Once again, Grace was reminded of just how savage humanity could become.

  Just a few hours ago, these people were probably like her—spending time with their families, working while dreaming about the end of their shift.

  But now?

  Now, their faces twisted with desperation, their eyes gleamed with something primal, and their hands reached for her, for Samantha, for Adam.

  There was an on-and-off switch to humanity’s brutality.

  And it had just been flicked.

  One moment, people were civilized. The next, they were animals.

  Even her.

  Grace could feel it crawling under her skin, pulsing in her veins—the urge to hurt them.

  The frustration. The exhaustion. The Game had stripped her down to something raw and violent.

  She wanted to kill these men. All of them.

  But then, as her gaze flicked to Samantha, she felt a cold pang of dread. She didn’t even want to think about what this was doing to her daughter’s mind.

  And really, of all the people she had met in this hellhole, the only one who still seemed to hold onto some semblance of sanity was—

  Adam.

  And right now?

  Right now, he had half a shovel buried in his thigh and a wooden stake lodged in his neck, while two men struggled to hold him down.

  "What the—!?"

  The veteran creep gripping the shovel blinked, stunned. He had expected Adam to scream, collapse, beg.

  Instead, Adam just glared.

  "What are you doing, Christine!? Stab him again!" one of the men restraining Adam barked. He was already using all his weight to force Adam down, but it wasn’t enough.

  Adam wasn’t budging.

  The IBAA had thoroughly documented just how strong veteran creeps became.

  If a creep leveled up for the first time and put their point into Strength, they would become twice as strong. Five points? Five times stronger than before.

  That meant that those who had been strong before the Game started would become monsters once they leveled up.

  Typically, the weakest Heroes should have been as strong as ten men—the points required to evolve into one was ten, after all.

  But that wasn’t the case at all.

  Records had shown that the jump in power from veteran creep to Hero was, at minimum, a 50% boost.

  The weakest Hero ever recorded was fifteen times stronger than a normal human.

  And Adam?

  Right now, he was three times stronger.

  "What are you waiting for!? Stab him again!"

  Christine trembled, tears spilling from her eyes as she yanked the stake from Adam’s neck.

  She wailed as she lifted it again—

  But Adam finally moved.

  With one sharp yank, he dragged one of the men holding him, using him as a human shield.

  "Argh!" The man screamed as the stake punched through his shoulder. His grip slackened, and that was all Adam needed.

  In one pull, Adam’s hand shot out, gripping his attacker’s throat.

  Then, with a sickening twist, he snapped the man’s neck.

  The others froze.

  Adam let out a slow, measured breath before hurling the man’s limp body toward Grace and Samantha.

  "Stab him! He should still be alive! Quick!"

  "What—!?"

  Grace barely had time to process what was happening. But Adam didn’t wait for her.

  With his now-free hand, he shoved Christine away and yanked his other arm, dragging the second woman still holding onto him. His fingers closed around the hilt of his sword, grabbing it from his locked arm. Without hesitation, he drove it straight into her leg.

  The woman shrieked, her body twisting in agony. But Adam wasn’t done. He ripped the blade out and plunged it into her other thigh before throwing her toward Grace and Samantha.

  "What have you done!?"

  The veteran creep finally snapped out of his shock. His hands clenched around the shovel, and with a roar, he swung it straight for Adam’s skull.

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  But Adam blocked it. With his arm. His bare arm. His bone snapped in half, blood splattering across the floor. But the shovel didn’t go all the way through, and Adam—he didn’t even flinch. His attention was already back on Christine.

  With a single, brutal plunge, he drove his sword through the base of her neck. The blade tore through bone, piercing clean through to the other side. He gritted his teeth, muscles straining as he lifted her limp body on the sword, pulling her closer. And then—he yanked the sword free and shoved her toward Grace and Samantha.

  The veteran creep’s hands trembled as he gripped the shovel tighter.

  "How—" His voice wavered.

  He had just broken Adam’s arm—how was he still moving? But Adam didn’t give him time to figure it out. With inhuman speed, his hand shot forward and grabbed the shovel.

  "HOW!?" the man roared in disbelief. His mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing, but he didn’t let himself be stunned for long. He yanked the shovel back from Adam—

  A mistake.

  Adam used that momentum to drive his sword straight into his heart.

  The veteran creep gasped, his mouth opening, but instead of words, blood spilled out. His hands clawed at Adam’s throat, fingers twitching with fading strength. And then—his grip loosened.

  At the same time, he released both the shovel and Adam’s neck. Before he could even crash to the floor, Adam hurled him toward Grace.

  Right onto her waiting sword.

  Grace gritted her teeth, her fingers clenched so tightly around the hilt that her knuckles turned white.

  As the warmth of the man's blood flowed over her hands, she didn’t apologize. Instead, she twisted the blade. The sickening sound made her stomach lurch, but she refused to look away.

  She held firm until—silence. His final breath ghosted against her skin. She yanked the sword free, letting his body crumple at her feet.

  All of this—from the moment Adam had been pinned and stabbed to the moment the veteran creep died—had happened in mere seconds. And yet, to everyone involved, it felt like an eternity.

  Adam’s breath was heavy as his gaze flickered toward Grace. She had collapsed to her knees beside the body, Samantha clinging to her, sobbing.

  …And then he saw the blood on Samantha’s tiny hands. It wasn’t just Grace who had struck the final blow at the enemy creeps.

  Adam’s jaw tightened. What… a cruel world.

  Why… why do children need to go through these things? Why should they experience the things I did?

  For a moment, his thoughts drowned him. But then, he shook them off and stepped toward the mother and daughter.

  Adam was about to help Grace up when she suddenly raised a finger and tapped at the air.

  "Oh…" Adam muttered as he realized what was happening. "Did you… level up?"

  Grace didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she clenched her teeth as her veins bulged and etched across her skin. For a few agonizing seconds, she stood there, body trembling—until the shiver finally eased. With a long, deep sigh, she straightened up on her own.

  She sniffled, wiping the tears from her cheeks, but in doing so, only smeared the blood on her face. "I… I chose to increase my Strength."

  "How about you, Samantha?" Adam knelt and gently took Samantha’s hands, wiping them clean. "Did someone talk to you? Are there numbers floating in front of you right now?"

  Samantha sniffled, her lips trembling before she shook her head. To be sure, Adam glanced at the halo above her head—there was no change in its brightness, unlike Grace’s.

  "Did… did I do wrong?" Samantha stammered, "But those people… they hurt you. They would have hurt Mommy and me."

  Adam and Grace both wanted to tell her that it was wrong—that hurting and killing people was never the answer.

  But in this world, saying that would make them the ones who were wrong.

  "Of course not," Adam sighed, shaking his head. "You did… what you had to do."

  Still holding Samantha’s hand, he carefully stood up, his gaze shifting toward the corner of the building. The roars and cries on the other side continued endlessly.

  "Now… you just have to do it again."

  Without another word, the three of them started moving, Adam and Grace each holding one of Samantha’s hands. Blood clung to them, painting their skin and clothes, mixing with the dust in the air. The dim, fractured light filtering through the smoke above cast long shadows over them.

  They looked like a perfect portrait of everything wrong with the Game.

  But what awaited them beyond the building? That was something else entirely.

  It was chaos.

  Adam and Grace couldn’t even comprehend what they were looking at. The battlefield was a writhing, tangled mass of bodies—screams and wet, sickening crunches filling the air.

  Bjorn was nowhere to be seen.

  Blood sprayed in every direction. People yanked at each other’s hair, tore at each other’s faces. Some swarmed together to take down a single person, while others accidentally killed members of their own team in their blind frenzy.

  A man near them was repeatedly slamming another’s skull into the ground—though ‘skull’ was a generous term. The head had long since been reduced to pulp, yet the man kept going, his hands slick with blood and bone.

  Perhaps that was true for everyone here. None of them were stopping.

  Grace clenched her jaw, instinct screaming at her to shield Samantha’s eyes from the horror before them. But instead, she gripped her sword.

  She took a deep breath, then let go of Samantha’s hand and stepped back.

  At the same time, Adam handed his sword to Samantha and stepped forward. He didn’t need to say anything to her, she knew what she needed to do.

  Everything was so, so fucked up. But it had to be done.

  Adam stared at Samantha for a few more moments, touching her cheek before placing her between him and Grace.

  A heavy silence fell over them. Then, with one final breath—they marched forward.

  A figure from the Blue Team spotted them first. He charged, swinging a rusted metal pipe toward them with a feral roar.

  Adam stepped in immediately, taking the full force of the blow on his shoulder.

  Adam wrenched the metal pipe from the man’s grip, then grabbed his arm and shoved him back, slamming the back of his head in the process. The moment he hit the ground, unconscious, Samantha let out a scream—then stabbed him.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  It was… fucked up. Truly, irreversibly fucked up.

  But they marched on.

  With the chaos unfolding around them, no one even noticed that Adam’s wounds were healing right before their eyes. He wasn’t looking for a fight, either. He only retaliated, only killed those who tried to kill them first.

  Unfortunately, that meant almost everyone.

  They moved forward, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. Adam took the blows, using himself as a shield, while either Grace or Samantha finished the rest. Grace, with her enhanced Strength, wasn’t standing idly by—she fought, killing those who lunged at them from behind.

  It was brutal. Horrific.

  And then—after what felt like dozens of bodies—

  "Ah!"

  Samantha’s sudden cry snapped both Adam and Grace to attention. "I… I hear the voice!"

  Their eyes met, tension crackling between them. Without hesitation, they dragged Samantha to the side—pressing into the shadows of a nearby building where the fighting was less intense.

  Grace crouched in front of her daughter while Adam kept watch. "I need you to choose Agility, okay?" she said, her voice firm but gentle. "Do you know what the letters look like?"

  Samantha nodded hesitantly, her eyes darting around as she struggled to make sense of the glowing words before her. Grace had already made the decision—Strength would be useless to a child her size. Even if Samantha increased it, a grown adult would still overpower her.

  "Do you see it?" Grace pressed, keeping her voice steady. "It—"

  "Grace!"

  Before she could finish, she felt a sudden force yank her away.

  Not just her—Adam had grabbed Samantha too.

  And then—they were flying.

  Grace barely had time to process what was happening before she hit the ground, rolling to a stop. And then—

  A crash.

  The sound was deafening.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she looked up—an entire car had just slammed into the wall.

  And Adam…

  Adam was trapped between.

  "Adam!?"