The dust of the collapsed tunnel clung to Kai's lungs like a shroud. The planetary sirens, now joined by the sharper, more urgent wails of Undercity breach alarms, created a cacophony that vibrated in his teeth. He stumbled out of the service corridor into a wider Undercity thoroughfare, a scene ripped from the worst war holos he'd ever seen.
Chaos reigned. Lumen-strips flickered erratically or were shattered, casting the street in jagged shadows. People screamed, running in blind panic, tripping over discarded belongings and debris shaken loose by the Shield instability. Plumes of acrid smoke rose from ruptured conduits. The air crackled with tension, thick with ozone and fear. Distant, heavy impacts echoed – not collapsing structures, but something *hitting* the Undercity levels from above.
*They're here.* The thought was ice in Kai's veins. His sabotage had worked too well. The Enders had exploited the Shield's momentary weakness.
**>DETECTING EXTRATERRESTRIAL BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURES.**
**>DESIGNATION: ENDER.**
**>THREAT LEVEL: VARIABLE.**
**>PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE.**
**>SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: NEUTRALIZE ENDER THREATS.**
**>REWARD: EXP PER THREAT NEUTRALIZED.**
**>BASIC TIER ENDER: 100 EXP.**
The System's crimson text sliced through the panic, cold and calculating. *100 EXP.* Exactly what he needed to reach Level 2. The implication was horrifyingly clear: the System wanted him to kill. To hunt Enders amidst this carnage.
A deafening *CRUMPH!* shook the street a block away. A section of the high ceiling buckled inward, showering ferrocrete and twisted metal. Through the gaping hole, silhouetted against the sickly greenish light filtering down from the poisoned sky above, Kai saw it. Not a ship, but a *pod*. Organic-looking, sleek, and wet, like a giant seed coated in obsidian slime. It slammed into the street, crushing a ramshackle market stall and sending terrified onlookers scattering.
The pod split open with a wet, tearing sound. Out clambered the Ender.
Kai's breath hitched. He'd seen holos, grainy and distant. Seeing one up close was different. Nightmare made flesh. It stood roughly humanoid, maybe seven feet tall, but its limbs were too long, jointed in ways that defied human anatomy. Its skin was a shifting, chitinous black, absorbing the dim light. It had no discernible face, just a smooth, featureless dome where a head should be, pulsating faintly with a sickly internal light. Four multi-jointed arms ended in vicious, serrated claws that scraped against the ferrocrete floor with a sound like knives on bone. It moved with unnatural, jerky grace, surveying the chaos.
**>ANALYZE: ENDER - BASIC TIER SCOUT/RAIDER.**
**>THREAT LEVEL: HIGH (Relative to User)**
**>SHATTERPOINTS: Primary Sensory Node (Head Dome), Joints (Elbows/Knees/Hip), Bio-Plasmic Core Cavity (Upper Thorax).**
**>WEAKNESSES: Susceptible to high-energy discharges, kinetic trauma focused on joints/core. Limited sensory range beyond motion/heat.**
*High threat.* But *Basic Tier*. The weakest. And the System highlighted its weaknesses in pulsing crimson overlays. The head dome pulsed brightest. *Sensory Node.* Disable that, maybe it couldn't perceive him.
Nearby, a Custodian patrol, looking harried and outmatched, opened fire with kinetic rifles. Bullets sparked harmlessly off the Ender's chitinous hide. It whirled, unnervingly fast, and one of its whip-like arms lashed out. A Custodian screamed as serrated claws ripped through his armor and flesh, sending him crashing against a wall. The other Custodians faltered, falling back.
The Ender turned its featureless dome towards the fleeing civilians nearby. It raised a clawed hand, and a crackling sphere of sickly green energy began to coalesce.
"No!" The word tore from Kai's throat, less courage, more raw instinct. He couldn't let it fire into that crowd. He also couldn't ignore the blazing **100 EXP** hovering in his mental interface. Survival and the System's hunger aligned.
He was weaponless except for desperation and his Level 1 tools. He scanned the street frantically. Shatterpoint highlighted a loose, heavy pipe nearby, similar to the one he'd used before. He darted, grabbing it. The Ender's dome swiveled slightly towards his movement.
*Sensory Node. Motion and heat.* Kai forced himself to stop moving abruptly, pressing against the cold wall of a building, heart hammering. The Ender's dome hesitated, the energy sphere pulsing. It seemed confused by his sudden stillness.
*Analyze. Shatterpoint.* The head dome glowed fiercely red. *Kinetic trauma.* He needed a weapon that hit hard. The pipe was heavy, but crude. He saw a discarded metal toolbox near the fallen Custodian. Inside, amidst scattered tools, was a heavy sledgehammer. Perfect.
Taking a breath, Kai moved. Not towards the Ender, but in a wide, fast arc, keeping low, using panicked civilians and wreckage as cover. The Ender's dome tracked him sporadically, its attention divided between him and the easier prey. Kai reached the toolbox, grabbed the sledgehammer. It was brutally heavy, straining his muscles.
The Ender finished coalescing its energy sphere and hurled it not at the crowd, but *at him*. Kai threw himself sideways. The green sphere impacted where he'd been standing, exploding with concussive force and corrosive sizzle, eating into the ferrocrete. The shockwave knocked him off his feet.
He scrambled up, coughing. The Ender was closing in, its long strides eating up the distance, claws raised. Kai had seconds. He raised the sledgehammer, not to swing wildly, but to *thrust*. The System screamed the Shatterpoint location. He focused all his will, all his fear, all his newly awakened destructive potential, on that single, pulsating point on the smooth head dome.
As the Ender lunged, claws descending, Kai stepped *into* the attack, ignoring the terror screaming in his mind. He drove the pointed end of the sledgehammer forward like a spear, putting every ounce of his body weight behind it, aiming precisely for the center of the crimson glow.
*CRACK-THUNK!*
The impact jarred his arms to the shoulders. The sound wasn't of metal on metal, but like hitting dense, rotten wood. The Ender shuddered violently. Its featureless dome fractured, spiderweb cracks spreading from the impact point, leaking a viscous, dark ichor. The sickly internal light flickered wildly. It let out a soundless scream Kai felt rather than heard – a psychic pulse of agony and rage that made his vision swim. It staggered back, claws flailing blindly.
**>CRITICAL HIT! SHATTERPOINT EXPLOITED!**
**>TARGET DISORIENTED!**
Kai didn't hesitate. Survival instinct, honed by the Undercity and now amplified by the System, took over. He wrenched the sledgehammer free, ignoring the dark ichor spraying his tunic. The Ender was reeling, its sensory input shattered. Kai circled, finding the next clearest Shatterpoint glowing on its upper thorax – the **Bio-Plasmic Core Cavity**.
He swung the sledgehammer in a wide, two-handed arc. Not a thrust this time, but a crushing blow fueled by terror and the desperate need for those 100 EXP. The heavy head connected squarely with the pulsing crimson target on the Ender's chest.
*CRUNCH-SPLATTER!*
Chitinous plates caved inward. Dark ichor and strange, glowing green viscera exploded outwards. The Ender convulsed, its limbs jerking spasmodically. The light in its fractured dome died. It collapsed to the street, a twitching heap of alien horror.
Silence descended momentarily around Kai, broken only by distant screams and sirens. The civilians nearby stared at him, wide-eyed with terror and awe. The surviving Custodians gaped.
**>BASIC TIER ENDER NEUTRALIZED. EXP GAINED: +100.**
**>LEVEL 1 (185/200 EXP)**
**>...**
**>LEVEL UP!**
**>USER LEVEL: 2 (0/300 EXP to Next Level)**
**>SYSTEM INTEGRATION COMPLETE.**
**>AWAKENED ABILITIES DETECTED: LIGHTNING MANIPULATION (PRIMORDIAL), SPATIAL MANIPULATION (PRIMORDIAL).**
**>SYSTEM SYNCHRONIZATION INITIATED...**
The notifications flooded his mind. But before he could process them, power *erupted* within him. It wasn't like the cold hunger of the Destroyer System. This was raw, wild, *elemental*.
Lightning. It crackled along his nerves, snapping at his fingertips. Blue-white arcs jumped from his knuckles to the sledgehammer's metal head with sharp *pops*. The air around him hummed with static, raising the hairs on his arms and head.
Space. A deeper, stranger sensation. He felt the *fabric* around him, the distance between himself and the fallen Ender corpse, the wall behind him. It felt malleable, thin. With a thought born of pure, instinctive panic at the sudden internal storm, he *pushed* against that space behind him.
The world didn't move. *He* didn't move. But the air directly behind him *ripped*. A jagged, vertical tear, barely a foot tall and paper-thin, flickered into existence for a fraction of a second. Through it, Kai saw not the street, but swirling, impossible darkness and distant, cold stars. A freezing wind, smelling of vacuum and ozone, gusted out before the tear snapped shut with a sound like tearing silk. The Custodians and civilians flinched back, eyes wide with new terror.
The lightning sputtered and died on his hands as quickly as it came. The spatial awareness receded, leaving him dizzy. He stared at his hands, then at the spot where the impossible tear had been. *Lightning. Space.* These weren't standard elemental affinities. These were... Primordial. The System's word echoed.
He needed to understand. He needed to *see*. Focusing inward, past the fading adrenaline and the lingering smell of ozone and alien ichor, he willed the Destroyer System interface to show him his status.
The crimson text, clearer now at Level 2, bloomed before his eyes:
**USER: Kai Aris**
**LEVEL: 2 (0/300 EXP to Next Level)**
**SYSTEM: Destroyer**
**AWAKENED ABILITIES:**
* **> Lightning Manipulation (Primordial) - Level 1 (0%)**
* **> Spatial Manipulation (Primordial) - Level 1 (0%)**
**SYSTEM FUNCTIONS:**
* **> Analyze (Target Assessment)**
* **> Shatterpoint (Weakness Detection - Passive)**
* **> Null Field (Energy Dampening - LOCKED - Level 3)**
**DESTRUCTION CAPACITY: 112 Units**
**ATTRIBUTES:**
* **> Strength: 7**
* **> Agility: 12**
* **> Endurance: 9**
**> NOTE: Average Baseline Human Male: 10**
The numbers hit him like a physical blow. *Strength 7. Endurance 9.* Below average. Pathetically weak. No wonder the sledgehammer had strained him. *Agility 12.* Above average. That explained his ability to dodge, to move quickly when survival demanded it. He was fragile, but fast.
*Lightning. Space.* Primordial. The words held weight, mystery, terrifying potential. He'd just torn reality by accident.
Another impact shook the street further down. More screams. More of those wet, tearing sounds as other pods breached the Undercity ceiling. The surviving Custodians were regrouping, eyeing him warily, weapons half-raised. They weren't sure if he was a savior or another monster.
Kai looked down at the sledgehammer, still dripping Ender ichor. He looked at his hands, where lightning had danced and space had bent. He saw the **0/300 EXP** glaring at him. The Destroyer System pulsed within him, a cold counterpoint to the newly awakened storm inside.
He was Level 2. He had power now, real power, wild and dangerous. But his body was weak. The Enders were here. The city was burning. And the System demanded more destruction.
Kai Aris hefted the sledgehammer, the weight a grim comfort. The Null was gone. The Destroyer was evolving. And the hunt for EXP had just become a war. He turned towards the sounds of fresh screams and alien shrieks, the crimson interface his guide, the lightning in his veins his new, terrifying weapon. Level 3 beckoned. 300 units of destruction away. He started walking, then running, into the heart of the invasion. The path was drenched in blood and lit by lightning. He had no choice but to walk it.