Insomniac Player

His fingers went numb around the dagger. Nightwalker. His own class, one he hadn’t even fully awakened, the same class the system had once tried to erase entirely.

He stared up at the eight-meter monster. "...What did you call me?"

For the first time since it stepped through the gate, the Hollow Giant didn’t attack. It lowered its enormous head instead, slow, deliberate. Not a predator lining up a strike. Something closer to recognition.

Daria’s staff came up. "...Sleepless."

He didn’t answer. The Giant spoke again, another flood of words that meant nothing, except the same two that kept surfacing clean through the noise. Nightwalker. Madhash.

One foot came down.

THOOM.

Pavement cracked under the weight. He stepped back on instinct. "...No."

THOOM.

It was coming straight at him. Not Daria. Not Noah. Him.

"Nightwalker." The voice rolled across the whole battlefield. "...Madhash."

He turned and ran. "NOPE!"

Not toward the evacuation routes, thousands of civilians were still moving out of Tycho, and leading an eight-meter monster into that crowd would turn a bad gatebreak into a massacre. He cut deeper into the ruined commercial district instead, mask pulling tight against his face with every hard breath. The Giant followed.

THOOM.

THOOM.

He glanced back. "Why are you chasing me fatso?!"

Its torso split open. "MAAAAADHAAAAASH!"

"STOP CALLING ME THAT!"

Its arm reached forward. Then something erupted out of the rubble beside him.

BOOM!

Noah. Blood ran down his forehead, half his coat torn away, dust caked over everything, and somehow still grinning. "Where are you going?"

He planted one foot and twisted his whole body, mana spiraling tight around his fist.

➤[Skill Activated: Screw driver]

"COME HERE!"

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

His fist buried into the Giant’s stomach. For one strange second, nothing. Then its whole torso twisted, flesh spiraling around his fist like something had grabbed the creature’s body and turned it with a wrench the size of a building. The motion climbed upward, and its feet left the ground, spinning.

WHOOOOOOOM!

Launched. He stopped running just long enough to watch a Level 60 monster fly clean across the city, through one building, bouncing off an intersection, tearing an elevated road apart before finally crashing several hundred meters out. Dust mushroomed up from the impact.

"...Holy shit." He’d known Noah was strong. He hadn’t known Noah could turn a monster into a flying drill bit.

Noah rolled his shoulder. "Still hurts."

He stared. "...His hand hurts. That’s the takeaway here."

A bellow tore through the city.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

The Giant rose out of the distant rubble, chest-mouth stretched wide, and every single monster on the battlefield stopped.

His smile died. Razorwings turned mid-air. Ravagers froze mid-charge. Grave Mantises dropped their targets. Hundreds of smaller things went still all at once.

One by one, every head turned toward him.

"..." He looked around slowly. All of them. On him. "Shit."

"MADHASH!"

The whole army moved at once.

"SHIT!" He ran.

Thousands of monsters surged forward behind him.

◇◇◇

"What the hell?!" A swordsman stared in disbelief. "Did he just taunt the entire gatebreak?"

"That’s insane," someone else muttered.

Daria’s face went white. "He doesn’t have a taunt skill."

"...What?"

"He doesn’t have one!"

"Then why are they all chasing him?!"

"I DON’T KNOW!"

He didn’t know either, and right now he didn’t have the bandwidth to care. A Razorwing dove, wings hissing before he even saw it.

FWOOSH!

He threw himself sideways, claws passing an inch from his skull, landed on the hood of an abandoned car, sprinted across it, jumped onto a delivery truck. Another dove, and he ducked, claws scraping metal above his head.

SKRRRRR!

He leapt off the truck into a narrow alley. Ravagers couldn’t fit through it. Grave Mantises could.

Tak-tak-tak-tak-tak.

Limbs struck the walls right behind him. He glanced back, three of them, Level 25, closing fast.

"Why can’t the Level Tens chase me?!"

A blade stabbed toward his back, and he dove straight through a broken shop window.

CRASH!

Glass exploded around him. He hit the floor of what used to be a clothing store, mannequins standing everywhere in the wreckage, and rolled up moving.

One mantis crashed through the window behind him. Another punched straight through the wall.

"Of course." He could fight, and his skills would probably get him clear fast, but they carried a full hour of cooldown each. He kept them in reserve, kept running instead. Six stat points still sitting unspent, and this wasn’t the moment to burn them.

He vaulted the counter. A blade cut the air where his spine had been a half-second earlier.

BANG!

A door sat behind the counter. He jumped it, hit the door, and sprinted into a stairwell leading up to apartments.

He climbed. A mantis burst up behind him, blade swinging, and he jumped the strike.

CLANG!

The blade cut clean through the stair grill instead of him.

"Whoa!" He climbed faster, the whole street below now packed with monsters.

BOOM!

A fireball tore through the alley, and several creatures went up at once, flame swallowing the ground floor.

He glanced down through the stairwell gap. Three mages stood on a rooftop across the way.

"KEEP MOVING!" one shouted. "We’ll cover you!"

He grinned behind the mask. "Beautiful people."

A Razorwing dropped in above him. "...Not you." He cut it clean in half and kept climbing.

BOOM!

The building shook, something massive hitting the lower floors hard enough to nearly throw him off the stairs. Going down was suicide now.

Sixth floor. Seventh. His lungs burned, legs screaming, walls exploding behind him as the monsters gave up on the stairs entirely and just climbed straight through the building instead.

"Cheaters!" Tenth floor. Roof access, locked. "...Seriously?"

A mantis burst up through the stairwell below. He backed up. "Okay." Dagger raised. "Maybe one skill—"

BOOM! The door exploded inward from the other side.

He stared. "...Or that."

One of the mages had blown it open from outside. He bolted through the gap, wind hitting his face, no ground left under him except one option, the next building sitting roughly six meters across the gap.

"...That’s doable." Second thoughts arrived about half a step too late.

A mantis climbed onto the roof behind him. Another followed. Razorwings circled overhead.

"I can do this." Five steps, then he jumped.

For one long second, nothing existed under his feet at all.

BANG!

His chest hit the opposite ledge. "Ugh!" Fingers caught the edge, body swinging free ten stories above the street.

He looked down once. Hundreds of monsters flooding the ground below. A Razorwing dove at him and got cut down mid-air by long-range players covering him from somewhere he couldn’t see.

"...Don’t look down." Something landed right above his hands. Another Razorwing, mouth already open.

He swung his body sideways, jaws snapping shut inches from his fingers, released one hand, drew the dagger, and stabbed up. The blade caught it under the chin. It shrieked, and he used the collapsing body as leverage to haul himself onto the roof.

"Thanks." He kicked the corpse off the ledge.

No rest waiting for him. More were already coming.

He ran again.