It was still early morning when Ethan slipped out of the residential complex.
The sky had only started to pale, that thin gray hour before real daylight. WestMart sat about two kilometers away. On a normal day, that distance meant nothing. Now it was long enough to get a man killed.
The streets were clogged with abandoned cars and worse. Bodies lay scattered across the pavement, some already picked down to bone after days of rot. The smell hung over everything, thick and sour, impossible to ignore.
Ethan kept the fruit knife tight in his hand and stayed off the main roads whenever he could. Alleys. Side paths. Any route that kept him out of open sight. Every time something shifted in the distance, he stopped and listened before moving again.
An hour later, WestMart finally came into view.
The supermarket looked like it had been torn open by a war. Most of the glass front was shattered. Twisted metal racks lay heaped near the entrance, mixed with trash and what was left of people who had not made it out. But it was not the rot that made Ethan slow down.
Something else sat in the air.
A heavy, greasy, fishy stench that clung to the back of the throat.
He covered his nose and moved along the outer wall, steps light. Near the entrance, several skeletons were spread across the floor. Most had been gnawed down so thoroughly that only shape remained. Ethan crouched beside one and studied the marks.
Small. Dense. Overlapping.
Rat bites.
His eyes narrowed.
So the rumors were true.
He did not walk straight in. Instead he searched the nearby rubble until he found an empty glass bottle, weighed it once in his hand, then threw it hard through the broken entrance.
It shattered across the floor.
For a second, nothing answered.
Then the squeaking started.
First a few voices deep inside the building. Then dozens. Then so many they blended into one restless, living noise. A rustle followed, low and fast, moving behind the shelves. A moment later a black mass poured into view.
Rats.
Not normal ones.
Each was nearly the size of a cat, fur slick and dark, eyes a hard blood red. Their claws clicked over the tile as they swarmed the broken glass, fighting each other for nothing, biting and shoving in a frenzy.
Ethan’s face went cold.
Perfect.
He stayed low and slipped through the entrance while their attention stayed fixed on the bottle. Shelves gave him cover as he moved deeper into the wrecked store. Product packages littered the floor. Most of the food had already spoiled. He ignored anything soft or short-lived and hunted only for what could last.
Canned goods.
Sealed biscuits.
Anything closed tight enough to trust.
In the snack aisle, luck finally tilted his way. Five unopened boxes of compressed biscuits sat tucked behind a fallen shelf. He shoved them into his backpack, then found two cans of beef under another toppled rack and took those too.
Good enough.
Time to leave.
A single sharp squeak froze him in place.
One mutant rat stood several meters away, red eyes locked on him alone.
"Shit."
The rat opened its mouth to call the rest. Ethan moved first. He snatched up an iron rod from the debris and swung with everything he had.
The skull burst against the floor.
Dead.
But the scream had already done its work.
All through the supermarket, the squeaking cut off. Then it came back louder. One by one, shapes turned in the dark. Hundreds of red eyes found him through the gaps between shelves.
Ethan’s stomach dropped.
The swarm came all at once, a black tide pouring down the aisle.
He ran.
Shelves crashed behind him as he dragged them over, trying to buy seconds. It barely helped. The rats flowed through every opening. One leapt onto his back and drove claws through cloth into skin. White pain ripped across his shoulders. Ethan snarled, slammed backward into a metal rack, and crushed the thing hard enough to make it let go. The rod finished it.
Another jumped.
Then another.
Too many.
He kept running until the corridor ended in a blank wall and stacked debris. A dead end.
He turned.
The swarm filled the passage behind him from floor to shelf.
"Damn it."
He raised the iron rod.
The first rat lunged. He broke its head open. The second came in lower. He crushed that one too. Every swing killed something. Every second brought more. Claws opened lines across his arms, his shoulder, his side. Blood soaked through his shirt and ran warm down his skin. His breathing turned rough. The edges of the world started to soften.
Then a different cry cut through the noise.
Louder.
Sharper.
The entire swarm stopped.
Slowly, the rats began parting.
Ethan stood there heaving, rod still raised, as something stepped out from the dark behind them.
It was the size of a small dog. Gray fur. Strange purple eyes. Thick saliva stringing from its mouth. There was a thinking cruelty in the way it looked at him, not the blind hunger of the others.
The Rat King.
It moved without warning.
One blink it was watching him. The next it was already closing the distance, claw flashing toward his chest. Ethan got the rod up in time, but the impact nearly tore it out of his hands and drove him backward several hard steps. Pain lit up across his ribs.
The Rat King gave him no room to recover. It came again.
Ethan stopped giving ground.
If he kept only defending, he was going to die in this aisle.
At the last instant he twisted aside, let the claws rip past his shirt, and drove the fruit knife forward with his free hand. The blade punched into the Rat King’s skull all the way to the hilt.
The scream that followed was high enough to hurt.
The creature thrashed with ugly strength and flung him sideways into a shelf. The impact emptied the air from his lungs and sent blood up into his throat. He coughed hard, vision swimming ~ but he never let go of the knife.
Not for a second.
The Rat King twisted and sank its teeth into his forearm. The pain was immediate and enormous, deep enough that his knees almost went. For a moment the world narrowed to white noise and the wet heat of his own blood.
He forced his hand to turn anyway.
Twisted the knife once.
Twice.
The thrashing weakened. The purple eyes lost focus. The heavy body shuddered, slowed, then collapsed against the tile and finally went still.
Silence rushed in after it.
The surrounding rats stared at their dead king. A few uncertain cries rose from the pack. Then the whole swarm broke. They scattered into the dark in every direction, claws scrabbling away until the supermarket belonged to quiet again.
Ethan dropped to the floor.
He was cut open in too many places, and the bite on his arm was the worst of them. Deep enough that pale tissue showed through the blood. He dragged in a rough breath, forced himself upright, and pulled the knife free from the Rat King’s skull.
Something small fell with it.
A crystal the size of a peanut, faintly blue, cold against the floor.
Ethan stared.
A Core.
In the stories from his old world, things like this held concentrated energy. Some said that consuming one could awaken an ability. For a second his battered body almost made the decision for him. His hand closed around it.
Then he stopped.
He opened the system panel instead.
[Target: Debbie Miller]
[Target Cooldown: 0 days]
Ethan looked from the glowing text to the Core in his bloodstained palm. A thin, tired smile pulled at his mouth.
Why keep it?
If the system worked the way he believed it did, this was better used as a gift. Debbie was available. The return could be worth more than whatever the Core might give him alone.
He made one last pass through the supermarket, found nothing else worth the weight, and started the long walk back while his body still obeyed him.
By the time he reached the residential complex, the sky had begun to brighten. Climbing the stairs felt longer than the streets. On the second floor he stopped at Debbie’s door and knocked.
"Who is it?"
"It’s me."
His voice came out thin.
The door opened almost at once. Debbie’s expression collapsed the second she saw him ~ the soaked clothes, the torn skin, the ugly bite on his arm. Color left her face.
"What happened to you?"
She caught him before he could tip forward, already close to tears.
"First... inside," Ethan managed.
She got him onto the couch. "Wait. I’ll get cloth~"
"Debbie."
She stopped.
Ethan pulled the pale blue Core from his clothes and held it out.
"This is for you."
Debbie stared at the crystal, then at him. "What is that?"
"Something that can awaken an ability. Eat it."
Her eyes widened. "You need it more than I do."
"No." He shook his head once. "You have Nina. You need a way to protect yourself."
Tears welled fast. "I don’t want it. You’re hurt this badly. Use it. I don’t need an ability."
"Debbie." His voice hardened through the exhaustion. "Do you want to rely on me forever?"
She had no answer for that.
"If you don’t take it," he said, lifting his hand, "I’ll throw it away."
"Don’t!"
She snatched the Core from him, fingers trembling around the cold crystal. For a moment she only looked at him ~ worry, gratitude, and something deeper tangled together in her face. Then she stopped fighting herself and swallowed it.
The Core melted the instant it hit her tongue. Warmth spread through her body in a sudden wave. Her eyes went wide as something inside her woke, and a soft white light rose around her skin.
At the same moment, the system answered.
[Ding! Mutant Rat King Core gifted to an eligible target.]
[Target: Debbie Miller]
[Beauty Score: 95]
[Base Return: 50x]
[Strong emotional response detected.]
[Bonus Drop activated.]
[Reward: SSS-Rank Space Ability]
[Initial Capacity: 100 cubic meters]
[Upgradeable]
[Target Cooldown: 7 days]
[Special Item: No material return.]
Ethan felt the connection hit like a door opening onto empty distance ~ a vast internal space, clean and waiting. Shock cut through the pain first. Then a tired, sharp satisfaction.
SSS-Rank.
He had hit the jackpot.
Before he could examine the ability any further, the room tilted. Black rushed in from the edges of his vision. His body went slack against the couch.
Ethan Carter passed out cold.