The chittering sound of the Scuttlers had almost become mundane to Kael.
He crouched behind a collapsed wall, axe held ready, and watched three Scuttlers pick through rubble fifty meters away.
'Level 2, all of them.'
They hadn't picked up his scent yet. Or his movement. Whatever it was, they tracked with those creepy heads. Kael had stopped questioning it and started observing instead—multiple fights had taught him when they'd lunge, how they'd circle, and where their blind spots were. It wasn't complicated anymore. Just... familiar.
Maybe two days had passed. Maybe three. Kael's sense of time had gone to hell the moment he arrived. At first, he'd tried tracking it properly—counting sunrises, watching the amber sun's arc like it was a clock. That lasted until he noticed the second sun doing its own thing entirely. The blue one would show up halfway through the amber sun's climb, or disappear for hours, or both would set at once and plunge everything into darkness he wasn't ready for. He'd stopped caring about the exact time. Surviving the next hour was enough.
Kael had stopped trying to count hours. Instead, he counted kills.
Forty-three Scuttlers. Each one a calculated risk, a desperate fight, a hard-earned victory. The first dozen had been pure terror—scrambling, bleeding, barely surviving each encounter. The second dozen had been slightly less terrifying as muscle memory began to form, as his body learned to move in ways it never had before. The last nineteen had been almost methodical, though he never let himself get comfortable. Comfort got you killed.
His status window flickered at the edge of his vision:
```
[STATUS]
Name: Kael Morrigan
Level: 5
Class: None
HP: 200/200 (Regen: 6.5 HP/min)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
STATS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Vitality: 26
Strength: 10
Agility: 9
Intelligence: 8
Available Points: 0
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
RESISTANCES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Slashing: 7%
```
Getting to Level 5 was hell for Kael. However, the growth was visible now. Vitality stats climbed from 6 to 26. Although the exponential gains were still modest at lower levels. Kael felt grateful. Each level up had multiplied his Vitality gain by his current level gained. Level 1 to 2 gave him 2 points, level 2 to 3 gave him 4, level 3 to 4 gave him 6, and level 4 to 5 gave him 8. The pattern was clear. By level 10, each level would grant him 20 Vitality. By level 20? The numbers became staggering.
But he had to survive long enough to reach those levels.
The slashing resistance had climbed to 7%, but the gains had slowed dramatically. That last Scuttler had given him only 0.2%. The system was forcing him toward harder challenges, stronger enemies. Comfortable grinding against weak monsters would only take him so far.
Kael studied the three Scuttlers ahead, planning his approach. The leftmost one was slightly separated from the group—that would be his first target. Quick kill, then engage the other two before they could coordinate. His grip tightened on the axe handle, splinters from the deteriorating wood pressing into his palm.
The weapon was falling apart. The rust had spread, flaking off in orange chunks. The head wobbled slightly where it met the handle, the connection weakening with each impact. He'd need a replacement soon, but that meant finding one, and so far the ruins had offered nothing but rubble and Scuttlers.
He moved.
Silent steps across broken stone, boots finding purchase on stable ground by instinct now. The isolated Scuttler's eyeless head swiveled too late. Kael's axe came down in a practiced arc, the blade biting through carapace at the weak point between head and body. The creature died with barely a sound, its legs curling inward.
[SCUTTLER HAS BEEN SLAIN]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 20]
[SLASHING RESISTANCE: 7% → 7.2%]
The other two charged immediately, their pack behavior triggering. Kael was already moving, circling left to prevent them from flanking. The nearest one lunged, teeth spiraling open. Kael sidestepped—not as gracefully as a hunter would, but functional—and brought the axe around in a horizontal sweep. It caught the Scuttler mid-leap, momentum and edge combining to cleave through its side.
[SCUTTLER HAS BEEN SLAIN]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 20]
The third one was smarter or more cautious. It backed away, chittering in what might have been fear or warning. Kael advanced slowly, not rushing. Rushing led to mistakes. Mistakes led to injuries. Injuries could kill you if you weren't near leveling up.
The Scuttler feinted right, then darted left. Kael didn't fall for it—he'd seen that pattern sixteen times before. His axe came down where the creature would be, not where it was. The blade caught it across the back legs, crippling it. A second strike finished the job.
[SCUTTLER HAS BEEN SLAIN]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 20]
Three more cores for his collection. Kael picked them up mechanically, adding them to the forty already weighing down his pockets. The minor mana cores were small enough to carry dozens, but they added up. His porter's harness, designed for hauling equipment, was at least good for storage.
He wiped blood off the axe blade and looked around the ruins. This section of the Nexus Realm seemed to have been residential once—the buildings had that lived-in quality despite being shattered. He could see the remnants of furniture through broken walls, faded colors that might have been decoration, the skeletal frameworks of beds and tables.
People had lived here. Or something roughly person-shaped, at least. The architecture was humanoid—doors at human height, stairs with human-proportioned steps, rooms sized for human-scale living. Whatever civilization had built this place, they'd been similar enough to his own that the ruins felt almost familiar.
Until you noticed the wrongness. The angles that didn't quite align with human aesthetics. The decorative patterns that hurt to look at too long. The sense that this place had been built by minds that thought in directions human minds didn't.
Kael shook off the discomfort and kept moving. He'd been exploring outward from his arrival point in a rough spiral, mapping the area in his mind. So far he'd found nothing but ruins and Scuttlers. No other monster types. No survivors. No sign that anything else existed in this place except predators and prey.
And he was firmly in the prey category, regardless of how many Scuttlers he'd killed.
The amber sun was descending toward the horizon, casting long shadows across broken streets. Kael had learned to time his hunting by the light—Scuttlers were more active in shadow, harder to spot, more aggressive. Better to fight when he could see clearly.
He was turning to head back toward what had become his makeshift camp—a relatively intact building with only two entrances, both easily watched—when he noticed something odd.
The shadows were wrong.
Not just long from the descending sun, but moving. Shifting independently of the light source. Kael froze, every instinct screaming danger. He'd learned to trust those instincts.
The shadow detached from a wall and resolved into a Scuttler. But wrong. Larger than the others—nearly twice the size. Its carapace was darker, almost black, with red markings that pulsed with faint light. The teeth in its spiraling mouth looked longer, sharper.
[SCUTTLER HUNTER - LEVEL 4]
[An evolved variant that preys on weaker Scuttlers. More intelligent and significantly more dangerous.]
Level 4. Only one level below him, but the description made his stomach clench. More intelligent. That meant it wouldn't fall for the patterns he'd learned. Wouldn't make the same predictable mistakes.
The Hunter's head tracked him, eyeless but clearly aware. Then it chittered—a different sound than the normal Scuttlers, higher-pitched and complex. A call.
Three more normal Scuttlers emerged from hiding spots Kael hadn't noticed. All level 2, but coordinated. Led by the Hunter.
Four enemies. One of them smarter than the rest.
Kael's mind raced, calculating odds. He could run—the Hunter was larger, probably slower. But the normal Scuttlers would chase him down, and fighting while retreating was a good way to die. Better to control the engagement, choose his ground.
A collapsed storefront to his right offered cover and limited angles of approach. Kael backed toward it, keeping all four creatures in sight. The Hunter advanced slowly, deliberately, while the normal Scuttlers flanked wide. Coordinated. Tactical.
This was going to hurt.
Kael reached the storefront and positioned himself in the entrance, forcing them to come at him from a narrow angle. The normal Scuttlers reached him first—exactly what the Hunter wanted, he realized. Send in the expendables to soften up the prey.
The first Scuttler lunged. Kael's axe met it mid-leap, the blade biting deep. The creature fell, but the second was already attacking from a different angle. Kael twisted, the Scuttler's claws raking across his shoulder instead of his throat.
[HP: 200/200 → 186/200]
[SLASHING RESISTANCE: 7.2% → 7.4%]
Fourteen damage. His resistance was helping, but not enough. The Scuttler clung to him, teeth seeking his neck. Kael grabbed it with his free hand—when had he gotten strong enough to do that?—and slammed it against the wall. Once. Twice. The carapace cracked. His axe finished it.
[SCUTTLER HAS BEEN SLAIN]
[SCUTTLER HAS BEEN SLAIN]
The third normal Scuttler hesitated, and that hesitation saved Kael's life. The Hunter chose that moment to strike, moving with speed that belied its size. It came in low, under his guard, claws extended. Kael saw it coming but couldn't react fast enough.
The Hunter's claws raked across his thigh, cutting deep. Pain exploded through his leg, hot and immediate.
[HP: 186/200 → 161/200]
[SLASHING RESISTANCE: 7.4% → 7.6%]
Twenty-five damage from a single hit. Kael stumbled, his leg nearly buckling. The Hunter pressed its advantage, lunging for his throat. Kael barely got the axe up in time, the handle catching those spiraling teeth. Wood cracked under the pressure.
The third normal Scuttler finally committed, attacking from behind. Kael felt claws pierce his lower back, felt them scrape against bone.
[HP: 161/200 → 143/200]
His axe handle snapped.
The Hunter's teeth closed on empty air as Kael fell backward, using his weight to crush the Scuttler clinging to his back. He heard carapace crack, felt the creature go limp. But now he was on the ground with a Level 4 Hunter above him and only the broken axe head in his hand.
The Hunter's mouth opened impossibly wide, rows of teeth spiraling inward like a meat grinder. Kael shoved his arm forward, ramming the jagged axe head into that mouth. Teeth bit into his forearm, but the broken blade caught in the creature's throat.
[HP: 143/200 → 128/200]
[DAMAGE DEALT: 34]
[CRITICAL HIT!]
The Hunter thrashed, choking on steel and wood. Kael twisted the blade, shoved harder, felt it punch through flesh. The creature's movements became erratic, panicked. He kept pushing until the Hunter went still.
[SCUTTLER HAS BEEN SLAIN]
[SCUTTLER HUNTER HAS BEEN SLAIN]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 120]
[LEVEL UP!]
The notification came with a wave of healing that was becoming familiar. His wounds closed, the deep cuts sealing themselves. The pain vanished, replaced by the warm rush of restoration. His leg straightened, back stitched itself together, forearm healed where teeth had punctured skin.
```
[LEVEL UP!]
Level 5 → Level 6
Vitality: 26 → 36 (+10) (HP Regen 9/min)
Strength: 10 → 11 (+1)
Agility: 9 → 10 (+1)
Intelligence: 8 → 9 (+1)
[Note: Vitality gain multiplied by current level (5 x 2 = +10)]
HP: 128/200 → 360/360 [FULLY RESTORED]
SLASHING RESISTANCE: 7.6% → 8%
Available Points: 0
```
Kael lay there for a long moment, staring up at the alien sky, feeling his heart slowly stop trying to hammer through his ribs. Three hundred and sixty hit points. His Vitality had jumped by 10 points in a single level. The growth was accelerating.
But he'd lost his weapon. Again.
He pushed himself to sitting, looking at the broken axe. The head was still embedded in the Hunter's throat, the handle snapped completely. Two weapons destroyed in two days. At this rate, he'd be fighting with his bare hands by the end of the week.
The Hunter's corpse was dissolving, but slower than the normal Scuttlers. Where it had lain, two items remained. A larger core—not quite as big as a major core but definitely more substantial than the minor ones.
[MANA CORE (LESSER) OBTAINED]
[VALUE: 100 NEXUS COINS]
And something else. A curved claw, nearly as long as his forearm, sharp and gleaming despite the blood coating it.
[SCUTTLER CLAW (HUNTER VARIANT) OBTAINED]
[CRAFTING MATERIAL - UNCOMMON]
[A naturally sharp claw from an evolved Scuttler. Highly durable.]
Crafting material. That implied there was somewhere to craft, someone or something that could turn materials into equipment. But Kael had seen nothing in the ruins except monsters and decay.
He collected the cores from the dead Scuttlers—four minor and one lesser—and tucked them away with the others. Forty-seven minor cores and one lesser. Enough to weigh down his pockets but not enough to feel like real wealth.
The claw he kept in hand. It was sharp enough to use as a knife, maybe even as a weapon if he got desperate. Better than nothing.
The twin suns were lower now, shadows lengthening across the ruins. Kael needed to find shelter before full dark. The Nexus Realm at night was something he'd experienced once and had no desire to repeat. Things moved in the darkness. Things that didn't show up as notifications in his vision.
He started back toward his camp, limping slightly despite the healing. His body was restored but his mind remembered the pain, and phantom aches made him cautious. The streets were quieter now, Scuttlers retreating to wherever they nested during the brightest part of the day.
That's when he saw it.
A building, larger than the others in this district. Still mostly intact, its walls reinforced with what looked like metal plating beneath the stone facade. The entrance was a massive door—or had been. Something had torn it off its hinges, the heavy metal twisted like paper.
But inside, he could see light. Not sunlight filtering through cracks. Artificial light. Blue and steady and completely out of place in these dead ruins.
Kael approached cautiously, the Hunter's claw held ready. Every instinct said this was a trap, that nothing good lived in places with working lights. But he'd been surviving on instinct alone for two days, and part of survival was knowing when to take calculated risks.
The entrance yawned open, darkness beyond the threshold despite the light he'd seen. Kael stepped through.
The interior was a mess—furniture overturned, papers scattered across the floor, signs of violence everywhere. But at the back of the room, still standing despite the chaos, was a console. Sleek metal and glass, utterly out of place among the ruins. The blue light pulsed from its surface, steady as a heartbeat.
Kael crossed the room slowly, scanning for threats. Nothing moved. No Scuttlers. No other monsters. Just silence and the soft hum of the console.
The moment his hand touched its surface, the console flared to life. Holographic text materialized in the air above it, crisp and clear:
[NEXUS REALM TRADING POST - AUTOMATED]
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS ACTIVE]
[CIVILIZATION STATUS: UNKNOWN]
[WELCOMING SURVIVOR #2,000,000]