Chapter 67 Power Leveling

Chapter 67 Power Leveling
I didn't waste the afternoon. The moment we had the vehicles sorted and the group settled, I pulled Ryan, Nathan, Sophie, Jade, Mia, and two of the dormitory girls — Zhang Li and a quiet girl named Cora who had barely said ten words since we picked her up but moved with the kind of focused attention that said she was taking everything in — and told the rest to stay with the vehicles and listen to Ava. Yuan Ying was on her feet before I finished the sentence. "I'm coming." I looked at her. She held the look. No argument in her face, just decision. "Fine," I said. Three others followed. Lin Qi, still pale from nine days in a locked room but steadier now. One of Zhao's girls who had stayed behind — her name was Priya, quiet, observant, the type who listened more than she spoke. And Derek, who set down the atlas and stood up without being asked. Kira watched from the back of the van, propped against the window with her ribs wrapped and her pistol on her lap. "This is a leveling run," she said. "Yes." "You're not taking me." "You have three fractured ribs." "I know that." Her voice was flat. Not angry — just precise. "I'm saying it so you know I know it. Go." I went. --- The street I had in mind was four blocks from where we'd parked — a commercial strip that had been failing even before the Veilfall. Low foot traffic, old buildings, minimal residential. The kind of block that cleared out fast when things went wrong because there weren't enough people there to begin with. We drove the truck. Ava stayed with the van and the rest of the group. When we pulled up to the block, I counted through the windshield. Fourteen zombies. Standard class, spread across maybe two hundred meters of street. They were moving in the loose, directionless pattern of things with no active stimulus — wandering, not hunting. The sound of the truck engine reached them at about a hundred meters and the nearest three began to orient. I got out. "Everyone stay by the truck," I said. "Watch." Ryan started to follow me. I put a hand up. "Watch first." He stopped. --- I went at the nearest three alone. Not because I was showing off. Because the group needed to see what this looked like when someone knew what they were doing. They needed the visual before I put a blade in their hands and asked them to do it themselves. Fear of the unknown was always worse than fear of the seen. I had learned that across enough loops to stop counting. The first zombie was eight meters out. I came in at an angle, fast, closed the distance before it completed its lunge reflex. The blade went in at the temple. Clean. It dropped. The second was two meters to the left, already moving. I pivoted, stepped into its reach rather than back from it — that was the counterintuitive part, the thing that took people the longest to learn — and drove the blade upward under the jaw. It stopped moving immediately. The third came from the right and slightly behind. I heard it more than saw it — the dragging step, the particular rhythm of something that had lost the muscle memory of walking properly. I turned with my elbow already moving and hit it across the side of the skull. It went sideways. I finished it on the ground with a single downward strike. Three seconds. Three zombies. I stood up and looked back at the truck. The group was very quiet. Jade had her hand over her mouth. Not from disgust — from the sudden, visceral understanding that this was achievable. That the thing she had been afraid of could be approached with the right technique. Yuan Ying was standing completely still, eyes wide, watching me with an expression I recognized. It was the look people got the first time they saw what the system made possible. The moment when the abstract idea of leveling up connected to the concrete reality of what someone at a higher level actually looked like in motion. Ryan had his arms crossed and his jaw set in the way he had when he was processing something and not yet ready to speak. "Okay," I said. "Come here." --- I left seven zombies on the ground with their legs destroyed — not killed, just immobilized. Limbs cut at the knee, crawling, unable to close distance. The sight of them was bad. I knew that. But bad was what we were working with. I looked at the group. "These ones can't chase you," I said. "They can still bite if you get too close to the head. Stay out of reach of the mouth and you're fine." I held out the spare blade to Zhang Li. "You first." She took it. Looked at the zombie on the ground in front of her. It was reaching toward her with both arms, mouth working, the low sound of something that had once been a person still trying to fulfill a function it no longer understood. Her jaw tightened. She stepped forward and hit it. The strike was off — she put it into the shoulder rather than the skull. The zombie kept moving. "Again," I said. "Head. The system only registers a kill when the brain stops." She hit it again. Better angle. The zombie went still and the soft pulse of light — barely visible in the afternoon sun but there, always there — rose from the body and moved into her. She stepped back. Breathing faster than usual but controlled. "How do you feel?" I asked. "Shaky," she said. Then, a second later: "But okay." "That's normal. Next one." I worked through the group one at a time. Ryan was the fastest to adapt. He had the physical confidence of someone who had been in real situations before — not combat, but the kind of work that built body awareness and the ability to act under stress.