The fog rolled in with the taste of iron.
Conner crouched beside a broken planter, arrow notched, heart steady. Across the ruined university courtyard, violet light pulsed in ragged waves. The last of the reanimated monsters had gone quiet—but something worse was coming. They could all feel it.
The System hadn't said a word since the last alert.
Which meant this next thing wasn't a wave.
It was a boss.
Conner glanced behind him.
Joey stood barefoot in a crater he'd made earlier, breathing hard, steam rising from the cracked ground around him. His shoulders—broad, dust-coated—were lined with fresh cuts. Metal floated around his arms, orbiting lazily. Controlled. Like it was waiting for the next command.
Katie sat perched on a chunk of fallen stone, her braid clinging to her back, eyes narrowed. Her coat had been shredded down one side, revealing a patchwork of frost-laced bruises along her ribs. She said nothing, but the sigil floating behind her pulsed in time with her breath.
Neive paced, her new hybrid summon flickering beside her like an animal that couldn't decide what shape it wanted to be. Her hands trembled from exhaustion, but she didn't stop moving. She couldn't.
And then Chadwick dropped in.
Literally—he fell from the third-story library window like a shadow peeled off the sky, landing in a crouch. His short hair shimmered with dark blue along the edges, blending into the smoke of the battle around them. His eyes, gloss-black and unreadable, swept across the group.
"Two minutes," he said. "Maybe less."
Joey tilted his head. "You sure?"
Chadwick didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The earth shuddered.
Katie muttered, "Guess that's our confirmation."
The boss came not with a roar, but a shift in reality.
The mana that had clung to every corpse, every wall, every shattered desk—it twisted upward. Bones cracked together, flesh melted into sludge, and the Reclamation's final horror took form.
It wasn't just one thing.
It was all of them—melded.
A writhing, grotesque mass of fused limbs, teeth, and rune-carved muscle, stitched together by black mana veins that pulsed like arteries. It moved on too many legs. Screamed with too many mouths. And it didn't stumble.
It charged.
"Positions!" Conner barked.
They moved without hesitation.
Joey stepped forward and raised both hands. The floating metal snapped to attention and formed a shield wall mid-air. "Buy me ten seconds!"
Katie dropped to one knee, summoning her anchor in the air. The frost glyph expanded into three glowing rings. "You've got six."
Neive's hybrid summon howled, then darted left, drawing the creature's attention with a sudden blast of green fire.
Chadwick was already gone—flickering into the mist.
Conner didn't shoot.
Not yet.
He waited.
Watched.
Studied.
The thing's joints—its movement. The weight shifts. Its breathing patterns. There, just below the second row of rib-bones, a twitch—a weakness in the connection.
[Weak Point Locked – Phantom Arrow Ready]
He drew.
Held.
The mana twisted around the string like breath.
Release.
The first arrow hit.
The second—the shadow arrow—followed a second later, weaving through the creature's ribs and exploding in black mist.
It staggered.
"Now!" Conner called.
Joey dropped the shield and sent two plates spinning forward like saws, carving into the beast's side.
Katie cast three layered spikes, her glyph bending them mid-air to strike from three different angles.
The boss shrieked, throwing its weight sideways—and crushed a section of the old lecture hall.
Neive's summon bit into one of its exposed arms, but was knocked aside with a spasm of raw mana. Neive stumbled from the feedback, nearly collapsing.
Chadwick reappeared beside her, catching her elbow.
"Don't push a cracked core," he said flatly.
She laughed weakly. "Didn't know you cared."
"I don't. But you dying would mess up the pattern."
He flickered away again, landing behind the creature and driving both daggers into a seam between bones.
The fight wore on.
The boss adapted—regrowing limbs, shifting form, shedding dead weight to stay faster.
By the tenth minute, the group was bleeding, breathing heavy, and running on grit more than power.
But they hadn't broken.
Not once.
And that was when the System spoke.
[Final Threshold Reached – Scenario Boss at 10% HP]
[Trait Synchronization Enabled – Final Strike Capable]
Conner's vision narrowed. The pulse in his Scope Eye grew louder—each movement of the creature now painted in lines and velocity paths.
He drew one last arrow.
Behind him, Joey whispered something under his breath and summoned a six-foot lance of raw, half-melted steel. "Go for it, Connor."
Katie dropped her last Anchor and aimed upward. "I'll clear the path."
Neive, lips split and eyes burning, summoned the same hybrid again—but it came out larger this time. Angrier.
Chadwick reappeared at Conner's shoulder.
He looked… calm.
"Want the kill?" he asked.
Conner didn't answer.
He already had the line.
Release.
The arrow sang.
The shadow sang louder.
The creature reared up—too slow.
The first arrow pierced through the chest.
The second exploded from the inside.
The thing screamed—and came apart.
Flesh unravelled.
Mana surged upward in a wave of black light.
And the courtyard went still.
[Scenario 1: Mana Reclamation Protocol – Completed]
[Core Point Earned: 1]
[Performance Bonuses Delivered]
Conner: Title – "Precision Survives"
Joey: Skill – "Forge Pulse"
Katie: Equipment – "Frozen Thread Mantle" (Uncommon)
Neive: Trait Buff – "Stability Surge"
Chadwick: Title – "Veilwalker"
Conner dropped to one knee, head bowed.
No one cheered.
But they were still alive.
And that mattered more.
Silence lingered like smoke after the collapse.
The grotesque boss had dissolved into mist, leaving only the scorched imprint of its fall—a scorched crater surrounded by broken stone and blood-slick grass. The wind carried the faint hiss of fading mana.
Conner stood slowly, wiping sweat and blood from his chin.
Joey let the twisted metal hovering behind him fall to the ground with a dull clang. His body sagged as the weight hit him all at once. "That's it, right?"
"Yeah," Katie murmured, eyes on the notification still glowing in her vision. "Scenario's over."
Neive was sitting down, her hybrid summon now a curled heap of fading magic beside her. She reached out, brushing its form with tired affection before it disappeared entirely. "I feel like I've been run over by a truck."
"You look like it too," Joey muttered.
She flipped him off half-heartedly. "Still prettier than you."
A laugh cracked between them—raw, exhausted, real.
The survivors gathered slowly. There were fewer now—only twenty-six where there had been over fifty. Mira limped in with help from Luc, her face pale, her right arm bandaged from wrist to shoulder. Taz had a fresh scar across one cheek and the hilt of a broken bat gripped like a sword.
But they were alive.
And they had fought.
Some better than others, but all with everything they had.
Joey stretched, grunting as his shoulders popped. "You guys get rewards too?"
"Yeah," Katie said. She summoned her new mantle—pale blue, layered with jagged threads of frost magic woven through. "Looks nice. I think it cuts mana cost."
"I got something called Forge Pulse," Joey muttered. "Haven't checked what it does yet."
"Trait buff for me," Neive added. "Stability Surge. Makes my summon fusions burn less mana."
They all looked to Conner.
He said nothing.
But the glow around him lingered slightly longer.
A few minutes later, the System delivered the next message.
[Core Point Acquired: 1][This resource cannot be traded, dropped, or altered.][Usage: Locked until Scenario Threshold Tier 2 is reached]
A sharp pause.
Then:
[Track: Core Points – 1]
No further explanation.
No tutorial. No options.
Just the number—and the weight of it.
Chadwick stood at the edge of the crater, arms crossed. He was the only one not looking at his System screen.
"You've seen this before," Conner said quietly, stepping up beside him.
Chadwick didn't answer right away.
Then, "One other zone. Different boss. Same kind of message."
"You were with a group?"
"For a while."
"And now?"
Chadwick finally turned. "Now I'm here."
It wasn't an answer. But Conner didn't press.
The way Chadwick's jaw tensed said enough.
Later, as the group sat around a flickering fire in the hollowed-out quad, Joey finally asked, "What do you think they're for? The Core Points."
"Power," Katie said. "Later. Bigger stakes."
"Classes," Neive added. "That's my guess. Or evolutions."
Chadwick said nothing.
Conner stared into the fire. "It's not just to reward us. It's to sort us."
"Sort us?"
He nodded. "Measure us. Track what we do. Who we protect. Who we let die. Who leads. Who breaks."
No one responded.
Because they all knew he was right.
Elsewhere
Beyond the edge of all zones.
Beyond time as players understood it.
Beyond space that could be mapped or broken.
There was a place.
No doors. No windows. No gravity. Just silence—and observation.
In this hidden realm, the Administration watched.
A dozen figures cloaked in shadow stood in a perfect circle, each facing a central sphere—like a glass planet spinning in slow motion, showing flickers of battle, death, and System logs.
At the front, stood Alore.
Her skin was dark and flawless, catching the dim light like polished stone. Her short black hair shimmered faintly with streaks of dark blue, styled tight to the sides, wild in the middle. Her eyes were pure black—not dead, but impossibly deep.
She studied the replay of Conner's final arrow. The twin strike. The moment of synchronization.
"A clean outcome," one figure murmured behind her.
"They adapted quickly," said another.
Alore spoke softly. "Faster than expected. And without guidance."
"Do you recommend escalation?"
Alore's fingers hovered over the edge of the sphere. Her expression didn't change.
"Not yet. Let them stabilize. Let them think they understand what's coming."
Then she smiled—faint. Cold.
"We'll see how long that illusion lasts."