Chapter 3 — The Hunter System
The warehouse was a cavern of rusted iron and freezing air.
Adrian sat on a wooden crate in the corner, his back against a support pillar made of reinforced steel. The metal was pitted with corrosion, the surface rough under his palm. Every thirty seconds, the pillar vibrated with a low-frequency hum as a distant structure collapsed in the eastern district. The settlement was quiet. The noise of the pre-dawn hours had been replaced by the sound of the wind moving through the jagged glass of the window frames and the crackle of fires that had reached the lower residential levels.
A heavy iron gear sat in the center of the room, its teeth rusted into a solid block of oxidized metal. The smell of old grease and stagnant water was thick. The gear was six feet in diameter, the central hub filled with a dark, viscous fluid that had pooled on the concrete. Adrian touched the metal; it was pitted, the surface rough under his palm. Piles of scrap iron were stacked in the corners, the metal sheets leaning against the walls in precarious stacks. The wind whistled through the gaps in the corrugated steel roof, a high-pitched sound that did not break.
The white text of the System flared against the dark of his closed eyelids. It was a white luminance that illuminated the interior of the warehouse, casting long shadows across the grease-stained concrete.
[System Start]
[User: Aison (Soul Sync: 98%)]
[Rank: Level 2]
[Soul Force: 74/100]
[Attributes:]
[Strength: 5]
[Speed: 7]
[Endurance: 8]
[Soul Force Cap: 4]
[Echo Stability: 2]
[Perception: 0]
[System End]
The Soul Force value flickered. Three hours ago, the number had been eighty-five. As he had moved from the rubble to the warehouse district, the number had dropped toward seventy. He felt a physical pressure behind his sternum, a cold weight that tightened when the dark figure in the doorway moved. The shadow did not breathe. It was a silhouette of shifting smoke, the form thickening and thinning as it pulled the energy from his chest. The drain was a continuous, internal displacement that caused the temperature of his skin to drop.
Adrian moved his fingers through the logs of the man who had occupied this body. He found the entries from the Tokugawa Outpost.
[Warning: Soul Force at 15%. Shadow stability compromised.]
[Warning: Soul Force at 5%. Critical depletion.]
[Notification: Soul Force at 0. Eternal Echo terminated. All active shadows dispersed.]
He looked at the shadow in the doorway. It was a fragment of a soul held together by the energy behind his ribs. If the Soul Force hit zero, the form would dissolve into the grey ash of the street. He moved to the skills tab. The panel shifted, the white light reflecting off the rusted iron gear in the center of the room.
[System Start]
[Skill: Eternal Echo (Rank: Unique)]
[Function: Duplication of deceased entities within 60 seconds of death.]
[Command: AWAKE (Activation) / RELEASE (Permanent Termination)]
[Storage: Echo Dimension (Current capacity: 1/5)]
[Note: Maintenance of shadows requires constant Soul Force. Higher-rank shadows increase drain proportionally.]
[System End]
The Echo Dimension was a cold space at the edge of his consciousness. It was a storage area where the shadow remained when it was not visible in the physical world. He could feel the shadow's presence even when the doorway was empty, a weight that sat behind his lungs.
He scrolled to the bottom of the panel. Beneath the combat stats and the duplication logs, a single line of text sat in a deep, pulsing red. The frequency of the pulse did not break.
[System Start]
[Attribute Detected: No One Gets Left Behind]
[Status: Flagged]
[Reactivation Condition: Not yet met.]
[System End]
Adrian looked at the red text. It was the attribute that had kept him at the bottom of the ranks in his old life. He reached out and touched his left arm. The scar was four inches long, a jagged ridge of tissue that was cold to the touch. The skin was a deep purple, the texture thickened and raised. It did not carry the heat of the reconstruction that had sealed his ribs and right leg.
A cry echoed from the street—a woman's voice, followed by a heavy thud that vibrated through the floor of the warehouse. The sound came from two blocks east, near the supply caches where the residents had clustered for safety. The thud was repeated in an even pattern, the sound of a beast hollowed moving through the debris.
Adrian stood up. The muscles in his thighs tensed as he shifted his weight. He looked at the rusted iron pipe lying near the crate. It was three feet long, the metal heavy and cold. He gripped the pipe, his knuckles turning white as he felt the weight of the iron.
"Follow," Adrian said.
The shadow stepped out of the doorway. It moved without sound, a dark pillar sliding across the grease-stained concrete of the warehouse floor. Adrian walked into the grey light of the dying night. The air was chilled, carrying the scent of burnt insulation and wet stone.
The walk to the supply cache covered four hundred meters of pulverized stone. He passed the remains of a pharmacy; the glass storefront had been shattered inward, the floor covered in a carpet of amber-colored vials. The smell of medicinal alcohol and stagnant water was heavy. A row of shelves had collapsed against the far wall, the white metal twisted into jagged shapes. Adrian's boots crunched on the glass, the sound sharp in the quiet of the alley.
Further down, he passed a workshop. A heavy lathe had been thrown through the brickwork, the machine sitting in the middle of the sidewalk like a dead beast. The drive belt was shredded, the black rubber trailing in the dust. A pool of hydraulic fluid had leaked onto the pavement, turning the ash into a dark, viscous mud. The air smelled of burnt motor oil and cold iron.
The thud grew louder as he approached the supply cache. The cache was a reinforced shipping container that had been bolted to a concrete pad. A beast hollowed stood in front of the container. It was three meters tall, its limbs thick and waxy. Its skin was the color of a bruise, stretched tight over a massive bone structure. The creature was hitting the steel door of the container with its fist, the metal denting with every impact.
The shipping container was a twenty-foot steel box, the exterior painted a dull orange that was now covered in black soot. Ten deep dents had been hammered into the center of the door, the steel bending inward until the latch began to pull away from the frame. The orange light of a nearby fire reflected off the bent metal, creating flickering highlights on the bruised skin of the beast.
A group of civilians was huddled behind a stack of wooden crates ten meters away. The crates were made of rough pine, the wood splintered at the corners. The smell of fresh resin was trapped in the stagnant air. One woman held a small child, her hand covering the child's mouth. The child's eyes were wide, reflecting the low orange glow of the smoldering timber. The beast hollowed turned its head toward them, its vacant eyes white in the dark. It sniffed the air, its head tilting at a ninety-degree angle as its joints clicked.
Adrian stepped into the open street. All he held was the iron pipe at a low angle, the metal catching the pre-dawn light.
The beast hollowed lunged. It moved at a velocity of ten meters per second, its boots cracking the pavement as it propelled itself toward him. The creature's joints clicked in a sequence of sharp, mechanical sounds. Its chest was a mass of thick muscle and bone, the skin translucent enough to show the dark veins beneath.
Adrian did not retreat. He tightened his grip on the pipe and moved toward the creature. The shadow followed, its form elongating as it prepared for the collision. The cold of the Echo Dimension moved through Adrian's blood, and he raised the iron pipe.
The iron pipe struck the creature's lead arm. The sound was a flat, heavy thud that vibrated through Adrian's forearms, the impact traveling into his shoulders. The beast hollowed's arm did not break, but the skin split, revealing the pale, bloodless muscle beneath. The creature tilted its head to the left, its vacant eyes fixing on Adrian's face. It raised its other fist, the joints clicking as the waxy skin stretched over the knuckles.
Adrian pivoted on his right foot. He swung the iron pipe in a horizontal arc, targeting the beast's knee. The metal hit the joint with a sharp, dry crack. The creature's leg gave way, the bone fracturing under the force of the strike. The beast hollowed dropped to one knee, the impact displacing the ash in a grey cloud that rose to its waist.
The shadow at Adrian's side lunged. It moved like a dark pillar, its flickering form wrapping around the beast's throat. The shadow's fingers, made of solid darkness, sank into the waxy skin. The beast hollowed shrieked, a high-pitched sound that was cut short as the shadow increased the pressure. The creature thrashed its arms, its fists hitting the pavement and shattering the concrete into grey shards.
Adrian did not wait for the creature to recover. He stepped into its guard and drove the end of the iron pipe into the beast's chest. The metal pierced the skin and the sternum, the sound a wet, muffled thud. The beast hollowed went limp. Its head fell forward, the clicking in its throat stopping as the light in its eyes failed.
Adrian stood over the cooling form. Sweat moved down his neck, the moisture cold in the wind. His calves were tense from the exertion, the muscles vibrating with the aftershock of the combat. He looked at the iron pipe; the end was bent, the metal distorted from the final strike. The shadow dispersed back into the ground, leaving only the dark, cooling body of the beast and the smell of ozone in the street. The civilians remained behind the crates, their eyes fixed on the man in the shredded black robe. Adrian turned toward the shipping container, his boots grinding the shattered glass into the ash. The second day was growing brighter.