The Wild Zone did not rush him.
That was the first mistake.
Kai stood still, blood dripping from his arm, breath uneven, every nerve lit like a live wire. The corpse at his feet twitched once—just a reflex—then went slack for good.
The silence that followed wasn't empty.
It was watching.
PREDATOR INSTINCT — ACTIVE
The words surfaced quietly, like a thought that wasn't entirely his.
Kai closed his eyes for half a second.
The darkness changed.
Not visually—structurally.
He felt pressure points in the air, subtle disturbances where nothing should be. Shapes crouched beyond his vision. Weight shifting. Breath being held.
Three.
No—four.
They were circling.
His pulse slowed.
That surprised him more than anything else.
Fear was still there, but it had stopped shouting. It had stepped aside and let something colder take the wheel.
I can't fight all of them.
That thought came clean and sharp.
So don't.
Kai bent and picked up a shard of broken concrete from the ground. It was jagged, ugly, barely a weapon.
But it fit his hand.
The nearest presence moved.
Fast.
Kai didn't look.
He threw.
The shard struck something solid with a wet crack. A screech ripped through the dark as a shape tumbled into view—another dog-thing, smaller, leaner, its leg folding wrong beneath it.
Before the others reacted, Kai moved.
He sprinted—not away, but sideways, breaking the circle before it closed. His boots slipped on uneven ground, but his body adjusted instinctively, balance correcting itself mid-step.
Adaptive, he realized distantly.
The injured creature tried to rise.
Kai brought his heel down on its skull.
Once.
Twice.
It stopped moving.
GENETIC DATA ABSORBEDCORE RESPONSE: STIMULATED
Pain flared in his arm again as another body slammed into him. Kai rolled, barely avoiding teeth, came up coughing dirt and blood.
The thing lunged.
Kai met it head-on.
He drove the concrete shard into its throat and felt resistance—muscle, cartilage, something tougher beneath.
He pushed harder.
The creature convulsed, claws scraping uselessly against his jacket, then went limp.
Kai staggered back, chest heaving.
The last presence hesitated.
He could feel it now—uncertain, recalculating.
Kai straightened slowly.
Blood streaked his face. His arm throbbed. His lungs burned.
But he was still standing.
"Run," he whispered.
The presence fled.
Not bravely.Not proudly.
It ran like something that had learned a rule too late.
Kai stood there for a long moment, waiting for his legs to give out.
They didn't.
Instead, warmth flooded through him—deeper than before, steadier.
CORE LEVEL INCREASEDCURRENT LEVEL: 1
A number.
Small.
But real.
Kai let out a breath that was half a laugh.
"So that's how it works," he murmured. "You don't reward effort. You reward survival."
CONFIRMATION
He sank down against a broken slab of concrete and pressed his back to it. His arm still bled, but slower now. The pain dulled, replaced by a strange tightness beneath the skin.
He watched, wide-eyed, as the torn flesh began to knit—not fast, not miraculous—but enough.
PASSIVE RECOVERY: MINORREQUIRES ADDITIONAL STIMULUS FOR OPTIMIZATION
Kai shook his head weakly.
"Of course you do."
He tilted his head back and stared up at the sky beyond the Barrier's faint glow. The stars looked sharper out here. Closer. Like they'd been waiting too.
Somewhere inside the city, people were sleeping.
Believing in walls.
Believing in systems.
Believing in labels like civilian and null.
Kai flexed his fingers.
They didn't tremble anymore.
He pushed himself to his feet.
The Wild Zone stretched ahead—dark, layered, alive with things that wanted to kill him.
For the first time, that didn't feel like a sentence.
It felt like an invitation.
Kai wiped blood from his cheek and took a step forward.
Then another.
The Wild Zone didn't stop him.
It adjusted.
And somewhere deep inside his chest, the Adaptive Core pulsed—slow, patient, hungry.
Not prey.
Not anymore.
[End of Chapter 5]