Before her, a familiar scene appeared.

Tall, destroyed buildings all around, viciously dented and bent like paper. Ruined and scarred streets with gouged pavement and broken concrete roads. And above all, a complete lack of living creatures no matter where she looked. The only thing that really changed was Taurus Hunting Academy no longer looming in the sky, but besides that...

Everything felt the same.

It was almost a copy.

'No,' Misha retracted her words, 'There's something wrong here. Something feels off.'

The air itself felt foreign to her... like it was rejecting her very existence.

The wind felt strangely harsh, cutting through her skin like invisible knives as it brushed against her body. The way it pushed against her wasn't natural, as if she wasn't supposed to be in it's path; goosebumps rose throughout her body.

She breathed in shallowly, feeling the way the air dug into her bones and joints, turning them to lead. That creeping sensation of weakness when she started moving around after being still for a long time blanketed her, but worse than she ever remembered it to be.

It was one hell of an uncomfortable feeling. Actually, it was almost painful — she corrected.

Then, it just disappeared. Like it'd never been there at all.

"What the hell was that?" She groaned.

She began to loosen her shoulders and stretch her neck to clear that clinging feeling of rust. Even though it made her a bit uncomfortable to do so, she just chalked it up to the effects of travelling to another world — that was probably it, yes.

'To another world, huh...'

The concept was almost always portrayed in a fantastical way, an escapist fantasy and the start of a new life unhindered by the troubles and responsibilities of the modern world. While the way of transmigrating to another world and the contents themselves had changed into something much darker nowadays, those fundamental ideals hadn't been touched much.

Even though it wouldn't erase her past, it'd be a fresh beginning. A good one, she tried to convince herself.

Pushing that to the back of her mind, she gulped down the tainted air around her that reeked of decrepit iron. Of roadkill left to boil and ferment under the sun for far too long. It was a smell she didn't want to be familiar with, but she was.

"How funny," She uttered humorlessly, "My Earth was destroyed, and this one is already falling apart too."

Her hands unconsciously balled into fists.

But with a hum of surprise, she found a renewed strength residing inside her. She loosened and tightened her hands over and over again, feeling out her new reserves of energy as they traveled through her bulging blue veins.

Misha's frame swelled with a kind of vitality she'd almost completely forgotten could exist, huge amounts she hadn't even caught the scent of since she was a teenager. Since years before the Dimensional Catastrophe ever happened.

It was a vintage, rejuvenating experience; it made her think of when the world was going through easier times.

Her mind went back to easy smiles and honest laughter, to fair-weather friends and true friends she wished she'd never parted with. 'Damn, Misha, don't you have any better memories?' She smiled, sinking into her reverie for a moment. She wished — just for a second — she was back in school, talking about every ludicrous, absurd thing that came to her head with her favorite people in the world.

She wished she hadn't lost contact with them, that she'd never forgotten their contacts. But that was her decision, unfortunately. "The price for success", she called it at the time, when she still thought she would rise to the top as a shining star.

But where had her decisions taken her instead?

Now she was stranded in another world with only a mysterious, particularly closed-lipped life-line, the clothes — well, armor — on her back, her trustworthy spear, and a million nostalgic, bitter-sweet memories of when she was truly happy.

'Oh,' She stalled, 'Wait a second.'

In that moment, she remembered her previous state of undress. 'Please don't tell me...' But thankfully, when she looked down at herself, she found she wasn't naked anymore 'Oh, thank god.' Instead, she was fully decked out in medium-weight, black steel armour far from being as heavy as her previous one, with multiple patches replaced by some tough dark grey leather she didn't recognize.

While she mostly favored heavy armour, this new batch of equipment suited her quite well too.

'Well, I guess lighter equipment does have its advantages.' Her eyes appraisingly traveled over every part of her body she could see. 'I'll lose a good deal of defense, but now speed won't be a problem anymore.'

It wasn't bad, in complete honesty.

Misha's skin-tight suit was also under there, as she judged from the familiar feeling of cool, flexible scale patterns over her skin. Better yet, it appeared to have been modified to fit her new frame, and the rips and tears had mended themselves closed.

Even further, there was no more of that nasty scent of disease coming from her body anymore, meaning the nasty stagnant Force Aura staining her had been cleared. As expected, her heavy spear was also strapped to her back again, just as heavy as before.

It would've been quite troubling if all her stuff had stayed in her old world.

'I don't know why my armour changed, but it feels better in a way.' She brushed her palms up and down her gear, testing out how it felt against her skin next. 'It's like I got a fancy new upgrade. Nice.'

Unsheathing the spear from her back and holding it with one hand, she got a better idea of her new strength. It used to take a fair bit of effort to lift her weapon, meaning that Misha's fighting style put a bigger emphasis on heavy strikes that'd cut off her opponent's life in one fell swoop, but of course, at a great energy cost.

It was a fighting style made solely to kill as quickly and efficiently as possible, and while it had its fair bit of advantages, it was full of exploitable holes against high speed or overwhelming defense. And there were also many creatures or people which could breach her armor with enough effort, making her equipment akin to an iron coffin rather than a companion in battle.

That'd forced her to hone her senses, to see patterns and openings where others saw nothing. To learn when and not to strike, like a viper, rather than the charging bull her frame and tools of choice made her out to be.

Now though, she spun it around with ease. She still felt the weight and power her spear carried, but it was no longer a burden.

On another note, her spear was honestly quite a beautiful work of experienced craftsmanship. She'd had it commissioned from a veteran Chinese smith with years of knowledge under his belt well into her career, and it'd been her baby ever since.

It had numerous mystical engravings of clouds and dragon-like serpents where the pole wasn't covered by leather, and the image of a giant peach tree with colorless, foliaged branches was stamped along the middle of the Greater Caveshell — a giant mollusk with a shell of magically-hardened minerals — steel blade, giving off a profound feeling.

"Oh, c'mon Misha," She groaned, creasing her brows humorously, "That's so cringy."

But even still, she never got tired of looking at it. She couldn't help but murmur praises under her breath.

'I should've commissioned more from Mr. Hou. That man's skills were heavenly.'

Not only in abilities, but the man himself also had quite good character; warm smiles, a brass tongue and a hearty laugh. She felt as much at home in his workshop as she did in her Guild HQ, more than she felt even inside her own apartment.

The spear itself had taken a fair bit of cash and she ate poorly for months until things got back in order, and it wasn't like she'd gotten her armour for free either — she'd collected it piece by piece from looting corpses left to rot inside Gates or from hole-in-the-wall, back-alley shops. Then she'd slowly refined and modified it to her tastes while combining only the best pieces.

It had taken so, so much time. The whole process lasted for four years or so until she was satisfied.

'Well, it wound up paying off in the en—'

[Slayer's Legacy initialized successfully. No excisions, amputations or purification necessary.]
[You have become an Avatar in the Hero's world, Earth.]

"—Fucking hell!"

She jumped with surprise as the voice traveled into her ears from seemingly nowhere.

Instead of the usual screen, a cold and even female voice sounded right inside her own head, though still accompanied by a soft chime. She didn't waste much time on the change though, as the mention of a foreign term caught her attention.

"Avatar?"

For a moment, there was only silence.

Her mind wandered back to the baritone words of the woman(?) — 'excision, amputation and purification'. They sounded medical, distant and disengaged, but sharp like a surgeon's scalpel. Her gut went cold at the thought of what it could mean.

Then her ears started ringing, growing into a tinnitus that slithered into her brain.

Suddenly, she was sent reeling, almost tumbling to the floor. A rush of information flooded into her head like a movie reel, making her shudder in pain. Seedlings of knowledge sprouted into fresh fruits of information in her mind, like a bizarre garden.

"sh-Shit," She sputtered.

She was lightheaded and confused for a moment, but she managed, steadying herself in place to digest the new information. When it was over though, she'd gained a good grasp of the overall scenario of this dimension.

A crisp electronic ding rand out inside her skull, and a hologram-like window flickered into view. The window was vastly different from the Slayer's Legacy panel, all sleek and futuristic, so she could only assumed it belonged to this world.

 

[Welcome to the Game of Intergalactic Slaughter, dear Avatar!]

[Region: No Man's Land (✪✪✪).]

 

"What a terrible name for an equally terrible "game". I guess it's better than no name, though." Misha frowned, poking at the screen only to see her finger pass right through it without interference.

"And No Man's Land, huh? A fitting title," she huffed, eyeing the death around her, "And the stars are meant to be it's danger level? Kinda hard to gauge how dangerous it is without any reference, but three stars... I guess it must be decent enough."

The window dissipated at her mental command, and retreated into her thoughts again. 

'So, it's... a death game setting.'

In this world's timeline, roughly two months ago; the entire world changed as godly beings called 'Stars' revealed their existence, starting a worldwide disaster that took the form of a sadistic game for their own sick entertainment. The ones who couldn't adapt quickly enough to their liking were killed first, while the ones who could became 'Avatars', and had small fragments of the 'System' grafted to their mortal souls.

Those ones still died, but they had the privilege of surviving longer as quality "actors" for the Stars.

Their final goal was to complete all the 'Main Quests' and survive with the help of the 'Attributes', 'Skills' and 'Levels' the System gave them, which would spell them as winners. The Stars would be forced to begrudgingly move on and torment another world.

These so-called Skills they used were powered by a type of magical energy only produced and distributed consistently by the System itself, referred to as 'MP', short for 'Magic Points'. Honestly, couldn't the name have been more original?

'Well,' Misha wagered, 'Maybe it's because of it being so cliché and well-recognized that it was chosen.'

"But ignoring that... Isn't everything only borrowed power in the end?" Her head throbbed, "They don't even have to learn their Skills first to use them. They can just leave everything in the hands of the System, sit back and watch their Levels grow."

It left a bad taste in her mouth.

From the moment where she went through an Awakening and started producing Force Aura, she trained like crazy to close the huge gap between herself and those who'd started earlier with sheer effort alone. She didn't have an ounce of talent with Aura control in her blood or innate affinity with any type of manipulation technique to her name, so she worked myself to death every single week.

And even then, she never got quite strong enough for her liking. But they could become twice as powerful in a flash.

She furrowed her brows in irritation.

The world hadn't been exposed to magic before the Stars invaded — unlike her's — so the Hero couldn't have possibly consolidated all of his strength yet, she fished. Not only physical and personal strength, but also power and influence over others.

Misha didn't know if that mattered though, since if these Heroes were worthy of the title of 'protagonists' like the golden panel said, she'd have to look out for things like plot armour or worse. Honestly, how the hell could someone like that be killed?

The couldn't. And when they were, it was for the sake of getting stronger and having character development.

If that useless SS-Rank, Julius was anything to go by, there was no way they wouldn't be outstanding somehow.

One way or another, they probably greatly outclassed her by a wide margin. She'd have to try and negate that in some way... but how? She pushed that out of her mind for now, instead focusing on another particular thing that'd gotten her attention:

The Levels.

For simplicity's sake, she first decided to narrow in on one particularity at a time.

"What's the criteria used for Levels?"

A soft chime, and then came the answer.

[There are two Levels to inform yourself on, inheritor:]

[The Levels given by the Slayer's Legacy, which appraise and register overall physical condition, combat experience, mental and emotional stability, arcane abilities, overall influence over their world, and some part of their unsealed, latent potential. The key difference is it only appraises. It's meant to be used as a reference for your power and the target's threat level.]

[The Levels given by this world's System on the other hand, artificially boosts the physique of Avatars with Attributes, raises their magic reserves by directly injecting units of MP into their souls, and lets them acquire Skills without any prior mastery required.]

[Resumedly, the Slayer's Legacy merely seeks to analyze and record, while the System acts to directly strengthen.]

"Wait," Misha frowned, "Then were the Levels you showed me the Legacy's ranking or the System's ranking?"

[They were the ranking of the Slayer's Legacy, inheritor.]

"But how much did everything influence his rating? Can you show me the percentages of everything included in the Levels or whatever?" It would be a great help if she could see the Hero's progress from a glance, she decided.

[Not now, inheritor. But future updates will allow for more in-depth readings.]

"Damn," She breathed out, "Alright, alright."

The mention of updates coaxed her to slow down, but she was still apprehensive.

Didn't those Stars have even a bit of patience? They barely waited for people to adapt themselves before they started cranking up their strength, and while she didn't want that kind of treatment too, it was still a shitty, unfair situation.

Asking about his levels hadn't reassured her whatsoever that he'd be a killable target.

"Well then," She continued, "Can I see my Levels too?"

Again, silence. Like a computer program thinking about how to respond — she remarked to herself.

She didn't know if the voice behind the Slayer's Legacy was a real person or some kind of construct, but it certainly felt like the latter when compared to the panel's prior wittiness in some answers. Funny, she almost missed the damn thing.

The muscles of her right hand felt weirdly sore and stiff, probably from swinging her spear around. She really needed to get back in shape, she halfheartedly promised to the future Misha. She knew she'd have to keep it anyways though.

"Hey!" She called out, "Did you forget about me? I'm still here."

She licked her dry lips, tightening and relaxing her right arm as the discomfort spread, riding up to her shoulder.

Then, she furrowed her brows. Her muscles were starting to hurt more, locking up and stiffening unnaturally as her entire right arm up to her shoulders throbbed. She felt like there was something slithering through it too, cold and ethereal but still there.

"What the—!"

 

[Warning! The inheritor's outer Providence has been breached!]

 

Before the words could even fully exit her mouth, a cold feeling settled deep in her heart as the chime of bells came.

 

[Warning! A foreign influence has touched your soul.]

[Prioritizing the well-being of the inheritor and safety of their identity... Analyzing possible solutions...]

 

The more air she tried breathing in, the more it hurt and the tighter her chest locked up. She was so distracted by the pain she didn't even notice the unusual color changes of the rippling panel, or the scratches that ran through it each time her pain blossomed anew.

The cold rushed and rippled through her entirety like a raging tide, making her groan as her whole body tightened. It became harder and harder to breath before she almost couldn't anymore, and a dull ache quickly worsening into a painful throb pulsed outwards from her viscera.

 

[You have temporarily received the Talent, Status Board(--).]
[MP rampages through your veins and blood vessels.]

 

The pain heightened as the freezing energy collided with the Force Aura dispersed throughout her, the two differing energies working together like sparks and dry kindling as her insides were set ablaze, an agonizing fire burning through her.

But even still, it was far from enough to make her scream. Not after everything she'd already passed.

She moaned and groaned and twitched with pain, but beyond that, she didn't even yell. She wrapped her steel-covered arms around herself in an attempt to numb the liquid wildfire coursing through her, to no avail.

It felt more or less similar to Awakening, but the sensation then could be described more as deep discomfort rather than such a torturous feeling. Her vision was overtaken by a blinding silver glow that she realized was coming from her eyes themselves, and a bright grey shine beamed forth from her skin through her thick armour.

The pain made her legs buckle as her muscles tensed and unwound in quick succession, spasming and breaking down little by little in excruciating clarity. She felt like she'd shatter any moment now as her knees met hard concrete.

But then, as the pain reached its climax and she felt like she'd burst into fire... it cooled down. Misha reeled, hacking and coughing.

"What...?"

If not for the white-hot warmth still radiating from her body, she would think it had all been a lie.

Furthermore, the bitter taste of metal and bile in the back of her throat, the scent of smoke that clung to her nostrils like glue, and the translucent pale haze of steam rising from her body were clearly there. She'd almost combusted, she realized.

"Just how..." She tried, but still couldn't force the rest of the words through her teeth.

She let herself go, body collapsing against the floor as she huffed and gasped for air. The cold pavement pressed against her heated cheek as she thought of something — anything, really — she could do in her current situation. She didn't like the idea of just waiting for it to pass, it left her too exposed in such an open area.

Then, she felt a buzz in her ears, a pressure building between her brows.

"Oh no."

Before she could think any further, another deluge of information rushed into her, head aching due to the amount of knowledge being crammed into it. For a long second, dark circles appeared in her peripheries and she felt alarms going off in her head.

They threatened to extend all the way to the middle of her sight any second now, but Misha knew she couldn't let that happen.

She felt she was being lulled into eternal sleep.

The broken film reel that came this time was bit fractured and fuzzy for whatever reason, and she grit her teeth hard to swallow the sleep and exhaustion threatening to overtake her. So hard she felt like her jaw would come loose.

'Why does no one have an ounce of pity in me? Aren't you supposed to be helping me, not making me suffer more?'

She cursed the Legacy a few thousands times in her heart, but even as she did so Misha didn't stop revising the new information:

MP — as she already knew — was an unnatural energy only produced by the System, but what she didn't know was that it was the product of taking a natural type of energy — Mana, because of course that was it's name — as reference before deforming it into something that could be more easily handled.

Mana required thousands of years of adaptation to harbor in one's body, which even afterwards would probably only give rise to a magically attuned sub-species within that race's individuals. Well, magic could still be used without ever taking it into the body itself, preventing most forms of  damage, if said body's owner was skilled enough in the usage sorcery.

But how could one obtain that knowledge if they couldn't experience it, unless they learned it from someone else? And god, Misha already knew enough about how frustrating it was to learn from purely second-hand accounts.

In layman's terms, unless they had a thorough understanding of magical theory, something that was impossible to have without magic to begin with, or the innate ability to sense Mana — which was also extremely unlikely — they'd be essentially blind to magic for the rest of their lives until death.

If someone wasn't born with it, they'd most likely never use it.

'So they crammed millennia of evolution into barely a few minutes.' She groaned, rubbing her forehead, 'Shit, who was the genius who came up with that? I have to meet them one day.'

Her mind sailed around the other key points and revelations offered to her, finding more and more to learn — Another thing she'd learned was that Force Aura and MP had the same roots, but were fundamentally different.

Somewhat like two sides to the same coin, if only the rim was actually gold and the two sides were made of silver and copper. But even with so many differences, they still bore traces of their origin.

That was why they reacted so violently when encountering each other inside her body.

'Like a goddamn powder keg,' she thought, sighing.

While MP was warped and distorted, Force Aura was generated inside Awakened without any extraneous factor other than the relative lack of Mana on her Earth. To explain it better, the reason why Earth had Force Aura was because it was a magic desert.

Since the environment had no Mana, any arcane energy that came through the Gates would end up exhausted before disappearing like fog, so it naturally sought a more welcoming place for it to thrive — human hearts, which were already equipped to produce and pump things out.

'Then, why didn't animals also Awaken?'

Such were the mysteries of the universe, for neither did she already know the answer nor did the Legacy provide it for her. The only thing she got out of it was — the Awakened had been created because of a huge series of colliding factors and coincidences.

Instead of knowledge, all that was required was 'intent' as a command before the body worked out the quirks. But of course, first a certain amount of long training sessions — both physical and mental — were demanded, for it wasn't rare for serious injuries and internal wounds to happen if someone tried to wield it recklessly.

'Maybe it isn't that animals couldn't Awaken, but that they didn't live long enough for humans to notice the changes?' It was a plausible enough reason, so she decided to leave it at that. The lack of a clear answer still left her miffed though.

"Well, I guess it's alright since it's still useful information."

Misha smiled, content with how quickly her body had healed of it's sores and aches. Her breathing was still heavy and ragged, but now she could breath through her nose again without trouble. She did feel something was off though.

"Hmm... I feel like I'm forgetting something."

Even as the tried remembering, nothing came back to her mind. She traced her steps back until the fateful fit that'd left her worn out on the floor, slowly and deliberately so as not to miss anything. She felt like her mind was in tatters from the exhaustion.

Then, with a click, she remembered.

"Ah! I was going to check my Levels—"

A golden screen popped up before her, turned horizontally so Misha could view it's contents.

 

[Misha Sol Callahvan] | [Level: 24]
[Status: Avatar (Hero Slayer).]

 

Nothing had changed about it, she noted, it was still just as semi-translucent as the others, with beautiful handwriting and detail.

"I like it," she cooed, "It's pretty compact, right down to business."

Her Level was a pitiful mere ⅓ of Roderick's, but the reminder that his was boosted by the System helped to ease her worries. The 'Status' part in particular caught her attention, and she didn't need to think much about it before an answer naturally appeared:

"The first word must be the identity I'm assuming right now, while the one in brackets is my real one." She snapped her fingers at the conclusion, convinced.

Still, she couldn't help but wonder about the Level the high-ranking Awakened in her world must've been — maybe they would've been in their early or mid-100s, while Julius... 'He would've probably been in his early-200s? Definitely apart from the rest.'

It was all a rough estimate, but she didn't have anything better to base herself on.

As she kept thinking and thinking, her mind eventually came to rest on the message she'd received earlier about something called a "Talent". 'I wonder what's that about?' To her surprise, before she could even ask the screen or the voice — whichever one answered first — about what it, another golden panel popped up.

 

[Talents: Slayer's Legacy(SS), Iron Blood Spear(E+), Steel Force Aura(E), Thunder Storm Footwork(D), Physique Boost(E), Heavy armour Mastery[E+), 6 Steps Of Lightning(C), Iron Wind Arts(D). | Traits: Instincts For Survival(C).]

[Temporary: Status Board(--).]

 

'Huh... Interesting.'

Misha's eyes traveled about the screen, giving it a once-over to take in the unfamiliar names.

"Are these my abilities? They look like skills from an RPG game."

She read each and every one of them and attempted to guess what they did, but it wasn't so difficult — their names alone were enough for her to gleam plenty from. They were probably the techniques she'd come up with throughout her career, and while she hadn't given them names like this, these were as good as any to her.

'That "Trait" though...' She had to admit, it left her stumped. Maybe it was being literal? She did always have good gut feelings.

Indulging in the weirdness of the situation, she tried to will forth everything from proficiency tiers to short summaries, all unfortunately to no avail. There were more restrictions in place than she thought, Misha realized.

She clicked her tongue lightly and willed the screen to close, watching it fizzle out. The view of the ruined world appeared in front of her eyes again, and she unconsciously sighed as she tightened the grip on her spear — which she hadn't let out of her grasp all this time — again. It had been roughly 30 minutes since she'd started her hunt for Roderick Powell, but all she'd done was just hoard information.

In the end, this was what hunts were all about. Getting information and waiting, then getting more information, and then waiting a little bit of more. They were boring and uninteresting affairs, and she liked them that way.

The only exciting moments bringing adrenaline to the table were when the prey and the hunter met, the scenario always idealized by the common folk and portrayed with rose-tinted glasses in the media. They were the most dangerous parts, but if everything was done right, they'd be almost as uneventful as the earlier phases.

Slowly, she lifted herself off the floor, limbs not nearly as heavy and pained as they'd once been. That'd still take some getting used to, she thought. Not that it was a bad thing at all.

Misha relaxed her arm and let the heavy spear hang by her side as she walked forward, taking in her surroundings all the while. It was pretty bad, and honestly, couldn't really be compared all that much to the surreal scene in her old world.

Destroyed shops with collapsed walls and ceilings littered the sidewalk, with buildings that weren't damaged being rare; overturned and smashed cars that looked like rubble clogged the streets; broken and mangled bodies of men bathed the ground in blood.

All of them were slashed and cut open, letting her peer into their steaming, pulpy bloody insides, oozing white and yellow fat, and exposed, rubbery red muscles tethered to filthy, glistening bones. The putrid smell of rot and decay filled the entire street and she could even see patches of rotting violet skin with bronze borders, flesh peeling and flaking right off like fish scales.

Even then, she still couldn't see a single insect like flies or maggots. The entire place was filled with only the dead.

Goosebumps flashed through her body.

She tried her best to avoid stepping on any swollen, gangrenating limbs, her gaze avoiding their glazed and pale eyes. Even in spots where there weren't any dead bodies, there were still brownish, deep maroon puddles of old blood that squelched beneath her iron boots.

Although it reminded her of Earth's final moments in thesis, it was only in thesis. They weren't similar at all.

The brutal scene reminded her of the time when the Solar Knights Guild were called upon by the Double A to subjugate monsters that escaped from a Gate. It was a relatively unknown F-Rank Gate that was neglected by the Association, which ended up being because the local Guild of that area, the Great River Guild, bribed their inspectors. Hefty amounts had changed hands for their goal:

Letting the Gate overflow — which it did — so they could reap the fame and benefits of subjugating the monsters.

And to make matters even worse, the ensuing Outbreak let hundreds of beasts that they weren't even remotely prepared to fight spill out in waves, killing up to roughly 200 or so civilians. It was a massacre, and thankfully the Guild was heavily charged.

Even though F-Rank monsters were weak, they were still strong enough to kill plenty of normal humans.

The situation had already cooled over because a stronger Guild arrived first, but all of the corpses remained for them to clean up due to their low rankings. To this day she didn't understand why Awakened had to do the cleaning instead of city workers paid for that, but that didn't matter.

What mattered was that it was a shocking taste of reality for her — she'd been still a fresh, naive Awakened who, even though had gazed into the darker parts of the world, still had foolish dreams of being a gallant hero. A truly stupid dream.

But unfortunately, these weren't monster corpses.

As she thought back about that day, she slowed down to a halt, stopping dead in her tracks as she tightened the grip on her spear. Her instincts were yelling at her — something wasn't right. 'Maybe I'm just nervous because of the situation...?'

No, that wasn't it.

A deep discomfort climbed down her throat as she gulped, swallowing dry, and made itself at home in the pit of her gut.

She looked down at the bodies again without thinking, and only then did she notice the injuries on them looked much more like those of bladed weapons than those of claws and fangs. These weren't wounds left behind by beasts.

Her first thought were other humans. 'But why would they commit a senseless slaughter like this?'

All these people seemed like common citizens, not wearing any armour or weapon they could've used to defend themselves or initiate aggression, and even if they had been taken away by the attackers, only a few looked capable enough to fight. Then maybe the attackers had been looters of some kind, but none of these people looked like they were living particularly wealthy lives.

'Then,' her mind raced, tense, 'What the hell was the reason for this?'

As if responding to her growing concerns, the sound of heavy metallic footsteps rang out somberly behind her, followed by the scratchy music of sharp metal being dragged across concrete. The disgusting smell of carrion and death came thickly from behind.

It wafted slowly into her nostrils, that distinct stench so strong and overpowering she gagged. She never got used to that smell.

She immediately knew it wasn't human. Or anything remotely natural, for that matter.

'Fuck, I guess it's time to test out my new strength.'

Taking in a deep breath, she quickly turned around while brandishing her heavy spear.