Kaizer cut straight through the last knot of bodies without slowing. The deeper he went, the less the wave behaved like animals and the more it was controlled. Wolves stopped lunging at random and started appearing at angles that stole footing. Boars waited in fog pockets like traps. When he broke one cluster, another took its place with timing that made his skin crawl.

  He stopped pretending this was a hunt and treated it like a march toward a commander, letting the residue tug guide him whenever his eyes lied. Arrow shafts came at him consistently now. Every time Kaizer pulled a missed arrow free from the environment, Essence Siphon answered with a sharper pull, hungry, impatient, as if it could taste the person who had left it. Kaizer used that pull the same way he used tracks, not trusting it blindly, but taking it as one more sense in a world full of liars.

  A lane opened ahead, too curated to be natural. Fog held low and stable. Corpses lay in deliberate patterns, wolves pinned by dense shafts at angles that suggested calm aim, boars punctured through joints so they collapsed rather than charged. Kaizer moved into it anyway, because the tug in his chest tightened hard enough to hurt.

  The strategist stood beyond the fog, not close, never close, bow lowered in a casual insult, posture calm enough that Kaizer wanted to put a spear through it on principle.

  “So… Finally, the boss shows itself,” Kaizer called, voice low, carrying. “You won’t run anymore?”

  A pause, then the reply drifted back, mild as conversation. “You keep making it expensive, and proper strategy is more important than single kills.”

  Kaizer shifted so tree trunks broke the cleanest lines. “Then let’s do this. Come get me.”

  The strategist’s tone did not change. “No.”

  Kaizer’s mouth twitched once. “Coward.”

  “I’m careful,” it said, and there was faint amusement in it. “There’s a difference.”

  Kaizer tightened his grip and stepped forward, because careful still bled when you forced it to.

  The fog shifted, not drifting, not moving with wind. It parted like a curtain and two centaurs stepped into the lane between them. The first came forward like a battering ram given hands, thick torso, heavy weapon, the kind of build that existed for one job and did it with enthusiasm. The second held back half a step, eyes scanning, shoulders loose, breathing steady. It did not look like it wanted to fight. It looked like it wanted to win.

  [Centaur Warrior: Lv. 28]

  [Role: Vanguard Breaker]

  [Centaur General: Lv. 30]

  [Role: Field Commander]

  Kaizer exhaled slowly. “Two, then.”

  The General lifted one hand and the fog around its forearm tightened, as if the air itself listened. It did not charge. It did not draw a weapon. It raised its chin and gave a short, sharp whistle that snapped through the trees like a signal you felt in your teeth.

  The Warrior moved on that sound.

  It surged forward with trained speed, hooves barely sinking despite the mass, weapon coming up in a cut that was too precise to be rage. Kaizer met it with footwork instead of strength, stepping off line and stabbing the spear point toward the Warrior’s leading shoulder to check momentum, then pulling back before the point could be trapped. The Warrior’s blade swept through the space where Kaizer’s neck would have been and clipped bark instead, carving a groove deep enough to shower splinters.

  Kaizer used the splinters as cover and tried to slip left, but the General turned that choice into a mistake. A pressure hit Kaizer’s limbs, subtle at first, like the world had thickened by a fraction, then heavier, enough that his second step lagged.

  [Debuff Applied: Command Pressure]

  [Effect: Movement responsiveness reduced]

  Kaizer felt it immediately. Not a slow. Not a weight. Something nastier. The delay between intention and motion.

  The Warrior punished it. It pivoted cleanly and slammed its weapon down in a short, brutal strike aimed at Kaizer’s hands. Kaizer forced his fingers to obey, snapped the spear shaft up to catch the blow, and the impact rang through his arms like a bell. The shaft bowed. His elbows screamed. He used the recoil to spin, keeping the weapon from being pinned, and drove the point toward the Warrior’s rib seam. The Warrior twisted, taking the thrust on thicker hide, then shoved forward to crowd Kaizer. Close range was where a spear became awkward and a heavier weapon became a problem.

  Kaizer retreated two steps, wanted three, got two and a half, and the half was enough for the Warrior’s hoof to slam into the dirt and launch its body forward into a shoulder check. Kaizer’s back hit a trunk hard enough to knock breath out of him. The General’s whistle cut again, higher, and the undergrowth around Kaizer stirred as wolves spilled in, not a full pack, just enough bodies to steal attention, low and fast and trained to bite ankles rather than throats.

  Kaizer swore and made his spear work like a staff, butt down to crack one skull, point back to open a second belly, then a kick to send the third wolf tumbling. The Warrior did not give him space to finish them neatly. It kept coming, forcing Kaizer to choose between killing the distractions or not losing his head, and Kaizer understood the shape of it instantly. The General was not trying to win with brute force. It was trying to make him spend focus in the wrong places until the Warrior landed something decisive.

  Kaizer stopped playing fair with his attention. He let a wolf live half a beat longer to become bait, shifted his stance so the animal lunged into the Warrior’s path, then used the collision to slip sideways and stab the Warrior’s foreleg joint. The point bit. The Warrior grunted, but did not falter. Essence flared along muscle, forcing the leg to obey.

  The General’s hand lifted again, two fingers pinching the air like it was holding an invisible thread, and the Warrior’s aura brightened. The blade looked denser, steadier, as if the world had started keeping time for it.

  [Buff Applied: Battle Rhythm]

  [Effect: Attack cadence stabilised, resistance to disruption increased]

  The next sequence came smoother. The Warrior stopped overcommitting. It stopped giving pockets. It became a metronome of death, each strike placed to herd Kaizer into worse footing, each step forcing Kaizer’s spear into awkward angles. Kaizer drew on essence and felt his core answer wrong, pressure behind his ribs tightening like a coil being wound too far. He did not let it break his breathing, but the pain was there, a hot line that flared every time he reinforced too hard.

  He adjusted his plan without wasting time feeling angry about it. The spear stayed in his hands, but his left hand drifted to his belt. Steel met fingers. A throwing dagger, plain and narrow, the kind that did not care about armour if it hit the right place.

  The strategist, still beyond the fog, sent an arrow hurtling toward Kaizer. The shaft slammed into the ground beside Kaizer’s foot, dense enough that it did not bounce, and the fog around it thickened for a heartbeat, making the patch of earth feel like glue. Kaizer shifted anyway, but his ankle lagged by a fraction, the debuff biting, and the Warrior’s blade clipped his shoulder. Cloth tore. Skin opened. Heat rushed down his arm.

  Kaizer did not look at the wound. He threw the first of his daggers.

  The blade spun end over end and buried itself into the Warrior’s upper arm near the inside seam, just enough to slow him down. The Warrior’s weapon line wavered by a fraction. Kaizer took that fraction and drove forward, stepping into the Warrior’s guard, spear shaft jammed horizontally to block the next cut from coming down clean. He shoved with his shoulder and forced the centaur to adjust around roots. For half a second, the Warrior’s hooves slid.

  Kaizer used the slide to thrust into the abdomen seam, deep enough that he felt resistance give. The Warrior snarled and grabbed the shaft, trying to trap it, trying to turn the spear into a leash.

  The General’s whistle snapped again and the canopy answered. Toolhand monkeys dropped from branches with sticks and stones and filth, shrieking, throwing anything they could grab. One hit Kaizer’s cheek with a wet slap that made his eye sting. Another struck his wrist with a rock. Minor pain, useful flinch.

  Kaizer forced his fingers to lock and yanked the spear free before it could be pinned properly, then snapped his second dagger up and threw it at the General’s face.

  The General did not panic. It tilted its head and the dagger skimmed past, but it had to react, and that reaction was enough. The command pressure shifted, eased by a fraction, just long enough for Kaizer to steal a cleaner step and keep his spear between himself and the Warrior.

  The General corrected immediately. Its eyes sharpened, and its hand clenched, and Kaizer felt something like a hook catch in his chest, not in flesh, but in flow.

  [Debuff Applied: Essence Pin]

  [Effect: Essence circulation partially restricted]

  Kaizer’s breath hitched. The pressure behind his ribs surged against the restriction like a trapped storm. For a heartbeat, his core felt like it was going to tear.

  The Warrior swung. Kaizer should have stepped. His legs did not answer fast enough. He raised the spear shaft instead and the blow struck it dead centre, snapping the weapon into a deep bend that screamed metal. The shaft held, but only just. Kaizer used the bend, letting the spear flex, then releasing that tension into a violent shove upward that knocked the Warrior’s weapon line high. He stepped in under it and drove his shoulder into the Warrior’s torso again, hard enough to force it back half a step.

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  He seized the half step and drove the spear point into the foreleg joint again, deeper this time, activating Triple Thrust. One stab, shallow. Two… deeper, a third, scraping bone. The Warrior roared, essence flaring to force the leg to obey, but the flare was a cost. Kaizer felt it, faintly, like heat rising off a fire. He turned his head and looked past the Warrior at the General and saw the relationship. Not a literal thread, but a dependence. The Warrior’s stability was being held from behind. The cadence was being sustained.

  Kaizer stopped trying to outfight the wall and started trying to steal the hand.

  He ripped an arrow shaft from a corpse at his feet, snapped it in half, and flung the broken piece toward the General. It was not meant to kill. It was meant to force another adjustment. The General stepped aside smoothly, and the moment it moved, the command pressure shifted again.

  Kaizer used that shift like a knife. He lunged past the Warrior’s guard, not fully committing to a strike, forcing the Warrior to choose between chasing him and protecting its commander. The Warrior chose the commander and turned to cut him off.

  Kaizer doubled back and drove the spear butt into the Warrior’s injured knee joint with brutal precision. He felt the bone crunch under the pressure of his spear.

  The Warrior dropped to one knee, not defeated, but forced to reset. The buff kept it from collapsing entirely, but the injury was real now. It bled thick and dark into the mud.

  The General noticed and answered by spending more. It lifted both hands and the fog at Kaizer’s feet thickened, clinging to his boots, pulling at his soles. The Essence Pin tightened as well, the restriction biting harder. Pain flared behind his ribs so sharply his vision whitened at the edges.

  The Warrior rose anyway, using essence to ignore the joint, and came for Kaizer’s head with a straight, murderous cut.

  Kaizer could not step cleanly.

  So he made the Warrior step dirty.

  He shoved the spear point into the ground, angled the shaft, and used it like a lever to vault his weight sideways around a trunk. The move tore at his injured side and sent hot pain down his ribs, but it broke the line. The Warrior’s cut hit the trunk instead, biting deep, and the recoil dragged the Warrior off balance. Kaizer slammed into the opening and drove the spear into the Warrior’s throat.

  The point hit thick muscle and stopped short of spine. The Warrior grabbed the shaft with both hands and tried to wrench it aside, trying to pull Kaizer in. Its eyes were wide, furious, and still focused.

  It was still being held up.

  Kaizer stared past it at the General.

  The General lifted one hand again and Kaizer felt another pressure settle over him, heavier, more personal.

  [Debuff Applied: Commander’s Mark]

  [Effect: Hostile units prioritise marked target]

  Kaizer heard buzzing immediately, and it was not random. Wasps came in from the fog line in a directed cluster, aiming for eyes and throat. Kaizer had no clean answer. He could not let go of the spear or the Warrior would tear it free. He could not close his eyes. He could not afford poison stacking on top of the Essence Pin.

  He did the only thing available. Fangs drawn, he bit, hard enough to rattle teeth. Kaizer felt the poison leave his teeth. Fangs of Verdana doing its work. The Warrior flinched by a fraction. Kaizer used that fraction to twist the spear violently upward in its throat, forcing the point deeper. Blood flooded out in a hot rush.

  The Warrior’s grip tightened, then loosened, then tightened again, its body refusing to accept that it was dying.

  Kaizer clenched his jaw and forced essence through the restriction, not in a flood, but in a surge meant to overwhelm the pin for a heartbeat. Pain ripped through his chest. The pressure behind his ribs screamed.

  The restriction snapped loose for half a second.

  Kaizer used that half second. He let go of the spear, and thrust his arm, claws extending. Claws of Silver activated and punched straight through the Warrior’s chest, reaching its heart.

  The Warrior shuddered. Its hands slid off the shaft. Its head sagged. The body stayed upright for a heartbeat, then collapsed into the mud with a sound that was too heavy to be called a fall.

  Kaizer staggered back, not celebrating, not relieved, because the fight was not over and his core was now thrashing like a trapped animal. His hands shook. His shoulder bled freely. His side burned. The buzzing still circled, and the wasps, denied a clean line, went for whatever skin they could find.

  Kaizer’s claws were fully extended, shining a deep silver.

  They were a part of him now, a promise that the wolf in his blood kept for him when steel alone was not fast enough. Bone and keratin pushed through fingertips, sharp and dark, and the wasps that tried to dart in met a swiping hand instead. Two were cut in half mid-air. One splattered against bark. Kaizer did not chase them. He simply attacked those that came into range.

  The General did not rush him. It stepped forward calmly, as if it had all the time in the world, and as it did, the command pressure shifted again, less like a slow, more like a tightening collar.

  Kaizer wrenched the spear from the fallen Warrior, claws digging into his own palm as he wrapped his hand around the shaft. “You’re the real problem,” he said, voice rough.

  The General’s gaze stayed steady. “You’re bleeding.”

  Kaizer barked a short laugh that hurt. “So are you, if I get to you.”

  The General raised its hand and the fog behind Kaizer pulsed. Wolves stepped out, three, then five, then more. Not enough to drown him outright, but enough to force spacing to break. Enough to force his spear into defence while the General worked.

  Kaizer’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t fight.”

  “I command,” the General replied, as if that was the same thing. “He fought. He lost. Now you do.”

  Kaizer moved, not at the wolves, but at the General. He sprinted three steps, forced through the command delay with stubbornness, and the General’s eyes widened by a fraction. It whistled and the wolves surged to intercept.

  Kaizer changed the rules. He did not stop to kill them cleanly. He slashed with claws as he passed, opening a throat and ripping an eye, leaving bodies alive long enough to become obstacles. He drove the spear butt into a skull and kept running. Blood spattered his hands. His core pressure surged and stabbed behind his ribs, but he did not slow.

  The General raised its hand again and the Essence Pin bit hard, locking his flow, tightening the pressure until it felt like his core was going to burst. Kaizer’s breath hitched. His stride lagged.

  The strategist fired an arrow.

  The shaft hissed through fog. Kaizer managed a single step back before the arrow buried itself into the ground right in front of him. A blue aura shone off the arrow, entangling around Kaizer’s feet. The strategist had intended to hit, but its backup plan was just as nasty. Kaizer was locked in place.

  The General stepped in, calm, and for the first time drew a weapon.

  It was not a pike, not a long polearm. It was a one-handed war spear, built for a mounted body that still wanted a free hand. The shaft was shorter than Kaizer expected, dense and dark, the grip wrapped in something that looked like cured hide. The head was the real offence. A wide, blade-profile point, heavy at the base, with a subtle hook on one side that could catch a shield rim or tear flesh on a withdraw. It could thrust clean, but it could also cut. It was the kind of weapon that punished anyone who assumed “spear” meant only straight lines.

  The General did not cut with it.

  It thrust toward Kaizer’s ribs, using the entangle and the delayed motion, using certainty.

  Kaizer barely managed to block the blow with the shaft of his inferior spear. The impact buckled it, then the next shove finished it.

  The spear snapped in two.

  The General’s thrust continued and bit into Kaizer’s shoulder, shallow only because the break stole momentum. Pain flashed hot and bright. Kaizer’s hand wanted to open. He forced it closed.

  He should have been too slow to react, rooted to the ground, but Essence Siphon finally did something for him. He sucked a deep breath in and felt power drag into him from the arrow residue and the fog-soaked air, ugly and scraping, but real. The pressure holding his feet loosened enough to matter.

  Kaizer dropped low, rolled backward through mud, and threw the broken half of his spear.

  The splintered shaft buried into the General’s torso under the collar seam, not deep enough to kill, deep enough to make it adjust and to prove that calm still had consequences.

  Kaizer forced his focus onto Essence Siphon and used it to claw back failing stamina. The sensation was foul, like dragging hooks through his own chest, and the pain behind his ribs flared so hard his vision blurred.

  The pin loosened, not fully, not kindly, just enough.

  The General lunged again. Kaizer twisted aside and took a thrust shallow across his ribs. The point tore flesh. Blood ran hot. Kaizer did not fall. He slammed his face into the General’s extended forearm and bit down, once again thanking Fangs of Verdana for giving him options that were not polite.

  The General stepped back, too late by a fraction, and claws scraped across its collar seam, drawing blood.

  The General’s eyes narrowed. “Interesting.”

  Kaizer grinned. “You’re leaking.”

  The General’s whistle came sharp as it took a step back, trying to make space. The wolves surged harder, faster, trying to pile Kaizer. Wasps darted in for eyes. A monkey dropped from above with a stick raised.

  Kaizer made the fight smaller. He backed into a tight pocket between two trunks where bodies could not surround him cleanly. He stabbed the monkey through the belly as it landed and used its corpse as a shield against the wasps, smearing blood and guts across his forearm so the insects hit meat instead of skin. A wolf tried to bite his knee and he pinned it with claws. Another snapped at his wrist and he cracked its skull on the trunk with a spin.

  He did not have the luxury of elegance. He had survival.

  The General used the chaos to reset and raised both hands again. The command pressure slammed into Kaizer’s limbs heavier than before, and Kaizer felt his movement lag as if his muscles were tired when they weren’t.

  [Debuff Intensified: Command Pressure]

  [Effect: Reaction delay severe]

  Kaizer swallowed bile and forced his legs to move anyway. His core pressure surged, swelling and spiralling, the pain behind his ribs turning from sharp to constant, like a bruise being punched from the inside.

  He could not outlast this. Not with the debuffs stacking. Not with distractions being fed in. Not with the strategist occasionally placing arrows to narrow his options.

  So he had to end it.

  Kaizer stepped out of the pocket and deliberately let the General see him commit, charging straight as if he was too angry to think. The General’s eyes tracked him and the whistle came, wolves surging to intercept.

  Kaizer did not fight the intercept. He used it. He slid under a snapping jaw, rolled his shoulder through mud and blood, passing the Warrior’s lifeless corpse.

  Then he threw it.

  A dagger left his hands like a lightning strike, straight and violent, glowing radiant blue. For the first time the General’s calm broke. It shifted, but Kaizer had been watching the strategist’s habits over the last few days, the way its arrows seemingly avoided trees, dodging around things. The dagger’s path changed mid-air, turning the same way the General had attempted to dodge.

  The blade punched into the General’s torso under the ribs and drove it back into a trunk with a wet, blunt impact. It drove deep enough that the General’s breath hitched and its stance broke for half a beat. The injury should have been manageable. It wasn’t, because Kaizer’s venom was already in its blood from the bite to its forearm. The General’s leg stuttered. Its grip tightened wrong.

  Kaizer felt debuffs fading. He surged forward with claw and fang, the only weapons left available to him.

  The General tried to rip the dagger free with one hand while thrusting with the war spear in the other. Kaizer grabbed its wrist instead and cut deep, claws biting into tendons. The General’s hand spasmed. Blood sprayed. The weapon slipped.

  Kaizer did not let it fall.

  He ripped it out of the General’s grip.

  The war spear came free with a jolt of weight and balance that made Kaizer’s instincts go quiet for a heartbeat. The shaft sat right in his hands, not because it was made for him, but because it was made to be controlled. Dense. Honest. A weapon that did not flex when you demanded a line.

  [Profession: Harvester has advanced.]

  [Harvester Profession: Lv. 24]

  Kaizer felt the profession click in the background like a latch turning, a quiet recognition from the System that taking what the battlefield offered counted as more than theft. He did not care about the approval. He cared about the weapon.

  The General tried to whistle. The sound came out rough.

  Kaizer leaned in close enough to hear its breath. “Thanks for the weapon,” he whispered.

  The General’s mouth moved but no sound came out.

  Kaizer answered with violence.

  He used the war spear the way he wanted to, not the way the General had. A short cut across the General’s forearm, the blade-profile head biting and tearing, then a thrust into the soft seam under the rib where the dagger had already opened the path. The hook on the head caught as he withdrew and ripped again, widening the wound without needing a second strike.

  The General jerked, tried to push back, and Kaizer pushed harder, pinning it against the trunk with his forearm.

  A wolf lunged for Kaizer’s side on the General’s whistle reflex. Kaizer did not turn. He snapped the spear back without looking and the hooked blade caught the wolf under the jaw, tearing it open as it passed. The body hit the mud and slid.

  Kaizer kept his eyes on the General and finished it with a final brutal rake across the throat, blade and hook doing what claws could have done, but cleaner, faster, with reach.

  The command pressure vanished like a snapped cord.

  Kaizer felt the relief instantly, and it almost made him collapse because the moment the external pressure dropped, the internal one became everything. His core surged violently, not levelling, not settling, swelling and churning as if it had been forced to hold too much for too long. Pain ripped through his chest hard enough that his knees threatened to fold. He planted a blood-slick hand on the trunk just to stay upright, teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.

  The General slid down the trunk into the mud, blood pooling around it in slow, dark waves.

  The strategist stood beyond the fog again, still at range, still calm. It lifted its bow slightly as if considering another arrow, then lowered it again, as if deciding the data was enough.

  “Good, take some time. Fix yourself so we can have a real battle,” it said, voice quiet, almost curious.

  Kaizer’s hands shook as he tightened his grip on the war spear, forcing his fingers to accept its weight. “Come closer,” he rasped. “I’m right here.”

  The strategist did not. Fog surrounded it and it vanished.

  The world went still the way it always did when the System decided it was time.

  [Wave 2 complete.]

  [Wave 3/5 begins in: 3:59:59]

  The guided movement loosened immediately. Wolves that had been holding angles broke and fled. The buzzing thinned as the wasps drifted off. The fog did not vanish, but it stopped behaving like a tool and went back to being air.

  Kaizer barely registered it.

  The moment the wave ended, the restraint inside him snapped. His core surged, not levelling, not settling, swelling and spiralling as if it had been forced to hold too much for too long. Pain ripped behind his ribs so hard he nearly vomited. Essence churned like it was trying to claw its way out through bone.

  Kaizer sucked in a breath that tasted like blood and wet earth, forced his legs to move, and started walking, because standing still made the pressure louder and he refused to give it that advantage.

  Four hours.

  That was what the downtime meant now.

  Four hours to either fix what was happening inside him, or to die before wave three even began.

  Dreamlike LitRPG Psychological Thriller

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  Alex Dawson's quiet life of classes and gaming shatters when he dreams of a crimson sky, a fallen moon, and a stranger on a mirror-like sea.

  The dream doesn't fade. An ancient system awakens, and Alex is dragged into the hidden realms of dreams where some want him to awaken, others want him to break, and one wants him back.

  Free to read on Royal Road