The wyvern wasn't done.
It wheeled in the air like a reaper bird, wings carving arcs through smoke and flame. Its shadow swept across the battlefield — hundreds of chained souls shivering beneath it like mice under an executioner's boot.
It wasn't hunting.
It was culling.
A burst of fire lit up the mud. Screams turned to wet gurgles.
I stayed low. Still. Mind racing.
Not fear anymore.
Simulation.
The layout of the battlefield. Movement vectors. Threat zones. Wind direction. Angle of descent. Pattern prediction. Environmental manipulation options.
All of it danced through my mind like a storm of data points.
I didn't even blink.
Hypothesis: Wyvern operates on heat, motion, and line-of-sight.Weakest link = line-of-sight.Objective = break visibility and reach high ground.
Survival window: six minutes.
But I needed a variable.
A tool.
I glanced at the corpse beside me. Young man. Branded 448. Ripped open from the gut down, but his arms were still intact.
Sorry, stranger.
I peeled off the slave's leather belt, looped it through the iron shackle on my ankle, and cinched it tight. Primitive, but stable. Then I snapped a jagged plank from the wagon wreck and jammed it between my manacled wrists. Makeshift leverage bar.
Crude tools. Better than none.
Still shaking, I began twisting.
Blood dripped. My wrists burned.
But the shackle clicked.
One hand free.
Just enough.
Tools acquired: [Leverage Stick], [Rust Belt], [Corpse Cover].
Now came the real gamble.
The other slaves were still running, dying, flailing. I scanned the battlefield again.
There — a slope.
Jagged rock face, half collapsed. The wyvern didn't go near it. Too narrow for its wings. It favored open killing fields.
That slope was my exit.
A narrow chance. One mistake, and I'd be bones.
Perfect.
I moved.
Low. Fast. Heart hammering.
Dodged between burning bodies, crawling under collapsed wagons, sliding behind craters full of blood and ash. I was a ghost in the wreckage.
Until—
"YOU."
A voice like ice snapping.
I froze.
One of the guards. Not just any grunt — heavy iron cuirass, axe taller than me, yellow feathers on the helm. A Warden.
His eyes locked on me like he smelled something out of place.
"A Drudge that runs without command? Clever. But we don't allow clever here."
He raised his axe.
I did the math.
Height: 2 meters.
Weapon: overhead swing.
Time to impact: 1.8 seconds.
My odds: not good.
But I wasn't playing the odds.
I was cheating them.
The plank in my hand — my crude leverage bar — I threw it.
Not at him.
At the ground. His foot.
It hit the mud just right. Unbalanced him mid-swing. Enough to shift his weight.
And then the wyvern came back.
It screamed.
So did the Warden.
He looked up just in time to see death descend.
I ran. Again.
Didn't look back.
Didn't need to.
I could hear it.
Bone. Steel. Flame.
When I finally reached the slope, I fell against the rocks, breath ragged, lungs clawing at the air.
Still alive.
Unarmed.
Alone.
Free.
For now.
[Survival Event: Drudge Culling — CLEAR]
[+1 Trait Recognition: "Creative Threat"]
[System Recalibration… ERROR.]
[Uncatalogued Behavior Detected.]
[Provisional Classification Added: ???]
A new screen blinked.
🧾 Itsuki Amagi
Class: Drudge (?)
Level: 1
Trait: [Hyper Cognition]
Bonus Trait: [Creative Threat] — You are not meant to be alive.
Adjustments will be made.
I stared at the message.
Then, for the first time since I arrived in this hellhole, I smiled.
A real one.
Because now I knew two things.
One — the system was watching me.
And two…
It didn't know what to do with me.
Good.
Because I wasn't here to play its game.
I was going to break it.