After getting out of the cars, the team fanned out, moving with precision and caution. Yvalna, on the other hand, looked relaxed and nonchalant, sticking behind the whole group, hands in her jacket pockets like she was out on a lazy stroll.

Maya walked beside Derek, fiddling with her fingers nervously. Derek could even hear the sound of her heartbeat—it was hammering like a drumline in his ear.

"I have to earn Contribution Points fast. I need to get her a weapon… maybe something ice-based. And the others too… they'll need gear if they're going to keep up."

This training run was the best chance to figure out what these people could do.

It did not take them long to find a horde of Giant steel-toothed Rats, who were gnawing on the corpses of beasts and men.

Maya's face turned green immediately.

" Appraisal "

[ Giant Steel Teeth| Class D|]

[ Normal rats that the mutation has infected, because they ate the corpses of corpses and the presence of mana]

" As expected", Derek said, shaking his head.

Their whiskers shook fiercely as they noticed the group, and their eyes turned bloodshot. In an instant, the rats let out high-pitched screeches and charged, their grotesquely muscled limbs twitching with unnatural strength. Dozens of them—each the size of a boar, with jagged metallic teeth glinting in the fading light—swarmed across the cracked asphalt like a tide of armoured doom.

Derek took a deep breath.

White lightning crackled along his spine, and a second later—FWOOOM.A sleek, ghost-white exosuit materialised over his body. Plates snapped into place like puzzle pieces, locking around his limbs with a pneumatic hiss. The Tempest Walker.

He drew his twin blades smoothly, both humming with soft, crackling energy.

"Okay, uh…" Derek blinked behind his visor. "Everyone just… do your thing? I guess?"

The Squad gave him a look.

Andrew raised an eyebrow. "That's… the plan?"

"Yeah," Derek muttered. "Isn't it obvious?"

It wasn't.

But after what they'd seen Derek do earlier, no one questioned it. They moved, and they were also eager to test their improved strength.

Andrew rushed forward, shield up, barking silent hand signals. Felix activated a kinetic boost module on his boots and rocketed toward the first rat, leaving a scorched trail across the concrete. His plasma-edged blade swung in an arc, cleaving a rat clean through the ribs. Its body hit the wall, smoking.

Evelyn, calm and composed, raised one hand. With an effortless flick of her wrist, a cluster of rats levitated, their legs flailing mid-air. She clenched her fist, and every floating rat crumpled like tin cans under a hydraulic press. Blood rained.

Maya hesitated. One of the smaller rats twitched, sniffed the air, and lunged at her, metal teeth bared.

Derek's leg tensed, ready to move.

But before he could—

SHHHRRCKK!

Maya shrieked and reflexively threw her hand out. A sharp spike of translucent ice exploded from her palm, impaling the rat through the snout and pinning it to the pavement like a morbid flag.

She blinked at her hand. "Did I just…?"

"Yup," Derek said, pausing mid-swing. "Cool."

Further back, Yvalna yawned so loudly it nearly echoed.

"You could help, you know," Derek called out.

Yvalna groaned like someone waking up too early. "Ugh. Fine. I'll stretch."

She raised a single finger.

WHUP-WHUP-WHUP—

The air twisted. Then collapsed inward like an invisible black hole forming in the centre of the street.

BOOM.

A silent shockwave detonated. Rats were flattened, liquified mid-charge. The ground cracked beneath the pressure. A dozen beasts were erased in a single blink.

Derek flinched. "Okay… that's probably enough from her."

Then it was his turn.

He stepped into the chaos, twin blades alight with jagged arcs of lightning. His Tempest Walker suit responded to every twitch of his muscle. A rat lunged—he spun mid-air, cleaving it diagonally. Another tried to flank him—he reversed grip and plunged a blade backwards, impaling it through the skull.

Then three came at once. Derek crouched, exosuit legs compressing, and launched himself skyward.

"Tempest Fury"

Lightning erupted from his back, snapping across the sky like divine whips. He came crashing down in the centre of the horde with a shockwave blast that vaporised the nearest rats in a dome of electricity.

He didn't have a plan.

He didn't need one.

He was the storm.

Every movement was instinctive. Brutal. His boots skidded, blades blurred, and every swing left arcs of lightning scorched into the pavement.

Within minutes, it was over.

Acidic blood hissed as it ate through broken concrete. Dead rats twitched in silence. The air smelled of ozone and charred fur.

Andrew approached, shield resting on his shoulder. "Thirty-four confirmed kills. No casualties."

"Cool," Derek said, shaking blood off his blade. "System … do we get points for this?"

[Mutated Rat Beast ( E- E-Class)- Eliminated x14][Elite Rat Brute ( E+ Rank)- Eliminated x12][ You've gained: 400 EXP| 400 system credits| 40 Mana stones| + 15 Tempest Fury XP]

"The Exp gained is getting smaller and smaller. At this rate, it will take months to reach Level 24"

Maya jogged over, eyes still wide. "That was… intense."

"You did great," Derek said. "You froze a rat to death. Honestly, that's cooler than what I did."

Maya blushed. "Thanks."

Yvalna stretched her arms, spine cracking like firewood. "She didn't scream. That's already a passing grade."

"...Thanks?" Maya said, unsure if it was a compliment or a threat.

Derek gazed into the distance, where screeching and roaring sounds were approaching. Under his feet, he could feel the subtle vibration of the Earth.

He looked at Yvalna, who also had her brows raised.

"More rats?" Felix asked, cleaning blood off his blade.

Derek checked the direction. "Worse, probably."

He turned to the squad and raised a hand. "Uh… take five? We'll go in a bit."

No speech. No rallying cry. Just him, in an exosuit that looked like it belonged to a sci-fi demigod, casually giving the world's chillest battlefield command.

And the Squad?

They nodded.

Not because he was a leader.

But because they'd just watched him clear a field with lightning, without breaking a sweat.

And somehow…It was working.

The group settled for a moment in the remains of the battlefield. Felix flopped down on a broken street bench, wiping rat gore off his visor with what looked like the sleeve of someone else's jacket. Evelyn conjured a small levitating bubble of water and floated it over to Maya, who gratefully used it to wash the blood off her hands. Yvalna sat on the hood of a flipped car and opened a bag of chips she did not get from Derek's supply cache.

"From the sounds alone, Derek could tell: thinking the monsters were gone had been a mistake"

"Too many," he muttered. But he was not worried, if he could not fight them, he could just ran, he promised to protect the city, but he had no moral obligation to face a monster horde, outside of it being a system mission.

" Now, the main issue is what could have caused all these monsters to come out of hiding?" Derek thought.

" Only a monster on the level of the Broodmother or higher could cause this beast horde" After thinking for a while, he issued an order.

" Guys, let's retreat "

No one said a thing as the three SUVS headed back into the inner city, despite the efficiency of the builder bots and the construction workers, expecting the city walls to be built in half a day was not possible.

Derek had to think of a way out of this situation.

Just then, he received a call from Mayor Harkland.

" Sir, we have a situation," he said in a tense tone.

Derek's brow furrowed, and he felt everyone in the car staring at him.

" What is it? " He asked calmly.

" One of the shelters was attacked "

" What...I thought we had everywhere patrolled, how did a monster sneak in?"

" No one can tell what happened, it's best if you look at the footage '

The screen flickered. Mayor Harkland's face vanished, replaced by grainy, jittery footage from the shelter's internal surveillance.

At first, everything looked… normal.

People huddled in corners. Volunteers distributing food. Tired faces, restless children. Then—

One of the volunteers turned. Their body twitched, just once. Then it folded in on itself—skin melting like wax, bones cracking into new shapes. A mouth opened far too wide.

It wasn't a scream. It was a signal.

A second later, three others in the crowd transformed. Limbs elongated. Eyes turned pitch black. A woman with a baby suddenly shrieked, the baby sprouting fangs and latching onto her neck like a leech. Blood sprayed. Panic erupted.

The feed cut out.

Derek's knuckles whitened around the armrest.

Shapeshifters.

"That's a new problem," he muttered.

Back in the SUV, the Genesis Squad sat stiffly, eyes glued to the black screen. Felix looked visibly sick. Evelyn crossed her arms, her usually unreadable face tight with concern. Even Yvalna blinked, her laid-back demeanour slipping a few degrees toward interest.

Andrew broke the silence. "How long before the outside horde hits?"

"Thirty minutes," Derek replied. "Give or take."

"And the shelter?"

"Already in lockdown. They can't tell who's who. Soldiers are in a standoff with terrified civilians, and monsters are blending in."

Andrew exhaled. "Great. Trapped between a wall of rats and a bunch of werewolf liars."

Maya paled. "We can't fight a war on two fronts."

"Nope," Derek said. "But we might have to."

He leaned back in his seat, fingers drumming against the window.

Think. Think.

He'd planned for monster attacks. He'd planned for sabotage. He'd even accounted for losing power or running low on mana.

But not shapeshifting freaks playing Among Us in a fallout bunker.

"System," he said under his breath. "Any analysis on that footage?"

[Analysing…]

[Lifeform Identified: Mimic Beasts – Variant Type]

[Classification: C+ to B-Rank]

[Description: Capable of absorbing memories and behaviour from consumed humans. High-level mimics can replicate speech, habits, and minor personality traits. Detection via surface scan is impossible.]

[Note: They act in coordinated clusters. A signal or a trigger—usually auditory—initiates transformation.]

Derek's eyes narrowed in thought.

Evelyn leaned forward. "We can't let them stay there. If even one escapes and blends into the other shelters…"

"They won't," Derek said. "I'll handle it."

"You're going into the shelter?" Maya asked, voice shaky.

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