Leo's desperate crowbar swing collided with the Brute's armored back. Instead of the satisfying penetration he'd hoped for, there was a sickening crunch of metal meeting bone and plating.
The blow was effective but non-lethal.
The Brute roared, a sound of pure, shocked agony, and stumbled forward.
Leo yanked the Crowbar back. Dark, viscous fluid—part blood, part synthetic lubricant—sprayed across the floor and across Leo's face, momentarily blinding him. Panic seized his muscles. He had failed the assassination.
He didn't stop to wipe his eyes. Instead, relying on pure, terrified muscle memory, he launched into a frantic, chaotic barrage. He had to keep the Brute off balance. He swung the crowbar in wide arcs, the metallic clang echoing as he scraped the Brute's shoulder plating.
He was swinging blind, fueled by the certainty that if he paused, he died.
Suddenly, a clean, white text box flashed over the red blur of his vision:
[3 Effective Strikes Detected. Acquired Skill: Blunt Weapon (Crowbar) (Basic)]
At that exact moment, his hands stopped feeling panicked. The crowbar no longer felt like a random piece of junk; it felt like an extension of his own arm. His next swing was no longer wild—it was a devastating, controlled uppercut.
The Brute, still reeling from the initial wound, was raising his razor-wire club for a retaliatory blow. He was slow, predictable.
WHUMMP!
The reinforced steel tip of the crowbar smashed into the side of the Brute's exposed temple, the one gap in his scavenged armor. The Brute collapsed instantly, the massive body hitting the concrete floor with a wet, shuddering thud. His club clattered away.
Leo stood over the silent corpse, the smell of fresh blood and ozone choking him. He had just killed a man. A man who was likely a monster, but still a man. The sheer, repulsive realism of the body—the snapped angle of the neck, the pool of darkening crimson spreading across the floor—overwhelmed his senses.
His stomach lurched violently. He dropped the crowbar and stumbled against the wall, dry-heaving until his chest burned and his eyes streamed tears.
"Done?"
The coarse, ragged voice of the woman—the Courier—startled him.
Leo slowly lifted his head, wiping the grime and sweat from his face. She was still pressed against the back wall, her grey eyes wide and assessing, locked not on the Brute, but on him.
"The Brute's salvage is yours," she said, her voice flat and cold. "Don't come near me."
She didn't wait for a reply. She didn't thank him. She simply used the Brute's body as cover and, with startling speed, darted past the killing zone and slipped out the hallway door, vanishing into the growing darkness. She was purely pragmatic, unwilling to risk a shift in the balance of power.
Leo felt a deep wash of loneliness, but also clarity. Trust was irrelevant here.
He leaned back against the wall, taking deep, shuddering breaths until the nausea subsided. Then, he forced himself to check the logs.
[Stunned Brute (Weak Point Hit): Inflicts 100 Damage (40 Blunt Weapon (Basic) x2.5 Multiplier)]
True Damage X2.5. That was the multiplier that made the kill possible.
He opened the Skills window, now no longer empty:
[Name: Blunt Weapon (Crowbar) (Basic)] [Tier: Basic] [Skill Type: Offensive / Utility] [Effect: Increased handling speed and 10% damage bonus with blunt objects. Grants instant recognition of basic weak points.] [Consumes: Stamina per enhanced strike.] [Learning Requirement: Strength F-, Vitality F, Wits F+] [Remark: You understand the physics of impact. Do not rely on luck.]
Leo was stunned. Just three effective swings had replaced years of physical training. This wasn't farming for experience points; this was the system rewarding immediate, desperate competency.
He remembered the hint from the drop:
(Hint: The Abandoned Quarantine Zone is a golden opportunity for rapid development.)
The "golden opportunity" wasn't finding rich loot; it was the chance to acquire core skills under duress. The game forced you to kill to survive, and it gifted you the skill to make the next kill easier. The beta players who died early were the ones who panicked, failing to adapt or failing to capitalize on the first few crucial moments of combat.
He walked over to the Brute's body, the stench no longer causing him to vomit, but hardening his resolve. He retrieved the crowbar and then began the search.
He quickly located the Brute's main weapon:
[Item: Raider's Club] [Type: Blunt Weapon] [Rarity: Rough] [Attack: High] [Notes: Crude assembly. Wrapped in razor wire for maximum bleed. Difficult to handle without gloves.]
Leo immediately tossed the crude club into his pack. He didn't have the Vitality to endure the bleed damage if he used it, but it was valuable salvage.
From the Brute's pockets, Leo retrieved a bent, half-empty pack of Stim-Sticks—a cheap, harsh form of nicotine—and another common Headlamp.
[Item: Stim-Sticks] [Type: Miscellaneous] [Rarity: Common] [Attribute: Reduces initial panic by 10%.] [Notes: Better than panicking in the open. Tastes like burning rubber.]
He tucked them away. Non-smoker or not, any mental edge was a resource now. He conducted a final, meticulous search, leaving no patch of armor or scrap of clothing unexamined. When he was certain the corpse held no more secrets, he shouldered his scavenge pack.
The sun had completely gone, leaving the Quarantine Zone bathed in a sickly, pale yellow light cast by distant, failing emergency lamps. The house was now a liability—a recent kill zone, guaranteed to attract the next wave of scavengers, or worse, the organized raiders.
He needed to get Underground.
Moving low, the crowbar tight in his grip, he slipped out into the ruins. The area was clearly a former housing district, but years of conflict had reduced the buildings to skeletal frames and mounds of rubble. He used the fragmented map data from the Scavenger's Ledger, moving toward the nearest drainage access.
The ruins offered excellent cover. He moved along the base of a massive, collapsed exterior wall, pausing frequently to listen for movement. The city was silent, but it was the unnatural silence of a held breath.
After ten tense minutes, he found the first access point: a large, circular maintenance hatch, half-buried beneath a pile of collapsed masonry. The hatch was clearly the way down, but the heavy rubble would take at least twenty minutes of constant, noisy effort to clear. As his eyes adjusted, he spotted two shadowy figures armed with heavy-looking rifles performing a slow, methodical sweep of the adjacent blocks.
Fighting them was suicide. Clearing the rubble was alerting them. He had to keep moving.
He continued his search and located a second access point near a former park perimeter wall. This hatch was less obstructed, blocked only by a flimsy wooden barricade, but it presented a new problem.
Two figures were already there, locked in a tense standoff directly over the hatch cover. One was an older man wielding a rusty, sharpened Rebar Spike. The other was a younger figure, the Courier Leo had spared back at the house.
The Courier held a jagged piece of ceramic tiling, a pathetic excuse for a weapon. The man with the spike was pressing her hard.
"You saw the flash, witch. Where'd the kill go? The Scrapper's gear is mine!" the man snarled.
"I didn't see anything, old man! Get away from the tunnel!" the Courier hissed back, her eyes darting between the man and the hatch.
Leo froze. He had stumbled into a classic standoff. An armed confrontation at a choke point. If this escalated, the sound would pull the riflemen right to this location. He couldn't afford to intervene, but he couldn't afford to retreat either—this hatch was his best chance.
He began backing away, shifting his weight with extreme care. He had to be silent.
CRACK!
His worn shoe came down directly on a brittle piece of terra-cotta pipe. The sound was sharp, loud, and final.
The standoff instantly dissolved. Both the man and the Courier snapped their heads toward the sound, their weapons momentarily forgotten.
Leo stepped out of the shadow, crowbar held loosely, hands raised in a gesture of neutrality.
The Courier, however, was faster. Her eyes narrowed in instant recognition.
"It's him!" she shouted, her voice laced with venom and panic. "That's the killer who took the Scrapper's haul! He's armed, spike him, old man!"
The Rebar man, surprised but suddenly seeing a more dangerous, better-armed target, immediately spun and lunged toward Leo.
Leo braced, ready for a fight, but even as the man closed the distance, a different, more ominous sound tore through the quiet night.
BANG!
The sound was sharp, deafening, and absolute. The man with the Rebar Spike jerked violently, his body going limp before he even hit the ground. A dark crimson stain blossomed across his back.
A chilling, slow smile emerged from the surrounding darkness. Two figures stepped forward, silhouetted against the pale city lights. They carried high-caliber assault rifles.
"Well, well," the leader drawled, his voice muffled by a dust mask. "Look what the kill dragged in. A fresh bird, and a pretty little thief."
The Courier, forgetting her confrontation with Leo, flattened herself against the park wall, terror wiping the calculated cunning from her face.
"The Vultures," she spat, her voice tight with hate and pure, gut-wrenching fear.
Leo retreated instantly, flattening himself against the same wall, his eyes fixed on the rifles. He knew about the Vultures: the organized pack of raiders who hunted players and survivors, selling the valuable neural chips for profit.
"We need a plan, now," the Courier whispered urgently, her eyes calculating. She snatched the discarded ceramic tile. "They're hunting territory. They'll use the fire line to drive us out."
Leo knew he was outmatched. Against guns, his crowbar was worthless. He needed an edge. He reached into his pack, pulled out his own damaged Utility Knife—the one he'd found taped to the crowbar—and silently offered it, handle-first, to the Courier.
She didn't hesitate this time. Her eyes flickered to the knife, then back to Leo. She understood the unspoken offer of temporary, desperate alliance.
"The tunnel is ten feet that way. I'll draw fire," she said, her voice dropping to a low, tactical whisper. "You get to the hatch. You're faster."
Before Leo could protest the suicidal plan, her body tensed.
"Don't shoot!" she screamed at the Vultures, throwing the useless ceramic tile as a distraction, then sprinting toward the dense, winding cover of the collapsed highway segment, moving with surprising, desperate speed.
The air exploded behind her.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The Vultures had taken the bait. Leo, holding the heavy crowbar, knew he had seconds to make it to the hatch before they realized their mistake.