THE ZOMBIE SYSTEM-Chapter 31: The First Attack

Follow curr𝒆nt nov𝒆ls on fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com.

The skeletal knight collapsed to one knee, rusted blade wedged deep in the mid-boss's throat.

The hulking beast—a scaled, centaur-shaped chimera stitched with lava-veined flesh—let out a final, choking groan before its body gave out. The molten light in its eyes dimmed to black, the core in its ribcage flickering once before it cracked with a brittle hiss.

Leon lowered his arm.

He didn't speak. He rarely did mid-fight.

The cave trembled around him as the ambient mana from the boss began to destabilize. Loose debris clattered down from the ceiling, the faint shimmer of the dungeon's ward-layer rippling with strain.

His boots crunched over scorched gravel and melted stone as he walked forward, unhurried.

His skeletal knight remained still, one knee pressed into the charred ground, its blade still embedded in the boss's throat. The knight's chestplate hissed, streaked with glowing red gashes from magma strikes absorbed earlier. It twitched once, almost like a breath.

Leon glanced to his left.

The skeletal mage stood with both arms lowered, robes still smoking. One sleeve had been incinerated by a tail swipe, leaving jagged bone beneath. Its staff—twisted metal topped with a cracked opal—radiated faint heat. Sparks of pale green still curled from its fingertips.

"Report," Leon said flatly.

The mage rotated its skull a fraction. Flames sizzled in its empty sockets, flickering once, then again—twice. Two pulses. Minimal loss.

Leon gave a nod.

This boss had been more durable than most—A-rank dungeon cores didn't typically birth monsters with lava attributes this early in the evolution curve. That had made things... messier.

The chimera had charged first. Fast, unpredictable, the molten seams in its skin flaring brighter every time it built up enough pressure to ignite. It had taken all of three seconds to cripple Leon's summoned knight in the opening clash—melting its sword halfway through a block.

Leon had adapted.

He baited it into a dead-end corridor near a collapsed wall—then used the skeletal mage to seal its exit with a blast of unstable frostfire. The explosion hadn't damaged the creature much, but it'd trapped it just long enough.

The knight was the key. Leon had ordered it to feint low and then lock onto the creature's chest—the exposed section just under the left pectoral where the scales were thinner. It had taken four slashes, two broken ribs, and the last intact edge of its melted sword—but the blade had found its mark. Pierced the core. Cracked it open.

Leon stepped past the knight now, reaching the boss's corpse. It still steamed faintly, the scent of scorched sulfur and ash thick in the air. He knelt, brushing away smoldering bone to reveal the core fully.

"Ruined," he muttered.

Too damaged to extract.

He stood again, brushing dust from his palms.

The knight began to rise—shakily. Its movements were uneven now. Damage to its spine—he'd have to repair it before the next run.

The mage limped forward too, one leg clearly fractured. No complaints. No delay.

Leon looked around the dungeon chamber.

Jagged obsidian formations lined the walls. Cracked stone underfoot. The air still pulsed faintly with residual mana.

But something else prickled at the edge of his awareness.

A silence that didn't feel natural.

Too heavy. Too intentional.

He turned his head slightly. Not fast. Just enough.

Then, loud enough to echo across the empty chamber, he said:

"Come out."

Nothing.

"I hate cowards," he added, louder now, his tone cutting like stone. "Especially the kind that hide and wait for others to do the heavy lifting."

Still nothing.

But now the air tasted different.

Stale.

Staged.

Leon tilted his head. His fingers twitched at his side. The knight shifted its stance. The mage's staff began to pulse with stored heat.

He didn't smile.

Didn't flinch.

He just waited—calmly.

Because he knew what came next.

Silence.

Then—clicks. Subtle, calculated. Like stone grinding under pressure.

The air buckled.

Five shadows shimmered into existence at once, slipping out of visual concealment with a rippling distortion field that warped the very light around them. Null-field tech—expensive, illegal in most zones, but perfect for ambush.

Leon didn't need to see the insignias to know who sent them.

But he saw them anyway.

Each operative wore high-collared black combat coats, reinforced at the joints, stitched with the blood-red insignia of the ARES Guild over the chest. No names. No ranks. Just the mark. One of them—a tall woman with short platinum hair—already had her rifle raised. The barrel pulsed with anti-spirit enchantments meant to unravel necrotic constructs on contact.

Another operative had both hands outstretched, chanting under his breath as a glowing sigil began to scribe itself into the ground beneath Leon's boots—a necromantic seal, designed to snare, bind, and rupture summoning threads in under two seconds.

No one spoke.

No warnings. No declarations. No mercy.

They were professionals.

Trained.

Efficient.

Leon didn't blink.

The sigil surged.

The air around him buckled—nullification field snapping into place, collapsing the ambient mana. A dome of shimmering blue light shot upward, locking down the ritual zone like a prison of light.

But Leon—

—had already moved.

Too slow.

Always too slow.

He side-stepped the radius before the seal could finish. His coat flared, boots scraping sharp across obsidian glass as he dove behind a jagged crystalline outcrop—one of the many shattered spires left behind from the earlier boss fight.

A heartbeat later, the first barrage screamed through the air—six bolts of compressed mana lit up the cavern, punching divots into the stone where he'd been standing seconds before.

"Knight," Leon said under his breath.

His skeletal knight surged forward, armor half-melted, sword grating against the floor as it leapt from cover toward the nearest operative.

The riflewoman pivoted.

Fired.

The shot caught the knight clean in the chest—spirit-breaker round—the bone cracked, but the construct didn't stop.

Behind her, Leon's skeletal mage raised a hand.

Pale-green fire bloomed.

The hound leapt from the blast.

It had been hidden—released a moment before the null seal locked in. A twin-headed undead beast, half fire, half bleached bone, erupted from the side chamber of the room and tore into the riflewoman with a burst of feral speed.

She screamed—cut short.

The glyph caster spun, redirecting the necro-seal to trap the hound.

Bad decision.

Leon was already behind him.

A whisper of movement.

A flick of his wrist.

One shot. Silent. Precise.

A compact mana round punched through the glyph caster's shoulder—armor flared, shattered, and the spell structure collapsed mid-channel. The seal flickered, hissed, and died.

Leon didn't stop moving.

The sniper—another attacker—took high ground, scrambling onto a narrow ridge of black stone to gain visual advantage. He raised his rifle again, breath held, steady aim—

Leon snapped his fingers.

The flamehound surged straight up the ridge, claws tearing stone.

The sniper fired—

—hit only smoke.

Leon rolled past two others trying to intercept, his coat catching a glancing blade.

One attacker raised a tower shield to block his path.

Leon threw a flashbomb into the man's visor.

The room exploded white.

Screams. Sparks. Metal on bone.

The skeletal mage launched a blast of kinetic force into the shield bearer's flank, toppling him sideways into the spike-lined wall.

The last two attackers regrouped quickly—one activated a gravity tether, the other a chain rune to lock down movement in mid-air.

Leon didn't fight fair.

He dropped flat, skidded low under the tether as it cracked the space above him, then called up a narrow summon—

—Bladewraith.

A lean, jagged humanoid construct, all bone-blades and hexed steel, shimmered to life behind the tether-caster and impaled him from back to front in one clean motion.

The man gargled and dropped.

Leon turned to the last attacker, just as the man lunged with a reinforced baton, aiming for his temple.

Leon caught the strike on his forearm, twisted, and brought an elbow down into the man's throat—crunch—then seized the weapon from his stunned grip and slammed it across his jaw.

The man collapsed.

Thirty-seven seconds.

Four bodies down. One still breathing.

Leon walked across the smoking field, footsteps slow and deliberate.

The last ARES elite tried to crawl away—face bloodied, one eye swollen shut, leg twisted beneath him. His belt of artifacts lay shattered nearby. A puddle of black blood pooled under his ribs.

Leon knelt beside him.

His voice, when it came, was quiet.

Too quiet.

"You tell Tobias Virell..." he said, brushing a shard of glass from the man's cheek, "...if he wants to kill me, he better stop sending house pets."

The man tried to speak. Blood bubbled at his lips. Nothing came out.

Leon stood.

"Save your strength."

He wasn't done.

Leon stood.

The fight was over, but the lesson wasn't taught yet.

He reached down, grabbed the man by the collar of his reinforced coat, and dragged him—effortless, one-handed. The wounded operative coughed blood, limp and barely conscious, his boots leaving a red trail along the jagged stone.

They passed the corpse of the centaur-chimera without a glance.

The dungeon was still shifting—walls creaking, the core destabilizing in quiet decay—but Leon moved like it was a sidewalk.

Through the collapsing antechamber. Past his undead, who now stood still—waiting, silent. The skeletal knight gave a low, metallic bow as Leon passed.

He didn't acknowledge it.

He kept dragging.

**

Outside, the transport was waiting. A small rune-marked hovervan used by dungeon clear teams—half-chartered, half-stolen. No one stopped him.

Not with that look in his eye.

He threw the operative into the back like trash.

And drove.

**

It took less than an hour to reach the ARES Guild's primary branch—a fortified tower of black and red glass jutting into the skyline like a blade. Armed guards flanked the front doors, their helms shaped like wolves. Inside, everything gleamed.

Marble floors. Biometric walls. Tracked movement.

The woman behind the reception desk looked up, already speaking. "I'm sorry, sir, but unless you have an appointme—"

Leon stepped into the center of the polished lobby, dropped the broken operative on the tile, and said—loudly:

"Tobias Virell!"

Every head in the room turned.

The man on the floor moaned once, barely.

Leon's voice didn't rise, but it cut clean through the building like a blade.

"If you want to kill me, Tobias, at least do it right. Don't send me your weaklings. Send me someone with teeth."

Silence.

Receptionists frozen.

Security unmoving, unsure.

The man's body lay twitching on the pristine floor, blood slowly pooling under his cheek.

Leon didn't wait.

Didn't explain.

Didn't look back.

He turned. Walked through the lobby. Pushed open the front doors.

And left.