[Corruption: 60%]
The numbers clicked over.
A shockwave ripped through Jiang Han's chest. It didn't come from Kang Dae's falling fist—it originated inside his own ribcage.
The system panel flashed, expanding across his entire field of vision in sharp red text:
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
D-Level restriction: TEMPORARILY LIFTED.
ABILITY SLOTS: EMERGENCY UNLOCK (1 slot)
TEMPORARY COPY: ENABLED.
Scanning available targets in current world...
No superhuman abilities available for copy.
ALTERNATIVE PROTOCOL:
Accessing Player's latent potential.
'Narrative Resonance' base function activated.
You cannot copy outside powers in this world.
But you can amplify what you already have.
PHYSICAL BOOST: 2x baseline.
PERCEPTION BOOST: 1.5x baseline.
DURATION: 180 seconds.
This is all the system can offer.
The rest is up to you.
Timer: 3:00...
The world slowed down.
Kang Dae's giant, glowing fist, which had been rushing toward his skull at the speed of a falling anvil, seemed to drop through water.
Jiang Han didn't think about it. The double physical boost had already wired itself into his muscle fibers. He kicked off the curved concrete wall behind him, pushing his body sideways.
The fist hit the floor where Jiang Han's head had been a fraction of a second ago.
The impact cracked the concrete, blowing dust and debris into the air. Jiang Han rolled, popping back onto his feet three meters away. His breathing felt different. Deeper. The air no longer felt thick and resistant; it flowed into his lungs like ice water, crisp and sharp. He could feel the exact placement of his feet on the rubble. His vision was incredibly clean. He could see the individual threads popping on Kang Dae's stretched tracksuit.
2:57.
Kang Dae stood up slowly. The pure black eyes locked onto Jiang Han, the mutant's head tilting to the side in confused frustration. The prey had moved too fast.
"Run!" Jiang Han yelled to Yoon Seo and Park.
He didn't wait to see if they listened. He broke into a sprint, heading straight for the nearest of the four dark-red roots anchoring the piggy bank to the floor.
Kang Dae roared—a sound that shook dust off the ceiling—and charged after him.
The gap in raw strength was still massive. Kang Dae had eight times the power of a normal man; Jiang Han only had two. If he got hit, he would still break. The only advantage he had was the 1.5x perception boost. His brain was processing the incoming threat slightly faster than Kang Dae could execute it.
Jiang Han reached the first root.
It was thick, pulsing with dark red energy. Earlier, he hadn't known how to cut it without a tool. Now, with the perception boost humming in his skull, he could see the energy flow inside the tendril. It wasn't uniform. The light traveled in rhythmic pulses, creating momentary weak points—nodes where the energy thinned out just before the next pulse arrived.
He didn't need a blade.
He planted his feet, timed the pulse, and threw a roundhouse kick precisely at the node just as the light dimmed.
The impact felt like kicking a thick stack of wet leather. But with double his normal strength, the force was enough. The root snapped.
Dark red energy sprayed from the severed end like an artery bleeding out, instantly withering into black ash. High above, the piggy bank lurched, tilting slightly as it lost one of its four supports.
2:42.
Kang Dae caught up.
A massive hand swept toward Jiang Han's head. Jiang Han ducked underneath it, feeling the wind of the swing ruffle his hair. He spun away, putting a large chunk of concrete debris between himself and the monster.
Kang Dae didn't go around it. He walked straight through the debris, shattering the concrete block with a single kick, and kept coming.
"Hey, ugly!"
A piece of sharp metal bounced off the back of Kang Dae's thick neck.
Kang Dae stopped and turned. Yoon Seo was standing ten meters away, blood still dripping from her chin. She had a piece of rebar in her hand. "You couldn't catch me on a good day. Let's see you try now."
She turned and sprinted.
Kang Dae let out a bellowing sound and went after her. The corrupted host's intelligence had deteriorated entirely into rage.
Jiang Han didn't waste the distraction. He bolted for the second root.
Timing the pulse. Striking the node. The second anchor snapped.
The piggy bank groaned loudly, swaying violently on the ceiling. The network of corrupted veins webbed across the upper arena began to flicker.
1:55.
He sprinted for the third root.
Yoon Seo was fast, but Kang Dae's mutated stride was eating up the distance between them. She dodged a lunging grab, sliding under the sweeping arm, but Kang Dae backhanded her as she was coming up. It wasn't a solid hit—just a glancing blow—but it was enough to send her tumbling across the rough concrete.
She hit the ground hard and didn't immediately get up.
Kang Dae raised his foot to crush her.
Jiang Han hit him from the side like a freight train.
At double baseline strength, Jiang Han weighed the equivalent of a small car slamming into the mutant's hip. It wasn't enough to knock Kang Dae down, but it shoved him off balance. The massive foot came down heavily on the floor, missing Yoon Seo by inches.
Kang Dae backhanded him.
Jiang Han couldn't dodge this one. He threw his arms up to block, taking the impact on his forearms. The force lifted him clean off his feet and sent him flying backward. He crashed into a ruined camera stanchion, the metal biting into his ribs.
He spat blood and forced himself up. His arms felt numb, but the system's adrenaline was keeping the pain at a manageable distance.
1:12.
"Go," he told Yoon Seo.
Park ran over, grabbed her under the arms, and dragged her away toward the perimeter wall where Ma was slumped.
Kang Dae refocused entirely on Jiang Han.
Jiang Han used the twisted metal of the stanchion to launch himself sideways just as Kang Dae bulldozed through it. He ran a jagged line across the arena, dodging corrupted staff members that tried to intercept him. He reached the third root, identified the node, and smashed it.
The third root tore free.
The piggy bank dropped a few meters, now hanging by a single dark-red tendril. The entire arena shuddered under the strain. The red pulse of the remaining root throbbed frantically.
0:45.
Only the fourth root left.
Jiang Han turned to make the final sprint.
Kang Dae was already there, standing directly in front of the last anchor. The monster wasn't moving. It had realized, through whatever dim awareness remained, what the prey was trying to do. It was guarding the final lifeline of the corruption core.
There was no tricking him now. No running around him.
0:30.
Jiang Han stopped. He wiped the blood from his mouth and tasted copper. His lungs were burning, the system-enforced physical boost pushing his biology perfectly to the edge without breaking it.
He stared at the two-meter-tall mass of muscle and black eyes.
0:22.
He bent down and picked up two handfuls of crushed concrete dust and gravel.
0:18.
He didn't run away. He ran straight at Kang Dae.
Kang Dae grinned that too-wide grin, raised both arms, and prepared to crush him the moment he came into range.
Ten meters. Five meters. Three.
Jiang Han threw the dust directly at Kang Dae's pitch-black eyes.
It wasn't a finishing move. It was an involuntary biological reflex test. Even mutated, even inhabited by a narrative parasite, the body was still originally human. Kang Dae blinked and brought a massive arm up to shield his face.
It bought Jiang Han half a second.
He didn't stop to fight. With the perception boost maxing out, he slid past Kang Dae's massive bulk, dropping his shoulder to avoid the blind swing that followed the dust throw. He hit the ground rolling, came up right next to the fourth root, found the pulsing node, and drove his heel straight through it.
0:05.
The fourth root snapped.
The Golden Piggy Bank fell.
It plummeted the remaining twelve meters to the concrete floor. The impact didn't just shatter it—it detonated it. The porcelain shell exploded, but instead of cash, a massive sphere of dark red energy tore outward.
In the center of the crater lay the core: a fist-sized ball of dense, pulsing crimson light. It beat like an exposed heart on the concrete.
0:01.
The timer hit zero.
0:00.
The enhancements vanished.
Jiang Han's legs buckled instantly. His body reverted to its baseline state, and the backlog of exhaustion, pain, and lactic acid hit him all at once. He crashed to his knees, gasping for air that suddenly felt thick and heavy again. His forearms throbbed with a deep, grinding ache where he'd blocked Kang Dae's strike.
He looked up.
The core lay two meters away, pulsing frantically.
Kang Dae saw it too. The monster let out a sound that was pure desperation and lunged toward the core, massive arms outstretched, trying to swallow it back up.
Jiang Han didn't have the strength to fight. He barely had the strength to stand. But he was closer.
He dragged himself forward, spotting the length of steel pipe Ma had dropped earlier. His fingers closed around the cold metal. He threw his weight behind his shoulder, using his momentum as he collapsed forward to drive the pointed end of the pipe directly into the pulsing crimson heart.
The metal pierced the core.
It shattered.
There was no sound. No explosion. Just a burst of blinding, pure white light that swept across the arena, swallowing everything in its path.
The corrupted staff members, frozen mid-stride, simply turned to ash. The dark red veins clinging to the walls dried up, cracked, and flaked away into nothing.
The blinding light washed over Jiang Han, warm and absolute, before everything finally went quiet.