The cool kiss of the night air greeted me as I emerged, followed by the dull grind of the mechanism as the cargo door descended behind me. With a sound like the closing of a vault, it sealed, leaving me to the mercies of the night and the restless dead.

  Hoisting the rucksack onto my back, the worn straps digging into my shoulders, I secured the buckles. The machete, its leather lanyard cinched around my waist, swung ready at my side. Subtlety was a fool’s errand now. Time was a precious resource, and in this exposed expanse, even burdened by my gear, my raw speed was my advantage. I broke into a ground-eating sprint towards the perimeter fence, a dark shape against the pale moonlight. The shambling horde was too slow, their movements sluggish. I weaved through their loose ranks, a phantom in the graveyard, their decaying hands grasping at empty air.

  Within a score of heartbeats, I had cleared the rusted fencing, landing with a jarring thud on the other side, making a beeline for the shadowed embrace of the woods. The cool night air against my face, the trees blurring into dark streaks as I ran with a speed born of far too much time spent in the cloying indoors, I couldn't help but take a deep breath in.

  The free expanse of tree and shrub, cool night air and glare of gibbous moon. It was a joy I hadn't had as a mortal man. Indoors and in front of a computer had been my preferred environment. But now?

  I was outside. Hunting.

  And that was fundamentally it. I was anxious. Excited. My teeth itched and my skin felt wound too tight around my bones. Even though was nowhere near hungry, even though there was still more than half a blood pool's worth still sloshing in my gut, I was excited. Because I could hunt now.

  The blood bags they'd given me would be saved for later. For dangerous and desperate situations. Now I wanted something alive. There were a good two miles to reach the bones of the convoy. Let's see if I could catch a snack on the way.

  The Orc’s bellow was a thing ripped from nightmare, a guttural shriek that clawed at the air, a profane blend of pig squeal and human agony. Its massive cudgel swung in a brutal arc, pulping three Goblins before they could even yelp. Skulls burst like rotten gourds, painting the ground in a crimson mist. The remaining four of the green vermin circled the hulking brute, their crude iron spearheads jabbing at its distended belly and thick legs.

  Twenty paces to the right, a pair of Orcs fought with their backs to each other, a desperate island in a sea of over ten Goblins and their grotesque, slavering Hounds. The smaller creatures harried them, snapping and tearing, a relentless tide against their brute strength.

  From my perch high in the boughs of a thick-crowned willow, I watched the carnage unfold, the initial shock of monster against monster fading. I’d witnessed Goblins clash with the shambling rotbloods before, but Orcs and Goblins… I’d assumed a twisted alliance.

  Apparently, the monsters held no such loyalties. Kill or be killed. Eat flesh or have your flesh be eaten.

  This, however, was an opportunity ripe for the taking. Not just to engage weakened foes, but to observe, to learn the crude calculus of their violence. Already, I’d noted a rudimentary understanding of combat, a base tactic in their deceptively simple minds.

  With a blood-chilling roar, one of the Orcs charged into the press, a living battering ram of muscle and fury. Two Goblins and a Hound were trampled underfoot, reduced to a broken mess. Its cudgel, a mass of stone of a man’s torso, wrapped in studded leather, slammed into another Goblin, bursting its body like a pus filled sore. Its comrade, however, was quickly overwhelmed, its prodigious bulk no match for the sheer, rabid onslaught of Goblins and their snapping beasts.

  “Two less,” I murmured, noting the utter lack of kinship. The charging Orc hadn’t spared a thought for its kin, and the Goblins seemed to consider their losses as nothing more than spilled bile.

  A shrill scream yanked my attention back to the smaller fray. Only two Goblins remained of the original four that had harried the lone Orc, and one dragged a leg twisted at an unnatural angle. The Orc itself was in dire straits, its chest heaving with ragged breaths, a spear buried deep beneath its left pectoral. Its thick hide was a gory tapestry of rents and gashes.

  The moment had come. The other Orc was still embroiled in its own bloody dance, and this one was on its last legs.

  Theoretically, I could skirt the edge of the battle, melt into the forest’s embrace, and make straight for the convoy that lay just beyond the clearing.

  But that was not my way. Not anymore. If I'd learned anything from the past day, it was that mere avoidance yielded nothing. I didn't have the luxury of being passive anymore. Blood, Aether Stones, and the brutal lessons of combat were commodities I desperately craved. In this blighted world, stagnation was a death sentence.

  It was time to feed. In more ways than one.

  I launched myself from the willow’s crown, landing in a silent crouch amidst the undergrowth, my feet barely brushing the earth as I exploded towards the wounded Orc in a leaping strike.

  Whether it was base instinct, a flicker of primal intuition, or some dark sixth sense, the Orc whirled around just in time to witness the descending arc of my splitting axe. The blade bit deep, cleaving its skull in a wet spray of gore and grey matter.

  Before the monster’s bulk even hit the ground, I was already charging the two remaining Goblins, my axe still buried in the Orc’s ruined head, the machete already bared, a sliver of cold steel thirsting for the crippled one’s entrails.

  Blood and slick coils of gut spilled over my hand as I gutted the moss-green horror. With a brutal backhand, I flung the viscera into the face of the second Goblin, blinding and staggering it. The spear thrust it launched at me went wild, a sloppy jab that left it wide open.

  Too close to effectively slash, I drove my forehead into its snout, my greater momentum and weight doing the brutal work. The Goblin reeled back with a choked screech, its features a mask of broken, burst red, and I followed through with a thrust, burying my blade deep into its sternum.

  Three seconds. Three enemies silenced.

  A swift glance at the larger melee confirmed they were still too consumed by their own savage ballet to notice my intervention.

  Instead of pressing my advantage there, I doubled back to the Orc still twitching on the blood-soaked earth and wrenched the axe free. My teeth found its throat, and once more, the familiar surge coursed through me.

  Bliss.

  Ecstasy.

  Nirvana in each hot, viscous mouthful that slid down my throat, filling my gut with boiling warmth.

  I drank until my belly was taut, near bursting, and even then, it took a supreme act of will to tear myself from the cooling corpse. There was still lifeblood within, and the dark, ever-hungry thing within me railed against leaving even a single drop. But I did, steeling myself to face the remaining horrors. There was still a fight going on.

  The other battle had reached its bloody crescendo while I had fed. Now, only the remaining Orc and three Goblins stood amidst the pulped and broken bodies of their kin.

  The Orc’s next bellow ripped through the quiet forest, a raw, guttural cry as it heaved its crude cudgel with a single, powerful arm. The makeshift weapon spun end-over-end, slamming into the lead Goblin’s shield with a sickening crack, reducing the flimsy defense to splinters.

  “This one’s different,” the thought hammered in my skull as the monstrous brute retrieved a four-foot length of sharpened steel – a crude “cleaver” – from straps across its back. It launched itself forward, a green tide of muscle and fury, careening through the remaining three Goblins. The dazed one was pulped underfoot without a sound, and the second was bisected in a gruesome spray, the cleaver slicing through hatchet haft, skull, and torso as easily as a hot knife through tallow. The last Goblin let out a shrill, panicked yelp and bolted.

  Half-expecting the Orc to give chase, I was caught off guard when it merely flicked the gore and bone shards from its crude blade and turned its gaze towards me. The obese monstrosity and I began to circle each other, a silent dance of impending violence.

  Yes, this one was undeniably different. A full head shorter than its kin, though even for a “runt” Orc, it stood a size that would dwarf any strongman. It wore the same haphazard animal hide armor as the others, its only distinguishing feature the crisscrossing network of scars that marred its face and bald skull. Perhaps being the runt of such a brutal species had forged a particular ruthlessness, a cunning edge. But one thing was certain: the piggish dullness I’d seen in the eyes of its brethren was absent here. This was no mere pig-man.

  This was a boar, and one screw-up would get me gored.

  We charged simultaneously, cleaver and splitting axe clanging together in a sonorous crack that echoed through the stillness of the woods. Sparks flew where crude steel met tempered metal, and we sprang back with the same unspoken urgency that had driven us together.

  I knew from the encounter in the old campus that these creatures were more than just blubbering behemoths. Beneath the layers of fat lay mountains of muscle, granting them surprising speed and brutal strength. But all that weight was a double-edged blade.

  Orcs were fast. In a straight line.

  I lunged again, my axe a whistling arc, circling the Orc, seeking its blind spot. Only enhanced sight and reflexes allowed me to intercept the cleaver on the haft of my axe as the monster shifted its grip, unleashing a devastating backhand blow that shattered my flanking attempt and sent jolts of pain through my bones.

  I gritted my teeth against the impact and pushed, angling my guard, letting the cleaver scrape and slam into the dirt. A guttural snarl tore from my throat as I slammed the hammer of my axe into the Orc’s face, pulping its features just as its ham-like fist connected with my own.

  We both staggered back.

  Brackish blood erupted from my nose, stars danced at the edge of my vision, and the coppery tang of blood mingled with the gritty taste of broken teeth in my mouth. It felt as though I’d been struck by a granite boulder, not a fist of flesh and bone.

  But I had gained the advantage in that brutal exchange.

  We had both shattered our nasal cavities, but where the Orc wheezed, a phlegmy rattle in its throat, blood and mucus flooding its airways, I had no need to breathe. More than that, the stolen blood coursing through me was already mending the damage.

  For it, the injury was a crippling impediment.

  For me, it was merely pain. Savage, blinding pain, to be sure, but pain I could ignore.

  My axe lashed out again, a blur of steel seeking its belly, its joints, its vital points, as I pressed my advantage and surged forward. The Orc was stronger, faster, and possessed an unnerving, veteran-like instinct, but it couldn’t draw a clean breath, and its eyes streamed with tears from its shattered snout.

  Even so, metal screamed against metal, that wide, brutal cleaver intercepting my axe at every turn, forcing my advance into a stumbling retreat as it aimed for my shins.

  I dropped into a roll, arresting my backward momentum, ducking under a wild slash that would have cleaved my arm from my shoulder, and lunged low, slamming my shoulders for the the Orc’s knees. A low-bearing leg sweep.

  I'd severely underestimated just how experienced the Orc was. Instead of buckling or trying to draw back, it lashed out with one knee, as thick as a grown man’s thigh, slamming into my jaw mid-lunge, and the stars danced anew in my vision. Had I still been mortal, it would have been a knockout blow. The Orc had likely expected exactly that, raising both arms for a massive downward strike.

  But I wasn’t mortal. And the Orc's counter had just become my opening. Because I was close now.

  The Orc’s bellow, a phlegm-choked shriek of agony and rage, clawed at my eardrums as it lumbered forward, the massive cleaver arcing down in a two-handed death blow, too committed to its momentum to halt. But even as the shadow of the crude blade fell over me, I moved. My arms snaked around its thick, tree-trunk of a foreleg, and the Blood Buff surged through me like molten fire. Heat bloomed in my muscles, sinews coiling and hardening, granting me unnatural strength. I launched myself forward, flowing into one of Tina’s most fundamental lessons: the leg-assisted Spear.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  In a single, seamless motion, I drove myself deep into the monster’s guard, its downward stroke missing me by inches, only its massive elbows jarring against my back. My arms, now like twisted steel cables, locked around its leg, the sickening crack of dislocation echoing as its hip joint gave way. Simultaneously, my shoulder slammed into its gut with the brutal force of a speeding juggernaut. I strained, a guttural hiss escaping my lips, teeth gritted against the impossible weight, veins throbbing against my forehead as I rose, lifting its near-ton bulk onto my shoulders. Then, with a final, earth-shuddering grunt, I brought it crashing down in a textbook Front Powerslam. The ground cratered beneath the impact, and blood and air were driven from the Orc’s lungs in a strangled wheeze.

  Before the Orc could even register the impact, I was already upon it, axe back in my hand, whirling in an overhead strike. Weight and blood-fueled strength drove the axe into the Orc’s thigh with pulverizing force, severing the massive limb in a geyser of gore and splintered bone.

  This time, when the Orc screamed, it was a high-pitched, hysterical shriek of pure agony, its massive hands clutching at the spurting stump, the cleaver lying forgotten on the blood-soaked ground.

  Again and again, I brought the axe down in brutal overhead chops, hacking into the exposed flesh like a lumberjack splitting logs, carving deep, suppurating trenches into the thrashing, yelping monster. It was gruesome work, and the part of me that still remembered a life of quasi-civilized restraint felt a flicker of pity.

  But I didn’t stop.

  Because I knew all too well that had I faltered, had I made a single mistake, it would have been me screaming and flailing on the ground, the Orc delivering the killing blows. This changed world offered no sanctuary for compassion. Kill or be killed. Simple as that.

  I closed my heart to its cries and kept going, carving through muscle and rupturing bone, severing its forearms when it tried pitifully to block my weapon, until finally, the axe-head found its temple, and the thrashing abruptly ceased.

  Long seconds passed, my grip tight on the axe haft, the blade buried deep in the Orc’s skull. I simply waited.

  “Well done” the Animal said in the back of my head, no hint of mockery or spite in its voice.

  “Shut it”.

  “I am complimenting us”.

  “I know. But do it without talking”.

  “Bah! Be contrary if you choose to. But this? It was a good hunt. And we did good.”

  I sighed audibly, not wanting to agree with it. The Animal was right though. Just like clearing the herd of rotbloods, or sparring with Tina, this gave me that same addicting emotion. A challenge overcome. A self-imposed trial, passed.

  The Animal within offered no further commentary, and with a slow shake of my head, I planted a boot on the dead Orc’s flank and wrenched the axe free. No time for the luxury of contemplation. The night was still young, but the shadows held their own urgency. Cutting things close was a game I preferred not to play.

  The next twenty minutes were nothing more than grim necessity. I knelt beside the fallen, replenishing the negligible amount of blood I’d taken for healing and the fleeting surge of the Blood Buff. Then came the less savory task: draining blood into my remaining three empty blood-bags and carving out the Aether Stones from their chests. Butcher's work.

  From the Goblins and their grotesque Hounds, I extracted fifteen of the smaller Aether Stones, almost black in their depth. The three I claimed from the Orcs were nearly twice the size, their color a stark, somber grey.

  Maybe it meant they were purer? The grey stones pulsed with those internal forks of blue, lightning-like energy far more frequently, at the very least. I squirrelled them away in my rucksack and held the three, now bloated, blood-bags in my hand.

  "Little Puck, got three more for storage, how do..."

  No time to finish. A pop, a blur of white fur and glowing blue eyes, another pop, and I was holding no more blood bags.

  "Customer satisfaction. 10 out of 10," I chuckled to myself. Quick and efficient, almost as if she knew I was in a hurry and wanted to get it done, without too much talking.

  Rucksack secured, the straps cinched tight against the weight of the Aether Stones, I swapped my bloodied splitting axe for its twin. The clean heft felt right in my grip. The backup machete slid into its scabbard, the worn leather straps fastened to the side of the pack. All those romanticized tales of old never spoke of the grim realities. It was all honor, shiny plate and bejeweled weapons. They failed to mention the cloying stickiness of gore, how quickly it dulled a honed edge, rendering steel useless without proper care – a luxury rarely afforded in this broken world. No water for rinsing, no sturdy brushes for scrubbing. Best to have a backup.

  My final preparation was the familiar weight of the shotgun, loaded and slotted into my belt. From the tree line, the convoy was a dark silhouette less than a hundred paces down the slope. And scattered around it, stark against the pale moonlight filtering through the leaves, lay the unmoving forms of the dead.

  The closer the hulking shapes of the military convoy loomed, the more cautious my approach became. The cracked asphalt was strewn with bodies, a macabre obstacle course of civilian and military dead. Still. Unmoving. These weren't the risen dead of rotbloods, but just corpses. Just like Mina had said. And yet, the closer I drew, the more unsettling the scene became.

  These were not merely fallen. They were… fragmented. Severed limbs, decapitated heads, torsos ripped asunder – pieces of humanity scattered like discarded toys. The rotbloods, for all their ravenous hunger, typically consumed or corrupted their victims. This felt different. This spoke of a deliberate, almost artistic brutality. Senseless carnage. The flesh hadn't been devoured, merely torn apart. For what purpose, I didn't even want to think about.

  And the silence… a suffocating blanket. No clicking of the resurrected dead, no Goblin chittering, no Orcish snarl. Even the nocturnal chorus of crickets and the cries of night birds were absent. To call it quiet was an insult to the word. It was as if the very air held its breath, a silent testament to some unseen dread that permeated this place. All except for the frantic thrumming in my own veins. Something was wrong here. Something that couldn't be seen from afar. A pervasive sense of dread that sent the hairs on the back of my head to bristle.

  By the time the towering forms of the two APCs were a mere twenty meters away, I was moving on all fours, weaving through the hulking Humvees and Jeeps like a shadow. Each movement was agonizingly slow, a desperate attempt to minimize sound. Progress was measured in inches.

  And for the life of me, I couldn't understand why I was so careful.

  Only that some deeply ingrained instinct, buried in the primeval depths of my brain, was screaming out for me to be quiet. My gut churned with a cold dread, my skin felt far too tight, stretched taut over muscle and sinew.

  “No, no, no, we have to leave. This smell is off. It smells of danger. Too much! Too much!!!” the Animal hissed, voice far too low and quiet.

  Was it afraid? This damned thing?

  “What are you talking about? What smell?” I thought back, unable to fully keep the shake growing in me.

  “Run! Run! We need to run! We need to survive!”

  “What the hell are you…?” I began, only to stop when the crack of a twig, or human bone, or whatever the hell it was, snapped audibly under my boot.

  I hadn't paid enough attention. The oppressive atmosphere. The Animal's panic. Whatever it had been, I had made a mistake. And despite the small, seemingly insignificant noise, I knew instinctively I had just screwed up monumentally.

  I couldn't fault Mina for this. There was no way she could've seen it from the mall's roof, not even with her precious monocular. Hell, I hadn't even seen it and I was twenty paces away from it. For all it's monumental bulk, it was unnaturally still. Had it been hibernating? A form of stasis? All I knew is that now that it had awoken, the intake of its breath was like a pressure valve bursting. The beat of it's heart, a war drum. And the cold that spread from my spine to the tips of my toes, a freezing shower.

  If the Goblins were Sinborn of Envy, the Orcs were Sinborn of Gluttony, and I was a Sinborn of Pride, this thing could only be a Sinborn itself.

  Sinborn of Wrath.

  Behind the APC, something vast and wrong began to heave itself into view, rooting me to the spot. First, a glimpse of horn – thick, ridged bone, almost like calcified tree roots. Then, an eye. Not merely red, but a bruised, angry crimson, the pupil a disturbingly vertical slit that pulsed with a wet, uneven rhythm, locking onto me with a hunger that felt deeply personal and violated some primal sense of order. And all too human in shape.

  It wasn't just looking in my direction. It was looking at me. Directly at me.

  Slowly, impossibly, the bulk of the creature rose above the APC’s armored shell. It was a titan, easily three times my height, its hunched form a grotesque exaggeration of human musculature, the limbs too long, the shoulders too broad, as if a man had been stretched and inflated to monstrous proportions. Cloven hooves, the size of buckets and cracked like sun-baked earth, scraped against the metal, leaving trails of clotted blood and viscera. Its legs were pillars of knotted muscle, thick as ancient oaks, skin stretched so taut it seemed on the verge of splitting, revealing thick, black veins that throbbed visibly beneath. A bull’s head, massive and elongated, swiveled towards me, a snout too long, too stretched, like an amalgamation of horse and human. Nostrils flared and wet, and it bared teeth...a chaotic mess of yellowed fangs and disturbingly human-like molars, crowded together in a parody of a grin.

  Twin plumes of hot, fetid breath blasted from its nostrils, carrying the stench of raw meat and something sickly sweet, like decaying fruit, as it opened it's maw and brayed.

  “Holy shi…” The curse died in my throat, choked by a rising wave of nausea and the sheer wrongness of its form.

  “RUUUUN!!!” The Animal’s psychic scream was a raw, tearing force in my mind, a primal command to flee the obscene mockery before me.

  Then, the world exploded in a deafening roar as the Minotaur’s maw unhinged with a wet crack, revealing a cavernous throat lined with rows upon rows of those human-like teeth, unleashing a bellow that felt like a physical hammer blow, concussing the air and leaving a metallic taste on my tongue.

  Whether I screamed or cussed, I didn’t know. But a sound ripped from my throat as the blasphemous thing launched itself towards me, a terrifying avalanche of twisted muscle and corrupted flesh.

  Its attack was as sudden as its unholy cry, a black iron axe, thick as my torso and stained with the burgundy marks of dried, rancid blood, arcing towards my head like a descending gate to some festering hell. Instinct, raw and desperate, screamed for survival. Blood Buff flared, a desperate jolt of inner power against the encroaching nightmare. Pure reflex. I threw myself down, unnatural speed my only defense against such a grotesque abomination.

  Even with that surge of adrenaline-fueled velocity, the axe passed so close I felt wind pressure scrape against the back of my head like sandpaper.

  Before I could even register the near miss, a sound like a bag of uncooked spaghetti breaking echoed through my chest. A crushing pressure, and in the split second before agony bloomed, I glanced down to see my upper body folding around a cloven hoof, the rough surface slick with a viscous, black ichor that looked all too familiar. My black blood. Then, I was weightless, rocketing through the air to slam into the side of a Humvee with a sickening crunch of metal and the wet tearing of my own flesh.

  The bursting sound had been the shattering of my ribs, the grinding the sound of them splintering against each other.

  A wet explosion of blood and shattered bone erupted from my mouth and nose. Half my vision dissolved into impenetrable black as my left eye burst, the side of my skull slamming against the cold steel of the Humvee. Sheer instinct, a desperate surge of adrenaline, propelled me into a frantic scramble beneath the vehicle, just a hair's breadth ahead of a piercing horn that would have skewered me like meat on a spit. The Minotaur, its movements unsettlingly swift for its bulk, had tracked my trajectory. It was hunting.

  Even as the monstrous shadow loomed above, I continued to roll under the military vehicle, a broken, desperate tumble, until my feet scrabbled for purchase on the rough ground. I launched myself into a limping run, every motion, searing agony. Behind me, the monstrosity hoisted a military jeep with a single arm, hurling it aside with a snarl. The twisted metal shrieked as it cartwheeled through the air.

  This was impossible. By any stretch of the imagination. Herds of rotbloods, goblins, Orcs, all these had been dangerous but... in the realm of reason. I could fight them. I could win against them. But this? This thing was faster than me. Stronger than a dozen orcs put together. And the sheer brutality of its violence was like a forge. There was no space for thought, no time for calculation. Only the primal imperative to run. This wasn't a battle; it was an extermination. To remain was a sentence of immediate, brutal death.

  The ground vibrated with earth-shattering tremors, even as the thunder of its pursuit echoed behind me. Pure, unadulterated animal instinct screamed, and I threw myself sideways an instant before its colossal hooves would have crushed me into the asphalt.

  But instead of thundering past, the Minotaur, with a terrifying display of agility, lashed out mid-charge. The haft of its lamppost-sized axe, thick and surprisingly swift, clipped me in the side, sending me cartwheeling through the air to land in a broken heap. The world spun in a dizzying kaleidoscope of pain, every nerve ending screaming. Inside my skull, the Animal howled, a frantic, echoing plea to flee.

  Pushing myself to my feet was a monumental effort, each movement a fresh wave of agony, bracing for the impact of that monstrous axe.

  But it didn't come.

  Instead, when I finally managed to turn, it was just in time to see the beast lower its grotesque head, those hate-filled eyes fixed on me, massive horns aimed straight for my face. Not ten feet away. It was watching, teeth bared in what could only be a monstrous, anticipatory grin. The bastard had malice behind its rage. Malice enough to wait. To make sure I see what was coming.

  It charged.

  This was it. The end of the line. Alone, about to be pulped into bloody ruin by this… thing.

  “It’s not fair,” the thought echoed, a pathetic whisper in the sudden silence of my head. Not even the Animal whined anymore.

  “DIE!” I roared, the sound surprisingly loud in my own head, a defiant cry against the inevitable. My hand snapped to my belt, whipping out the shotgun, leveling both barrels at the onrushing monstrosity’s grotesque face.

  “DIE!!!” I bellowed again, the word thick with spite and blood-flecked spittle, mirroring the froth that flecked the Minotaur’s monstrous maw.

  Fair? Unfair? What did it matter in this blighted reality? Who cared about fairness? No one. That was the brutal truth. So no use whining about it. All that mattered now was the manner of my going. If death was the destination, then I’d meet it on my own terms, with every last scrap of defiance I possessed. Human or vampire, that core stubbornness remained. A promise I’d made to myself, and one I damn well intended to keep.

  If I'm gonna die, it's gonna be as spitefully as I can.

  “DIE!!!” I screamed, a final, desperate cry over the thunder of its hooves, and unleashed both barrels. Point blank. Right into those hate-filled, beady red eyes.