As Luke reached the front of the train carriage, he caught his reflection in the window and paused. With his bloody shirt discarded on the floor, his bare chest was visible.

Damn, Luke thought with wide eyes.

When he first started working out, Luke had the singular goal of avoiding a heart attack. Fuelled by tragedy, Luke blew past his original goals and transformed himself. The system dialled those gains up to eleven, and he almost didn’t recognise the lean slab of muscle looking back at him.

Each oversized muscle stood out, defined and pronounced like chiselled marble that bulged as he flexed. Luke smiled. Then he reached forward and grabbed one of the subway’s metal rails. As he pulled, the metal bent towards him.

With newfound confidence, Luke approached the end of the carriage. The door’s white paint was peeling off at the edges, exposing rusted metal beneath. Over the years, generations of vandals had covered it with childish profanities.

It was funny how much society had changed, yet some things stayed the same.

Compared to most trains on the underground, this one was a decades-old relic, only in use on the Bakerloo line. The handle was stiff to open and made a high-pitched whine as Luke pulled it, despite the care he took. He winced, but the rats ahead didn’t notice.

Fresh air rushed into the carriage.

For the first time since arriving, he could hear the surrounding dungeon. The rush of water from the river below was barely audible over a low hum coming from below.

Looking down, Luke saw that the strange noise was coming from rows of intricate runic glyphs that had replaced the train tracks. The train was hovering several feet in the air.

That’s new, he thought.

Though the glyphs depicted an alien language, Luke understood them. He couldn’t make out the words, but he understood the intent. They told the train to ignore gravity, and it listened.

It was hardly the craziest thing Luke had seen that night, but it still took him a moment to refocus on the task at hand.

Peering ahead, Luke confirmed he remained undetected. The closest rat was crunching its bone with an unsettling intensity, and the rest were fighting over scraps. What had once been a person bore little resemblance to a human being and the sheer butchery turned his stomach.

Luke clenched his hammer so hard his knuckles went white.

Getting control of himself, Luke took a moment to study the lone rodent. It was gaunt, with the flesh practically hanging off the bones. A long skeletal tail wagged in the air. The monster was enjoying itself.

How do I do this? Luke considered. Killing one undead abomination had been easy enough, but that was no reason to get careless. He had the element of surprise but all the grace of an elephant.

Chrissy always joked he had two left feet, and he doubted his ability to sneak up on anything.

Instead, Luke opted for a more defensive ploy. The door was a natural choke-point, and he could use it to fight the rats on his own terms.

After a few moments of deliberating, Luke gave the equivalent of a mental shrug. He didn’t have the patience to spend hours scheming, nor did he think he would come up with a better plan. Building a trap briefly crossed his mind, but he wouldn’t know where to start. No plan survives contact with the enemy, he quipped.

Standing on the gangway, Luke drew his arm back, then swung the hammer forward like a pistol at the races.

The window smashed.

Plexiglass splintered into large chunks from the force of his blow and exploded forwards into the carriage ahead.

Luke exhaled slowly, heart pounding in his chest.

A chorus of snarls filled the air as the rats rushed him. The creatures were swift despite their emaciated forms, and in only a few furious heartbeats, they had dashed forward and reached the door.

Luke drew in a sharp breath as the lead rat slammed into the metal with a thud. Its kin spared no time for clambering over it.

Powerful jaws lunged at Luke through the window and snapped at his face. The teeth were as long as his fingers. He shrank back and stumbled as he tripped over his own feet.

This dented, if not shattered, Luke’s deluded image of himself as a fearless warrior.

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Scrambling to his feet, he saw with relief that, in its haste, the rodent had become stuck in the window. It flailed its head and sprayed yellow-green spittle everywhere.

Luke’s skin sizzled as several drops landed on him.

Before the beast could extricate itself, Luke raised his hammer high and brought it down hard.

There was a crack as it connected.

Unfortunately, with the rat thrashing about, he had missed the headshot. Instead, his blow struck the rat on the side of the neck and crunched several vertebrae. The rat jerked once, twice, then went limp.

Having learned from his first encounter, Luke didn’t assume that the undead monster was truly dead. His return swing drove the claw of the hammer through the rat’s cheekbone.

There was a loud squelch as it penetrated, and grey matter decorated the carriage. Luke hoped that the standard zombie rules applied: remove the head or destroy the brain.

A few frantic seconds followed as Luke tried and failed to remove his hammer from the beast’s skull. It was stuck.

While he wrestled with the corpse, his foes weren’t idle. While he struggled, Luke almost lost his hand to the next rat in line, which climbed over its dead kin to reach him.

Just in time to avoid the attack, Luke dislodged his hammer. It made a wet slurping noise as he stumbled backward. He lost his grip, and it went flying.

Luke cursed.

From his tool belt, he pulled out the screwdriver. The abomination had a gaping hole in its left eye socket, so Luke aimed to make the right side match.

As the rodent lunged forward with its yellow teeth bared, Luke met the attack with a jab. The rodent reacted with keen reflexes, avoiding the attack as it bit down on Luke’s forearm with powerful jaws and serrated teeth.

Pain overwhelmed Luke’s mind.

In a blind rage, he pummelled the rodent’s face with his good hand, over and over, until his knuckles were a bloody mess, but it refused to let go. Luke abandoned any pretence of strategy and fought back with primal ferocity.

Clenching his jaw, he reached out and ripped out the rat’s remaining eye, snapping the attached nerve and crushing it like a grape. He hooked his fingers into its rancid snout and pulled as hard as he could.

Exerting his [Strength], Luke pried its mouth open and wrenched his arm out. Free at last, he continued his offensive.

Luke head-butted the vermin as hard as he could.

A wave of dizziness nearly overwhelmed Luke in the aftermath of this collision, but he was lucky. He had inflicted more harm on the rat than himself. Its jaw snapped and broke, leaving it to hang at an unnatural angle. Blood trickled down Luke’s forehead as he watched the rat stagger.

There was no time to gloat.

Noise from behind sharpened Luke’s mind. Glancing back, he saw the third and final rat forcing its way through the window opening. It was the largest of the three.

Luke would face two at once if he didn’t finish the second. Breathing heavily, he thanked the heavens, the system, and Gaia when he caught sight of his hammer a few feet away on the floor.

He lunged at the hammer, grabbing it in his uninjured left hand. He was right-handed but would have to work with what he had left.

A glance at his injured arm revealed a grim sight: muscles torn, tendons ripped, blood everywhere.

Channelling pain into anger, Luke swung at the still-dazed rodent’s head with his hammer. The blow was brutal and smashed it like a melon. Luke grunted in satisfaction and wiped the gore from his eyes.

Blood dripped from his hammer.

A thud on the floor behind told Luke he had no time to celebrate, and he turned to face his last opponent.

He spun in time to catch it midair.

Luke caught the giant rodent in the ribs with the claw of his hammer and threw it off course. Instead of landing on Luke it crashed against the wall.

Panting heavily, Luke threw himself at the beast. He was long past the point of anything remotely resembling finesse.

Luke pressed its face to the floor, leveraging his superior bulk against it. Over and over, Luke plunged the hammer down with brutal savagery. Up close and personal, this method proved sufficiently lethal.

In the back of his mind, an itch tingled, and Luke recognised this sensation as system messages waiting to be acknowledged.

[You have killed a Level 3 Plague Rat.]

[You have killed a Level 5 Plague Rat.]

[You have killed a Level 5 Plague Rat.]

[Concept gained: Warhammer - Starting rank Bronze, for killing monsters with a Hammer. +3 Strength, augments hammers within the psion’s domain. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Accept? Yes/No.]

[You have gained enough experience to reach level 3.]

[You have gained enough experience to reach level 4.]

Notifications rolled in as Luke fought against exhaustion. His last shred of energy seeped into the blood-soaked floor. He had underestimated the undead vermin. All three of them were at a higher level than he had expected. They had been faster, stronger, and tougher than the first one that he met. They had almost killed him, and his arm looked like a chunk of chewed-up meat.

Luke let out a painful laugh. Despite his injuries, he was alive, and the rats were dead. He had won. Lying on the floor, a shade of delirium clouding his thoughts, he replayed the fight in his mind. It had all happened so fast, but with the system enhancing his mind the memories were crystal clear.

Luke checked the attribute tab in his system menu. It confirmed he had two free points to spend from his level-ups. There was a temptation to min-max and invest everything into [Strength], but he held off. Luke didn't think that it was a lack of raw power that was holding him back, and he had more immediate concerns.

The throbbing pain in his arm made it challenging for Luke to come up with any long-term strategies. Without medical intervention or magical healing, he might lose his arm. The bleeding had slowed down, but he could now see black lines tracking their way up through his veins. Given his dire situation, Luke took a gamble and invested both points into [Recovery]. He hoped it would boost his natural healing like he assumed it would.

Having done all that he could, the last remnants of Luke’s mental energy dissipated. He was exhausted and grievously injured. On top of all that he was still infected with zombieism. The sound of the river below filled his ears. It had been a long day. When darkness beckoned he surrendered to unconsciousness almost immediately.

I wonder what brains taste like.