Insomniac Player

Smoke swallowed the sky. The sun was still up there somewhere, but Tycho City couldn’t see it anymore, just a suffocating grey ceiling stretched between the towers, midday gone false-dusk.

Explosions rocked the streets. Roars rolled between buildings. Steel rang against steel. And under it all, the sound Damien hated most, screams instead of battle cries. People who’d had ordinary mornings an hour ago.

BOOM!

Something crashed through the upper floors of a building.

He looked up. "Incoming!"

A winged shape dropped out of the smoke, wings folded tight, falling like a thrown spear.

➤[Razorwing — Lv. 10]

He threw himself sideways. Claws tore into the pavement where he’d stood a half-second earlier. He rolled up onto one knee, dagger already out, the mask over his nose and mouth shifting with every sharp breath.

SHNK!

Blade in under its jaw. It shrieked once, and he twisted the handle until it stopped moving before ripping the dagger free.

"One." Three more shapes dropped through the smoke overhead. "...Of course."

Green light flared behind him. Daria’s staff came up, wind gathering.

WHOOOOM!

A compressed blast caught all three at once, folding their wings back mid-flight. Fire followed before they could recover.

BOOOOM!

Three burning corpses hit the street. He stared. "...Show-off."

"Heard that!" she shouted from twenty meters off.

"Oops."

A roar cut them both off. An armored beast charged out from between two abandoned aerial cars.

➤[Ironhide Ravager — Lv. 18]

Four thick legs, plated shoulders, a skull wrapped in overlapping bone. He barely got a foot back before its shoulder clipped him and sent him spinning through the air.

He hit the ground rolling, twice. "Ugh." Pain lanced through his ribs.

It turned for another pass. He pushed himself up. "No. This one’s mine."

It charged, faster than the numbers on its level should have allowed. He stepped sideways at the last second, but not far enough, the plated shoulder caught his chest and lifted his feet clean off the ground.

He’d already planned for that. His free hand grabbed one of the armor plates on the way past, and his body swung with the beast’s momentum instead of fighting it. It roared and thrashed, trying to throw him.

"Hold still!" He drove the dagger into its back, the First Blood blade punching straight through armor. It screamed and jerked hard enough to nearly break his grip.

It came around for another charge. He let go, sprinted straight at it, and dropped, knees scraping stone as he slid underneath its full weight, dagger already moving.

SHNK!

The blade opened the softer flesh behind its front leg. It stumbled, and he rolled clear before it could recover, then jumped onto its back on the way up, one hand locked on a bone plate, the other driving the dagger into the gap behind its skull, again, again, again.

It thrashed under him, and he held on. "Die already!"

It went down at last. He jumped clear as the body hit the street.

➤[Ironhide Ravager — Lv. 18. Eliminated.]

➤[Experience Acquired.]

He doubled over, hands on his knees, breath fogging warm against the black cloth mask covering the lower half of his face. He tugged it back into place where the fighting had knocked it loose, more out of habit than thought at this point. "...That took way too much out of me."

An explosion pulled his eyes up. Daria stood in the middle of an intersection, and the whole battlefield seemed to bend around her.

Fire swept a street clear of armored beasts. Water tore free of a broken pipe and twisted around her staff before slamming two Razorwings out of the sky. Stone erupted into a wall between fleeing civilians and something with blade-like arms.

➤[Grave Mantis — Lv. 25]

BOOM!

Cracks spread through the stone under its strikes. Her eyes gleamed, and the ground beneath the mantis erupted, a spike of rock through its abdomen, wind compressing around it before flame finished the job.

BOOM!

Gone.

He watched her work. Fire. Earth. Water. Wind. Not just destruction, deployed with real thought, earth for cover, water on the fires, wind on anything airborne, flame for whatever got too close. Players had started forming up around her without anyone giving the order, like she’d become the center of gravity for the whole fight without trying to.

"Madam Marvel!" a wounded swordsman shouted. "Left side!"

"I see it!" Her staff swung, and the street erupted.

BOOM!

Three Ravagers went flying sideways.

"Push!" Players surged forward.

For a few minutes, it almost felt possible. Not a win, maybe, but a hold. Thirty-three minutes left on the clock.

THOOM.

The ground shook. He froze.

THOOM.

Not an explosion. Footsteps. The shouting around him died out as something stepped through the smoke.

A leg first, pale grey, impossibly long and thin. Then another. He tilted his head back. Eight meters, easily, proportions all wrong, arms hanging past its knees, skin stretched paper-thin over bone. No eyes. No nose. No ears. A blank face under a crown of horns like some grotesque helmet.

Its chest split him open with dread before it ever moved. A vertical seam ran from collarbone to stomach, flesh parting to show rows of teeth lining the inside. Its whole torso was a mouth.

➤[Hollow Giant — Lv. 60]

"...Sixty." Someone near him breathed the word out loud.

Daria’s face went hard. "This is bad."

The Giant’s chest-mouth split wide open.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Not a roar. Hundreds of voices screaming at once, in unison. Windows shattered along the block. He clapped both hands over his ears; weaker players near him dropped where they stood.

BOOM!

Something shot past him, human-shaped, moving like it had been fired from a gun. It slammed straight into the Giant’s chest.

BAAAAAANG!

Eight meters of monster staggered backward. He recognized the man instantly. "...Noah?" The same military officer from the Rusted Blade Gate.

Noah’s eyes flicked toward him for half a second, an unreadable pause aimed at the mask before the fight pulled his attention straight back to the Giant. Whatever he’d been about to say never made it out.

Noah landed already moving, combat armor sealed over every inch of him, and didn’t waste a second. Another leap, another punch.

BOOM!

The Giant’s knee buckled. Another hit, its torso twisting sideways. A third caught its chest and shoved it back another step.

Players cheered. "He’s beating it back!"

"Keep going!"

Noah jumped again, fist slamming full into the blank face.

BOOOOM!

The Giant staggered. Damien stared. Noah was strong, far stronger than a single handshake had ever suggested.

Then the Giant stopped moving.

One long arm rose. Noah’s expression shifted, too late to matter. The hand came down.

BAAAAAAAAAANG!

Noah simply vanished, a shockwave tearing through the street behind him. Damien’s coat snapped in the blast wind as he turned to watch Noah fly sideways across the whole intersection, through a traffic platform, and into a half-collapsed building.

BOOM!

Concrete blew apart. The structure groaned overhead.

"Noah!" someone screamed.

The Giant lowered its arm. Silence sat over the street for a second.

Then it turned, slow and deliberate. Damien tightened his grip on the dagger, bracing for it to come for Daria, the one who’d actually hurt it.

It turned toward him instead.

He froze. No eyes on that blank face, and somehow he knew without a doubt it was looking straight at him, mask and all, like the cloth over his face meant nothing to whatever was doing the looking.

The battlefield seemed to fall away around it. The Giant stood still, its chest-mouth slowly closing, its head tilting, almost curious.

Cold spread through him. "...Why is it staring at me."

Daria’s voice cut in. "Sleepless?"

It didn’t move toward him. Its long fingers curled slowly, and it spoke.

"Sha’hal... vorum... na kheth..."

His eyes widened. No system translation appeared. This wasn’t a language the interface knew at all.

"Vara... shen... torak..."

Alien syllables rolled out from a mouth that had no business shaping speech, the sound coming straight from its chest instead of any face.

"...What?" he muttered.

It leaned in slightly, the torso-mouth widening. "...Nhar... val... sethar..."

None of it meant anything. Then two words did.

Clear. Unmistakable.

"NIGHT-WALKER."

He stopped breathing. Daria’s head snapped toward him.

The mouth on its chest stretched wider, and the second word came slower, heavier than the first.

"...MADHASH."