Moon's stomach let out a monstrous echoing growl.
"Shut up," he muttered and clutched his abdomen as he walked down the ruined street.
Opening his first Mana Node and drastically increasing his Vitality had a massive drawback. His baseline metabolism was operating at hyper-speed.
The synthetic steak he had eaten back on Earth was completely burned through. He was burning calories faster than a marathon runner. If he didn't find food soon, his own body would start cannibalizing his muscle mass.
Moon stuck to the alleyways and relied on his 1.7 Agility to move quietly.
He was actively hunting and scanning the environment for anything remotely edible. Rummaging through a rusted car had yielded nothing but a skeletal corpse and a handful of useless Earth-variant coins.
As he rounded a corner onto a wider commercial avenue, a flickering light caught his attention.
Half a block down, the faded neon sign of a Mega-Mart convenience store buzzed erratically.
The structural glass was shattered, and the automatic doors were wedged open by a pile of rubble. The interior emergency lights cast a sickly yellow glow onto the pavement.
"Bingo," Moon whispered.
Processed apocalypse food. It was exactly what he needed.
He gripped his iron baton and approached the storefront silently. Before he could step through the shattered glass, the sound of violent kinetic impacts and guttural shrieks echoed from inside.
Someone was fighting.
Moon melted into the shadows near the entrance and peered through a cracked window advertisement.
In the center of the main aisle, a tall broad-shouldered man was fighting for his life.
Moon recognized him immediately. It was Garrett. He was the quiet lone-wolf survivor from the warehouse who had ignored Braddock's speech about safety in numbers and vanished into the city.
Garrett wasn't using a system weapon. He was wielding a heavy red emergency fire axe, and he was swinging it with terrifying efficiency.
He chopped through the collarbone of a lunging Blight-Fiend, ripped the blade free, and kicked another one into a shelf of canned beans.
He was skilled, but he was getting overwhelmed.
There were at least fifteen regular Blight-Fiends swarming the aisles, attracted by the noise and blood.
They were climbing over the checkout counters, knocking over displays, and closing the circle around the tall man.
Garrett was panting heavily with sweat pouring down his face. His swings were getting slower. Fatigue was setting in.
Moon watched from the shadows. Normal people would have rushed in to save a fellow human. But Moon's mind was completely rewired by the System.
He didn't just see a horde of terrifying zombies.
He saw a pile of Origin Points waiting to be farmed.
"Time to play the hero," Moon grinned. "And rob him blind."
Moon stepped out from the shadows and charged through the shattered automatic doors. He didn't announce his presence.
A Blight-Fiend at the edge of the horde turned toward the new sound. Before it could even raise its claws, Moon brought his iron baton down in a brutal sweeping arc.
CRACK!
The zombie's knee shattered inward. As the creature fell, Moon casually tapped the back of its skull with his iron baton, crushing the brittle bone.
[Ding!]
[Target Killed. Trash Conversion Successful.]
[+20 OP acquired.]
"One," Moon whispered.
Garrett looked up with his eyes widening in shock as Moon vaulted over a fallen display rack and landed directly in the middle of the swarm.
"Cross?!" Garrett grunted as he buried his axe into a zombie's chest. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Shopping!" Moon yelled back and ducked under a swipe from a rotting claw.
Moon went to work. He didn't use wide sweeping attacks. He played it incredibly smart.
With his 1.7 Agility, he danced around Garrett's heavy axe swings. He watched the taller man fight, waiting for Garrett to severely injure a monster before swooping in to claim the final strike.
Garrett chopped a Blight-Fiend's arm off. The creature stumbled.
Moon was instantly there, driving his baton through its face.
Garrett kicked a zombie backward to knock it off balance. Moon spun, grabbed the zombie by the throat with his bare hand, and used his [Toxic Carapace] to melt its windpipe before snapping its neck.
[Target Killed. Trash Conversion Successful.]
[+20 OP acquired.]
[Target Killed. Trash Conversion Successful.]
[+20 OP acquired.]
The system notifications rained down in his vision. Moon was actively kill-stealing, ensuring his hands or weapons dealt the fatal blow to almost every monster in the room.
He seamlessly absorbed their residual energy without Garrett noticing a thing.
"Sorry man, thought he had you!" Moon yelled cheerfully as he shattered the skull of a zombie that Garrett had just tripped.
"Stop apologizing and just hit them!" Garrett roared and pulled his axe free from a monster's ribs.
In less than two minutes, the convenience store fell dead silent.
Fifteen Blight-Fiends lay scattered across the aisles.
Garrett leaned heavily against his fire axe. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. He looked around the room and then looked at Moon, who wasn't even sweating.
"You're... you're a freak, you know that?" Garrett breathed and wiped blood from his forehead. "You didn't even use a skill. Just raw physical stats."
"Just good cardio," Moon smiled.
He casually pressed his hands against a few of the corpses on the floor to trigger the final Trash Conversions. His OP balance soared well over 400.
Garrett didn't push it. The tall man walked over to a relatively intact shelf, smashed the glass with the butt of his axe, and pulled out two dust-covered protein bars and a can of peaches.
He tossed one of the bars to Moon.
Moon caught it, ripped the wrapper off with his teeth, and devoured the dry block in three bites. It instantly calmed his hyperactive metabolism.
Garrett popped the can of peaches with a dirty pocket knife and started eating them with his fingers.
"Braddock and the others?" Moon asked as he leaned against a checkout counter.
"Dead. Or wishing they were," Garrett said bluntly as he swallowed a peach. "They tried to barricade the warehouse doors. A brute variant smashed through it an hour after you bailed. I took the roof exit. Been moving ever since."
Garrett looked at Moon closely. His eyes were sharp and calculating.
"You hit hard. You're fast," Garrett said as his voice dropped to a serious tone. "I've been scoping out a target. I can't take it alone. But with you? We could clear it."
"I'm listening," Moon said and crossed his arms.
"Three blocks north. There's a fortified police precinct," Garrett explained. "If we want to survive the next two days, we need actual weapons. System gear is great, but a real pump-action shotgun or riot armor will keep us breathing. The armory is completely sealed."
"What's the catch?" Moon asked.
He knew the System well enough by now. Good loot was never free.
"The courtyard is guarded," Garrett said grimly. "Two elites. Special Blight-Fiends. One is a massive brute built like a tank. The other... I don't even know what to call it. It's feral. Fast. Has literal bone blades growing out of its forearms."
Garrett looked at Moon, expecting the smaller guy to hesitate. Elite monsters were a death sentence for F-Rank beginners.
But Moon didn't feel fear. A massive terrifying grin spread across his face as he imagined the raw stats and skills locked inside those two elite monsters.
"A tank and a blender," Moon chuckled and gripped his iron baton tight. "Lead the way, Garrett. I'm still hungry."