Doing the wrong thing now might very well lead to his death. The glass was on the ground and he had to crouch to get them, but if he did, the beasts' paws would have a solid hold of the ground too.

Then, if it tried to leave, things might get complicated. If it unbalanced Ricardo enough, he might even fall on the shards, and then only luck could say if they would cut his neck or other less important parts of his body.

It all came to how weak the lack of oxygen made the hound. Ricardo had to crouch, there was no other solution. Whether it would make the hound struggle depended on how well it had been strangled.

He decided to do it slowly. If he ever got the feeling he might fall, he would let go of the hound and do his best not to fall to his death.

Whatever happened later, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

Slowly, he crouched, which made him grunt in pain from the movement on his broken foot fingers. The hellhound felt the change and its claws did their best to get a solid hold of the ground, but nothing more than that. Ricardo let go of the wrench with his right arm but used his left arm to lock the hound as well as he could in a sleeper hold.

It didn't react in any way whatsoever.

There was something about holding a dominated living being so close while bringing it to its death... close enough to hear its breath, feel its heat... that was extremely taxing on his mind.

It felt too personal.

It had been just a dog a few hours ago, probably a pet. It was scared; it had only been defending its territory when Ricardo came for it. Now, it would die because he wanted some XP.

He felt like he was the monster here, not the other way around.

As he had done multiple times while climbing the corporate ladder, he did his best to ignore the useless and uncomfortable feelings. No one could achieve success without trampling on a few morals here and there. And success defined his very life.

He got a glass shard the size of his forearm from the ground and approached it to the hound's neck. Its pelt would likely be thick and the moment it felt threatened, it would struggle again. Whether the struggle would be enough for Ricardo to release it was a question he didn't have an answer to. So, he had to do his best to pierce the hound as deeply and quickly as possible.

With care, he positioned the pointy end of the shard at the middle of the hound's neck, right above his arm to help with the aim when he pushed. He didn't know if the beast had a jugular vein, or where it was, even if it did. So, it was better to just try to cut the windpipe while doing as much damage as he could to the surroundings. Hopefully, it would be enough to either make the hellhound choke on its own blood or die of blood loss.

Now came the painful moment of the process, which made him realize he needed to find a glove, too. He had to push the shard as hard as he could, and it would hurt his hand. He got as good a grip as he could on the bottom of his palm, which he guessed wouldn't cripple him for good.

He pushed.

The pain was almost unbearable. At least when the hound started thrashing, he had to focus on keeping it in place, and it took his mind off the pain. The beast was weakened enough by the lack of oxygen — or whatever hellhounds breathed. Ricardo's fears were unfounded. The beast didn't pose any challenge to be held while it trashed.

The shard found much less resistance than he thought it would too. It wasn't an easy insertion, but the shard got up to the middle of the beast's neck before he couldn't push further, in part because of the resistance, in part because of the pain in his hand. He did his best to pull the shard back so the hound could bleed to death. Blood poured fiercely from the wound, covering his arm and the hound's body with it.

Together with his own blood, it made the shard slippery, but thankfully the very flow of the beast's blood pushed it and helped him remove it. He let go of it when he was done.

He clutched his hand hard to avoid bleeding to death himself, although he didn't know if it was possible to bleed to death from the hand. No reason to lose any blood either way.

There was a lot of blood leaving the hound's neck. It whimpered, but it was a wet whimper of something drowning in its own blood. It was a pitiful scene and Ricardo felt a heavy heart yet again despite his attempts to shut his mind and feelings down.

This was his new reality, killing dogs — no matter how evil-looking — today to survive whatever tomorrow brought. After the capypard and the rats had invaded his bridge, it wasn't a matter of if he would be attacked, but when. He had to be prepared for whatever the apocalypse threw at him. 

He hated it. He hated being manipulated by his fear of the intelligence of these beasts, of his surroundings, of the unknown. He hated that the system had already changed him into a killing machine.

But he hated even more the thought of allowing himself to die. He would rather regret killing than die for lack of resolve. Faced with his selfish nature, he stared right back at it with hands full of blood.

As he felt the best slowly die so close to him, the seconds seemed to stretch towards eternity. All the while, he did his best to harden his resolve. He was successful, yes, but he had never gone through something like that.

In the end, the beast became weak enough that he just threw it on the ground and waited for it to die like that.

A few moments later, the system confirmed his kill in a notification at the left corner of his vision.

You've killed a Mutated Saber-Toothed Hound — G-5

+4,050 XP — 6,652 total

That was enough XP to level up, and he did it right away. 'Level up Power!' he thought, but nothing happened. Next, he tried opening his Experience Window and going from there.

Experience Module

Total: 6,717 XP

Power:

G-2 » G-3 — 5,994 XP

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Lifespan:

F » E — 1,057,342 XP

Regeneration:

G » F — 117,482 XP

Talent:

D » C — 12,688,099 XP

The XP requirement was still the same as before, and he had enough to level up. He tried focusing on the "Power" line and the XP below, and he got a prompt.

Evolution Module

Do you want to use 5,994 XP to evolve your Power from G-2 to G-3?

"Yes!" he said.

Evolution Module

Prerequisites not met.

You need three Verses to level up your Power to G-3.

Now, what? He needed three Verses? What the hell were Verses?

'System, what are Verses?' he tried to ask, to no avail. Focusing on the "Verses" word also did nothing.

Frustration hit him. He had almost died for nothing?

He screamed in rage, scaring some beasts circling him after the fight had taken so long. The sight of them shook him awake from his self-pity. He had to keep his mind grounded now, focused on his surroundings, or he might die from a sneak attack.

The surrounding beasts were mostly dogs and cats. When he stared at them, the tooltips above their heads revealed they were mostly at the G-2 and G-3 ranks, with a couple of G-4s. He didn't feel confident in fighting them with his hand like that, even less if they all attacked together.

His first instinct was to go back to his food bag and leaving immediately. But as he looked at the hound, he decided it would be a shame to leave such splendid weapons behind. The claws, teeth, and horn of the hellhound could be put to good use at the end of a metal bar if he found some fishing line or silver tape. Or even if he found a wooden board and used them as spikes for a club. The horn was exactly the pointy thing he was looking for to turn his metal bar into a spear.

Even its hide might be useful as low-tier leather armor. No matter how weak it had been against the shard, it was better than his naked skin, as his hand might testify. But while he had some hopes of getting the claws, teeth, and horn, he had no hope at all in finding a knife nearby and skinning the beast. Or of coming back to it later and finding the carcass there, not with so many hungry beasts nearby.

But first things first.

He used another glass shard to cut his shirt and bandage his hand with it. After that, he used another shard to cut the hound's claws off. It wasn't easy work. At times, he used his wrench to hit the glass for an extra push, trying not to break the glass while doing so.

It took him the better part of ten minutes to finish the first paw, but it gave him the experience he needed to halve that time for the other paws. Each minute he spent there made him more nervous, but the nearby beasts had shown no signs of approaching. He guessed killing a G-5 beast had earned him some respect.

A little less than half an hour after starting, he had gotten himself twenty sharp claws, all of them as long and almost as thick as his middle finger.

Next came the horns.

If the hound's anatomy was anywhere close to Earth's animals, the horns grew from the skull. Without a saw, his only choice was breaking them close to the skull so they wouldn't come out short.

He did his best but failed. The horns were too sturdy. He tried everything, from hitting the horns to jumping on them, but in the end, he had to give up.

That just made him want to use them as weapons even more. So he changed tactics.

Instead of trying to break them, he cut the hound's head off. He could try to take the horns from it later, and it would also allow him to take his time to take the teeth off. His original plan had been breaking as many of them as he could, but removing them one by one would be better. For that, he brought a couple of glass shards with him just in case he couldn't a knife in his hunting adventure.

Holding the head by one horn, and the claws and shards with the other hand, he moved back to the place he had left his plastic bag and was elated to find it still there. He took a pack of energy bars from the bag, dropped the content of the pack on the plastic bag, and put the shards and claws in the pack, to prevent them from tearing the plastic bag. Then, with one hand he carried the head, with the other, the bag and both weapons.

If he ignored the frustration from not leveling up, that fight had been... liberating.

It had damaged him. The two small holes in his chest hurt. His hand, now that he thought better about it, might end up permanently crippled — he was already having trouble bending one of his fingers.

But it had been worth it.

He had proven the Omniverse and, more importantly, himself, that he was the meanest SOAB around. He was on top of it. Humanity might be in the freezer, but they were still at the top of the food chain.

Still, he decided to find something to use as a shield before he tried fighting something that strong again. It had been a necessary fight for his psyche, yes, but logically, it had also been a stupid one to take, especially against a horned enemy. A shield would have made it much easier.

As he walked to the closest school, he checked the system message he had minimized.

Interactive Tutorial: Power Rank Check

All overlays come with the Power Rank Check function that allows you to detect the power rank of beings on the same tier as you or lower.

Your Power is currently at the G-2 Power Rank, meaning you are at the G tier. You can only detect beings' Power Rank up to the G-9 rank.

This function is absolute in the Omniverse and cannot be adulterated by anything or anyone. No one can hide their power from the system, no matter what they do.

It was good to know that the tool couldn't be fooled. The Power Rank was determined by the strongest attack a being had shown, minus the power of any weapons they used. But beasts didn't use weapons, so their Power Ranks would be a complete assessment of their power. It made things much simpler.

It made him wonder about how much weapons could help against stronger enemies. And if weapon skills — if they existed — were also computed in the Power Ranks. If a skill like "Sword Strike" became his strongest one, how could the power of the sword even be taken out of the equation?

Another thing he wondered about was leveling up. If his strongest attack determined his Power Rank, didn't it mean that if he learned a strong-enough attack, he could level up without the need to spend XP?

He put those questions to the back of his mind when he reached the place of the street where the ruins of the school stood.

Once there, he quickly started checking the exploded cars and thought he lucked out in the first one. Unfortunately, while it had a backpack, it had been burned to a crisp and broke apart when he lifted it.

He did luck out on the ninth car though. There stood a slightly blackened but still usable backpack in all its glory.

He got rid of everything inside except the pencil case and a notebook, just in case he wanted to write anything down. Also, the pencil case had a much-needed scissor. It was made for children, but it was better than nothing.

The contents of the bag of food went into the backpack and he put the head in the plastic bag instead. Just finding that backpack made him much more comfortable with the apocalypse, because now he could move his shit around with ease.

Encouraged by it, he looked for another one, and this time it took him thirty cars to find it. It was still worth it in his book, especially because he also found a jacket there.

It was teenager-sized, but it might help if he was feeling cold with no way to cover himself. He tied it to his waist, then he put the plastic bag with the head in the new backpack and wore it over the first one.

It felt awkward, but it didn't hinder his movements.

The next item on the list was medicine. The throbbing in his hand made him wonder if he shouldn't have gone for it first, even if he lacked suitable ways to carry the medicine away. He didn't overthink it though, what was done was done, and he was going for the medicine now.

The closest drugstore wasn't far, only five minutes away. Smiling happily, he headed there at once. He had no issue finding the place, but its ceiling had been made of brick and he had to excavate a lot to find what he wanted. He lucked out in finding a piece of warped metal as long as his leg that he used as a shovel of shorts and made his life easier.

Two hours and a lot of sweat later, he put the twentieth box of painkillers in his food pack. It went right next to the ten packs of bandages, ten boxes of antibiotics, ten boxes of anti-inflammatories, and two liters of saline.

He had no idea about how many he should hoard, or which medicine was better for which kind of injury, but that felt good enough.

He swallowed a painkiller with some water, took an antibiotic, cleaned his injury with saline, bandaged it, ate a few energy bars, and stood up.

Now, back to work. His primary purpose to leave the bridge had been leveling up by battling enemies. Even if he didn't know how to use the XP for now, it was still evidently important. The more he abused the window of adaptation to kill the beasts around, the better.

With his injury taken care of, it was time to look for more blood.