Imagine one day you are taking a stroll. A relaxing day, finally, after weeks of slaving away. Everyone passing by gives you nods and pleasantries. It's a jolly good day. Only, out of nowhere, you sense a man staring at you. A homeless man. Now, it isn't the normal stare. It's a greedy, ogling stare.

  So you do what any sane man would do: you jump at him to give him the beating of his life! But soon you realize the man is too slippery and hard to catch. So you chase him...because you really need to give him a beating.

  Next thing you know, even your underwear is gone.

  — SysAdmin 007, retelling the 'Authentic and real' story of Zayn's life before the apocalypse.

  ***

  With Raka entering burst mode, the Battlewraith could no longer keep up. Bad news was, neither could Zayn. Raka raced beyond reason, beyond speed, its lithe frame tearing past the wind and sand alike, cutting a trail of yellow across the desert.

  He often spotted a golem only to bolt past it helplessly. Miscalculating its distance, speed, or both. And Raka showed no sign of slowing down. Still, not like he minded it. Not like he wasn’t enjoying this too!

  The gale reshaping the map of his face felt strangely cathartic. All the fatigue he had amassed was shed off. He drank into the feeling, let all his worries fade.

  The bike jumped from crest to crest and glided through the air gracefully, flooding his veins with adrenaline.

  Sometimes it would do a flawless 360 backflip on its own, leaving Zayn amused and asking for more, “Do it again!”

  “No. That’d make me lose aura points.”

  He shot his motorcycle a humorous glance. Mildly amusing to see his philosopher bike throw out random internet slang, no denying that. “How did you become so fast?”

  “You’re not the only one growing.” The bike snorted, proud of itself. But Zayn didn’t mind. It made sense, it was friggin’ Raka—The Helldivers ride. It should be this proud. Its novelty was exactly why he was so fascinated with it. To the point that he paid the majority of his ‘lucky money’ to purchase it.

  He decided to enjoy the ride. If he had the same stats before the apocalypse, he would have been knocked out about twelve times by now. His current body was resilient enough for this kind of nut-shattering, spine-rattling adventuring. Just barely.

  Vitality should heal everything back, right?

  What…if it didn’t?

  The battlewraith was still behind them, still having the advantage of flying around as she wished. Though she couldn’t quite copy Raka’s burst speed. Eventually, they reached the destination, and Raka finally slowed down.

  Burst mode over!

  As Raka returned to its old, fatter form, Zayn poked at it, “The young have died and left the old to croak.”

  Raka hurrumped and muttered something, low enough that he didn’t catch it. Seemed like it’d picked up some bad habits. He’d not seen Old Gravekeeper do that, so it must have learned that from the treants.

  Zayn finally got to take a look around the fight situation and found it was no less than catastrophic!

  He thought he’d seen it all. Then he saw undead treants swarm and ragdoll the stone golems, jumping on them. There seemed to be about ten treants for every stone golem, and the number only became increasingly skewed by the minute.

  Surely, this wasn’t his fault too?

  T’was just a scratch! Not like he had actually done any actual damage to the stone ape; he’d just scratched its skin. Shouldn’t have been enough for the stone ape to pull out the white flag and treat itself to some deep-earth beer!

  Or did Faeria go back and give it another round of beatdown? Possible. He could see her doing so.

  Since the situation on the battlefield was like this, his plan of fishing in troubled water fell apart.

  Worse yet, he became the centre of attention with Raka’s engine alerting the entire neighbourhood to his presence.

  The treants stopped beating the golems and glared at him like he’d desecrated their ancestral grave, screeching, hissing, filling the air with the smell of rotten flesh.

  “I am just passing by, just checking around the situation!” Zayn pumped a fist at the treants, “You do your thing, beat em’ up. We are on the same team!”

  They were, in fact, not on the same team.

  The next moment, all of them rushed towards him. Zayn sighed, closing onto the nearest golems instead of arguing with a bunch of rabid treants.

  The stone golems were getting the rock whipped out of them since earlier, and the duo had only made it worse. Now the punishment was being dealt in metal! Not long after, he had enough of them to complete the objectives.

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  Objective — Defeat stone golem II — completed!

  “Nice!” He beamed and sped past the encirclement of treants.

  Soon, he focused on his next goal: the sole Stone Turtle on the battlefield.

  The Stone Turtle clambered on the sand in an aimless manner. The crackheads and stoneheads both avoided it, steering clear of its path like it was some kind of Mafia boss. It seemed happy with that arrangement, enjoying a jolly good stroll while its tiny minions were getting bullied.

  He knew this kind of monster. This was the one employee who played games when the boss wasn’t looking. He wasn’t going to allow it!

  ‘I see you now’ active!

  Stone turtle - Lv35

  Skills: [Turbine Slam - ? ], [Sonic Rush - ? ], [Rapid Bite - ? ]

  Noticing his gaze, the Stone Turtle immediately went ballistic, akin to a bull who’d seen red. Eyes blazing. It snorted out swathes of cloudy miasma. Its reptilian head shot towards him, snapping wide open.

  Swarving Raka, Zayn sprayed a bucket full of sand into the turtle's mouth. When the building-sized thing realized it, it grew even more infuriated. It waddled on its four feet in haste.

  Great success!

  “Round three!” He throttled past the wind, taking a zigzag path on the sand. That was better to avoid its crushing, sizzling bites. He could sense its mana signals from a mile away, warning him just before it used its skills.

  Perfect dodge performed! (43/99)

  “Nice!” He smirked. Finally, his trials were moving once more. It didn’t work whenever he was against anyone weaker than him. The system wasn’t one to give a consolation prize. The feats had to be earned, and at the very least, he had to face someone at least five levels higher than him to gain the system’s acknowledgement.

  That made sense.

  The turtle was vexed at eating sand so many times in a row. Eyes glowing in anger, it sprang into the air. Its mana skeletons painted it clearer in the night sky than the freakin’ moon.

  BOOM!

  Like a meteor, it slammed down behind him. Raka shook faintly from the impact, but it was just far enough to shrug off any damage. This pattern continued for a while, again and again, as though artillery nukes were dropping behind him every ten seconds.

  Skill detected!

  Turbine slam (Initiate): Making use of its springing legs, the turtle pushes itself up in the air in a rapid, swirling move, falling with an earth-shattering impact.

  Cooldown: 8 seconds

  The turtle spun in the air once again like a kite and descended on him when the cooldown was over. No way it should be allowed to do that.

  Gravity shouldn’t allow it to perform such moves, not at its weight. But here it was, jumping around like it was the descendant of the Incredible Hulk.

  The velocity it carried made it nigh-impossible to catch mid jump. He didn’t plan to catch it mid jump.

  He grinned.

  A silly, yet dangerous plan formed in his head.

  Right below its navel was its glaring weakness. A small, red gap—where there was no shell covering it. Without his skill, it was hard to detect such a small opening. But with it, it flared brightly enough to be seen from hundreds of meters away.

  Baby turtles had this thing where they lacked a shell around their navel right after they hatched. But this thing was no child. This was a building-sized, rock-crunching, smoke-exhaling turtle.

  Whatever.

  The man in red fled across the desert, and the nuking turtle followed.

  This strange scene played for a while. But the turtle never caught up. When it began to notice something going amiss, it would stop. The scene would then change to Zayn chasing it instead, provoking it with his words until it was hot on his trail again.

  Boom…

  Finally, after jumping around for five minutes, he had it where he wanted it to be.

  With its elliptical body, the turtle could only land one way or another, and he’d been counting on it to fall on its back for once.

  “Hehe.”

  There it was—on its back, limbs flailing, belly out in the open. It whimpered, probably asking for help or whatnot, but these woods weren’t interested in saving helpless turtles.

  These woods harboured turtle-hunting demons in red.

  Without wasting time, he jumped on top of it. The crack on its navel was a hexagon-shaped opening, like the ragged mouth of a volcano. A vaporising heat distorting its edges.

  Hollowfang out, he reinforced its edges with bloodmetal. And that wasn’t the end. Scarlet energy crackled down to the blades as he slashed down with all his force.

  Crack!

  Its shell cracked in the middle and spread out into a cobweb-like extension. Harsh tang of metal and earth spurted out of its broken shell, of stone, iron, and ash. Toxic fumes leaving as magma wafted out.

  Perfect kill performed! (6/11)

  Level up!

  He’d expected to get at least two levels from that. But it did appear that the higher his level was, the more growth mana he needed to level up.

  Satisfied, he was about to leave, but the yellow sphere inside him stirred and turned restless.

  "Hmmm?"

  Confused, he walked a step closer to the turtle.

  The whining stopped.

  When he backed a step, it began again. Unbearably loud.

  Like something was bashing a door in his mind, over and over.

  Curious, he went close and used ‘I see you now’ to check. Then he noticed a mana shard hidden in the remains of the turtle.

  Weird.

  Crouching, he pulled it out—a football-sized thing. [Verdant Skin] dispersed the heat across his body, and he became engrossed in watching the patterns of mana on it.

  It pulsed on and off, and the sphere in him only grew ever more desperate.

  As the yellow sphere threw a tantrum. pain rang from the depths of his soul. After a while, he was forced to comply, part out of curiosity, part out of the soul-rending pain.

  "Fine!" he surrendered. "Come out."

  He also wanted to see what was going to happen.

  Once he let it out, the yellow thing flashed towards the core and covered it like a pufferfish. Within a minute, the core that was almost the size of a football shrivelled and broke apart.

  The sphere, on the other hand, became more corporeal, like a mix of gas vapours.

  Zayn watched as it returned to his body like a content chick returning to its mother.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  Raka raced towards him, its radar shaking with blaring noises. It stared at him in clear accusation, “What did you do this time?!”

  He stared at the moon in defeat.

  He had done nothing! Nothing! He could swear!

  Beep! 23 meters away from the nearest target…

  Beep! 22 meters from nearest target…

  He felt it, hundreds of stares focusing on him hungrily.

  Beep! 15 meters away from the nearest target…

  The morphed, bony branches of the nearest trees broke down, falling and morphing into the shape of the treant. The trunk broke, shaping into grotesque, humanoid forms.

  Undead treant - LV 13

  Undead treant - LV 15

  Undead Treant - LV 13

  One after another, until there were hundreds of them. Slithery figures crawled out of the sand. Rotten tendrils snaked out of their body, giving off a disgusting stench.

  Muttering something incessantly, they moved towards him.