The city behind him burned.
Rook didn't look back again.
Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, overlapping with screams and the wet, inhuman shrieks of monsters echoing through concrete canyons. Smoke smeared the skyline into something unrecognizable, a jagged silhouette of what had been normal less than an hour ago.
The road ahead was empty.
That alone felt unnatural.
Rook drove with both hands on the wheel, knuckles white, eyes flicking constantly between the cracked asphalt and the translucent blue screen hovering at the edge of his vision.
His heart still hadn't slowed.
Every breath felt shallow, controlled by effort rather than instinct. He could still feel the impact of the crowbar vibrating up his arms, still see the goblin's body twitching as it died.
He didn't want to do that again.
The System window pulsed softly, waiting.
Rook forced himself to read.
Not skim.Not glance.Read.
Name: Rook
Level: 3
Strength: 12
Vitality: 11
Agility: 10
Intelligence: 12
Perception: 10
Charm: 10
Numbers. Clean. Neutral. Unimpressed.
Another panel expanded.
[Available Functions]
— Status
— Skills
— Inventory
— Global Shop (Limited)
— Messages
And below them—dim, unassuming, almost easy to miss—
— Territory Claim
Rook frowned.
He tapped it.
Nothing exploded. No alarms sounded. No dramatic warning appeared.
Just a simple description.
[Territory Claim allows a human participant to designate and manage a controlled zone.]
[Territory ownership enables construction, defense, population management, and resource allocation.]
[Only one territory may be claimed per participant.]
That was it.
No flashing icons.
No bonus EXP notice.
No "rare" tag.
Rook slowed the car to a crawl on the empty highway shoulder.
Population management.
Defense.
Construction.
His mind shifted gears.
Every video he'd glimpsed before leaving the city—every scream, every shaky livestream—had been the same. People clustering together, fighting in the open, chasing levels like lifelines.
No walls.
No shelter.
No plan beyond the next kill.
He imagined night falling on those streets.
Imagined exhaustion. Injuries. Monsters coming while people slept in cars or on sidewalks with weapons clutched in shaking hands.
The System hadn't promised fairness.
It promised survival.
And survival required something most people were already ignoring.
A place to stand.
Rook pulled over completely and killed the engine. The sudden silence was deafening.
He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes for exactly three seconds.
"I don't have the stomach for this," he muttered, thinking of the goblin's blood, the man who'd cheered, the woman whose scream had cut off mid-word.
Fighting wasn't a path.
It was a stopgap.
He opened his eyes and looked at the System again.
At the function no one was talking about.
At the one thing that didn't involve killing something with his bare hands.
"I build," Rook said quietly.
The System didn't respond.
It didn't need to.
He started the car and turned off the highway, heading away from population centers, away from the noise—toward land no one would bother claiming yet.
Behind him, the city devoured itself.
Ahead of him, something empty waited.