We straightened up from among the bushes in the schoolyard, shaking the leaves off ourselves.

  "Are you ready?" I whispered to the girl. Though her eyes were still filled with terror, it seemed her survival instinct had taken over. She nodded.

  "Just... just be quiet and follow me. If I say stop, stop. If I say run, run. No questions."

  We slipped through a collapsed section of the wall and onto the street. The streets were unrecognizable. On the curb where school buses used to wait, there were now overturned vehicles burning in flames. Power poles had fallen, cables were scattered on the ground like snakes, spitting sparks. The air carried a heavy scent of burnt rubber and metal.

  Thanks to my newly acquired Agility points, my steps were much lighter than before. I could control the sound I made when I stepped and maintain my balance perfectly. The girl followed me from behind with timid steps. Occasionally she would trip or hold her breath, but she was careful not to make a sound.

  For a while, we stayed away from the main road, advancing through side streets. We were lucky for now. There were only distant screams and the sounds of explosions; no direct threat had crossed our path yet.

  "We need to turn here," the girl whispered, pointing to a corner with a trembling finger. "My house is at the end of this street."

  We turned the corner and froze in our tracks.

  "Holy shit..."

  In the middle of the street, spanning the entire road between two buildings, was a massive mass. A creature at least two stories high, with grey, rocky, bumpy skin, lay slumped in the middle of the road, sleeping.

  Even its breathing made the ground vibrate. As its ribcage rose and fell, the parked cars next to it swayed like toys. The hot steam coming from its nose blurred the air. We immediately threw ourselves behind a car.

  "The road is blocked," I said, gritting my teeth. "We can't pass by it. If it wakes up, we’ll both be crushed like flies. Look at the size of that thing..."

  The girl’s face was as white as chalk, but she didn't give up. "It’s okay," she said; though her voice trembled, she had found a solution. "We can go back to the previous street and go around the back. I always leave the gate to my backyard open. If we jump over that wall, we’ll land in the yard, and we can enter the house from there."

  "The backyard..." I thought. "Makes sense. At least we won't have to deal with that massive thing."

  "Okay," I said. "We're going back. Be very quiet."

  Backing away on our tiptoes, we moved away from that massive creature and turned into the previous side street. However, when we entered the street, we encountered another unexpected sight.

  In the middle of the street, standing in front of a technology store, was a group of three people. They held baseball bats and iron bars like crowbars. The store was closed, but the shutters hadn't been lowered, and the latest model phones, laptops, and drones in the display case were still shining.

  "What the hell are they doing?" I whispered, pulling the girl into a recess in the wall.

  The group was laughing and joking loudly among themselves. They acted as if the world hadn't been leveled, as if the sky wasn't burning, and as if a giant monster wasn't sleeping just one street away.

  "This is our chance, boys!" shouted a skinny man with a red bandana on his head. His voice echoed. "While everyone is losing their minds, let's steal everything we can! When all this shit is over, we're going to be rich! We'll live like kings!"

  "Exactly!" supported the fat one next to him, raising his crowbar in the air. "No police, no security. This is our kingdom!"

  I rolled my eyes. "What are these idiots talking about?" I thought. My hands were shaking with anger. "Do they think this is some kind of game? Oh, for fuck's sake... If they make too much noise, that massive creature at the corner is going to notice us."

  I analyzed the situation. In front of us was this group of stupid humans, and behind us was a massive creature. We couldn't pass where the creature was; we had to use this street.

  "I have to stop them," I thought. Passing by silently was risky; if they saw us, they might shout and attract attention.

  I stood up and took a step toward them, thinking I might warn them. But at that moment, I realized it was already too late.

  The man in the red bandana had already picked up a large paving stone from the ground.

  "Watch this, boys! This is how it's done!" he shouted, spreading his arms as if performing a circus act. And he hurled the stone at the store's display window with all his might.

  CRASH!

  The sound of the glass breaking exploded like a bomb in the silent street. Thousands of glass shards scattered on the ground. But that wasn't the real disaster. Immediately after, the store's alarm system went off.

  WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!

  The sound was so loud it grated my ears, drowning the street in a siren wail.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "Damn it!" I shouted, turning to the girl. "RUN!"

  Grabbing the girl by the arm, I bolted past the group with all the speed my 7 Agility points gave me.

  The group looked at us in surprise.

  "Where are those idiots running to?" said the fat one, swinging his crowbar.

  "They didn't see us, right?" asked the third one, in a slightly worried voice.

  "What difference does it make if they did!" laughed the one in the red bandana, heading toward the window while trying to shout over the alarm. "Let's loot this place! No one is com—"

  His words were cut short by the ground shaking.

  THUD! THUD! THUD!

  A sound rose, but it wasn't an alarm. It was the sound of tons of weight hitting the asphalt. All three men froze. They slowly turned their heads toward the corner of the street, where a massive shadow appeared.

  "Something's coming..." said one of them.

  And the thing they saw was their final sight.

  From the corner of the street, the massive grey creature that had been dozing earlier was turning. The alarm had woken it up. And it was angry. It was so large that it filled the entire street between the two buildings. Its steps crushed cars, and its shoulders demolished the facades of the buildings.

  "Holy shit..." said the fat one, dropping his crowbar.

  Two of them tried to run away screaming, but the man in the red bandana was frozen in place. His eyes were locked on the mountain-like mass coming toward him.

  The creature didn't even speed up. It just walked. It didn't care about the obstacles in its way.

  CRUNCH!

  Its massive foot came down on the two men trying to escape and the third one who stood frozen. The sound of bones breaking and flesh being crushed drowned out the alarm for a second. The men were crushed like insects and flattened onto the asphalt. Blood spurted from between the creature's toes and spread across the street. Those dreams of "becoming rich" had turned into a bloody stain on the asphalt.

  "Holy shit..."

  My whisper was lost among the footsteps of that massive creature. We were running without looking back, but there was a problem. The alarm those stupid looters had triggered hadn't just woken up that massive thing; it had woken up the entire neighborhood.

  Growls were rising from side streets, from the tops of buildings, from under manhole covers. Figures gliding like shadows, mutants running on all fours... they were all coming toward this chaotic symphony of sound—toward us.

  "Alex!" the girl screamed, out of breath. "From the left! One's coming from the left!"

  When I turned my head, I saw a creature that looked like a skinned dog but much larger, descending rapidly from the fire escape of a building.

  "Damn it," I thought. "We won't make it. That thing is faster than us. Even my current 7 Agility points aren't enough."

  An idea came to me. Could I get a speed skill from that rabbit I just killed? No, if I could, a notification would have appeared the moment I touched it or when it died. It meant there were restrictions to the system's Biological Harvest skill that I didn't know yet, hadn't solved yet. Maybe a level difference, maybe a species incompatibility...

  But I wasn't in a laboratory environment to analyze these things right indi. I was on a battlefield. The only solution I had was a gamble. And for that, I had the best (and worst) skill possible: Genetic Roulette.

  "Anything that can increase my speed..." I prayed silently as I continued to run. "Please, give me something useful. Please don't give me a curse like blindness or deafness."

  [GENETIC ROULETTE ACTIVATED.]

  [MANA CONSUMED: 10 MP]

  [SOURCE: SLOT 1 - MUTANT HUMAN]

  [SPINNING ROULETTE...]

  The symbols flashed in my mind like lightning and stopped.

  [TRAIT ACQUIRED: MUTANT PHYSIQUE (LOW TIER)]

  [DURATION: 5 MINUTES]

  "Bingo!"

  I felt a sudden, explosive change in my body. This time, my teeth didn't grow, nor did my skin harden. Instead, I felt my muscle fibers tighten, thicken, and densify. My leg muscles became as strong as hydraulic pistons, just like when Matt first transformed. Now I understood how Matt could jump so high with that lumbering body, how he could accelerate so suddenly. This was pure, raw muscle power.

  I stopped suddenly. The girl panicked when she saw me stop. "What are you doing?! They're coming!"

  I didn't answer her. The skinless dog creature behind us was only fifty meters back and coming at us with saliva flying. I couldn't drag the girl at this speed.

  I bent down and scooped the girl up in one move.

  "What?!" The girl flailed in surprise. "What are you doing?! Put me down!"

  "Sorry," I said, gripping her like a feather with the power of my mutant muscles. "Hold on tight!"

  And I bolted.

  The ground was sliding away from under my feet. With every step, I pressed down hard enough to crack the asphalt; with every leap, I covered meters. The wind whipped my face, leaving the girl’s screams behind. In that moment, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I had encountered Matt in a more open area instead of inside the school, but now was not the time to think about that.

  The creature behind us paused for a moment as if surprised, but then continued the pursuit. However, the gap between us was no longer closing; on the contrary, it was widening. I wasn't an athlete; I was a locomotive.

  "Right!" the girl shouted, her head buried in my chest as she gave directions. "Now left! Into the street with the blue building!"

  I took the turns with a speed and sharpness that would break a normal human's ankles. The mutant physique allowed my body to withstand this G-force.

  "There it is!" I looked where the girl pointed.

  At the end of the street, there was a brick wall. Behind it, the house that was claimed to be safe. But from the other end of the street, two more "Mutant Humans" who had heard our approach emerged. They began running toward us, snarling.

  "The wall!" said the girl, panicking. "The gate might be locked, we have to jump over the wall but it's too high!"

  I narrowed my eyes. "Leave the rest to me."

  I didn't slow down. Instead, I accelerated with a final burst of power. I felt that foreign, dense muscle mass in my legs burning. Ten meters to the wall, five meters...

  "Hold on!"

  Just as we reached the base of the wall, I slammed my left foot onto the ground so hard I felt the concrete shatter. And I launched myself upward.

  A two-meter wall? For a mutant physique, that was just a stepping stone. We soared through the air. Time stopped for a moment. That unsafe street below, those snarling creatures, and that chaos remained on the other side of the wall.

  THUD!

  We made a somewhat hard landing on the soft grass of the garden. My legs absorbed the impact, but I couldn't maintain my balance, and I tumbled along with the girl. After a few rolls over the grass, soil, and dried leaves, we stopped at the base of a tree.

  At that exact moment, the familiar notification arrived.

  [GENETIC ROULETTE DURATION EXPIRED.]

  The explosive power in my muscles deflated like a popped balloon. All that remained was fatigue, aching joints, and a heart beating like crazy. I lay on my back and looked at the sky—that smoke-filled, crimson-painted sky.

  "Are you okay?" I asked, out of breath. The rasp in my voice was gone.

  The girl sat up beside me. She brushed off the leaves; her hair was a mess, but she was in one piece. Her eyes were still in shock, but she nodded.

  "I'm fine... I think."

  I took a deep breath and struggled to sit up. From the other side of the wall came the angry snarls and the sounds of the creatures scratching at the wall. But this wall looked sturdy and was topped with broken glass. It would take them time to cross.

  "Let's get inside immediately," I said, pointing to the back door of the house. "Let's not push our luck."