I slowly lowered the door handle of the lab. My heart was thumping against my ribs like a snare drum. Leaving Matt’s corpse, the smell of acid, and that suffocating room behind, I stepped out into the corridor.

  The hallway was silent. But this wasn't a peaceful silence; it was the silence of a graveyard.

  Most of the fluorescent lights had shattered; the few remaining intact ones flickered at irregular intervals, plunging the corridor into light and then back into darkness. The walls... God, the walls were like abstract art paintings painted in blood. The floor tiles were covered with shards of broken glass, torn school bags, stray shoes, and pieces of flesh I didn't want to identify.

  I walked with caution. Stepping on a piece of broken glass and making a sound was the last thing I wanted right now. I didn't know if it was because I had increased my Agility points, but my steps felt lighter than before. My body was more balanced, my movements more fluid.

  I approached the large window at the end of the corridor. It looked out over the school yard and the main street.

  The moment I looked outside, my breath caught in my throat.

  "This... this isn't a battlefield," I whispered, pressing my hand against the cold surface of the glass. "This is a slaughter."

  The school yard was riddled with craters. The court where students once played basketball was now a graveyard of burning cars and overturned trees. But the truly terrifying thing was the things prowling among the ruins.

  Those who were human-sized like Matt were in the minority. Massive creatures, at least three meters tall and resembling armored insects, were crushing cars like tin cans. In the sky, beings that were a cross between a bat and a human were snatching up fleeing people and tearing them apart on the spot.

  "If I had encountered one of those things instead of Matt..."

  The mere thought made me nauseous. I was lucky. Incredibly lucky. If I had been trapped in that lab with one of those massive creatures, neither Hardened Skin nor anything else could have saved me. I would have just been lunch for those monsters.

  I turned my eyes from the yard toward the street.

  Right then, I saw a silhouette leaping over the school’s perimeter wall. This was a monster, but it was different from the others. It had no torso. It consisted only of a single, massive, bloodshot eye and two long, muscular, hairy legs protruding from beneath it. It resembled a "Beholder" but was much more repulsive.

  The creature stopped in its tracks. That massive pupil rolled from side to side, scanning the surroundings like a radar.

  And then it looked up. Directly at me.

  Our eyes met.

  The fear I felt in that moment was much sharper, much more primal than when Matt attacked me. There was no intelligence in that eye, only pure malice.

  "It saw me," I thought, throwing myself under the window in a panic. I leaned my back against the wall, covering my mouth with my hand. "It definitely saw me. With those legs, it would take seconds to climb up here."

  My heart was beating so fast I feared the creature might hear it. It might come after me. I have to be sure. If it's coming, I have to run.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I waited one, two, three seconds. There was no sound. No sound of climbing, no sound of breaking glass... nothing.

  Summoning my courage, I raised my head ever so slightly above the windowsill. I would only look out of the corner of my eye.

  I froze at the sight.

  The creature was there. But it wasn't moving. Because right in the center of its massive eye, a glowing steel sword, nearly a meter long, had been impaled.

  And there was someone standing on top of the creature's slimy eyeball, gripping the hilt of the sword.

  It was a human. He wore a long black coat, his face covered in blood and a black liquid. The wind whipped his coat around him. The creature’s corpse hadn't collapsed; it was just frozen in place, as if this being on top of it was keeping it upright.

  "Did he... kill that thing alone?"

  An ordinary human couldn't do this. It was obvious from every inch of that creature that it was powerful.

  Right then, the figure in the black coat, as if sensing he was being watched, snapped his head upward.

  Those cold, ice-blue eyes in the middle of his bloodied face found me, looking out from the small window on the third floor.

  My breath stopped.

  I had been afraid when I locked eyes with the monster. But when I locked eyes with this man... what I felt wasn't fear. It was a mixture of the respect and dread a prey feels for a predator. There was no mercy in those eyes. No humanity. There was only the potential to kill. The blood on his face wasn't his, and his stance looked far more terrifying than the monster beneath him.

  Reflexively, I crouched back down. My knees were shaking.

  "What was that?" My hands were trembling involuntarily. "Was he a human? Or another monster disguised as one?"

  I waited there for a few seconds, maybe a minute. I didn't dare look again. Finally, when my curiosity overcame my fear, I peeked out again, trembling.

  The man was gone. There was only the corpse of the giant eye monster, collapsed on the ground like a deflated balloon where the sword had been pulled out.

  I leaned my back against the wall again and let out a deep breath.

  "I'm not alone," I whispered. "There are others who have gained powers like mine."

  This should have been good news, right? Humanity was resisting. But that feeling of unease wouldn't go away. That man's gaze...

  "I'm not naive enough to think every human will be good," I said to myself. Scenarios I’d read in web novels rushed into my mind. PKs (Player Killers), those who hunt other humans just for pleasure or power, those playing god with the power-drunkenness brought by chaos...

  "If I encounter someone with ill intent..." I thought, staring into the darkness of the corridor. "And if this person is stronger than me... I could have an end much worse than encountering a monster. Monsters just kill. Humans, on the other hand..."

  Before I could finish my thought, I heard the sound that tore through the silence.

  "HELP ME!"

  A scream. A high-pitched, sharp, and terrified girl's scream.

  The sound wasn't coming from very far away. From upstairs... probably from one of the classrooms on the floor above.

  My body moved without my permission. I lunged to my feet and took a step toward the stairs. This was a reflex. A reflex instilled in me by civilization, morality, and the way I was raised. Someone is in danger. Help.

  But then I stopped.

  My foot remained suspended in the air, then I slowly pressed it to the ground but didn't move forward.

  "Should I help her?"

  That cold, analytical voice in my mind kicked in. What if it's a trap? What if someone like that man in the black coat is using someone as bait to lure people in? Or what if there’s a monster next to that girl that’s too powerful for me to handle?

  "I just killed Matt," I reminded myself. "My own best friend. Am I going to risk my life for someone I don't know at all now?"

  The thought scared me. I wasn't scared of the monsters, I was scared of myself. The damn apocalypse hadn't even been going on for an hour. An hour ago, I was an ordinary student thinking about a math exam. Now, I was hearing someone's scream and doing a cost-benefit analysis of "Is it worth going?"

  "Has human life become worthless to me already?"

  I put my hand to my chest. My heart was still beating. My blood was still running warm. The System calling me a "Genetic Abomination" shouldn't mean I was actually a freak. At least not mentally.

  "No," I said, gritting my teeth. "I'm not an idiot, but I'm not a monster either. Not yet."

  I felt my Agility points. I was fast. I was silent. I didn't have to go and barge in headfirst. I would just... I would just look. If the situation was too bad, if there was nothing I could do, I would turn back. But at least I had to go and see what was happening.

  "This is a test," I said, gripping the handrail of the stairs. "A test for my humanity."