The gray sky was the most beautiful thing Kai had ever seen. For a long, blissful moment, there was no pain, no fear, just the rough texture of the asphalt beneath his back and the muted light of a world without a sun. He was alive.
Then, the pain hit.
It started as a dull throb in his thigh and quickly escalated into a blinding, white-hot agony. He gasped, trying to sit up, and his vision swam with black spots.
"Don't move!" Elara was kneeling beside him, her face pale with shock. She was ripping a strip of cloth from the bottom of her own shirt, her hands shaking. "Ben, we need pressure! It's bleeding, it's bleeding a lot."
Ben scrambled over, his academic composure completely gone, replaced by wide-eyed panic. "Oh gods. Okay. Pressure." He pressed the wad of cloth against Kai's leg, and Kai cried out, a raw, guttural sound torn from his throat. The pain was an all-consuming fire.
They were exposed. The street they had emerged onto was part of the sprawling university campus, but it was just as devastated as the rest of the city. Papers and textbooks were scattered like autumn leaves, and the manicured lawns were gouged with craters. In the distance, a grand, ivy-covered library was burning, thick black smoke billowing into the sky.
"We can't stay here," Ben said, his voice trembling as he applied pressure. "Kai, can you walk?"
Kai tried to push himself up, but a wave of dizziness and nausea sent him slumping back to the ground. "No," he grunted through clenched teeth. "No chance."
"We'll carry you," Elara said with fierce determination. "We just need to get off the street." She pointed to a modern-looking building across the quad, its glass-and-steel facade miraculously intact. "There. The science building. We can barricade ourselves in a lab."
Just as they were about to move him, a familiar, unwelcome chittering sound came from behind a nearby overturned campus security cart.
One last Tunnel Crawler, likely disoriented and separated from the main horde, crawled into view. Its antennae twitched, sensing the blood in the air, and it fixed its eyeless face in their direction. It was wounded, dragging one of its legs, but it was still a threat.
Elara and Ben froze, their faces masks of pure dread. They were helpless, pinned down protecting Kai.
"Get... back," Kai rasped. He reached for his saber, his hand shaking with the effort. He couldn't even sit up, let alone fight.
But the Crawler wasn't looking at them. It was focused on the dark, gaping maw of the storm drain they had just escaped. It skittered towards it, eager to return to the darkness. Its path would take it right past them.
Kai saw his chance. It was a stupid, desperate gamble. "When it passes... shove it towards me," he hissed.
"What?" Ben whispered, horrified.
"Do it!"
The Crawler drew level with them, ignoring them completely in its haste to get underground. With a shared look of desperate resolve, Ben and Elara shoved the creature's flank with all their might.
The injured Crawler stumbled, disoriented, and fell right beside Kai.
With a final, desperate surge of adrenaline, Kai rolled onto his side, ignoring the searing agony in his leg. He thrust the saber with one hand, a clumsy, awkward jab. It was just enough. The blade's point punched through the Crawler's soft underbelly. The creature gave a final, gurgling hiss and went still, its legs curling in on themselves.
A wave of blue light washed over Kai's vision.
[You have slain a Level 3 Tunnel Crawler.]
[XP Gained: 30]
[XP: 545/600]
He had miscalculated. He was still short. The despair that hit him was colder and sharper than any monster's claw. It wasn't enough. He was going to bleed out on this street.
But then, another box appeared, its text glowing like a holy scripture.
[Quest Completed: Find a Path]
[You have successfully navigated the subterranean tunnels and reached the university district.]
[Reward: 75 XP]
[XP: 620/600]
[YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 6!]
[All wounds healed. All stats increased.]
[You have 5 undistributed stat points.]
A wave of warmth, more powerful and potent than any he had felt before, flooded his body. It was a blissful, radiant heat that washed away the pain and exhaustion. He looked down at his leg. In the torn denim of his jeans, under the blood-soaked cloth, the mangled flesh was knitting itself back together in real-time. The bleeding stopped, the torn muscle fibers rewove themselves, and the deep puncture wounds sealed over, leaving behind only smooth, unblemished skin.
Elara and Ben stared, their mouths agape, as the grievous wound vanished before their very eyes.
"Kai..." Elara whispered, completely stunned. "How...?"
Kai sat up, his body whole and humming with newfound energy. He felt better than he had in days. "I leveled up," he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He opened his status screen, his mind already working. He dumped all five points into Endurance, hoping it would make him tougher, harder to injure in the first place.
[Endurance: 15 -> 20]
He got to his feet, testing the leg. It was perfect. He looked at his stunned friends, then at the smoking library in the distance. They had made it. But their quest was far from over.
"Come on," he said, his voice filled with a new, hard-won confidence. "Let's find somewhere safe."