The outpost had gone quiet.
It was the kind of quiet that existed between explosions, when the ears were still ringing and the body hadn't accepted that the fighting was over. Soldiers sat along the walls, too tired to move but too wired to sleep. Medics moved between the wounded, their hands steady and their faces blank from exhaustion.
Holden sat in his room. The door had been repaired, though the walls were still cracked from the 7-Star breakthrough. Maintenance crews had patched the worst of the damage with fresh concrete that didn't match the old stone.
He pulled up his System interface.
[Current KP: 1,320,290]
[Multiplier: 10,000x]
[KP Booster: 2x Active]
The number glowed steadily in his vision. It was the result of weeks of relentless farming, from the artillery mission and rift closure to patrol kills, the massive horde defense, and the Nightmare Dungeon runs he had squeezed in between operations.
His 10,000x processor ran the numbers automatically.
