"Move faster!" Lin Da'is hissed, dragging his heels over the cracked concrete of the alleyway. Sparks fell from a severed streetlight above, flickering erratically, and every shadow seemed alive.
Footsteps—too many, too precise—echoed behind him. Not human. Not fully human. His heart hammered, but the Core inside him pulsed in tandem, measuring distance, anticipating motion.
"Don't slow down! Don't think!" he muttered.
The first attacker appeared: humanoid, joints bending wrong, skin that absorbed light. Its head twisted almost 180 degrees as it lunged, reaching with impossibly long arms. Lin rolled sideways, smashing into a dumpster. Metal bent but didn't break; the Core reinforced his bones almost instinctively.
"Level Two?" he panted.
Affirmative. Activation recommended.
Energy surged through his veins, muscles shifting, tendons and ligaments weaving into something faster, sharper, stronger.
The attacker screamed—not sound, but vibration. Windows along the alley cracked as its resonance tore at the air. Lin grabbed a rusted pipe, swung instinctively. The creature's arm bent backward, snapping like wet paper, yet it didn't flinch.
"Not enough…" Lin growled.
Another shadow appeared behind the first, faster, darker, impossibly silent. Lin's mind raced, connecting trajectories, estimating speed, predicting impact. Reflexes executed before thought. He felt the Core's intelligence guiding him.
Sparks flew as metal collided with inhuman flesh—or what he thought of as flesh. Limbs twisted in wrong directions, eyes that weren't eyes tracking him, mouths that opened where none should be.
"You're fast… but not enough," hissed a voice inside his head—the Core, calm, calculating.
"I know that!" Lin snapped back, twisting and flipping, landing behind a fire escape ladder. He tore it from the wall and swung it like a bat. The first attacker shrieked again. Its form fractured, multiplied for a second, like corrupted video frames.
Initiating evasive sequence. Layer Two mobility engaged.
Lin's perception split—past, present, immediate future. Every shadow, every potential strike, every angle of escape calculated. He moved almost as if teleporting, but slower—deliberate. Each motion precise. Each strike deadly.
A hum from the Core resonated. Not in sound, but in sensation. The second attacker hesitated—a moment of weakness Lin exploited, striking its torso. Sparks of energy—residual from the Core—sliced through the creature's wrong geometry. It collapsed in a heap, then dissolved into black dust.
"More coming," the Core warned.
Lin's ears caught it: low, metallic footfalls, echoing like percussion on stone. Not one attacker, but dozens. The city around him seemed to warp. Shadows stretched, twisted, folded upon themselves. Every corner held a predator. Every window, every doorway, every alley might hide eyes that shouldn't exist.
"Where… where are they coming from?" Lin whispered, panic threading his voice.
Unknown. They are being drawn by Milestars. They are attracted to you.
His stomach dropped. The Void was aware now. Entities he couldn't name, couldn't comprehend, were converging.
A screech erupted above, and he looked up. Black silhouettes spun across the rooftops, moving faster than possible. Gravity didn't seem to affect them normally. Their shadows stretched and twisted across walls like living ink.
"Think! Move! Survive!" Lin shouted.
He leaped onto a nearby car roof, Core calculating trajectories, enhancing muscle output. A shadow lunged at him midair. He barely twisted sideways. A strike of invisible force erupted from him—null pulse—the attacker exploded into vapor, leaving a lingering distortion in the air.
Lin landed hard, knees buckling, breaths sharp and short. The Core hummed, stabilizing internal damage, weaving muscles and bones into something stronger, something unnatural.
Footsteps approached from behind. Another creature lunged. Lin swung a jagged piece of metal, cleaving through its limb with a sickening snap. It shrieked in a frequency that made his skull ache.
"Why me?" Lin grunted. "Why can't I just be normal?!"
You were made for this.
Lin's vision expanded—he could see incoming threats before they emerged, trajectories calculated and projected as faint holographic outlines only he could perceive. Not imagination. Not hallucination. Prediction. Simulation. Reality bending around him.
A shadow split into three, then five, each moving independently. Lin's fists moved faster than thought, striking precise nodes, dispersing fragments of wrong geometry into nothing.
A wall to his right fractured—metal bending, concrete cracking. A larger shadow emerged, enormous, limbs folding and unfolding impossibly. Its eyes—or whatever passed for eyes—fixed on him. Hunger radiated. The Core whispered, Level Three available. Engage at will.
Lin swallowed. He didn't wait. Muscle and mind synchronized. A wave of energy erupted outward—force amplified by the Core. The creature recoiled, distorted, then lunged faster.
He struck. Metal pipe, thrown debris, his own reinforced fists—every strike calculated by the Core. Every action countered by the Void-touched attacker.
The city around him quivered. Time felt fractured. Shadows no longer obeyed angles. Reality was wrong.
Breathing hard, Lin calculated a new path. He ran, Core enhancing each stride, weaving through collapsing alleyways. Attacks struck behind him, missing by centimeters, some hitting the walls, sending sparks and rubble flying.
A voice whispered in his mind.
You are human no longer. They will not stop until you are either consumed… or voided.
Lin's stomach turned. He didn't understand the full meaning, but instinct screamed—survive. Adapt. Outpace.
A shadow dropped from above. He landed rolling, narrowly avoiding talon-like appendages. The Core pulsed violently, syncing with his nervous system. Muscles rewrote themselves mid-stride. Reflexes sharpened beyond normal human limits.
He struck upward, hitting the creature's chest. It fractured, like glass bending under impossible pressure. Lin felt its energy—or lack thereof—brush against him, cold and wrong.
He bolted.
Around the next corner, a figure waited. Human? Maybe. Too tall, too rigid. Its face featureless, but a faint glow emanated from beneath its skin. Lin's instincts screamed.
"Wait…" he whispered. "Why aren't you attacking?"
No answer. Just silence.
"Answer me!" Lin shouted, raising his fists.
The figure tilted its head, and suddenly, an overwhelming pressure filled Lin's mind. Knowledge. Pain. Infinity compressed into a single moment. He staggered, vision blurring, but understood without understanding: this was the Void. The thing that had awakened within him, and now it watched directly.
"You… must… survive," a distorted voice said. Not inside his head, but everywhere at once.
Lin fell to his knees. He felt every predator converging, every shadow twisting. The Core pulsed, merging with his body, his mind, rewriting possibilities into action. He could fight, he could run, he could survive—but each movement was a calculation, a fracture of his own humanity.
Something massive shifted behind him. He didn't dare turn.
"Level Four?" he muttered under his breath.
Not yet. Observation only.
Footsteps multiplied. Shadows elongated. The city became an arena, a trap. Lin Da'is rose slowly, fists clenched, Core humming in resonance with the Void.
He whispered, almost to himself:
"Bring it. I'll survive."
---
Chapter 3 sets up:
Immediate danger (multiple Void-attached attackers)
Rising tension (shadows, city warping)
Milestars powers scaling (Level Two and hints of Level Three/Level Four)
Cosmic horror intrigue (Void is watching, knowledge compression, human vs alien reality)