The sun plummeted beneath the tree line faster than Kyle expected, like a bullet dropping after its arc. One moment, filtered blue light dappled the ground; the next, shadows stretched and merged into a blanket of darkness. The three of them had gathered broad leaves—tough and waxy against their palms—to create makeshift beds on the spongy ground near the stream.
"This ain't gonna work," Kyle muttered, arranging his third attempt at a sleeping surface. The leaves kept sliding apart under his weight, exposing him to whatever might crawl beneath. Every sound in the undergrowth now carried potential threats.
A light bloomed overhead—not the dying sun, but something else entirely. Kyle's neck craned back, his mouth parting slightly as he took in the massive celestial body dominating the night sky. A moon, he guessed, but three times larger than Earth's had any right to be. Its pale surface cast enough light to reveal Dex's and Marcus's faces..
The stream bubbled twenty paces away, a constant whisper that anchored Kyle's racing thoughts. They'd chosen the spot deliberately—close enough for water, far enough that predators using the stream wouldn't stumble directly into their camp. Street logic applied even here: control your territory, know your exits.
With darkness, the jungle's chorus intensified. Clicks and chirps and distant howls wove together. Each unfamiliar sound triggered the same hypervigilance he'd developed walking through rival territory back home—ears straining, muscles ready.
"We need fire," Marcus said, staring into the darkness beyond their small clearing.
Dex nodded, already gathering small branches and dried vegetation. "Basic survival shit."
Kyle watched them work. Fire meant safety—from cold, from predators, from whatever else that was in the new place, but it also meant visibility. In the Five-Eight, sometimes staying hidden kept you breathing longer than standing your ground. He ultimately decided to help.
"Look here, moron. You got to smash the rocks together," Dex insisted, striking one stone against another. The rocks clacked uselessly, not even a spark emerging from their collision.
"No, dick." Kyle grabbed two sticks from the pile. "You gotta rub two sticks together. Everyone knows that."
He positioned one stick against the other, trying to remember scenes from movies he'd half-watched during late-night cable binges. The wood refused to cooperate, either too damp or simply wrong for the task. His palms grew raw from the friction, but no smoke appeared, no ember caught.
Marcus just stared at them, his expression unreadable in the moonlight. His silence carried weight—judgment, perhaps, or simple conservation of energy. Kyle had always found Marcus the hardest to read, even after years together. The quiet ones always kept the most tucked away.
After twenty minutes of frustration, they abandoned the fire project. The darkness would remain unbroken.
"We should take turns sleeping," Kyle suggested, thoughts working through the problem. "Two sleeps, one stay awake. Rotate."
Dex and Marcus nodded, the logic undeniable. But implementing it proved another matter entirely.
"Nah, bro, that was like fifteen minutes max," Kyle argued. His internal clock insisted he'd barely closed his eyes before Dex was prodding him awake for his watch.
"I'm telling you right now, that was at least three hours, twinkle star." Dex jabbed a finger at the moon's position, which had barely shifted in Kyle's perception. "Sky don't lie."
"It was pretty long," Marcus offered, his contribution frustratingly noncommittal.
Kyle's jaw tightened, the argument burning through energy they couldn't afford to waste. His time perception altered during stress—but the street-forged part of him couldn't back down from the challenge in Dex's voice. In the Five-Eight, giving ground meant losing respect. Here, those same instincts might get them killed.
A sound cut through their bickering—movement in the undergrowth, deliberate and approaching. Multiple somethings, creating a rhythm of snapping twigs and rustling leaves that Kyle's brain instantly categorized as predatory.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, what was that?" Marcus whispered, eyes wide with reflected moonlight.
Kyle's hand slid to his pocket, fingers brushing against the two remaining vials. The liquid inside shifted against his touch. Survival instinct warred with strategic thinking. Use them now and gain immediate safety, or save them for a worse situation yet to come? His street-honed instinct for resource management whispered to wait.
"Shut the fuck up," Dex hissed, already reaching for his spear.
Four shapes materialized from the darkness, moving with the confident stealth of hunters on familiar ground. At first, only their eyes were visible—amber orbs catching the moonlight with an unnatural glow. Kyle's heart hammered against his ribs, each beat a countdown to violence.
As they drew closer, their forms took shape—the same doglike creatures they'd seen at the stream earlier, but now hunting as a pack. Their armor-plated backs caught the moonlight, scales gleaming like wet metal.
"It's that fucking dog thing," Marcus breathed, his voice barely audible.
"And now he got his friends." Dex's fingers tightened around his spear. "We should have killed it."
"You're right," Kyle whispered, accepting Dex's assessment. Back home, when Dex said someone needed handling, Kyle had rarely questioned the judgment. Now, facing this instead of rival dealers, the same dynamic reasserted itself.
Kyle rose slowly, spear gripped in sweating palms. His body remembered old lessons—make no sudden movements, show no fear, claim your space.
"Try to look big," Marcus suggested, stretching his arms wide as he stood.
"What the fuck you mean 'try to look big'?" Dex's incredulity carried even in his whisper.
Kyle's mind raced through options. Running meant exposing their backs, triggering chase instincts. These creatures had evolved here—they'd be faster, more adapted to the terrain. Flight wasn't viable.
"We can't run," he said, spear point leveled at the approaching predators. "We gotta fight. From their eyes, it looks like they have better vision at night."
The creatures fanned out, instinctively moving to encircle their prey. Kyle recognized the tactic from a dozen street confrontations—isolate, intimidate, then close in. Some things, it seemed, were universal constants. The largest creature—the one they'd seen drinking earlier—took position directly across from Kyle. A leader, his mind supplied. Take out the head, and the body falls.
Kyle felt an eerie calm settle over him. This moment—facing down death with his boys at his back—he understood. The context had changed, but the calculus remained the same: survive this moment, then the next, then the one after that. No point thinking beyond immediate survival.
"Back to back," he ordered, muscle memory from countless alley standoffs taking over. "Don't let them get behind us."
They formed a triangle, each facing outward, spears extended. The creatures circled, testing their defenses with feints and growls. One snapped forward toward Marcus, who jabbed his spear in response. The creature backed off, but its retreat.
"They're smart," Msrcus murmured, tracking the leader's movements. "Coordinating."
The creatures circled closer, moonlight gleaming off their armored plates. Kyle's heartbeat slowed to a controlled rhythm, each breath measured. The largest beast—the alpha—locked eyes with him.
"The big one's gonna charge first," Kyle whispered, fingers closing around one of the remaining vials in his pocket. "I'm gonna use another vial. It's our only shot."
His mind calculated angles and timing.
"When I throw it, we go for a kill. I'll try to get two with the splash. Then we handle the others."
No one questioned his plan. No one needed to.
The alpha's muscles tensed, haunches coiling like springs.The vial left his hand in an arc. The vial sailed through moonlit air and shattered against the jungle floor, directly between the alpha and another beast circling behind it.
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The liquid transformed instantly—clear fluid to clinging vapor that sought exposed flesh like a hungry ghost. Where it touched, scales sizzled and peeled away, revealing vulnerable meat beneath. The animals writhed, their howls cutting through the night air like knives.
Movement flashed in Kyle's periphery—the third creature launching toward Marcus, jaws wide enough to take a chunk from his thigh. Time slowed to a crawl, the way it always did when violence erupted. Dex reacted with instinctive speed, driving his spear up under the creature's belly plates where armor gave way to soft tissue.
The momentum carried it forward even as the spear sank deep. The beast shrieked, twisting away and spraying dark blood across the leaves. Kyle lunged after it, spear extended, aiming for the throat. His weapon caught only a glancing blow, opening a shallow gash that leaked steaming fluid. The stench of the creature's wet fur filled his nostrils musky, like a wet dog mixed with something metallic.
His failed attack left him off-balance, feet stumbling for purchase in soil too soft, too yielding. The smallest of the pack seized the opportunity, darting forward to clamp its jaws around Kyle's ankle.
Pain exploded up his leg as teeth designed for tearing flesh found purchase. The creature's bite pressure felt impossibly strong, like vices closing on bone. Kyle felt something give way beneath his skin—not breaking, but threatening to. A scream tore from his throat before he could contain it, but midway through, instinct took over. The scream transformed into something else—a roar pulled from deep in his chest, animal and furious.
Marcus appeared beside him, spear already in motion. The weapon punched through the smaller creature's throat, emerging slick and dark on the other side. The jaw pressure on Kyle's ankle released instantly as the animal went limp, its final breath gusting hot against Kyle's skin.
Kyle asset the situation. One down, dying now in twitching spasms that sprayed blood across Kyle's bare legs. One wounded, circling warily, leaking dark fluid from its belly. The alpha, portions of its armor dissolved by the vial, shook itself like a dog shedding water, patches of exposed flesh smoking slightly where the vapor had burned through.
Kyle's leg throbbed with each heartbeat, but adrenaline kept the worst pain at bay. The larger creature, now missing chunks of its armor from the vial, began to recover from the initial shock. Its eyes found Kyle again. Kyle felt rage answer rage. This thing thought it was the predator? He'd been hunted his whole life—by rivals, by cops, by a system designed to devour him. He wasn't prey. Never again.
Anger replaced calculation. Kyle pushed off his good leg, using the momentum to drive his full weight behind his spear. The weapon sank deep into the alpha's exposed shoulder, the impact jarring Kyle's arms to the elbow.
The creature howled, body twisting in a sweeping maneuver that slammed into Kyle with the force of a baseball bat. His world tilted sideways, body airborne then crashing among twisted roots and leaves. His spear remained buried in the beast's flesh, leaving him weaponless.
"Kill that fucker!" Kyle yelled, the command tearing from his throat.
Marcus moved without hesitation, driving forward with his spear aimed at the alpha's center mass. The beast reared up, and the weapon caught its back legs instead, opening a gash that pumped dark liquid.
The other beast—the one Dex had wounded earlier—had recovered enough to see opportunity. It charged toward Kyle as he scrambled backward, hands searching the ground for anything resembling a weapon. His fingers closed around the final vial, ready to throw.
Before he could release it, Dex appeared like a ghost from the darkness, bringing his spear down in a brutal arc that opened the creature's side. The beast yowled, jumping back as Dex pressed forward for another strike.
Behind him, the largest creature—the leader—finally lost its battle with gravity. It collapsed to the ground with a thud. Marcus didn't waste the opportunity. The spear plunged down once, twice, three times into the creature's throat. Each blow sent dark splashes of blood across the moonlit clearing.
The last creature—seeing its leader fall—made a desperate play, leaping onto Marcus's back while he was focused on finishing the alpha. Claws dug into flesh as it scrambled for purchase, jaws snapping inches from Marcus's exposed neck.
Dex crossed the distance in three long strides, driving his spear upward into the beast's hindquarters with enough force to lift its back legs from the ground. The creature released Marcus, twisting toward this new threat.
Kyle pushed himself upright, ignoring the fire shooting from his ankle through his calf. He limped toward his embedded spear, eyes fixed on the chaotic struggle nearby. The wounded one from earlier had slipped away, leaving a dark trail of fluid that gleamed in the moonlight as it disappeared into the undergrowth.
Wrapping both hands around his spear's shaft, Kyle heaved, yanking the weapon free with a wet sucking sound. The alpha twitched beneath him, life draining from its eyes.
The final beast fought with the desperation of cornered prey, snapping and twisting between Marcus and Dex as they tried to pin it down. Kyle joined them, driving his spear into its flank, feeling resistance give way as the point sank through muscle and into something vital.
The creature's struggles weakened, then ceased entirely, leaving three blood-soaked men standing over its corpse, chests heaving with exertion and something darker—triumph mixed with fear.
But it wasn't enough. Kyle drove his spear into the creature's body again, then again. Marcus and Dex joined him, their weapons rising and falling in a rhythm that spoke of frustration, of terror, of the need to inflict damage on a world that had inflicted so much on them.
Each thrust discharged something from Kyle's system—the rage at JT's death, the fear of this fucked up place, the confusion of rules that made no sense. The soft resistance of dead flesh absorbed his fury like concrete absorbed rain, taking everything he gave and demanding more.
When they finally stopped, arms trembling with exhaustion, the ground beneath them had turned to mud—soil mixed with the creatures' dark blood. Kyle stared at his hands, now in the moonlight, coated in fluid that steamed slightly in the cool night air.
The motes of light appeared again, rising from the corpses like dandelion seeds caught in an updraft. Kyle watched them, too tired to flinch as they separated into three streams and sank into his chest, into Marcus, into Dex. The familiar cold fire spread through his veins.
New information blossomed behind his eyes:
[Congratulations you are now Level 3] [Skill improved: Fighting (Novice 4)] [New skill acquired: Spear Combat (Novice 2)] [Unbound Points: 16]
Kyle blinked, The pain in his ankle dulled slightly as warmth spread through his limbs. When he looked down, the bloody punctures where teeth had torn his flesh appeared smaller, less ragged. Information settling into his consciousness like sediment in still water. thrusting stances, defensive positions, strike zones. Words like 'haft' and 'buttspike' suddenly had meaning. His body understood angles of attack he'd never considered.
"Either I'm hallucinating," he muttered, "or this leveling shit actually heals us."
Marcus collapsed onto a fallen log, spear across his knees. Blood—both his and the beasts'—turned his shirt into a Rorschach test of violence. "You seeing it too? The level ups?, I level up twice."
“Yea me too.” Kyle said.
Dex nodded, examining his arms as if seeing them for the first time. "Yeah. I got skills now. Like, skills I never knew before." he whooped.
"Yo we're fucking killers now." Dex spun his spear in a tight arc, the movement fluid like he'd done it a thousand times. His eyes lit up the way they used to after winning a fight.
Marcus stared at the corpses, moonlight reflecting in his eyes. "Yo, I just realized something. Where's the third one? I remember killing two but—"
"One got away," Dex interrupted, wiping his spear clean on a broad leaf. "The one I cut open first. It might come back."
"Yeah, you're right, Dex. We don't know if that fucker is going to come back," Kyle said, shifting his weight to favor his good ankle. The wound throbbed with each heartbeat, a constant reminder of how close he'd come to something worse.
Dex wiped dark blood from his spear tip, casual as if he were cleaning a knife after dinner. "It probably won't be tonight," he said, confidence riding his words like it always did. "That thing's bleeding out somewhere."
Kyle watched the shadows between the twisted trees, half expecting yellow eyes to materialize from the darkness. The jungle breathed around them, every rustle and snap making his muscles tense. His character sheet floated in his mind like a ghostly report card, numbers that somehow mattered more than any grade he'd ever received.
"Hopefully that was its pack and we are good for now," Kyle muttered, not believing it himself. This place didn't seem built for giving breaks.
Marcus sat cross-legged on the damp earth, eyes unfocused as he stared at something only he could see. "I can't believe we leveled twice from that," he said, voice tinged with wonder and exhaustion.
Kyle could see it too—the rush of new information that had flooded his brain when those light motes disappeared into his chest. Fighting styles, weapon techniques, survival instincts that felt both foreign and familiar. His body knew things now that his mind had never learned.
"I think we need to focus on our strength, vitality and resilience for now," Marcus continued, always the planner. "Let's go over our points."
Kyle closed his eyes, calling up the interface that had branded itself into his consciousness. Sixteen unbound points hovered there, waiting for allocation. Another decision in a place that seemed designed to test every choice.
He opened his mouth to suggest a distribution, but the words died as the first rays of sunlight cut through the canopy overhead. Blue-tinged beams caught the scene in stark relief, transforming shadow into sickening clarity.
The clearing looked like something from one of those crime documentaries his mother used to watch. Dark blood soaked into the soft earth, black in some places, rust-colored in others. The creatures' bodies lay in twisted heaps, armor plates gleaming wetly under the strengthening light. One's jaw hung open, teeth still visible, still sharp. Flies—or something that resembled flies but with too many wings and bodies that shimmered like oil on water—had already found the corpses, landing in writhing clusters around the worst wounds.
The sweet-copper stench of death hung in the air, strong enough to taste at the back of his throat.
The morning light showed everything they'd done in the darkness. Kyle had seen violence before—had been part of it, had watched friends bleed out on concrete corners. But this was different. More animal, more desperate.
He caught Marcus's eye, saw the same realization there. They'd survived the night, but no one looked triumphant now. Not with death coating their skin, their clothes, their weapons.
The sound of retching broke the silence. Dex had turned away, bent double as his stomach rebelled against the morning reality. Even he—always the hardest, always the one to laugh after a fight—couldn't stand in the middle of this slaughter without his body protesting.
Kyle looked down at the beast he'd helped kill, at the puncture wounds that peppered its once-formidable form. In daylight, the creature seemed smaller somehow. Less monster, more animal.
"So this is what level three feels like," he muttered