It started with a pulse.
Low. Deep. Felt more than heard.
Conner had just finished tightening the grip on his new bow when the ground gave a soft rumble. A flicker of violet light surged through the sky—not from the structure this time, but from somewhere deeper in the zone. The air changed.
Then came the message.
[Global System Event: Mana Reclamation Protocol – Initiated]
[All unclaimed mana signatures will be forcibly reclaimed by conversion.]
[Effect: Dead entities within contaminated zones may reanimate temporarily. Duration: 72 hours. Elimination required for stabilization.]
The silence broke.
From across the campus—inside buildings, under rubble, and even beneath the shallow soil—movement began.
Not smooth movement. Jerky, twitching. Wrong.
The corpse of a Rootcrawler half-buried near the courtyard snapped upright, its bones cracking and resetting as violet energy surged through its limbs. Where its eyes had once been, now glowed twin sparks of unstable mana.
It hissed.
Then lunged.
Conner fired on instinct, the arrow splitting its skull mid-air.
The thing hit the ground twitching—and then disintegrated into purple mist.
Behind him, more started rising.
They formed a line.
Joey stood shirtless, blood still crusted along his ribs, but his body firm and massive in the orange light of the setting sun. He twisted his new molten blade between his hands and smiled through a split lip.
Katie stood beside him, her coat refrozen in patches, one arm already laced with weaving lines of frost. Her hair was up in a tight knot, and her eyes had the kind of calm only people who'd survived the worst could wear.
Neive crouched low, whispering to her partially-rebuilt wolf summon. A second creature shimmered behind her, half-formed, flickering like a draft of something not yet fully imagined.
And Conner—quiet, steady, bow already drawn—watched the edge of the fog.
They were ready.
But the dead kept coming.
An hour earlier…
Conner sat alone on the third floor of the library, watching the wind move through the broken windows. His fingers brushed the curve of his new bow, but he wasn't training.
He was remembering.
His dad used to say the woods never lied. Animals didn't bluff. Wind didn't fake its direction. The only trick was learning how to listen to it.
Conner was twelve when he hit his first moving target.
His dad didn't cheer. He didn't clap.
He looked at him, smiled once, and said, "That shot mattered because you waited. Don't forget that."
Conner never did.
Elsewhere, around the world…
A city in northern Germany burned.
Students and civilians scrambled across a cracked mall atrium as infected boars charged through broken glass. A dozen people fought back—some with fire magic, others with makeshift weapons. Above them, a translucent dome pulsed, locking them in.
In Tokyo, the subway system had turned into a maze of glowing runes and collapsed tunnels. Commuters huddled behind vending machines, watching blue-armored beetles claw at metal with corrosive fangs.
In a remote valley in Montana, a group of teenagers fought in the rain with pitchforks and magic-slicked rifles, defending a barn that had become their stronghold.
In every zone, the same message had appeared.
[Global Event: Active]
No one was exempt.
No one was ready.
Back at the university…
They fought through the night.
The mana zombies weren't smart—but they were relentless. Old Rootcrawler corpses came back with twitchy, unpredictable movement. Former students—half-buried under rubble, their bodies bloated with mana—sprinted forward with explosive force, teeth sharpened, eyes glowing.
They didn't feel pain.
Didn't hesitate.
Katie froze five in place with a burst of glyph-cast ice, then shattered them with a blast of spiked frost.
Neive summoned a new form—a stockier wolf with plated legs and a whip-like tail. It didn't last long, but it bought her time to breathe.
Joey crushed everything in sight, his body a wall of heat and steel. At one point, he turned mid-swing, pointed at a flying metal shard, and called it back into his hand.
The metal bent through the air—willingly.
His eyes widened. "Did I just…?"
Then he grinned. "Oh yeah. That's new."
An hour later, when they were surrounded—tired, boxed in, blood on the ground—he returned.
Chadwick dropped into the courtyard from the rooftop.
He was bloodied. His cloak was shredded. But his eyes burned gold, and his body moved like he hadn't lost a step.
Without a word, he blurred forward.
He passed through a leaping zombie's strike—literally passed through it—as if smoke, then reappeared behind it with a clean stab to the base of the skull.
[Skill Activated: Shadow Veil (S)]
He spun, kicked off a wall, vanished again mid-air—and landed beside Katie.
"Still breathing?" he asked.
"Barely," she said, frost coating her hands.
"Good. Then you can watch this."
He blurred again.
Somewhere in the chaos, it clicked.
Conner leveled up.
So did the others.
A new message appeared.
[Trait Milestone Reached – Lv.10 Achieved]
[New Trait Ability Unlocked]
Conner – Phantom Arrow (D):
A delayed second mana arrow fires 1.5 seconds after a successful True Draw hit. Automatically seeks the same target if they're still visible. Cannot be blocked if the first arrow connects.
Joey – Magnet Core (A):
Joey can now bend and control shaped metal within 20m without contact. Magnetism is directed by intent. He can float, snap, twist, or call weapons.
Katie – Frost Anchor (A):
Katie can summon a sigil mid-air that stabilizes her next three spells, letting her chain attacks, freeze time delays, or cast in impossible angles.
Neive – Echo Draft (B):
Neive can temporarily combine traits from two summoned creatures, fusing abilities into a single, unstable hybrid. Lasts 30 seconds. Cooldown: 5 minutes.
Chadwick – Shadow Veil (S):
Becomes intangible for 2.5 seconds. Gains a crit bonus if attacking from behind when exiting Veil. Cooldown: 20 seconds.
The moment they leveled, everything changed.
Katie's ice began floating around her like crystal wings.
Joey's axe hovered at his shoulder, spinning slowly like it was waiting for his call.
Neive's summon shifted forms mid-run, adapting on the fly.
And Conner?
He fired an arrow that landed clean in a zombie's throat.
Then, a second later, another arrow—made of shadow and silence—pierced through its skull without being drawn.
He watched it fade.
And for the first time since this all began… he believed they could win.