Riko didn't even get the chance to breathe.
The instant their feet hit the open dirt, the three monsters lunged at him, all gnashing teeth and jagged, glitching shadows. Their bodies were bigger than the first creature's, twice as wide, three times as loud, and most definitely four times more interested in turning him into breakfast. Their claws scraped sparks off the junk metal, as they bounded forward in uneven, shuddering motions, like something was puppeteering them with lagging Wi-Fi.
"WAIT—THREE AT ONCE? THAT'S ILLEGAL!" Riko shouted, stumbling backward as they converged. "YOU CAN'T TEAM UP! WHERE IS THE RULEBOOK?!"
No rulebook appeared.
Just teeth.
Dozens of pixelated, misaligned teeth snapping far too close to his face.
Riko jerked to the side, but his feet didn't cooperate-they moved too fast, too strong, like someone had swapped out his bones and replaced them with compressed springs. His shoulder slammed into a pile of metal plating. The entire sheet caved inward like he'd tackled a cardboard wall.
One of the monsters sprang towards his legs.
Riko yelped and kicked reflexively.
His foot shot out with ridiculous force, and the creature skidded backward across the dirt, grooves deep behind it. But the other two didn't hesitate-they surged forward, jaws wide, mouths flickering between real flesh and digital distortion.
Riko's breath caught in his throat. Panic surged like boiling water in his chest. His heart hammered so fast it felt like it might detonate. His legs moved before he could think—before he could even form a coherent thought.
He jumped.
He didn't plan to, didn't aim, didn't even bend his knees properly. He just reacted, terror roaring through every cell.
And the world dropped away.
Riko shot upward like gravity had taken a lunch break. The junkpile shrank beneath him, shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, looking suddenly like a messy toy model set. Wind blasted against his face, cold and sharp, whipping hair into his eyes. His stomach lurched so fast he almost screamed.
"WHOA—WHOA WHOA WHOA!"
He flailed wildly, his arms thrown out like broken helicopter blades.
He soared past the top of a collapsed crane. He sailed right over a twisted billboard frame that he never could've reached even in his wildest, most unrealistic parkour dreams. A rooftop-an actual real rooftop from the abandoned factory across the fence-rose past him in a blur.
He wasn't only jumping.
He was launching.
"H-HELP! HOW DO I STOP?!" he shouted to absolutely no one.
There was no instruction manual mid-air. No helpful parachute. No pop-up tutorial telling him how to decelerate without shattering all his newly "reinforced" bones.
He arced at the top, weightless for a split second, hanging in the sky like a glitch that forgot to fall.
And then gravity remembered his existence.
Riko plunged downward, screaming all the while.
He hit the roof with a metallic boom that rattled throughout the factory. A burst of dust erupted around him. The panel under his feet buckled and dented in as if he weighed a truck. He stumbled ahead, coughing as rust clouds swallowed him.
"Oh," he wheezed, staring at his shaking hands. "I'm a nightmare. I'm an actual walking disaster. Someone should arrest me for basic safety concerns."
He wobbled upright, clinging to a bent exhaust pipe which screeched under his grip.
Below, the three monsters skittered in circles, confused and snapping at each other. One kept looking up at him, as if trying to calculate whether it could make the jump too.
"Don't you dare," Riko muttered. "Don't look at me like a snack up here. I'm not a rooftop meal."
He forced himself to breathe, though each inhale felt like his lungs were trying to outrun his ribs. His entire body buzzed-every muscle thrumming with leftover energy from that impossible jump. If this was what fifty levels felt like, he wanted a refund. Preferably one with a sedative.
"Okay," he panted softly. "Okay, Riko, think. You're fifty levels stronger—whatever that means. You destroyed metal by sneezing at it. And you just did an Olympic jump that should've launched you into orbit.
He gripped the pipe more tightly.
"So how do you NOT die now?"
He didn't get time to come up with a plan.
Because the world spoke on his behalf.
A sound rolled through Junk Zone 88.
Not a growl.
Not a hiss.
Not even the sharp chittering of the smaller monsters.
This sound was deeper. Colossal. A low, resonant rumble that shook rust loose from the beams around him. The metal beneath his feet vibrated. The hollow parts of the rooftop shuddered like they might snap clean in half. The air itself felt heavier, like the atmosphere was holding its breath.
Riko froze.
Slowly, he turned his head toward the junk mountains at the far end of the zone.
One pile moved.
No—rose.
Like something enormous underneath it was standing up after a long sleep.
Another roar louder this time seemed to shrink the sky. The junk towers quivered; sheets of debris rattled loose in miniature avalanches. A crane moaned and tipped to one side. Dust plumed upward like smoke.
Below him, the three monsters immediately ceased snarling at him.
They turned toward the sound instead.
And for the first time, Riko saw fear in their glitching eyes.
"Oh no," he whispered. "NO. Nope. Whatever that is, it stays over there." But the roar came again-longer, deeper, so powerful it rattled his bones. Something enormous was waking up behind piles of junk, shaking up the whole zone.