The pressure Leon felt the instant his foot crossed the last step onto the fourth floor wasn't sothing that could be captured with a single word.
It wasn't ordinary fear. It wasn't just raw power, either. It was more like the air had suddenly thickened and started pressing into him from every direction - slipping under his skin, trying to force his muscles to tense up before his brain even had ti to decide.
If soone had asked him a few weeks ago what it felt like to stand under a stream of water dropping from several ters up, he probably wouldn't have known how to answer. But right now - right now he could've sworn it was close.
Heavy. Constant. Stubborn.
As if sothing bigger and stronger was testing whether he could stay upright.
And yet the corner of his mouth lifted.
Not wide.
Not dramatic.
Just barely.
"So I really have grown," he muttered under his breath, tightening his grip on his daggers as if to check whether the tension in his hands was stress… or excitent.
A few days ago he would've stood here wondering if running was the smarter option.
Now - after the essence he'd absorbed, after the fight with the Crimson Horned Boar, after every monster he'd turned into experience and stats - he wasn't the sa person who'd first seen zombies crawling around campus.
That wasn't a taphor.
The System had literally rewritten his body, his reflexes, his perception. Every essence he took in was another layer poured onto a foundation that had been painfully average not long ago.
That didn't make him invincible.
But it also didn't an he had to lose.
It ca down to what this thing could do - and whether Leon's own toolkit was enough to survive the first thirty seconds.
Because at this level, the first half-minute decided everything.
Leon activated Darkness Manipulation slowly.
The shadow beneath his feet deepened, as if the corridor's light dimd by half a shade. His perception shifted, subtle but imdiate - edges sharper, space clearer, even the movent of air easier to catch.
What even was adrenaline?
In the old world it had been a hormone - blood vessels tightening, heart rate spiking, pupils widening, more oxygen, faster decisions. A body's ergency switch for fight or flight.
In the new world, adrenaline still existed, but it was only an accessory now - next to mana, stats, skills that could twist reality harder than any biological impulse.
Still, Leon felt it: his pupils widening, his heartbeat quickening, his muscles coiling not with panic, but with readiness.
He didn't stay still.
He tapped his foot once, testing traction on the dusty floor, then surged forward at full speed - sliding down the corridor so fast that to an ordinary observer it would've looked like he was skipping through space in short jumps rather than running.
The fourth floor was almost untouched.
No scattered bodies like the lower levels. No smashed skulls, no signs of a mass slaughter. The walls were dirty, the floor dusty, but there weren't the familiar dark stains of fresh blood that usually followed zombie movent.
There wasn't a single corpse.
That alone was wrong.
Most room doors were closed. A few hung ajar, like soone had tried to flee in panic and never had ti to pull them shut - but there were no signs of doors being battered down, no ragged splintering typical of mindless infected hunting for life.
Leon slowed just slightly, analyzing as he moved.
If ordinary zombies had been on this floor, those doors would've been broken days ago. On the first day after the System arrived, most of the transford had thrown themselves at anything that slled alive - no patience, no strategy.
Leon stopped in the middle of the corridor - not because he hesitated, but because he understood that sprinting blindly wouldn't help. And against sothing that could generate that kind of pressure, it was better to stop being the hunter for a mont and beco bait.
Even if it made him look like he didn't have a plan.
He stood calmly, breathing evenly. His shoulders hung loose, but every muscle beneath his coat was tight. His shadow stretched wider than it should have, poised to move before anything even happened.
He couldn't pinpoint the direction the pressure ca from. It wasn't a neat source you could point at like a dot on a map. It was spread out - an presence filling the space, slowly condensing.
But instinct told him clearly:
It's coming.
And it was coming fast.
The air on his left trembled.
He didn't hear footsteps.
He didn't hear breathing.
He felt only a gust - sharp and violent, like the space itself had been cut by sheer speed.
Leon didn't think.
He sprang sideways and slashed diagonally with one dagger, the blade carving through the spot where his torso had been a heartbeat earlier.
CLANG.
tal on tal ripped through the corridor's silence, the sound ricocheting off walls and closed doors that hadn't heard anything but zombie dragging for days. The impact was strong enough that Leon felt a clear vibration in his wrist.
He hadn't even fully reset his stance when another gust hit behind him - closer than the first.
aning the enemy wasn't just fast.
It could change direction mid-motion, as if inertia didn't apply.
Leon's body reacted before thought could form.
He spun one hundred eighty degrees, raising his second dagger high. His reinforced strength snapped into a single brutal motion as he brought the blade down like he ant to split his opponent in two.
CLANG.
The collision was even harder. For a mont his right hand went faintly numb - nothing serious with his current stats, but enough to tell him he'd struck sothing tougher than bone.
"Finally," he murmured, a small curve tugging at his mouth as he saw his opponent up close.
It was a zombie.
But not like any he'd seen before.
Its skin was a deep, dark blue, as if the veins beneath weren't filled with blood but with condensed mana. Its eyes weren't cloudy and empty like ordinary infected - wide open, lit with a distinct greenish glow that spoke of sothing beyond mindless hunger.
But the most striking part was its arms.
Or rather - the things that should have been arms.
Instead of hands and fingers, two elongated, curved projections grew from its shoulders like blades - tallic in the corridor light, as if bone itself had reshaped into weaponry.
"Back up," Leon growled - more to himself than to it - and drove forward with his full weight, pressing into the lock where his daggers had stopped one of the creature's blade-arms.
To his satisfaction, the beast was forced back several steps, soles scraping the floor and leaving dark streaks.
That told him one thing.
Speed was its domain.
Strength… not necessarily.
A low, guttural sound crawled out of the zombie's throat - more like tal grinding than a growl. Then its body pitched forward and vanished from where it stood, leaving only a sared shadow.
Too fast.
Leon's pupils widened further as he clenched his teeth and threw a heavy strike to the right, exactly where the light in his peripheral vision warped.
CLANG - !
THUD!
tal hit tal, and the counterforce launched the zombie through the air. It slamd into the opposite wall hard enough to crack it, plaster spilling down in chunks.
Leon stayed where he was, breathing deeper than before.
Not because he was tired.
Because he'd realized sothing that made his stomach tighten.
This creature was lightning-fast. It had real perception. It reacted to counters and changed attack angles in fractions of a second.
This wasn't going to be a simple hit and endure fight.
This was what real evolution looked like.
Not slow, mindless zombies that could only shuffle forward and chase noise - but creatures that had stepped onto a growth path, crossed the threshold of pure instinct, started using mana deliberately… even if their minds were already far from human.
And the most unsettling part?
One clean cut from those blades, and Leon would end up like the rest - no will, no thought, another beast in this building.
He didn't let himself linger on it.
The mont the evolved zombie hit the wall, Leon didn't wait for it to regain balance. He used the distance instantly, pushing Darkness Manipulation with full focus and letting the shadow spread through the corridor thicken and respond like an extension of his own muscles.
Black mass rippled along the floor, then shot up into chain-like lengths. Under his control they split and attacked from multiple angles - not trying to smash head-on, but to cut off escape routes.
The zombie's green eyes flared brighter.
It rebounded off the wall, snapping into a violent sideways leap, then another - moving in nonlinear, strange patterns that weren't just dodges. They looked learned. Or instinctively optimized for avoiding threats.
Six chains missed by centiters.
Four closed in around its outline, sealing exits, forming a tightening cage of darkness.
Leon braced for the mont the shadow would cinch and pin the creature to the floor.
And then sothing happened he didn't expect.
A hum.
Not loud - low and trembling, like the air around the beast had been forced into vibration.
A strange energy burst from the zombie's body - not black, not green, but prismatic, as if mana had condensed into a half-transparent shell. In an instant it ford around it like an egg-shaped barrier.
The four shadow-chains struck almost simultaneously.
CLANG.
The sound wasn't muffled.
It was tallic.
As if Leon's shadow hadn't hit energy at all, but sothing solid.
The chains bounced, losing cohesion and collapsing into pooling darkness on the floor.
Leon's eyes widened.
"What the hell…" slipped out before he could stop it.
That was an active skill.
A barrier.
Which ant the beast wasn't just physically evolved - it could operate mana at a level that was starting to resemble Evolvers.
He didn't get ti to think deeper.
The zombie vanished again, motion blurring so violently the air shuddered.
Leon spun instantly, raising both daggers into a defensive guard. His body was a coiled spring, ready to absorb impact from any angle.
CLANG!
The creature's blade-arm slamd into his weapons with enough force to spit sparks into the corridor's dimness. A shockwave surged up Leon's forearms as he was driven back several ters, boots scraping the floor under the pressure of the hit.
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