The barrel of the purple sniper rifle hummed.
It sounded like a screaming wasp.
Quinn looked at the heavy steel door of the sterilization room.
Noah and Emma were right on the other side.
They had saved her life.
She was not going to let them die in a cheap clinic.
The blonde girl tightened her finger on the glowing trigger.
She had a cruel, victorious smile on her face.
Quinn squeezed her fist.
She didn’t drop the blue core.
She crushed it completely.
The glowing blue sphere shattered like a glass lightbulb in her bare hand.
Raw digital energy exploded outward and wrapped around her wrist like a living snake.
It burned.
It burned worse than the molten iron door.
The blue energy violently forced its way through her pores and shot straight up her arm directly into the bio-chip in her neck.
[Evolution Catalyst Consumed.]
[System Restructuring…]
The blonde girl gasped.
She pulled the trigger.
The purple plasma bolt ripped out of the rifle.
It tore through the air toward the sterilization room door.
It was faster than a bullet.
It was guaranteed death.
Quinn’s vision flooded with blinding crimson light.
[Class Unlocked: Trailblazer (Rank 1)]
[Skill Evolved: Shadow Step > Crimson Step]
The world didn’t just go black.
It stopped entirely.
The purple plasma bolt froze in midair.
Time itself crawled to an agonizing, heavy halt.
Quinn stepped forward.
She didn’t teleport.
She physically moved through the frozen space.
The air felt thick like liquid concrete.
Her body screamed in protest but her new stats forced her muscles to endure the strain.
She walked directly into the path of the frozen plasma bolt.
She grabbed the glowing hot barrel of the sniper rifle.
She ripped it upward with a violent jerk.
Time snapped back into reality.
“Boom!.”
The purple plasma bolt missed the steel door by a fraction of an inch.
It shot straight up and blew a massive, smoking crater through the concrete ceiling of the clinic.
Dust and debris rained down on the sterile tiles.
The blonde girl stumbled backward in pure shock.
Her weapon was pointing at the roof.
She didn’t even see Quinn move.
“My turn,” Quinn growled.
The blonde girl panicked.
Her white ceramic armor instantly projected its glowing blue kinetic shield.
Quinn pulled her right fist back.
The red aura of Adrenaline Rush mixed perfectly with the raw, terrifying crimson energy of her new Trailblazer class.
Her bare knuckles glowed like hot coals.
She threw a straight punch directly into the center of the blue forcefield.
“Crack!.”
The kinetic shield didn’t just absorb the hit.
It shattered instantly like fragile sugar glass.
The blue light exploded into a thousand useless sparks.
Quinn’s fist carried through the broken shield and smashed directly into the blonde girl’s armored chest.
The ceramic armor caved inward.
The impact lifted her completely off her feet.
She flew backward across the room and crashed into the ruined front entrance.
Her body bounced off the molten iron doorframe and she collapsed onto the wet alley concrete.
[System Alert: Apex Target Defeated!]
[EXP + 1500]
[Total EXP: 1500/2500]
[Current HP: 100/500 (Max HP Increased)]
Quinn stood in the center of the ruined clinic.
The red aura slowly faded from her skin.
Her chest heaved.
The bio-chip in her neck pulsed with a steady, calm rhythm.
The terrible freezing pain was completely gone.
She walked over to the open doorway.
The blonde girl was lying in the rain.
She was paralyzed from the neck down due to her crushed armor.
She looked up at Quinn with terrified, tear-filled eyes.
The arrogance was completely gone.
Quinn crouched down next to her.
The rain washed the blood off the girl’s chin.
“Who sent you,” Quinn asked coldly.
The girl swallowed hard.
She was shivering.
“The World Board.
They placed the bounty.
Everyone is coming.
You can’t run Solo Queen.”
Quinn leaned closer.
“I’m not running.
Tell the World Board I am going to find their Trailblazer Academy.
I am going to take every single core they have.”
Loud police sirens suddenly screamed from the main street.
Red and blue lights flashed against the brick walls of the alley.
The real cops were finally showing up to the explosion.
The heavy steel door of the sterilization room kicked open.
Emma stood there with her medical bag strapped tightly over her shoulder.
Noah was right behind her carrying Jax’s unconscious body.
“The cops are blocking the street.” Emma yelled over the sirens.
“The subway hatch is open.
We have to go underground right now.”
Quinn stood up and left the paralyzed sniper in the rain.
She ran into the back room.
A heavy circular iron grate was pulled away from the floor.
A rusty metal ladder led down into absolute pitch-black darkness.
It smelled like stagnant water, rust, and ozone.
“Noah go first,” Emma ordered.
“Don’t drop the idiot.”
Noah climbed down the ladder awkwardly with Jax slumped over his shoulder.
Emma went next.
She clicked on a heavy tactical flashlight attached to her medical bag.
The bright beam pierced the darkness below.
Quinn looked around the ruined clinic one last time.
She had survived her mother’s trap.
She had evolved.
The Trailblazer path was unlocked.
She climbed down the rusty ladder and pulled the heavy iron grate shut above her head.
The lock clicked loudly.
The sound of the police sirens faded into a dull, distant hum.
They stood at the bottom of a massive concrete subway tunnel.
It was abandoned.
Old rusted train tracks disappeared into the endless black void ahead of them.
Emma pointed her flashlight down the tunnel.
“If we follow these tracks for two miles we will reach the harbor shipping yards.
We can steal a boat.
Noah can pay off a smuggler.”
Noah leaned Jax against the damp concrete wall.
The rich boy wiped sweat and dirt from his forehead.
“I have offshore accounts.
We can buy new identities.
We can disappear.”
Quinn shook her head.
“We aren’t hiding Noah.
We are going to war.”
She opened her glowing blue screens to check her new class stats.
[Current Status]
Name: Quinn Carter
Level: 11
Class: Trailblazer (Rank 1)
HP: 150/500 (Healing Factor Active)
EXP: 1500/2500
Strength: 45
Agility: 48
Perception: 40
Intelligence: 42
Skills: Basic MMA (Lv.
3), Eagle Eye (Lv.
1), Iron Skin (Lv.
2), Healing Factor (Lv.
1), Sonic Strike (Lv.
1), Crimson Step (Lv.
1), Adrenaline Rush (Lv.
1), Viper Strike (Lv.
1)
Her stats had taken a massive jump.
Her Max HP was huge.
She was finally ready to fight the real monsters.
A strange, wet scraping sound echoed from deep inside the dark tunnel.
It sounded like heavy claws dragging across the rusty steel train tracks.
Emma froze.
She raised her tactical flashlight and aimed the bright white beam down the tunnel.
The light cut through the damp fog.
Something was standing on the tracks fifty yards away.
It wasn’t a person.
It was massive.
At least eight feet tall.
It had a grotesque, hunched spine covered in thick black scales.
Pale, sickly gray skin stretched tightly over heavily corded muscles.
The beam of the flashlight hit its face.
It didn’t have a face.
The entire front of its head was a massive, gaping jaw filled with three rows of jagged, translucent teeth.
No eyes.
Just a glowing red bio-chip embedded directly into the center of its smooth, eyeless forehead.
[System Warning: Dimensional Rift Entity Detected.]
[Subject: Blood-Hound (Level 20)]
[Threat Value: FATAL]
The monster unhinged its jaw and let out a deafening, ear-piercing shriek that shook the dust from the tunnel ceiling.
It dropped onto all four of its limbs.
It began sprinting down the tracks directly toward them at a terrifying, unnatural speed.
We have officially entered the Sci-Fi phase!
The World Board didn’t just send human snipers, they sent a Level 20 Rift Monster into the tunnels!