The walk out of Iron-Grip Canyon was supposed to be a quiet moment of reflection. Zayn wanted to think about his life choices, his dwindling bank account, and the fact that he was currently wearing more of Kaelen's internal organs than Kaelen was.
But the System had other plans.
As the sun began to dip behind the jagged cliffs, casting long, bloody shadows across the path, a massive, gold-bordered notification flared in the center of Zayn's vision. It was so bright it actually gave him a localized migraine.
[RANK 20 ACHIEVED!]
[TIER-BREAK DETECTED: THE FIRST THRESHOLD]
[Processing evolution... DNA restructuring in progress...]
Zayn stumbled, his knees buckling as a wave of white-hot heat surged through his bone marrow. It felt like someone had replaced his blood with liquid lead and then set it on fire.
"Oh... you've got to be... kidding me," Zayn wheezed, leaning against a canyon wall. "Right now? I don't even have a chair."
[Evolution Complete.][Tier 1 Reward Selected: The Menace Protocol.]
[New Passive: Apex Predator (Dormant)]**
[New Active: The Butcher's Hour (Limited Time: 10 Minutes)]
Description: For 600 seconds, all physical stats are increased by 500%. Pain receptors are deactivated. Moral inhibitors are purged. You are not a human; you are a disaster.
"Five hundred percent?" Zayn muttered, staring at the screen with bloodshot eyes. "That's statistically irresponsible. I'm going to break the planet."
[Warning: Incoming Hostiles detected. Iron-Grip Syndicate 'Clean-up' Squad.]
From the mouth of the canyon, three heavy-duty armored transports screeched to a halt, kicking up clouds of red dust. Fifty men piled out, but these weren't like the mercenaries from before. These were Syndicate Enforcers—men in full-body tactical plating, carrying mana-rifles and thermal-axes.
Leading them was a woman with a cybernetic eye and a scar that ran from her chin to her collarbone. She looked at the carnage Zayn had left behind, then looked at the lone, gore-soaked boy leaning against a rock.
"Target identified," she said into her comms, her voice cold. "He looks half-dead already. Don't waste the high-grade rounds. Just sweep him up."
Zayn looked up. His golden eyes weren't just glowing now; they were vibrating. He could see the pulse points in their necks from fifty yards away. He could hear the hum of their armor's batteries. To his heightened senses, they were moving through molasses.
"You guys really have terrible timing," Zayn said, his voice dropping an octave into a low, terrifying hum. "I was just about to find a stream to wash this tunic."
He stood up straight, and the ground beneath his boots cracked.
[Skill Activated: The Butcher's Hour]
[Time Remaining: 09:59]
Zayn didn't run. He ignited.
He moved so fast that the air behind him cracked in a sonic boom, shattering the glass on the Syndicate transports. The woman with the cybernetic eye didn't even have time to blink before Zayn was standing three inches from her face.
"Hi," Zayn deadpanned.
He punched her.
He didn't just hit her; his fist, reinforced by the 500% stat boost, passed through her reinforced chest plate, through her ribcage, and out the back of her armor. He retracted his arm, and she collapsed in a heap of crumpled metal and shredded meat.
**[Gore Factor: Optimal]**
**[Primal Gauge: OVERFLOW]**
The fifty Enforcers froze. Their tactical HUDs were screaming "System Error" because they couldn't track Zayn's movement speed.
"OPEN FIRE!" someone screamed.
A hail of blue mana-bolts filled the air. Zayn didn't dodge. He walked through the fire, the bolts dissipating against his skin like raindrops against a windshield. The "Menace Protocol" had turned his skin into something denser than tank armor.
He reached the first line of soldiers. He grabbed two of them by their helmets and slammed them together. The helmets didn't just dent; they imploded, spraying a mist of pink brain-matter and visor-shards across the rest of the squad.
"This is... actually quite cathartic," Zayn said, his voice echoing with a weird, dual-tonal distortion.
He caught a thermal-axe mid-swing with his bare hand, the red-hot blade hissing against his palm. He didn't flinch. He simply crushed the blade with his fingers, stripped the weapon from the soldier's grip, and used the jagged handle to perform a makeshift lobotomy on the man.
The clearing became a festival of viscera. Zayn was a blur of crimson, moving from soldier to soldier with the clinical efficiency of a butcher on a deadline. He wasn't even using skills; he was just using raw, unchecked physics. He ripped a door off a transport and threw it like a frisbee, decapitating four men in a single, clean arc.
"Help! Someone call the High Hegemony!" a soldier wailed, trying to crawl under a truck.
Zayn appeared above him, tilting his head with that terrifying, anime-style curiosity. "The Hegemony is closed for the weekend. Didn't you get the memo?"
He stepped on the soldier's back. The sound was like a dry branch snapping under a boot, but much, much louder.
[Time Remaining: 04:20]
Zayn looked around. There were no soldiers left standing. The three transports were burning, the metal melting under the intensity of the mana-leaks. The canyon floor was no longer red dirt; it was a swamp of Syndicate blue and human red.
"That's... forty-eight, forty-nine..." Zayn counted, tapping his chin with a blood-stained finger. "Wait, where's the last one?"
A muffled whimper came from inside the burning transport. Zayn walked over and ripped the roof off the vehicle as if he were opening a can of sardines. Inside, a young recruit was curled into a ball, sobbing.
Zayn looked at him. The golden glow in his eyes began to flicker as the countdown hit the final minute.
"You know," Zayn said, leaning over the edge of the ruined truck. "You're really lucky. I'm starting to get a very bad headache, and I think my moral inhibitors are about to kick back in."
[The Butcher's Hour: Ending in 10... 9...]
Zayn reached in, grabbed the recruit by the collar, and tossed him gently—by Zayn's current standards—about thirty feet into a soft bush.
"Tell your bosses that the dry cleaning bill for this tunic is going to be astronomical," Zayn called out.
[0... Status: Exhausted]
The golden light died instantly. The 500% boost vanished, leaving Zayn's muscles feeling like they had been put through a meat grinder. He collapsed onto his knees, coughing up a small spray of blood. Every nerve ending in his body was screaming in a language he didn't want to translate.
[Tier-Break Penalty: 24-hour 'Limp' Status.]
[All stats reduced by 80% for duration of cooldown.]
"Worth it," Zayn croaked, lying back in the dirt, surrounded by the wreckage of an entire Syndicate squad.
He looked at the sky. He was now Rank 20. He was a Tier 1 Primal. He was, by all definitions of the word, a menace.
"But seriously," he whispered, closing his eyes as the adrenaline finally left his system. "If the next guy doesn't have a wet-wipe, I'm going to lose my mind."
[Chapter 20 End]
[Current Rank: 20 - Tier 1]
[Zayn's Condition: A god for ten minutes, a potato for the next twenty-four hours.]