She sucked in a breath. When her vision cleared, there was no immediate fireball—just a distant, dirty column smudging the sky toward the ocean, far beyond the town's edge.
"A nuke," she whispered.
Someone else. Somewhere out there.
Some desperate, terrified, or utterly ruthless person—
—had detonated a nuclear weapon.
For kill count. Or out of panic. Or because they didn't believe there was a next world and wanted to take as many with them as possible.
Another pulse hit her—this one purely system.
Not the explosion. The reaction.
Kill notifications flared across distant points on her internal map. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands—millions of beasts erased instantly. Her own kill counter barely twitched. These weren't hers.
But the world had lurched, a massive energy shift tugging at its balance.
The end had just been dragged closer.
The world was dying faster than the system had projected.
She swallowed hard. Steadied the bike. Forced her hands not to shake.
Wind tore at her as she accelerated again, letting the air scrape some shock out of her chest.
Industrial Bypass, her last stop. She arrived with about thirty minutes left on the countdown.
The container fortress buzzed with controlled chaos—fighters on platforms, civilians hauling debris, people shouting instructions at each other with the kind of exhausted affection only born from surviving a night together.
Children with spears spotted her first.
"You came back!"
"Talia!"
"War Goddess is here!"
She winced at the title but didn't bother arguing anymore. It had spread far beyond one or two mouths.
She limped the corridors one last time, using her spear as a walking stick while she checked weak points, re-tied fraying ropes, adjusted angles—
and tossed a couple of precise fire bombs into dense packs as she passed.
[Kill Count: 10,057]
Another notification rolled gently into her HUD.
[Reward #10,000 Pending → Legendary Guardian Beast]
She didn't open it. Just felt it slot into place like the final piece of a blade—and a quiet promise that the next world would not be simple.
Someone shoved a bottle of water into her hand.
"Drink, or I'll throw it over your head," a woman muttered.
A kid hugged her waist. "Thank you. For… um… all of it."
A man gripped her hand with both of his, eyes wet. "You kept us alive. I don't have words for that."
Launa found her near the central junction, armour scorched, hair plastered to her forehead.
"Final loop?" Launa asked.
"Finished," Talia said. "This is the last stop."
Luke jogged up a moment later, mace slung over his shoulder, face smudged black.
"Don't ditch us in the new world," he said. "We're coming with you."
Talia huffed a tired laugh. "Survive the next fifteen minutes. Then we'll talk."
He grinned. "Yes, boss."
"Where's the medic?" she asked. "I want my lecture before I pass out in a different world."
Launa snorted. "Clinic. This way."
The infirmary was a furnace of stale air and quiet suffering.
Talia ducked under the tarp and nearly stumbled over a stretcher. Bodies lay everywhere—some moaning, some still, some already wrapped in sheets that didn't quite hide limbs beneath.
A pair of firefighters dragged another sheet-covered form toward the morgue container outside. Its metal door hung half-open, cold air spilling like fog. Too many shapes inside. No time to sort them. No time to mourn.
A medic with shaking hands tied off a pressure bandage on a man missing three fingers. Another kneeling beside a teenage girl splinted her leg with twisted plywood. The girl's breath came in panicked hiccups, each one smothered by a whispered, "I'm okay, I'm okay," like she was trying to convince her own body to believe her.
Dale stood at the centre of it all.
He looked ten years older than he had hours before—smeared with drying blood, dark circles carved under his eyes, hair plastered to his skull with sweat. Another medic slumped beside him, elbows on his knees, hands trembling from exhaustion.
When Dale lifted his head and spotted Talia limping in, something ugly and tired flickered in his expression—anger, fear, relief, deep exasperation.
"Talia Rowe," he said, "why is your bandage the colour of a murder scene?"
She almost laughed. Almost fell over.
Around her, people murmured her name—some in awe, some in relief, most just grateful she was still standing.
"You're lucky I like a challenge," he muttered, dragging her toward a crate-turned-table. "If the next world doesn't have beds, I'm strapping you to a tree until you heal."
She held up a hand. "Force majeure. South needed help."
"So you donated your leg," he snapped. "Maybe next time you'll offer your head. Sit. Now."
Launa backed away, grinning.
"Traitor," Talia muttered.
Dale peeled back the soaked bandage and hissed.
"You're really testing the limits."
He cleaned and re-stitched her wounds as gently as he could, muttering the whole time.
"No more bus roofs. No more collapsing barricades. Try this new, radical concept: self-preservation."
She bore it quietly, flinching only twice.
Her pain tolerance was warped beyond normal—most people would've been screaming.
"I'll try," she said. Internally: Maybe the last 24 hours made me a masochist. God, I hope not.
"You will," he corrected. "I don't fancy rehabbing a half-crippled war goddess in a world with no hospital beds."
She snorted. "You called me that. I'm telling everyone."
He rolled his eyes and taped fresh bandage down. "Out. Go sit somewhere that won't collapse."
Talia climbed slowly, testing each rung with her good leg and hauling herself with her arms until she reached a high perch overlooking the fortress. Her last view of this world—hills, town, smoke-stained sky.
She sat back against cool steel, finally still.
System rewards.
If the system didn't come with them into the next world, she'd regret wasting the chance.
So she started opening.
Blindbox after blindbox unfolded in her HUD—gear, potions, odd items, consumables, skill books, junk, treasures. Her inner space filled with organised chaos.
The major territory rewards refused to open—quiet glowing seals locking them for the next world.
Good. She wanted that unfairness with her.
For once, opening blindboxes wasn't about min-maxing.
It was a strange, quiet kind of fun.
A final distraction.
A way of breathing while the world counted down.
She didn't notice she had an audience.
People drifted toward her perch in ones and twos—drawn to the flicker of rewards appearing and vanishing around her hands.
A pair of teenagers whispering halfway up the ladder:
"Is she… collecting rewards?"
"Before the world ends?!"
"Bro, she's speed-running the apocalypse."
A tired father squinted. "If she's doing it, there's a reason. Talia never does anything without purpose."
His partner elbowed him. "Then open yours. You're not going to arrive broke in the next world."
Clusters formed below.
Some opened their own blindboxes—armour pieces glowing, books appearing, food packs materialising. A woman laughed when her reward was a kettle. A man cried when he received the healing salve he'd needed hours ago.
Others simply sat and rested—sharing rations, passing blankets, leaning on each other in the first moment that had felt safe.
Launa, Luke, Reno, and several Rowe-aligned fighters watched her from a distance.
"She's preparing," Launa whispered.
"The War Goddess always is," Luke added.
"If she's opening boxes," Reno said, "we should too."
Quietly—almost reverently—the core group joined the ritual.
Blindboxes bloomed like fireflies in the dying light.
All of them moving, deciding, preparing, while Talia, exhausted and unaware, kept opening her rewards as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Talia realised at some point that she wasn't alone on her perch.
Launa had settled nearby. Luke too. A couple of Rob's runners. A few others she recognised only from glimpses in battle.
Strangers who weren't really strangers anymore.
She looked at them, then at the hundreds below.
For a breath she froze—she hadn't expected them all to be watching her. Waiting, almost. Not for orders… just for her.
So she spoke. Nothing dramatic. Nothing heroic.
Just a quiet acknowledgement of everything they had survived.
"You've earned your place," she said, voice carrying strangely well in the thickened air. "I'll see you all on the other side. Stay alive."
Weapons lifted—bows, spears, pipes, machetes.
Some people cried openly.
Some shut their eyes.
Some just exhaled and let their shoulders sink.
The last half hour blurred—final checks, stitches, the climb to the top, and one last round of blindbox roulette as the timer bled down.
Her HUD ticked over: [00:01]
Something shifted. The system's pressure fell over the city like a hush.
One minute before Binding.
The air tightened.
Sound thinned.
Even the flames seemed to bow, lowering themselves.
Then, as it hit [00:00]—
In the blink between one breath and the next—
The world froze."