Chapter 9: The Crow’s Perch
The quiet inside the main reading room of the library was heavy, smelling of old leather, dust, and the faint, sweet scent of rotting paper. Leon didn’t look through the towering arched windows to see if the soldiers were brave enough to follow him inside. He knew Harrison wasn’t a fool. A seasoned military captain wouldn’t risk his remaining men chasing a terrifying, unknown entity into a dark, unlit building during the first hour of a global apocalypse.
Leon walked deep into the shadows of the rear archives, where the light from the street couldn’t reach him. He dropped onto a wooden chair behind a massive oak desk, letting out a long, slow breath. The dark fabric of his cloak rippled once before settling around his frame like liquid ink.
"Open inventory," he murmured.
The sleek, black screen materialized in the gloom, casting a faint violet glow over his pale face. He ignored the updated stat numbers for a moment, his eyes locking onto the heavy, black iron chest he had ripped from the Gnoll Chieftain’s ashes.
With a thought, the lock snapped with a dry, metallic ping.
[Opening Tier-1 Outbreak Boss Chest...][You have received: 2,000 Mana Stones (Low-Tier)]
[You have received: ]
[You have received: 1x Grade-D Weapon Conversion Scroll]
Leon reached into the black space, his fingers wrapping around a heavy, dull silver band. The metal felt ice-cold against his palm. A single, cloudy gray stone was embedded in its center, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic vibration that matched his heartbeat.
° —
Passive Effect: Grants a permanent +8 to the Mana attribute. Active Skill: — Once every twelve hours, the user can summon three fragile skeletal scouts from the ash of defeated targets. The scouts last for ten minutes and share their vision with the caster.
Leon slipped the cold band onto his left index finger. A sharp prick of pain pierced his skin as the ring bonded with his soul, forcing his mana pool to expand instantly. The blue bar in his status menu jumped up, the raw magical energy buzzing beneath his skin like a trapped swarm of hornets.
"Eight points of mana just from a Tier-1 boss," Leon muttered, a cold smile touching his lips. "In the future, people would kill their own teammates for a drop like this."
He looked at the second reward—the Weapon Conversion Scroll. It was a blank parchment that could turn any ordinary object into a system-approved combat weapon, scaling its damage with the user’s physical attributes.
Leon looked around the dark archive room. He didn’t want a sword or a spear. Those weapons were too conspicuous. They drew too much attention from the authorities and other survivors on the street. His gaze landed on a heavy, twenty-inch iron letter opener resting on the librarian’s desk. The metal was dark, unpolished, and had a sharp, double-edged point.
He pressed the glowing scroll against the cold iron tool.
[Applying Grade-D Conversion Scroll...][Target item has been system-integrated.][You have created the item: ]
°Effect: Attacks with this weapon deal an additional 15% decay damage over three seconds. Durability: Indestructible within Tier-1 zones.
The simple tool transformed, the metal turning a deep, matte charcoal-black that didn’t reflect any light. It was the perfect hidden weapon—small enough to slide into his sleeve, but deadly enough to pierce the thick hide of an orc.
Leon stood up, sliding the dark blade into his duster coat pocket. He couldn’t afford to rest any longer. The first hour of the apocalypse was over, which meant the initial chaos would now settle into a brutal, grinding reality. The military would finish setting up their hard defensive lines, and the low-level monsters would begin to group up into massive packs, hunting down anyone caught outside the safe zones.
He walked out through the library’s rear loading dock, slipping into the narrow, trash-strewn maze of the back alleys.
His Perception stat suddenly flared, a sharp vibration hit the back of his brain. Two blocks east, inside the courtyard of an upscale apartment complex, a massive spike of volatile mana was breaking through the asphalt.
It wasn’t a standard outbreak gate. It was a Suppression Node—a rare, glowing crystal obelisk that dropped randomly during the first day. Whoever controlled a node could claim ownership over the surrounding three blocks, turning the area into a private safe zone where monsters couldn’t spawn. In his past life, the mega-guilds had built their multi-billion-dollar empires by locking down these nodes early.
’If I remember correctly,’ Leon thought, his eyes narrowing as he sprinted through the shadows, ’the person who claimed that specific node was a corporate executive who used it to extort thousands of survivors, forcing them to work as slaves just for a safe place to sleep.’
Leon’s smile turned vicious beneath his hood. ’Not this time.’
He reached the iron gates of the apartment courtyard within two minutes, his movements completely silent. He crouched behind a line of dense green hedges, his dark eyes taking in the scene.
The suppression node had already landed—a six-foot-tall, glowing sapphire pillar floating two feet above the concrete, radiating a calm, blue protective dome over the courtyard.
Standing around the pillar were five men. They weren’t monsters. They were human survivors, but they were armed with heavy baseball bats, kitchen knives, and a couple of silver revolvers. Leading them was a middle-aged man in a wrinkled silk suit, his face twisted into an arrogant, greedy smirk as he looked at the floating crystal.
"Listen up!" the man in the suit barked at his followers, his voice echoing off the brick walls of the courtyard. "The system says this thing makes us safe. No monsters can get inside this circle. From now on, anyone who wants to step into this courtyard has to give us half their food and any weapons they find. If they don’t like it, we leave them out there for the dogs."
One of his thugs, a heavy-set guy with a blood-stained pipe, grinned. "What if they try to fight us, Mr. Sterling?"
"With what?" the executive laughed, tapping his revolver. "The army is miles away, and we have the guns. We set the prices now."
Leon watched them from the dark brush, his expression as cold as stone. Human nature never changed. Give a weak man a tiny scrap of power during a crisis, and he would instantly turn into a tyrant.
Leon reached into his pocket, his fingers wrapping around the matte-black grip of the Ashen Dagger. He didn’t feel anger; he only saw five targets standing between him and a priceless resource.
He stepped out from the hedges, his dark duster trailing behind his boots as his thirty-foot circle of invisible, suffocating darkness expanded into the courtyard.
"Who’s there?" the thug with the pipe yelled, his head snapping toward the entrance as the ambient temperature suddenly dropped.
Leon didn’t answer. He just kept walking, a blurry shadow cutting through the dim afternoon light.