Arthur descended the mountain trail with a smooth, preternatural stride.
The red rain continued to fall, turning the world into a blurred and bloody landscape.
He moved like a shadow. His feet barely made a sound on the wet gravel as he tested his new physical limits.
"System, scan the area ahead", Arthur commanded silently in his mind.
[High-energy reaction detected 500 meters ahead.]
Arthur slowed down and crouched behind a rusted metal guardrail. Below him was a small gas station that usually served as a rest stop for truckers. It was now a scene ripped straight from hell.
A massive semi-truck had plowed into the storefront, its cabin crumpled like cheap paper.
Three creatures were tearing at the body of a driver who hadn't even made it out of his seat.
They were pale, their skin stretched tight over thick, pulsating black veins. Their movements were twitchy, lightning-fast, and completely devoid of anything human.
"Tier-0 Runners." Arthur whispered to himself.
"They were the lowest of the low."
"Yet, in this early stage, they were enough to wipe out a town of thousands in a single night."
Arthur didn't pull out his katana. He wanted to test his mental power first.
He focused his mind on the concept of the Void within his system. The space around the three creatures began to ripple, like intense heat rising off asphalt in the summer.
One of the Runners looked up from its meal. It sniffed the air with a nose that was now just a raw, bloody hole.
"Rend."
Arthur spoke the single word aloud.
Without a sound, a thin line of absolute blackness appeared across the gas station lot. It passed straight through the gas pumps, the heavy truck, and the three monsters.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then, the top halves of the creatures slid perfectly off their waists. The truck's cabin split in two, and the severed gas pumps began to spray fuel into the red rain.
Arthur stood up and walked toward the carnage. He ignored the dead monsters. He walked straight to the back of the store.
Inside, there was a heavy-duty backup generator and dozens of industrial tanks of propane.
"Extract."
He commanded, placing his hand on the cold metal surface of the generator.
The massive machine vanished instantly into his Infinite Vault. Next were the propane tanks, the rows of canned food, and the racks of winter clothing.
In his previous life, he would have struggled to carry a single crate of these supplies. Now, he was stripping the world bare in seconds.
"Arthur?"
A weak voice came from under a pile of collapsed roofing.
Arthur stopped. He recognized that voice instantly.
It was Ben, the son of the man who owned this gas station. In his past life, Ben had been one of the very few people who had shared food with Arthur.
He moved a heavy piece of the roof with one hand, lifting it as if it weighed nothing.
Ben lay there in the dirt. His leg was pinned beneath a steel beam and bleeding heavily. His eyes widened when he saw Arthur's cold, glowing eyes and pristine tactical suit.
"Arthur, thank God. You're alive. Please help me."
Arthur looked down at Ben's leg. It was completely mangled.
In this brutal new world, a cripple was just a delayed corpse. Even with the advanced medicine stored in his Vault, Ben would never be a fighter.
But Arthur remembered the moldy crust of bread Ben had given him five years in the future.
He sighed softly.
He wasn't a hero anymore, but the Sovereign always paid his debts.
"Drink this" Arthur said.
He pulled a basic healing potion from the Vault and handed it down. It was the lowest grade he had, but to a normal human, it was a literal miracle.
Ben drank it frantically, coughing as the glowing liquid forced his shattered bones back together.
"Stay in the basement of the store" Arthur instructed, already turning his back to leave. "Don't come out until the rain stops. If you're lucky, the military will find you."
"Wait! Take me with you!" Ben pleaded, reaching out to grab Arthur's boot.
Arthur kicked his hand away. It wasn't done with cruelty, but with an absolute, chilling indifference.
"I don't lead teams, Ben. I rule."
Arthur vanished into the red mist, leaving the ruined gas station and his past debts behind.
An hour later, he reached the outskirts of downtown Seattle. The city was a chaotic symphony of screaming car alarms and distant gunfire.
The National Guard was desperately trying to set up a perimeter, but they were already being overrun. The soldiers were shooting at the infected, but they didn't understand the rules of the game yet. They are aiming for the center of mass, Arthur muttered, standing silently on the roof of a stalled bus.
"What a waste of bullets."
In front of him, a massive public park was glowing with a strange, pulsing violet light.
[System: Mythic-Grade Crate detected in 300 meters.]
[Warning: A Guardian entity has manifested to protect the drop.]
Arthur felt a thrill he hadn't experienced in a lifetime.
Mythic Grade.
In his previous life of suffering, the highest-tier item he had ever seen from afar was a Rare Grade.
He jumped from the bus, falling thirty feet and landing on the pavement with a silent thud.
The park was filled with fresh human bodies, but they weren't being eaten by the infected. They were being systematically gathered into a grotesque pile at the center of the square.
Sitting on top of the pile was a creature that made the early Runners look like harmless puppies. It was over seven feet tall, its skin hardened into an obsidian black armor. Instead of arms, it possessed long, heavily serrated blades made of dark bone.
"A Tier-1 Bone-Blader" Arthur whispered.
His hand finally reached back to grip the cold hilt of his katana.
"The perfect guardian for a Mythic Crate on the first night."
The creature's grotesque head snapped toward him, its multiple sensory eyes glowing red. It let out a horrific screech that instantly shattered the glass of the nearby streetlights.
Arthur didn't flinch. He drew the black-gold blade from its scabbard.
"Come", he said, a cold smile slowly crossing his face.
"Let's see if this SSS-Rank talent is as invincible as the system claims."
The Bone-Blader blurred, crossing the fifty-meter gap in less than a second. Its bone blades whistled through the wet air, aimed directly to decapitate Arthur.
Arthur didn't dodge. He used Void Step. He appeared exactly three feet above the creature, his katana already glowing with a dark, consuming edge.
"Spatial Rend: Vertical", he commanded calmly.
The blade cut down through the air, leaving a lingering trail of black sparks in its wake. The Bone-Blader raised its arms to block, trusting its impossibly hard bone-armor.
It was a fatal miscalculation.
Against a dimensional spatial attack, physical armor was as useless as wet tissue paper.
The katana sliced through the bone blades and the creature's thick skull with absolute zero resistance. The two halves of the Guardian fell heavily to the sides, its violet blood staining the wet grass.
[System: Tier-1 Guardian killed. 1000 Evolution Points gained.]
[First Kill Achievement Unlocked: Reward - Sovereign's Eye.]
Arthur didn't even pause to check the system rewards. He walked casually to the center of the corpse pile, where a glowing, crystalline chest sat waiting.
It pulsated with a hypnotic light that seemed to draw the very soul out of his body.
He placed his hand on the lid.
[System: Mythic Crate opening. Please wait...]
All around him, the city continued to burn and scream. In the distance, he heard the terror of thousands as the first wave of mutations intensified.
He knew that Julian and Elena were probably hiding in a dark closet right now, praying for a savior. They had no idea that their former pack mule was currently busy becoming their god.
The heavy crate clicked open with a sound like shattering glass. Inside sat a simple, black ring and an ancient scroll that looked like it was made of human skin.
[Item: Ring of the Void Monarch (Mythic).]
[Item: Sovereign's War Fortress Construction Scroll (God-Tier).]
Arthur picked up the cold ring and slid it onto his right index finger.
Immediately, the radar map in his mind expanded exponentially. He could see every living soul in the city, represented by dots. Every human, every zombie. And much more importantly, he could see every single unharvested resource.
"Now."
His voice echoing softly in the silent, bloody park.
"The real game begins."
He unrolled the fleshy scroll to check the requirements. To build the first stage of the fortress, he needed millions of tons of steel and concrete.
He looked up at the towering skyline of Seattle. The skyscrapers were no longer buildings or homes to him. They were simply raw materials.
"I'm going to take it all", he whispered to the red sky. "Every brick, every copper wire, every single drop of fuel."
He activated Void Step and vanished completely, heading toward the massive industrial docks.
Behind him, the city wept, but Arthur Thorne was already securing a future where his power was absolute.