I burst through the window, glass trailing behind me as I soared through the air. The crowd looked up in stupefaction as I flew further than any human should, and were too slow to remember that they should be shooting. I landed exactly where I hoped, atop the vehicle. The gunner looked quite surprised as I shot him in the head. I dove in after his corpse before the surrounding gunmen could get a bead on me.

The interior was sizeable, enough so that I could clearly see the driver and codriver, who both quickly became interior decorations. The dead driver's corpse must have fallen against the controls, as the vehicle flew forward, catching the important-looking man and smashing his lower body against the wall. He also looked quite surprised.

I quickly climbed to the gunner's seat and manned the machinegun. Half of the surrounding men pelted the gunner's nest with gunfire, while the other half quickly realized what was about to happen and booked it. It didn't matter.

I quickly figured out I was supposed to press both buttons with my thumb, which was an odd configuration but worked wonders. I could see where I was aiming through a thick glass viewport, and began to gun down the surrounding enemies. It kicked like a mule and shot faster than a Gatling gun, practically sawing through all the targets I swiped the barrel over.

More screams. More blood. More vultures. I kept shooting, and they kept dyin'. Only one made it across the street, arms flailing wildly as he made it indoors. He was covered in the blood of his comrades.

I was too.

I climbed out of the gunner's seat. I considered taking the vehicle, but I had no idea how to drive it, so I didn't bother.

"Wait..." whimpered a voice. I drew and aimed at the source of it, only to find the well-dressed man from before. He was still pinned against the wall, the entire lower half of his body completely pulverized. I suppose the vehicle was keeping all his guts in. Good for him.

"Where is Charles Woodswork?" I asked, voice even. No point in trying to intimidate a dead man. Maybe he was feeling helpful.

He wheezed. I doubt he could feel much pain. He raised a shaky hand and pointed at a building a few streets down. It was fancy as all hell, with three stories and a classy wooden finish.

Frankly, that was my first guess, but it never hurt to ask.

I said nothing more and left him there. I heard his voice from behind me. "All units...converge on the town hall... suspect is-"

I didn't let him continue speaking before I finished him off. His body slumped against the hood of the vehicle. He was speaking into some sort of box-like device in his hand, which I assume it lets him communicate with his compatriots. An oversight on my part, I suppose.

It didn't matter. Now everybody would be in one convenient place for me. Time to finish this.

I checked my guns one last time and began walking towards the town-hall, taking the chance to calm my heart. There were no more gunmen, as they all were more than happy to follow orders and put more people between them and me.

I walked down the streets, breathing deep, taking in the familiar sights and sounds. Fearful gazes from behind curtains, doors slamming shut as the slower bunch finally made it indoors. Women screaming loudly for no particular reason.

I hated that last part, the sound grates on you after hearing it for the umpteenth time.

There weren't all that many people, really, neither was the town all that big. It only took three streets until the town hall came into sight. It was about what I expected, surrounded by a veritable horde of armed men and women. They were rushing into positions around the arches on the exterior of the building, and more still were throwing down what looked like bags of sand.

There were no more vehicles to be seen. I figured they probably sent most of them with the away team, and only had the one left in town.

Without heavy armor, they stood no chance in hell.

I crept through the back of a nearby three-story building. It seemed to be a store mixed with a house, so the owners could retire for the day just by heading upstairs. I stalked my way up to the topmost floor, but it seemed the building was mercifully empty. I peaked out the window, obscuring my body in shadows.

There were somewhere between 20-30 targets, some were taking up positions in nearby buildings just as I was, some more hunkering down behind sandbags, and others still were placing mounted machineguns. I even saw some carrying those shoulder-mounted explosive launchers.

I see. They were preparing for a god damn war. They probably thought they were under attack from a rival group. That was probably why they weren't covering their corners properly, focusing all their firepower down the central road.

The last mistake they would ever make. I had an angle on the vast majority of them from the shop I was in. I took a deep breath, shouldered my lever-action, and started shooting.

The cycle of the lever-action was a blur as I lit them up, prioritizing my targets based on weapon, position, and reaction. Those who looked for my position died first, then the mounted weapons, and finally the launchers. A new wave of screaming began as I put bullet after bullet into my targets, each shot painting walls and sand red, every cycle of the action killing or disabling my targets.

Sometimes I aimed for shots that weren't immediately lethal. Hearing your comrades scream in agony as they bled out was an incredibly effective demoralizer, and it added to the cacophony of sounds, making me harder to pin down.

I even had time to casually reload my rifle, bullet by bullet, as the survivors cowered behind cover. It wouldn't help. I stretched that muscle again, and my next bullets tore straight through sandbags and thick wooden barriers. Watching their comrades get shot straight through cover broke the rest, and they all ran screaming for the interior.

None of them made it.

I watched for a little longer, making sure there were no more survivors, putting down the screamers. There weren't.

I exited back the way I came, stepped over the fresh sea of bloody corpses, and entered the town-hall through a side-door.

Someone was on the other side, covering the door with a handgun. His hands were shaking, and his eyes were crazed. He didn't act fast enough before he died, but his death throes were enough to pull the trigger.

The shot hit me in the side, and it dug into my flesh....but didn't penetrate the skin. The wound would just be a painful bruise.

I knew it was the effect of the system. Not so much my stats, but something else. I didn't know what, and It didn't matter. I stepped over his body, used the emergency stairs, and entered the second-floor hallway.

The stairs didn't lead to the third floor. A security measure, I suppose. All it meant is that I'd have to kill everybody on the second. I stalked through, revolvers in hand. People came from around corners and died. People barreled through doors and died. People ran from me, and they died too.

Everybody in the building had a gun. Everybody was fair game. Everybody would die.

I killed my way across the second floor, reached the stairs on the opposite end, and climbed to the third. I wondered vaguely if you had to walk across the entire damn building to get to the top floor. There was probably a way up that I didn't recognize.

I reached the third floor, which was a penthouse of sorts. It was filled with decorations, more a museum than anything else. Swords, tablets, vases, animal heads, Charles Woodswork was clearly a man of affluence.

I didn't have much time to take any more in before I was tackled by a mountain of a man. He was hiding right by the entrance and used sheer girth to stop me. My guns flew across the room as he lifted me off the ground with pure strength strength

He was clearly stronger than an average human should be. I could see the veins on his butch-looking face bulge as it contorted with rage. He grabbed me by the throat with both hands, intending to choke me out. I pulled back the thumbs on both of his meaty hands, breaking them. He let me go, and I immediately crouched and punched him in the balls.

To his credit, he didn't crumble, but he sure froze, and I kicked him on the side of his knee, breaking it immediately. That made him crumple. I went to stomp on his head, but he grabbed my ankle and twisted, forcing me to compensate by twisting with it, letting myself fall to the ground. I grabbed an antique-looking vase on the way down, turned, and bashed him over the head with it.

He flinched. The vase was thick ceramic, and incredibly heavy. It shattered over his head, matting his hair with blood. All that was left in my handle was a long, sharp shard, which I immediately tried to jam through his eyes, but he blocked it with a palm and punched me in the face with the other hand.

The punch would have destroyed the face of a normal man, but I was even further from human than he was, and barely even felt it. I grabbed the fist and forced the hand away, and leveraged the ceramic blade to force his other hand away, leaving us face to face, both hands occupied.

I headbutted him, and his head bounced off and hit the hardwood floor. I headbutted him again, and again, and again, till I felt the strength leave his hands. His face was a mess of blood, and so was mine. I ripped the ceramic blade straight through the joints of his fingers and stabbed him through the eye with it.

He finally stopped moving, and I untangled myself just in time to see men begin to flood into the room from behind the door on the opposite end. They must have crowded into his office in a last-ditch effort to defend him and hoped their close-quarters specialist could take me out. He would have if i wasn't such a monster.

These people clearly weren't very experienced, as their planning has been consistently atrocious across the board. Perhaps they were people dragged into a conflict that they didn't understand, forced to pick up weapons due to circumstances beyond our control.

Aren't we all?

I drew my sawed-off as they raised their guns, and flexed that muscle as hard as I possibly could. I pulled both triggers, and the recoil damn near wrenched my arm off, sending my barrel straight into the air.

The resulting blast was like a cannon, spread out in hundreds of small points. There were more pellets than a buckshot round could possibly hold, and they hit with force beyond gunpowder. The blast was deafening, and the entire back wall turned into a beehive. The people exiting the room turned into paste, gore splashing far enough to reach me.

I had a splitting headache, now. That muscle clearly wasn't meant to be pulled quite that hard. Or maybe its because I just headbutted a man with a skull like a bull. Probably both.

I staggered to the other side of the room, fighting off nausea. The shotgun slipped from my hands, and I don't quite remember where the lever-action landed. I hoped the blast didn't kill Mr. Woodswork. I had words for him.

My boots made a wet squishing sound as I staggered through the pile of gore, and over the wreckage of the door. His office was quite the sight, decorated much like the room behind me, stinking of opulence. He had a circular, inscribed glass window on the wall behind him, its depiction too vague for me to bother deciphering.

Charles Woodswork was alive. He had flipped over his expensive, hardwood desk, and hidden behind it. That saved his life. He poked his head out from behind it, checking on the situation. He found it, looming over him.

He was a well-groomed old man, dressed immaculately and somehow possessing poise, despite him hiding behind a desk. He slowly rose, looked around, realized his situation, and slowly took a seat on his crocodile-skin chair.

He looked tired and defeated. "Why?" was all he asked, voice even older than he looked.

"Your people burnt down my town."

He thought for a moment. "The town of the insects? I was told it was populated by a bunch of monsters."

"Did you even think to talk it out?"

He paused, then laughed. His face was an odd mixture of amusement, acceptance, and disdain. He responded to my question with one of his own.

"Did you?"

I drew my father's walker and shot Charles Woodswork six times in the chest. The force of the system-enhanced blasts sending his wheeled chair flying backward, straight through the stained glass.

His body joined the rest.

-Combat Over-

-Town Subjugated: Rewards distributed based on Contribution-

-Bounty Gained: 500,000 Chips-

-Assessing Performance-

-Exceptional Performance Detected: Solo Subjugator, 100 Man-Slayer, Kinslayer, Kingslayer-

-Host Marked as Exceptional-

-Multiplying Rewards due to Exceptional Performance-

-ERROR: Fatal Weakness detected in Exceptional Host: Illiteracy. Correcting-

-Skill(s) gained -Reconsolidating-

-Core Progress 532%-

-Bypassing Stages-

-Forming Silver Core-