I lay prone behind a jutting slate slab, chest pressed to the freezing dirt, lungs burning as I forced my breath quiet.
Beside me, Zayla scratched the dirt uneasily. Scritch. Scritch. Her claws made a faint, rhythmic sound, a predator’s patience fraying.
“Ten,” she hissed, a low growl vibrating in her throat.
Suddenly, a sharp, cold spike stabbed into my chest. It wasn't my fear. It was hers. Through the bond, her sheer terror was bleeding into me, making my own heart stutter.
“A full Wolf Hunting Party,” she whispered, her voice tight. “The leader is a Bone-Breaker. A werewolf of that size can snap a stone pillar with one punch.”
“I know...” I wiped the cold sweat stinging my eyes. The phantom nausea from the bond made my hands shake. “Size just means more mass. More mass means more momentum. More momentum means... a longer braking distance.”
Zayla growled, her ears twitching in a tight arc of anxiety. “Your physical strength isn't even a third of that wolf's. We should move down, use the terrain for melee, and coordinate with my Shadow Step—”
“Your HP is at 30%. Going down is suicide.” I cut her off, my voice hoarse. I gripped her shoulder—hard. I could feel her trembling through the fabric. “Stay down. Watch my hand signal. Please.”
I reactivated the System vision. The world was stripped of its skin, turning into a blue wireframe model. The canyon below was a classic slot canyon—towering weathered cliffs on both sides with ancient ruins suspended overhead.
Typical collapse terrain. But in my eyes, these weren't ruins. They were Potential Energy Bombs.
Wedge boulder.
It was like a nuke hanging by a hair.
I nudged Zayla, pointing a trembling finger at the massive limestone slab hanging precariously over the pass.
"See that hairline fracture at the base?" I breathed, my lips barely moving."I'm going to force a reverse-expansion inside it. It should shatter the load-bearing pillar and bring the whole cliff down on them."
Zayla frowned, her golden eyes locking onto the dark rock. "And if your... expansion... is not enough?"
I whispered, turning to look her dead in the eye. "If the stone is denser than my calculations... if it cracks but doesn't fall, I need you to use your Shadow Step. You hit that exact fracture with everything you have. Push it over the edge."
Zayla’s ears twitched. A fierce, predatory glint returned to her eyes. "Understood. Give the signal."
Ten tall, black shadows silently infiltrated the canyon entrance. The leading Bone-Breaker was massive—over 2 meters of muscle and hate, wielding a crude cast-iron warhammer. Saliva dripped from his jowls, glinting purple in the moonlight.
“Five... four...” I counted silently. My heart pounded so loud I feared they might hear the vibration. Zayla gripped her broken blade, her palms sweating. The shared anxiety through our link was deafening, like static noise screaming in my head.
“Three... two...”
The wolves walked into the death radius.
“One.”
I clawed at the loose dirt until I snatched up a jagged piece of gravel—a perfect, improvised wedge. I jammed it with desperate force into a hairline crack at the base of the crumbling pillar beside me.
This was the first domino.
“Expand...” I whispered through gritted teeth, activating a variant usage of [Quick-Set Barrier]—reverse operation.
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I triggered a tiny, directional Hydraulic Expansion inside the crack.
Normally, this would barely crack a beer bottle. But at a structural critical point, it was the last straw.
CRACK.
A sickening sound of rock fracturing echoed in the valley.
The Wolf leader snapped his head up. He didn't see an enemy. He saw the sky disappear.
The cliff face didn't just fall; it sheared. It slid down like a guillotine blade made of limestone.
A massive wedge of rock, carrying tons of debris, slammed into the narrow pass under the acceleration of gravity. The ground jumped violently beneath us. A shockwave of dust swallowed the hunting party before they could even scream.
No flashy sword fights. No sparks of clashing weapons. Just pure, raw Kinetic Energy.
Zayla was nearly shaken off the cliff. She clung to the edge, her vertical pupils fully dilated as she stared at the rubble. The orderly Wolf squad was now a layer of organic matter beneath tons of limestone. Black, viscous liquid slowly oozed from beneath the boulder.
A sudden clarity washed over my mind, like a CPU instantly overclocking. The massive XP from the environmental kill hadn't just leveled me up—it pushed me straight past Level 2.
A notification flickered in my peripheral vision: [LEVEL UP! Lv.1 -> Lv.3] [Logic (INT): 18 -> 22]
A warm current flooded my body, wiping away the exhaustion of the night. I felt like I’d downed a high-concentration energy drink. My thinking speed—my CPU frequency—felt faster.
But the high didn't last. A moment later, a heavy wave of exhaustion anchored me back to reality. It was Zayla. She was still critical. My level-up had refilled my mana, but it couldn't fix her broken body. The bond was a two-way street: my strength was currently acting as her life support, draining me as fast as I gained it.
I stood up and dusted off my cargo pants. Zayla looked at me like I was a monster she had never seen before. Her tail was puffed into a massive bottlebrush.
“You...” her voice was dry. “You didn't even draw a blade. You just... pushed a rock?”
“Correction. I shifted a torque fulcrum.” I brushed debris off my sleeve. “Basic Structural Mechanics. I told you, I suck at fighting. But demolition? That's my specialty.”
A weak groan came from the rubble.
Zayla's golden pupils narrowed into icy slits as she stared at the shifting rubble.
“One survived,” she rasped, her voice devoid of any warmth. “Let’s go ask our guest exactly how far behind Garza’s main legion is.”
Three minutes later. The lone surviving wolf scout, his lower half severely mangled by the rockslide, was dragged out and pinned against the base of a dead tree. Zayla’s broken blade was pressed hard against his throat.
"Speak!" Zayla roared, driving her knee brutally into the wolf’s ribs.
The werewolf spat a mixture of blood and dirt, letting out a wet, hoarse laugh. "Tickles... little kitten..."
Zayla trembled with rage. She raised her blade, ready to just end it.
"Stop!" I blurted out, my voice cracking. "Killing him deletes our only data source!"
I forced myself to step closer, though every fiber of my being wanted to run. The heavy stench of copper, wet fur, and ruptured organs hit me like a physical wall. Yesterday, I was worrying about my CAD assignments. Today, I was standing in a slaughterhouse.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and activated [Structural X-Ray].
The gruesome reality of the wolf's body was replaced by a clean, blue wireframe of stress points and structural integrity. A glaring red warning pulsed at his shattered right thigh.
"Don't hit him again," I said, pointing a shaking finger at his mangled leg. "You're going to accidentally kill him. His femur is completely sheared. There’s a jagged bone splinter resting less than a millimeter from his femoral artery and sciatic nerve."
Zayla paused, looking at me.
"If he struggles too hard, or if you apply any more blunt force to his torso," I explained, "the structural tension snaps. That shard severs the nerve bundle. He dies of shock in sixty seconds, and the pain will be... catastrophic."
I meant it as a warning.
But Zayla was a wasteland predator. She didn't hear a medical warning; she heard a target coordinate.
A cold, ruthless understanding flashed in her golden eyes. Without a word, she lowered her blade from his throat and pressed the heavy flat of the metal directly against the skin right above his shattered knee.
She didn't cut. She just applied weight.
"AAAAHHH——!!!"
The wolf’s defiant sneer dissolved into a scream that tore through the night, a sound of absolute, mind-shattering neurological overload.
I flinched violently, instantly turning my back to the nightmare. I squeezed my eyes shut, my hands trembling as the shrill screams echoed off the canyon walls.
"Now," Zayla whispered over the wolf's agonized gasps, her voice dripping with ice. "Let's talk about Garza's numbers."
“Garza's main force—how long? What's the composition? Any siege engines?”
Soaked in cold sweat, the wolf looked at Zayla. "One... one week..." he trembled. "Not three weeks... that was a lie. The Vanguard arrives in one week. Two hundred Iron-claw elites... bringing a Siege Beast..."
“One week?!” Zayla’s face went pale. Three weeks turned into one.
I stared into the wolf’s eyes. “Why is Garza in such a hurry?”
The wolf revealed a twisted smile. “He is looking for... the Key. The Sun Clan's last Key...” His pupils dilated as he succumbed to the trauma. He was dead.
I stood up and looked at Zayla. “Key? ”
She subconsciously covered her chest, where an ancient pendant was hidden. Her ears drooped as she avoided my gaze. “That doesn't matter. What matters is we only have one week.”
I looked at the rubble blocking the canyon, my brain spinning.
“But is one week really enough to build a decent fortress?”
Question of the Day: What is the scariest "Non-Weapon" weapon?
(Click an option to initiate combat)
?? A) A Laser Pointer.
Result: The Zayla Summoner. You point it at the enemy. Zayla destroys the enemy (and the wall behind them) trying to catch the red dot. Risk: High Friendly Fire.
?? B) A Lego Brick in the dark.
Result: Critical Hit! Ignores 100% of Defense. Causes status effect [Crippled] and [Uncontrollable Swearing]. Even the Wolf King fears this.
?? C) Physics.
Result: The Ultimate Arbiter. Gravity doesn't negotiate. Momentum doesn't miss. Ask the 5 million tons of rock sitting on the enemy army. Alex's Choice.
What's your pick? Tell me in the comments! ??
Follow and Rate to see Alex turn the canyon into a death trap!