The human scream didn’t echo—it snapped.

  Short. Sharp. Final.

  Kade Soren watched the young man collapse, eyes wide with disbelief as the blade slid out from between his ribs. Blood soaked through the torn shirt, dripping between wooden planks of the rickety outpost the group had fortified.

  The dying man’s friends stood frozen.

  Not screaming.

  Not running.

  Just frozen.

  People always froze when you killed their hope first.

  Kade wiped his blade on the fallen man’s sleeve, sighing with mild annoyance.

  “You should have listened,” he said, his tone bored. “I told you not to breathe loudly. Sound attracts predators.”

  One of the remaining three—barely a woman, nineteen maybe—fell to her knees, trembling violently. “We—we weren’t loud. We didn’t attract anything. You—you killed him!”

  Kade blinked, genuinely puzzled.

  “I eliminated a risk. Your friend was panicking. He would’ve gotten all of us killed eventually.” His voice remained flat, clinical. “Say thank you.”

  Her face contorted with horror.

  Kade studied it with mild curiosity. “You’re not saying it.”

  Another of the group, a tall man with dirt-smeared cheeks, snarled, “You’re insane.”

  “No,” Kade said. “I’m alive.”

  The man drew a crude spear.

  Kade smiled faintly. “See? Now you’re being loud.”

  The man lunged.

  Kade didn’t move.

  The spear’s point came within a hair’s breadth of his chest—

  —and Kade sidestepped so gently it looked like a dance. He rotated his wrist and plunged his blade beneath the man’s ribcage, lifting upward. Bone cracked. The man’s breath hitched.

  He crumpled.

  Two left.

  The kneeling girl sobbed into her palms.

  The last one—middle-aged, wearing a torn jacket and a haunted expression—raised his hands slowly.

  “Please,” the older man whispered. “Please don’t—she’s a child.”

  “She’s nineteen,” Kade corrected. “A child doesn’t get system notifications. She is old enough to survive. Old enough to die.”

  The man swallowed hard. “We—we can help you. We gathered food, water—”

  “Oh good,” Kade said brightly. “That means I don’t have to.”

  He slit the man’s throat with one smooth pull.

  The woman’s sobs turned into hysterical shrieks.

  Kade stepped forward.

  “Shhh,” he said softly, crouching. “Screaming is even worse than heavy breathing. Haven’t you learned anything?”

  She tried to crawl backward. He caught her easily, like picking up a frightened kitten.

  “You will be quiet,” he instructed.

  She shook her head frantically.

  Kade sighed.

  “Then this is your fault.”

  The blade slipped in just under the jaw.

  Her body went limp immediately.

  Kade lowered her to the ground gently, almost tenderly.

  [You have defeated: Human (LVL 3)]

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  [EXP gained]

  [You have defeated: Human (LVL 2)]

  [EXP gained]

  [Level Up! LVL 5 → LVL 6]

  Two soft chimes.

  Kade closed the notification windows with a flick.

  “Inefficient,” he muttered. “Barely worth the stamina.”

  He stood, stretching lazily. The makeshift outpost had been a good idea—barriers of woven branches, a roof of old leaves, stones stacked to form walls. They had tried hard. It was almost commendable.

  Almost.

  He stepped over the bodies and walked toward the edge of the clearing. The air shimmered faintly—faint remnants of the world shaking earlier that still hadn’t fully faded.

  He stared at the flickering horizon.

  “So,” he murmured. “It happened again.”

  A pulse of mana, echoing distant thunder.

  A resonance that made the back of his neck tingle.

  Mike Storm.

  The lightning anomaly.

  The “exception.”

  Kade had watched the Verdant Maw fight from afar—hidden among rocks, observing carefully as the monstrous plant-beast rampaged. He remembered it vividly: the chaos, the foliage storm, the panicked screams of those fleeing.

  And then the lightning.

  He had watched Mike fight with desperation and raw instinct, bleeding, cornered… and then carving through a creature that should’ve devoured him alive.

  Kade had never felt awe in his life.

  But that fight?

  That was the closest thing to religious revelation he’d ever experienced.

  A man chosen by the System.

  No—challenged by it.

  Refusing to submit.

  Ascending through adversity.

  It was beautiful.

  It was perfect.

  Kade wanted to break it.

  Not because Mike was special.

  But because he represented something rare:

  Proof that a human could shed weakness.

  Proof that humans could transcend.

  Kade believed the System had integrated the universe for one reason:

  To purge the weak.

  Most people, he thought, misunderstood fairness. They thought fairness meant gentleness. Equal chances. Kindness.

  But fairness—true fairness—was cruelty distributed evenly.

  The Tutorial didn’t need heroes.

  It needed filters.

  Kade stepped into the forest, feeling the faint tremors of energy through the roots and soil. The Verdant Maw’s death had altered the zone slightly, disrupting the creature-patterns. He liked it better this way—more chaotic, less predictable.

  He moved through the underbrush silently, his blade held low. The forest beasts knew better than to approach him now; they had seen him carve through too many of their kind.

  Besides—he wasn’t hunting them.

  He was hunting potential.

  Two figures stepped out from behind a tree—a skinny boy with sharp eyes and a girl who wore a makeshift bandana and carried a bloodied hatchet.

  They looked up at him with too much admiration.

  Kade hated admiration.

  It was an invitation for disappointment.

  “You’re back,” the boy said eagerly. “Any survivors?”

  “No,” Kade replied. “They disappointed me.”

  The girl swallowed. “You… killed them all?”

  “Yes,” Kade said. “Of course.”

  The boy’s eyes shone. “You’re so efficient.”

  The girl nodded slowly. “You’re right. Weak people slow everyone down. It’s… logical.”

  Kade studied the two of them.

  They weren’t like the others.

  They didn’t tremble at deaths—they tried to understand them. Rationalize them.

  They were empty enough that he could fill them.

  He motioned to the boy.

  “Report.”

  The boy straightened. “We tracked the last big mana spike eastward. A huge storm, sir. Like… I don’t even know how to describe it. I’ve never seen the sky bend like that.”

  Kade’s pulse quickened.

  “Show me.”

  They led him through the forest—moving quickly, efficiently, avoiding the beasts and hazards. Kade followed at a leisurely pace.

  He wasn’t worried.

  If something attacked, he’d kill it.

  Leaves rustled underfoot as they reached a narrow ridge. The air felt different here—charged, alive, humming with residual energy. Kade stepped up beside them and looked down into the valley.

  His breath caught.

  Lightning patterns scorched the ground. Deep cracks radiated outward like spiderweb veins. A section of earth had melted into glass from the heat. Trees lay split open, sap still smoking. The wind whistled softly over the cracked earth.

  And at the center of the devastation was a shimmering distortion—like the air itself was remembering something traumatic.

  Mike had fought here.

  Not the Verdant Maw—this was something else.

  Something more personal.

  Something violent.

  Kade knelt, dragging two fingers over the scorched soil.

  He felt it immediately.

  Lightning, yes.

  But something else.

  Something wild.

  Something that didn’t belong to the predictable elements.

  “What… is that?” the girl asked.

  Kade smiled faintly.

  “Potential.”

  The boy swallowed hard. “You think he’s dangerous, don’t you?”

  “Dangerous?” Kade rose to his feet. “He’s magnificent.”

  The girl frowned. “But if he’s that strong… what are we supposed to do?”

  Kade turned to them slowly.

  “We grow stronger.”

  The boy nodded enthusiastically.

  The girl bit her lip. “And… then what?”

  Kade smiled—softly, politely.

  “Then we kill him.”

  The girl flinched. “What? But he—he’s helping people, isn’t he? I heard a group say he—”

  “Heroes are illusions,” Kade said, voice soft as silk. “Only predators survive.”

  He stepped closer.

  “You want to survive, don’t you?”

  The girl hesitated.

  Kade leaned in.

  “Heroes die first,” he whispered. “The System rewards decisive action. Mike Storm will become a beacon—and beacons attract challengers. Competition. Blood.”

  He gazed down at the scorched battlefield again.

  “And it will fall to us,” he murmured, “to end him before he becomes something unstoppable.”

  The boy swallowed. “But why him?”

  Kade didn’t answer immediately.

  He stared at the destruction with something like longing.

  “Because the System showed him a path,” he said at last. “A path denied to us.”

  He turned, meeting their eyes.

  “And I will not be denied.”

  Lightning crackled faintly in the valley below—residual energy tugged by the wind.

  Kade exhaled, savoring the scent of burnt ozone.

  “Come,” he said finally. “We have work to do.”

  They followed.

  In the distance, the next pulse of Mike’s Trial rumbled through the sky.

  Kade smiled faintly.

  He didn’t rush.

  Predators didn’t chase.

  They waited.

  Watched.

  Learned.

  And when the prey was finally tired—

  They struck.

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