Chapter 3: The Weight of the Void and the Whisper of Metal
The adrenaline of that first kill — even if it had only been a Bot — faded, leaving a cold residue in Klaus's blood. The enemy's body had fully disintegrated, yet the ghostly echo of the wrench striking pseudo-metal still reverberated through his bones.
He looked at his empty hand, fingers slightly trembling. The wrench — his first, primitive symbol of safety — now rested in the ethereal space of the ring. The absence of its weight made him feel strangely vulnerable.
The silence in the container yard was now absolute, broken only by the distant hum of dying machinery and the constant pulse of the System map in his peripheral vision, showing the slow but relentless shrinking of the Safe Zone. He had time, but not much. Hours, maybe.
Priority 1: Collect. Priority 3: Avoid conflict. The System's words had become a mantra. He couldn't stop.
With one last glance at where the Bot had fallen, Klaus melted into the long shadows of Necropolis-7's artificial dusk. The sky — a permanent, sickly palette of green and purple — began to darken, plunging the urban landscape into deeper, more dangerous tones.
His first destination was the warehouse whose roof had served as his landing point. The main door was jammed, corroded by rust and time, but a half-destroyed side entrance offered a way in. Inside was a cathedral of industrial decay. Skeletal cranes hung from the high ceiling, and the floor was littered with debris — unrecognizable machine parts and puddles of dark, oily liquid.
Then he saw it. A faint, almost imperceptible glow emanated from inside an abandoned toolbox under a workbench. His normal eyes might have missed it, but the System's passive scan highlighted it with a faint, pulsing outline.
>> LOOT SIGNAL DETECTED: [COMMON] <<
He opened the box carefully, the creak of metal echoing through the hollow space. Inside, among rusted screwdrivers and bits of wire, were a sealed plastic bottle of water (>> PURIFIED WATER [COMMON] <<), three bars of a high-energy nutritional supplement (>> EMERGENCY RATION [COMMON] <<), and the glowing item — a small box of ammunition.
>> 9MM AMMUNITION [COMMON] – 12 ROUNDS <<
Klaus smiled — a dry, humorless twitch. Ammunition. Without a gun, it was little more than useless metal. But it was potential. And potential was currency here.
With a thought, all the items vanished from the toolbox and appeared neatly sorted into separate slots in his inventory. The one-ton capacity was such a distant limit it barely felt real; for now, every gram mattered.
He exited the warehouse through another door leading to a side street lined with crumbling residential buildings. The architecture was a jarring hybrid — wrought-iron balconies draped in digital moss clung to raw concrete walls threaded with exposed conduits pulsing faint blue energy. It looked as if a 19th-century city had been infected by a technological virus.
While scavenging through the ground-floor apartment of one of those buildings — finding only rags and the stench of mold — he heard the first sound of real combat.
Two sharp cracks. Gunfire. Followed by a human scream — agony and surprise — then abrupt silence.
Klaus froze. He crouched behind the shattered window frame, holding his breath. The sounds had come from across the street, inside a building that had once been a market. Through the broken glass, he saw movement — a figure in a worn tactical jacket, holding a semi-automatic pistol. A Browning Hi-Power, Klaus recognized instantly from an old game he used to play. The figure moved with the cautious precision of a predator.
The gunman was looting a body — another recruit, lying motionless in a widening pool of blood. Klaus caught a glimpse of the dead man's face: young, maybe younger than him, with an expression of pure terror frozen in place.
It was the first real death he had witnessed. It felt different from the Bot. Visceral. Human.
The gunman searched the corpse's bag and, finding nothing of value, tossed it aside with disdain. Then he vanished into the dark recesses of the market.
Klaus stayed still for long minutes, his stomach churning. That — that was the true face of Necropolis-7. Not just predictable Bots. Desperate, armed, dangerous people. The System's "recommendation" to avoid conflict burned into his mind as law.
He waited until he was sure the shooter was gone before moving again. He didn't cross the street. Instead, he used cover to skirt around the block, keeping his distance from the market. His goal now wasn't just loot — it was survival until he found a real weapon. The wrench was fine for desperate close combat, but against a firearm, it was suicide.
Night fell fast, bringing with it an almost total darkness broken only by flickering neon signs and the faint light of his own HUD. The System, in its twisted "mercy," provided a basic night-vision function that turned the world into ghostly shades of green — but at the cost of depth and clarity.
It was in that green haze that he found the second Bot.
He was crouched behind a burned-out car, watching an intersection, when he saw it. This one was different. It wore what looked like the remnants of a corporate security uniform, and in its hands — not a pipe, but a shotgun. A battered Winchester Model 12 — a relic of trench warfare, but at close range, a weapon of absolute destruction.
The Bot patrolled a fixed path in front of an abandoned subway station, its scanner-eyes sweeping the area with a sinister red glow.
Klaus felt a knot of fear and excitement tighten in his chest. A gun. His chance. But how could he take on a shotgun with a wrench? That was suicide.
He studied it. The pattern was methodical, predictable — from a broken lamppost to a charred newsstand, then back again. The cycle took exactly twenty-seven seconds. There was a ten-second window where the Bot's back was turned to the dark entrance of the subway and its line of sight was blocked by debris.
A huge risk — but a chance at life.
Klaus moved like a shadow, circling around the block to approach the station from behind. The stench of decay and moisture grew thick. He descended the cracked steps into pitch darkness. His night vision turned the ticket hall into a nightmare of green and black — littered with the remains of… things he chose not to identify. The air was heavy, stagnant.
He crouched behind a row of rusted turnstiles, just within the darkness, with a clear view of the entrance. He could hear the Bot's heavy, metallic footsteps outside.
Three… two… one…
The Bot passed by, its broad, lifeless back turned toward the shadows where Klaus waited.
Now!
He didn't run — he moved, fast and silent. In seconds, he closed the gap. The wrench materialized in his hand. The Bot, just as Klaus came within striking distance, began to turn, sensors detecting anomalous movement.
Too late.
Klaus lunged, not to stab — but to smash. With all the strength in his arm and shoulder, he brought the heavy tool down on the Bot's weapon arm.
CRACK!
The sound was like metal bone snapping. The Bot's arm twisted at an unnatural angle, and the shotgun clattered onto the concrete floor. The machine emitted a sharp alarm, its other arm raising to strike — but Klaus was already moving. He dropped, rolled, snatched the shotgun off the floor — the metal was cold and reassuring — and without hesitation, aimed center mass and pulled the trigger.
The blast was deafening in the confined space — a roar that made his ears ring. The recoil was brutal, nearly tearing the weapon from his hands. The buckshot tore into the Bot's torso, hurling it backward into the wall with devastating force. Sparks flew, metal shards scattered, and the Bot slid down the wall, inert.
>> SECURITY BOT [LEVEL 2] TERMINATED. +25 EXPERIENCE POINTS. <<
Klaus gasped for air, ears buzzing, shoulder throbbing from the recoil. The acrid scent of gunpowder filled his lungs — a perfume of violence and victory. He had a weapon now.
He checked the shotgun. The System displayed information:
>> SHOTGUN "WINCHESTER 12" [COMMON] <<
>> PUMP-ACTION. 00-BUCK SHELLS. <<
>> MAGAZINE CAPACITY: 5+1. CURRENT AMMO: 4. <<
Four shots. Four chances. More than he'd had ten minutes ago.
He searched the disintegrating Bot. No chest this time — but from the pooling oil and debris, he recovered twelve more shells (>> 00-BUCK AMMUNITION [COMMON] – 12 ROUNDS <<) and something unusual: a small metallic capsule in a blister pack.
>> COMBAT STIMULANT [UNCOMMON] <<
>> EFFECT: TEMPORARILY BOOSTS PHYSICAL ENDURANCE AND REACTION SPEED. <<
>> DURATION: 5 MINUTES. SIDE EFFECT: SEVERE FATIGUE. <<
An uncommon item — exactly what the System had advised to save. He stored it in his inventory, away from the common ammunition.
Armed and invigorated, Klaus decided the subway station would serve well enough for his first night. He found a small locked control room at the back of the concourse. The lock gave way after a solid strike from — well, he didn't have the wrench in hand. With a thought, it appeared. He smiled, genuinely this time. The ring was miraculous.
He forced the door open and stepped inside. The room was tiny, windowless, and smelled of old dust — the perfect hideout.
He shoved a heavy filing cabinet against the door, forming a crude barricade. Then he sat on the floor, back against the far wall. Darkness filled the room except for the dim glow of his HUD.
Opening his mental inventory, he took stock of Day 1.
KLAUS'S INVENTORY:
Wrench [COMMON]
Purified Water ×1 [COMMON]
Emergency Ration ×3 [COMMON]
9mm Ammunition – 12 Rounds [COMMON]
00-Buck Ammunition – 12 Rounds [COMMON]
Basic Bandages ×1 [COMMON]
Winchester 12 Shotgun (4/5) [COMMON]
Combat Stimulant [UNCOMMON]
(Empty)
(Empty)
He had survived. He had killed. He had a weapon — and a valuable item. But looking at the list, a restless hunger grew inside him. It wasn't enough. Nowhere near enough. The ring wanted to be filled. The System encouraged accumulation.
Outside, in the darkness of Necropolis-7, the night sang its hymn of horrors — sporadic gunfire, muffled screams, the electronic growls of Bots, and occasionally, a distant roar from something he dared not imagine.
Klaus tore open one ration bar and ate mechanically. It tasted like cardboard and chemicals. He drank a sip of water. Every move was calculated — conserving resources.
He didn't sleep. He kept vigil. The shotgun rested across his knees, fingers near the barrel, ears tuned to every whisper of sound near the door. Every minute stretched into an eternity. Every noise, a possible threat.
His HUD map showed that the Exclusion Zone had advanced significantly. Entire districts he'd seen earlier in the day were now red — consumed. The world was shrinking. In nine days, there'd be nowhere left to run.
But for now, in that dark, airless room, Klaus was alive. And being alive, he realized, was the only real currency that mattered. Everything else — the loot, the ring, the weapon — were just tools to prolong that state.
The coldness he'd felt after killing the Bot returned, wrapping around him like a cloak of necessary pragmatism. The man he had been before the teleportation was fading — replaced by something sharper, more dangerous, more determined.
Day 1 was ending. Dawn would bring new horrors, new challenges, and, he hoped, new opportunities to fill the empty slots of his ring.
The hunt had only just begun.
(End of Chapter 3 – Day 1)