The waiting was the worst part.

Ronan lay flat against the ridge, binoculars pressed to his eyes, watching the lit city below with a patience he’d learned over forty-seven days of hiding from things that wanted to eat him.

Nothing moved.

The lights flickered, warm, orange, almost inviting, but no figures passed beneath them. No shadows crossed the illuminated windows. No sounds drifted up from the streets.

It was like the city was putting on a show for an audience that never arrived.

"That’s not normal," Ronan whispered.

The skitter crouched beside him, its violet eyes fixed on the city with an intensity that made his skin crawl. Its jaw remained clamped shut for once, no unhinging, no clicking. Just silent vigilance.

"You sense something?"

The creature’s head turned toward him, then back to the city. Its too-long fingers scraped against the rocky ground, leaving shallow furrows in the dirt.

Ronan took that as a yes.

He lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes.

His body was still humming from the morning, if it even was morning. The bite mark on his collarbone had faded to a dull ache, but he could still feel the phantom pressure of Sarael’s teeth. The way she’d moved against him.

"Stop thinking about it," he muttered.

The skitter clicked once, softly, like a laugh.

"Shut up."

***

Ronan waited another hour.

Nothing changed.

The lights stayed on. No monsters patrolled the streets. No sounds of movement or hunting drifted up from the city below. It was a stage frozen mid-scene, waiting for its actors to return.

"Either it’s a trap, or whatever was here is gone," Ronan said finally, sitting up. "Neither option changes what I have to do."

He pulled the coordinate stone from his inventory. It remained still, its pulse gone, confirming he was directly above the anchor stone’s location. The forward camp was somewhere in that city. The exit gate was somewhere in that city.

And his food and water were running low.

But would he really risk walking into a lit-up city that felt suspiciously safe?

No, he wasn’t that dumb. He still had days’ worth of supplies left; the smartest move now was to grind and get stronger.

And hopefully, by the time he stepped into that city, he’d be far too strong for anything hiding or lurking inside it.

Ronan shoved the coordinate stone back into his inventory and pushed himself up from the ridge. His knees popped, stiff from lying still for too long, but the ache was nothing compared to what he’d endured over the past forty-seven days.

"Alright," he said, turning his back on the lit city. "Let’s go for a quick detour."

The skitter rose beside him, its too-long limbs unfolding with a series of quiet pops. Its violet eyes flicked from Ronan to the city, then back, almost like it was questioning the decision.

"I know," Ronan said. "It’s right there. But walking into that without knowing what’s waiting? That’s how people die. I’ve watched enough people die to know."

He started walking back the way they’d come, away from the ridge, away from the lights. The skitter fell into step behind him, its claws scraping softly against the rocky ground.

"We need to find monsters. Lots of them. And we need to kill them until I’m strong enough that whatever’s in that city doesn’t matter."

The violet moon hung overhead, unchanged, unmoving. No sun to mark the passage of time. Just that perpetual twilight that made everything look like a dream.

Or a nightmare.

Ronan chose to think of it as a dream.

***

The first hour of hunting was slow.

The territory between the ridge and the dead city he’d woken up in seemed empty. No skitters, no bone-faces, nothing but crumbling ruins and rusted vehicles and that oppressive silence that pressed against his ears.

"This place was crawling with monsters yesterday," Ronan muttered, scanning the empty streets. "Where the hell did everything go?"

The skitter clicked behind him.

"You don’t know either, huh?"

Another click.

Ronan sighed and kept walking.

The second hour, however, was better.

They found a pack of bone-faces huddled in a collapsed supermarket in the middle of an empty highway, six of them, tearing into something that had been dead for weeks. They were C-Rank, same as the first one he’d killed.

Easy prey.

Ronan’s active skitter moved before he gave the command, launching itself at the nearest bone-face. Claws ripped through sinew. Black ink sprayed.

[Soul Absorbed: 100 EXP]

Ronan didn’t just stand there.

He pulled a steel javelin from his inventory and threw it at a bone-face trying to flank his summon. The javelin punched through its skull, and it dropped mid-lunge.

[Soul Absorbed: 100 EXP]

Five left.

Then another javelin, and that led to another kill.

[Soul Absorbed: 100 EXP]

The skitter tore through two more while Ronan lined up his third throw. His aim was getting better. The stats helped, but so did practice. Forty-seven days of watching hunters fight had taught him something after all.

[Soul Absorbed: 100 EXP]

[Soul Absorbed: 100 EXP]

The last bone-face tried to run.

The skitter was faster.

[Soul Absorbed: 100 EXP]

Ronan lowered his arm, breathing steadily. Six bone-faces. His skitter had killed four. He’d killed two.

Not bad for a porter.

"Good," he said to the creature.

The skitter’s jaw unhinged slightly, violet eyes pulsing.

"But no level up from that, huh? Guess my thresholds are getting higher now."

Ronan didn’t let the lack of a level-up discourage him.

Six bone-faces in under two minutes was still six bone-faces. Experience was experience, even if the system no longer rewarded every kill with a dramatic ding and a flood of notifications.

He knelt beside the nearest corpse, watching as its shadow detached from the body and slithered toward him. The ink-black shape merged with his own shadow, and a notification flickered across his vision.

[Shadow Stored: Bone-Face Stalker (C-Rank) x6]

[Storage Full. Cannot Store Additional Shadows.]

"Storage full?" Ronan frowned. "System, show shadow storage."

[Shadow Storage: 3/3 Slots Occupied]

[Slot 1: Skitter (B-Rank) - Active Summon]

[Slot 2: Skitter (B-Rank)]

[Slot 3: Skitter (B-Rank)]

No room for bone-faces.

He’d need to either discard something or stop hunting until he made space.

"Discard the weakest," Ronan muttered, thinking out loud. "But that feels wasteful..."

The active skitter tilted its head at him, violet eyes pulsing slowly. It didn’t seem concerned about being discarded. Either it lacked the capacity for self-preservation, or it trusted him not to throw it away.

Roman wasn’t sure which was worse.

"System, is there a way to expand shadow storage?"

[Error: Information Corrupted]

"Of course." He sighed. "Discard the bone-faces’ shadow. Keep the other three as reserves."

[Shadow Discarded: Bone-Face Stalker (C-Rank) x6]

[Shadow Storage: 3/3 Slots Occupied]

[Slot 1: Skitter (B-Rank) - Active Summon]

[Slot 2: Skitter (B-Rank)]

[Slot 3: Skitter (B-Rank)]

Not ideal. But he’d rather keep the B-Rank skitters than a bunch of C-Rank bone-faces.

"Alright." Ronan stood, brushing dirt off his pants. "Let’s find something bigger."

The skitter led the way.

Ronan wasn’t sure when he’d started trusting the creature’s instincts over his own, but somewhere between the supermarket and the next cluster of ruins, he realized he was following it rather than giving directions.

It moved with purpose now, no longer just pacing him but actively scanning ahead, nostrils flaring, tongue flicking out to taste the air.

"You smell something?"

The creature clicked twice. Fast and excited.

Ronan’s hand drifted toward his inventory.

The ruins ahead were different from the ones he’d been walking through. Older, maybe, or just more thoroughly destroyed. The buildings had been flattened rather than collapsed, reduced to piles of rubble and twisted metal that rose like grave markers against the violet sky.

And in the center of it all, something moved.

Large.

Slow.

Breathing in a way that made the rubble shift with each inhale and exhale.

Ronan stopped at the edge of the ruins and raised his binoculars.

The creature was massive.

At least fifteen feet at the shoulder, with thick, segmented plating that looked more like stone than flesh. Its head was low to the ground, nearly indistinguishable from its body, with a single glowing eye set deep in the center of its forehead.

Its legs were short but thick, each one ending in claws that could probably tear through tank armor.

And it was eating.

A pile of corpses lay beneath it, skitters and bone-faces and things Ronan didn’t recognize, all crushed and torn and being methodically consumed.

"A flesh golem, huh...?"