novelraw Chapter 42 42: Fog Cat
Chapter 42 42: Fog Cat
Leon went almost completely still, as if someone had cut the signal to move. His entire body shifted into a waiting state, attention narrowing to the way the fog breathed, rolling and pulsing around him with an unnatural rhythm, while he listened for anything out of place.
Without the experience he'd absorbed through the Elite Soldier passive, that first strike would've been a death sentence. His real combat history was still shallow, and losing sight of an opponent moving almost as fast as he did would've made predicting the next attack nearly impossible. Especially because this wasn't a mindless zombie, it was a predator that had evolved specifically to hunt.
After that first clash, Leon already knew the oversized cat's speed was dangerously close to his own. And unlike Leon, the beast had a perfect sense of smell, one that turned this fog into an extra sense, an advantage Leon understood all too well as he stood motionless, knees slightly bent, eyes closed.
A minute passed. Then another. He still didn't move.
He listened to everything that reached him, faint claws scraping concrete somewhere out there, the soft drag of movement, even his own breathing as he forced it slower. The longer the silence stretched, the more tension would build on the other side.
And then he heard it.
The telltale hiss of air being split at insane speed, like something large was moving too fast for the fog to close behind it.
Leon's instinct fired before thought.
Black, abyssal feline eyes snapped into existence inches from his face, cold, focused, and a pair of claws shot straight for his throat, perfectly placed to open it in a single motion.
A tiny, almost invisible smile touched Leon's mouth.
Instead of jumping back, he simply shifted his head a fraction to the right, letting the claws miss him by centimeters.
The beast didn't lose momentum. It followed instantly with a rear-leg strike, the swipe ripping through the air with a vicious whistle…
This time, it shrieked.
Leon wasn't there.
And his dagger, guided by instinct and newly-installed experience, drove deep into its neck, tearing through tissues that would've meant instant death for anything normal.
But to his surprise, the beast didn't drop.
It howled and sprang away, trying to vanish into the fog.
"Where do you think you're going…"
Leon's voice was ice as he launched after it in the same moment, activating Darkness Manipulation.
From the blackness beneath the cat's paws, a chain erupted and snapped around one of its hind legs. It slowed the creature for maybe half a second, less, before it tore free.
It was enough.
Leon appeared beside it almost instantly, pushed off the ground, and vaulted onto its back. Both daggers drove down with full force into its skull.
Bone gave way with shocking ease.
The beast's entire body went slack, collapsing onto the concrete with a heavy, lifeless thud, as if all that terrifying speed and power simply drained out of it in an instant.
The fog began to creep back into place.
Leon stood over the corpse, eyes on the system message.
[Essence Record – Kill Confirmed]
[Target: Fog Cat (LVL 22)]
[Reward: +15 AGI | +10 VIT | +5 INT | +90 MANA]
Heat surged through him, far stronger than anything he'd felt from cutting down zombies, like Essence Record was making a point of the difference between mindless mass and a real, evolved predator.
Before the sensation could fade, the system spoke again.
[Level Up: LVL 12 → LVL 13]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
[Level Up: LVL 13 → LVL 14]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
Leon nodded automatically, accepting it with little outward reaction.
Only then did he look down at his two daggers, turning them in his hands. Only now did the line Effective against armored and reinforced targets below Level 40 fully click.
What he'd assumed was system exaggeration turned out to be brutally real, those blades had slid into the beast's skull like he wasn't piercing bone at all, but butter.
He drew a slow breath, surprised less by the numbers than by how different his own strength felt now. He hadn't gained much from the Violet Mutant Marten, but after this, after using his stats properly through Elite Soldier, he could feel a clear leap in how effectively he could apply what he had.
Next to the dead cat, the air rippled.
A familiar gray box formed.
Leon walked over, picked it up, and shoved it into his backpack without hesitation. No lingering. No celebration. The goal hadn't changed, and the fog didn't look like it planned on thinning for him.
He only realized something was off after a few more steps.
The fog, dense and sticky just moments ago, was sinking fast, draining away as if an invisible valve had been opened and it was simply pouring into the ground. More of the campus snapped into view: building outlines, sidewalks, abandoned clutter.
That wasn't normal. Fog like this didn't vanish in minutes.
Leon couldn't know it, but Valeria, walking several steps behind him, giving the dead cat a brief glance, understood immediately. That creature had a specific ability: it could maintain fog within a defined area, literally bleeding it out from its body and the environment to create perfect hunting conditions, cutting off sight and disorienting prey long before the actual strike. With its death, the effect simply stopped being sustained.
Leon kept moving. Even if it felt strange, the last few days had taught him the world wasn't going to explain itself.
Over the next dozen minutes, the road became a string of short, repetitive fights. Leon put down several zombies, some quicker, some slower, without much emotion, until finally, wedged between two buildings, he spotted the familiar low structure of the university pharmacy.
He didn't hesitate.
He accelerated into a run and drove a full-force kick into the door, aiming to go in fast and aggressive before anything inside could react…
At the exact same moment, a shadow launched out of the building toward him.
Long and Deformed. Moving at least twice the speed of a normal pre-apocalypse human.
For anyone else, that would've been instant death.
A weaker evolver probably wouldn't even have registered the danger.
But Leon, Agility as his most developed stat, reacted almost purely on instinct. He stepped back once, using the momentum, and whipped into a half-turn strike, smashing his leg into the incoming shape with full power.
He expected the enemy to fly, shattered by impact.
Instead, the shadow only slid back a single step, as if it had accepted the blow, absorbing it in a way that shouldn't have been possible with that gap in strength.
Leon froze for a fraction of a second.
His Strength was fifty. A kick like that, unleashed without restraint, would've killed a normal human, bones and organs crushed in one motion.
He looked closer.
The shadow straightened, revealing itself fully.
A gigantic rat stood upright on two legs, elongated snout, unnaturally long forelimbs ending in claws, and a pair of red eyes locked on Leon with raw, animal fury, like being stopped was a personal insult.
It let out a guttural squeal, coiled, and lunged again.
Leon snorted, more irritation than tension. After everything he'd already dealt with today, this was sloppy.
In the next instant, he vanished from the rat's view, leaving nothing but a faint disturbance in the air.
To the beast, it was like the human had ceased to exist. Its red eyes caught only empty space…
And before instinct could even scream warning, Leon appeared directly behind it and, without looking, drove a dagger straight into its skull. The blade punched through bone without resistance and sank into the brain.
The rat stiffened for half a second, as if trying to understand what had happened.
Then its body went limp and collapsed, dead, never even getting the chance to comprehend how a man could be in front of it one moment and behind it the next.
Leon stepped back and looked down as the system notification appeared.
[Essence Record – Kill Confirmed]
[Target: Umbra Spine Rat (LVL 18)]
[Reward: +10 STR | +5 VIT]
He nodded automatically, absorbing the boost with almost no visible reaction, his body was already getting used to that sensation.
But something else drew his attention immediately.
Right beside the corpse, the air rippled again.
A scroll appeared.
Leon frowned, moved in, and picked it up carefully. The next system window unfolded at once.