Insomniac Player

The Hollow Giant clenched its fist.

BOOM!

The air popped from the pressure alone. It had adapted. Noah read as a physical powerhouse to it, so the Giant had built itself a body capable of matching overwhelming physical force head-on.

Salma’s voice cut through the channel. "Don’t hit it again until we know its limits."

"A little late for that."

"I mean don’t use another major skill on it."

Noah looked up. The Giant stood noticeably bulkier than a minute ago, its blank face tilting toward him. Then it was gone.

His pupils contracted. "Damn, fast."

BANG!

A fist caught him mid-thought. He crossed both arms to block, and the impact still launched him clean through an abandoned shop.

BOOM!

"NOAH!" Several players shouted at once.

The Giant stepped forward, cracking the street under its weight. He climbed out of the wreckage, blood at the corner of his mouth, grinning anyway. "Okay." He wiped it off. "Now you’re interesting."

"Don’t enjoy this!" Salma shouted through the line.

"Shut up! This is the best part of my job!"

She closed her eyes. "...Military idiots." Without another word, she pushed Damien’s information straight to the government command channel.

From there it spread fast, squad leaders, guild commanders, independent high-levels, support units, warnings blooming across Tycho within seconds.

➤[EMERGENCY COMBAT INTELLIGENCE]

➤[HOLLOW GIANT — Level 60]

➤[Confirmed Ability: Predatory Adaptation]

➤[WARNING: The first player to inflict serious injury determines the Giant’s adaptive ability.]

➤[DO NOT ENGAGE THE HOLLOW GIANT WITHOUT COMMAND AUTHORIZATION.]

Confusion rippled across the battlefield.

"What does that even mean?!"

"Stop attacking the Giant!"

"Only designated players engage!"

"Who found this out?"

"Government intel! Spread it!"

The monsters’ attention shifted away from Damien for a moment, as if something had called them back. Daria landed beside him, a burst of wind throwing a knot of smaller creatures backward. "That’s insane."

She looked toward the transformed Giant. "It copied Noah?"

"Not exactly." He shook his head, mask damp against his jaw. "It adapted to him."

"Which is worse. Copying’s predictable. This isn’t."

Salma arrived behind them, Naked Nun a step behind her, cigarette somehow still burning between two fingers despite everything happening around it.

"Much worse," Salma agreed. She nodded toward Noah’s opponent. "He specializes in raw physical force."

"So it built physical reinforcement to answer that." Daria caught on instantly.

"If I hit one first, it might build elemental resistance instead."

"And if Hamari does?" Salma added.

"Long-range defense, probably."

Delulu’s voice crackled in over the channel. "I’m not shooting that big ugly thing first, no thanks."

Damien looked back toward the gate. Twelve of these things, potentially, and each one built its ability off whoever hit it hardest first. That changed the entire math of the fight. They couldn’t just throw their strongest players at every Giant blind.

They could choose the fight instead.

His mind started moving fast. If they controlled who struck first, they controlled what each Giant became. Physical against Noah meant a Giant that answered strength with strength. Send someone completely different at it after, and that adaptation was worthless.

"...You could actually exploit this." He said it out loud without meaning to.

Salma turned. "Say that again. Slower."

"Predatory Adaptation." His eyes sharpened. "The description says first player. Just the first serious injury sets it. After that..."

Daria’s eyes went wide. "It can’t change again."

"Probably not."

Salma got there in the same breath. "So we pick who hits it first on purpose. Then send someone completely different in to finish it."

He nodded.

Noah’s voice cut into the channel. "Oh, that’s great."

A crash followed a half-second later. "Could’ve mentioned that before I made this one basically unkillable by force."

Damien almost laughed.

THOOOOOOOOOM!

The whole city shook. Everyone froze at once. The crimson gate overhead pulsed, its surface stretching wider, the tear between the skyscrapers widening further.

Something moved on the other side. Fingers, giant ones, curling around the gate’s edge.

His smile died. "...The others are coming."

A pale grey head pushed through first, blank face, no eyes, no nose. Then a chest, the vertical mouth already splitting open.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Players across Tycho looked up. Some lowered their weapons. Some just froze in place. One Hollow Giant had already been enough. A second was climbing through now.

Daria’s grip tightened on her staff. Naked Nun raised her sword. Delulu’s voice came through soft, almost small. "...Eleven more."

Salma dropped her cigarette and crushed it under her boot. Damien checked his quest window.

➤[Hollow Giants Remaining: 12/12]

➤[Personally Slain: 0/1]

The second Giant pulled one arm through, then a shoulder, then half its body, while thousands of smaller monsters kept flooding in around it. The countdown kept ticking.

00:24:18

Twenty-four minutes until real reinforcements. Twelve Level Sixty monsters and an entire army wrapped around them, and somehow he had to personally kill one of them with his own hands.

The second Giant’s chest-mouth opened. Its head turned, slow, past Noah, past hundreds of fighting players, and stopped on him.

"..." His face fell. "Oh, come on."

It leaned through the gate, and the same impossible word rolled out of its chest. "...Madhash."

The third Giant followed. Then the fourth. Every enormous pale hand that gripped the gate’s edge changed the mood on the ground a little more. Players who’d been fighting full-tilt started slowing down, some stopping outright, faces already going hollow. One Giant had been a nightmare. Twelve was something past reasonable.

He stood in the middle of a wrecked street, dagger still in hand, watching another one drag itself through and turn its blank face toward him without hesitation.

"..." His grip tightened.

Another landed. Its head turned too. By the time the twelfth one hit the ground, all twelve stood scattered across the ruined district, and every single one faced the same direction.

Him.

The city went strangely quiet. Then the first chest-mouth opened.

"Night...walker..." A second joined it. "Madhash..." Then the rest, voices overlapping, twelve of them rolling out across Tycho at once.

A chill crawled up his spine.

Daria looked over at him slowly. "...Want to explain that?"

"I would love to." He didn’t take his eyes off them. "I genuinely don’t know how."

Salma stood nearby, cigarette between two fingers, unlit for once, just watching him and the Giants side by side.

"That word. Madhash." He said it toward her, half a question.

She shook her head. "Never heard it in my life."

"Same."

One of the Giants stepped forward.

THOOM.

A wave of magic tore across the sky.

BOOOOOOM!

A firestorm caught three Razorwings mid-air and blew them apart. Heads turned upward across the whole street as figures dropped down out of the smoke-filled sky.

Reinforcements. A swordswoman landed first, her level flashing briefly overhead, Level 68. A heavily armored man landed beside her, Level 73. More followed, sixty, sixty-five, seventy-eight, most carrying guild insignias. He counted at least thirty in that first wave alone, and more kept arriving from aerial trains and military transports behind them.

Daria let out a breath. "Finally."

Salma shook her head. "Not the real reinforcement."

He glanced at her. "What do you mean?"

"This triggered a legendary-class gatebreak. These are strong." Her eyes tracked the newcomers. "Not the strongest."

Noah approached, armor dented and scorched but still moving under his own power. "Where are the major guilds, then?"

"They declined." Her expression darkened.

Daria blinked. "They what?"

"Official response, word for word: our top players are currently unavailable due to ongoing quests."

Noah scoffed. "Greedy, selfish bastards."

Another explosion rolled through the street. The Hollow Giants started moving in unison. At the same moment, something else shifted, the smaller monsters gathering around them, the whole army flowing back toward the twelve Giants like water finding a drain.

Daria watched it happen. "They’re protecting them."

"No." Salma’s eyes narrowed. "They’re supporting them."

The smaller monsters weren’t scattering wild anymore. Flying creatures took up positions in the air. Ravagers formed lines across the intersections. Mantises climbed the buildings and settled in like sentries.