The armored bus plunged into the financial district's underpass.
Complete darkness swallowed everything instantly.
Ren gripped the wheel, Echolocation painting the pitch-black tunnel in sharp, pulsing wireframes of sound. Every abandoned car, every crumbled pillar, every crack in the concrete, mapped clean inside his head. 1
Before the System, he would've hyperventilated in a place like this. He remembered cowering in the university library, flinching at a dropped textbook, heart spiking at the sound of a senior student's heavy footsteps in the hallway outside.
Now the suffocating darkness felt warm.
Protective, even.
The System hadn't just rewritten his DNA, it had scorched away his fear entirely and replaced the empty space with a hollow, gnawing furnace. He was no longer the prey. 2
He checked the rearview mirror. The Humvee's headlights carved twin beams through swirling ash. Chloe kept her distance, driving with the rigid, careful tension of someone who understood death was one missed brake pedal away.
Ren tapped the radio on his shoulder.
"Headlights off."
"I won't be able to see the road," her voice cracked through the static. Panicked. 3
"You don't need to see the road. Follow my taillights. Harsh light draws attention down here. Kill the beams."
A second passed.
Then the tunnel dropped into absolute, crushing darkness.
Ren navigated the graveyard of abandoned commuter cars without slowing much. Steering around a shattered ambulance, a cluster of rusted sedans piled against the left wall, a chunk of collapsed ceiling sitting dead center in the lane. Echolocation fed him a continuous stream of spatial data, clean and effortless. The air was thick down here, reeking of ozone, stagnant water, and crude oil in equal, suffocating layers. 4
Then the floor moved.
Subtle. A ripple in the asphalt that had absolutely no business existing. Ren slammed the brakes. The bus screeched to a halt. Behind him, the Humvee's tires skidded on slick concrete, stopping a few yards back.
"What is it?" Chloe asked over the radio.
Ren didn't answer. He stared at the ground ahead.
The System overlay flared blue across his retinas.
[Mutated Asphalt Crawler (Lvl 8)]
[Status: Ambush Mode]
[Warning: Corrosive Touch]
'Oh, so the city itself is alive now. Great.' 5
The System had done its usual work on the rats, the feral cats, the zoo animals, twisting all of them into recognizable nightmares. But this was different. A colony of subterranean insects that had secreted a shell of melted tar and concrete around themselves, camouflaging perfectly within the urban decay.
Objectively impressive. Horrifying, but impressive.
The pavement erupted.
Three elongated, segmented bodies burst from the roadbed, showering the armored bus in jagged chunks of asphalt. Centipedes the size of subway cars. Carapaces gleaming with wet black tar. Hundreds of scythe-like legs clicking frantically against the concrete pillars in the dark. 6
One coiled around a support column and drove its mandibles straight into the reinforced steel hood.
The metal shrieked.
Ren kicked his door open and stepped into the dark.
Didn't bother with the shotgun. Buckshot would deflect uselessly off that tar-thickened armor, not even scratch it. He needed penetrating power. Precise and deep. 7
"Stay in the truck!" he barked into the radio.
He activated Dash.
Space compressed. He materialized directly above the first Crawler's massive head, gravity pulling him down.
[Skill Activated: Rending Claws]
Fingers elongated into metallic talons.
The Crawler whipped its segmented tail in a frenzy, shattering the concrete pillar behind it. Ren ignored the falling debris raining down around him. He plunged both hands deep into the creature's unarmored, glowing eye sockets.
A deafening, vibrating hiss tore through the tunnel. Acidic tar spewed from its mandibles, sizzling against his boots. Chitin Shell flared instantly, hardening his skin against the caustic splash. 8
Ren twisted his wrists.
Shredded the soft neural tissue behind the eyes. Anchored his boots firmly against the skull and pulled upward with everything he had.
The monster collapsed, dozens of legs twitching in a chaotic, dying rhythm.
He didn't pause. The second Crawler was already charging, jaws spread wide to snap him in half clean.
Ren pulled a deep breath of the foul tunnel air. Focused his mana.
[Skill Activated: Psionic Scream]
The invisible shockwave hit the charging Crawler dead center. Its momentum carried the massive body forward even as its primitive brain short-circuited completely. It crashed hard into the side of the armored bus, stunning itself against the heavy steel plating. 9
Ren was already moving.
He scaled its segmented back using Wall Run, boots finding traction on the sticky tar. Located the soft, pulsating joints between the heavy armor plates. Drove his claws in deep, severed the spinal nerve cluster in one clean, ruthless strike.
[Target Dead: Mutated Asphalt Crawler (Lvl 8)]
[Experience Gained: 300]
Two down.
The third Crawler watched all that happen and made a very reasonable decision. It skittered backward and burrowed frantically into the shattered asphalt, disappearing.
Ren let it go. Hunting a burrowing enemy in the dark wasted time he didn't have, and he already had what he needed. 10
He knelt beside the second kill. The hunger was a physical ache demanding immediate tribute, the way it always did after a fight. He plunged his bloody hands into the severed nerve cluster and ripped out a handful of pale, gelatinous marrow.
Forced it down his throat.
Tasted of crude oil and rusted copper. 11
[Gluttony Activated.]
[Consumed: Subterranean Marrow.]
[Vitality +3]
[Strength +2]
[New Passive: Corrosive Resistance (Low)]
[Description: Minor immunity to acid and toxic burns.]
Ren wiped his mouth. Breathing steady. Heart rate steady. He had just ripped a subway-car-sized insect apart with his bare hands in complete darkness and his hands weren't even shaking.
Probably should've been more unsettled about that.
He wasn't.
He watched the black talons retract slowly back into normal fingernails. Piece by piece with every meal, another sliver of whatever he used to be got traded away for raw, unadulterated power to survive.
And the terrifying truth was that he didn't miss a single piece. The old Ren was weak. The Glutton was eternal. 12
He keyed the radio. "Road is clear. Turn your lights back on."
The Humvee's high beams flooded the tunnel.
Illuminated the slaughtered monsters. The blood-soaked boy standing quietly among them. Chloe stared through the windshield with a face that couldn't quite decide between awe and horror.
Ren climbed back into the bus, wiped his slick hands on his jacket, shifted the heavy transmission into drive, and pressed deeper into the abyss.