figure stumbling out of a shattered coffee shop. A young woman, clutching a bleeding arm.
Kael's training screamed at him: *Observe. Assess. Do not engage without intel.*
But the System's words burned in his vision. **Level Up or Die.** This was the intel. He had to engage.
He didn't use his firearm. Ammunition was finite, and the report would draw every horror in a five-block radius. Instead, he vaulted the rooftop ledge, catching a fire escape and sliding down, the metal groaning under his weight. He landed silently in the alley, a length of heavy, discarded rebar in his hand.
The Corrupted charged the woman. Kael moved to intercept.
He was faster, his body a honed weapon. He swung the rebar in a two-handed arc, aiming for the thing's head. It was a killing blow, he was sure of it.
The creature moved with shocking speed, twisting. The rebar meant to crush its skull instead slammed into its shoulder with a wet crack. It roared, a sound of pure malice, and a clawed limb swiped back.
Kael tried to dodge, but he was over-committed. The claws ripped through his tactical jacket, scoring deep lines of fire across his ribs.
**Health: 84/100**
**Damage Dealt: 25**
**Damage Received: 16**
Agony blinded him for a second. The numbers were a cold, brutal assessment. His best shot had only taken a fifth of its health. A single glancing blow from it had cost him dearly.
This wasn't a fight. It was a slaughterhouse equation.
The Corrupted lunged again. Kael abandoned all form, all technique. This was gutter-fighting. He dropped, sweeping the rebar at its legs. It stumbled, and he drove the jagged end into its back, again and again, a piston of desperation.
**Damage Dealt: 12**
**Damage Dealt: 11**
**Damage Dealt: 13**
Its health bar plummeted, but so did his Stamina, the number flickering down from the intense exertion. He was tiring. The creature thrashed, its claws catching his thigh.
**Health: 71/100**
**Stamina: 45/100**
He was losing. The realization was ice in his veins. He roared, channeling the pain into a final, brutal thrust, putting all his weight behind the rebar, aiming for the base of its skull.
The metal punched through with a sickening crunch.
The Corrupted shuddered and then dissolved, not into a corpse, but into a cloud of fading, sickly green motes. The alley was silent, save for Kael's ragged gasps. Two small copper coins and a faintly glowing vial of red liquid clattered to the ground where it had died.
**Victory!**
**XP Gained: 60/100 to Next Level.**
He stared at the message. He had nearly died. He was bleeding, his body screamed in protest, and he wasn't even halfway to the next level.
A whimper came from the street. The young woman was still there, staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. Then she scrambled backwards and fled into the ruins.
He was alone. The coppery taste of blood was in his mouth, his own. He looked at the health potion. It was a taunt. A single, small reward for almost being culled.
Kael leaned against the wall, pressing a hand to the bleeding gashes on his ribs. This was the Aegis Protocol. This was the hell they had built. Leveling up wasn't a game. It was a slow, bloody grind through a world designed to kill you. And he knew, with a soldier's cold certainty, that Level 2 would cost him even more.
He had to get off the streets. He had to find a strongpoint. He had to survive.
The Culling had begun. And Kael, the operative who thought he knew what war was, had just received his first, brutal lesson.