Freezing water choked his throat, forcing him to thrash violently against the crushing current.
Gasping, Leo dragged his upper body onto the jagged, mud-slick river stones.
Lungs burning, he vomited a torrent of black, metallic-tasting water onto the grey silt.
Every muscle in his torso convulsed as he struggled to draw air into his starved chest.
Cold wind whipped across the barren riverbank, slicing through his soaked clothes and freezing the water to his skin.
Darkness had finally given way to a dismal, overcast dawn.
Looking around, he realized the subterranean river had spat him out miles away from the sanctuary.
Shattered ruins of old-world bridges hung like broken limbs over the rushing water, their concrete pillars cracked and overgrown with glowing, toxic moss.
He pushed himself up on trembling hands, his vision swimming with dark spots.
Mud caked his face and filled the crevices of his armor, but he barely felt the discomfort.
It was a miracle he was still breathing.
But as he stared at the bleak sky, he felt no joy in his survival.
Inside his chest, something had cracked and withered away.
That terrifying vision of the Earth's cracking crystalline core still burned behind his eyelids.
"Draining the world," he whispered, his voice a dry, rasping scratch.
He remembered the mysterious voice that had spoken to him in the deep.
It had revealed the horrific truth: his cosmic fishing rod, the very tool he used to save lives, was a parasite draining the planet's lifeblood.
Every attribute point he fished, every rare skill he pulled from the water, tore another microscopic rift in the planet's fragile core.
For months, he had operated under the delusion of being a savior.
He had believed he could fish humanity out of the dark, building a safe haven where no one would ever have to starve or die again.
What a childish, arrogant fantasy.
Building a sanctuary had been his ultimate goal, a shining city where the weak could find refuge.
He remembered the faces of the survivors he had rescued.
Some had looked at him with genuine gratitude, but many more had looked at him with greed.
They had taken his food, slept under his fortified roofs, and immediately begun whispering in the shadows.
Greed was the true apex predator of the apocalypse.
Power was the only currency that mattered in this ruined world, and he had been giving it away for free.
In the end, his naive altruism had nearly destroyed everything he cared about.
"I was a fool," he muttered, a bitter, humorless laugh escaping his dry lips.
A sharp pain flared in his chest, a physical manifestation of his shattered idealism.
He had let his naive empathy blind him to the monsters wearing human skin.
By trying to protect everyone, he had put his true family, the ones who actually cared for him, in mortal danger.
Guilt had driven him to make excuses for the parasites, but he could no longer afford that luxury.
Images of his lost family flashed before his eyes—the faces of the orphans who had died in the first dungeon break.
What a foolish, arrogant trade he had made, prioritizing the survival of strangers over the safety of those who actually stood by him.
Sovereign Coalition warlords had seen that vulnerability from miles away.
That boy, the soft-hearted orphan who cried for every fallen survivor, had drowned in the black reservoir.
Now, only the hunter remained.
---
Stumbling toward a half-collapsed concrete drainage pipe, Leo sought shelter from the biting gale.
Inside, the air was stagnant and smelled of old decay, but it was dry.
He collapsed against the curved wall, his body shivering violently as hypothermia threatened to set in.
Gathering some dry twigs and scraps of paper trash blown into the pipe, he struck his flint.
A tiny spark caught, blooming into a small, flickering fire that cast long, distorted shadows against the concrete.
Warmth slowly crept back into his numb fingers.
He looked down at his hands, which were wrapped in filthy, blood-stained linen bandages.
These bandages were a symbol of his old life—a reminder of the gentle healer who had wrapped his wounds after his first fishing trips.
They felt like a weight, a shackle tying him to a weak, pathetic version of himself.
With deliberate, steady movements, he began to unspool the cloth.
Layer after layer fell away, revealing the raw, jagged scars crossing his palms.
These were the marks of a man who worked, who struggled, who bled for ungrateful mouths.
Holding the dirty bandages over the small flame, he let them drop.
Fire consumed the fabric instantly, turning his past into a heap of crumbling black ash.
"A boy who wanted to save everyone is dead," he said to the empty darkness.
Every turn of the leather strap felt like a seal on his new resolve.
Black hide felt cool against his skin at first, but it quickly warmed, conforming to the contours of his hands.
It felt solid and unyielding, shielding the soft, vulnerable flesh.
He looked at the ashes of his old bandages, now scattered by the draft of the wind.
Reaching into his inventory, he pulled out a roll of thick, black beast-hide leather.
It was tough, harvested from an apex predator he had hauled from the depths weeks ago.
Using a rusted hunting knife, he sliced the leather into long, even strips.
He placed one end of a strip against his left palm and began to wrap.
Pulling the leather tight, he felt the brutal friction bite into his unhealed scars.
He didn't flinch.
Instead, he welcomed the pain, using it to anchor his mind, to harden the soft edges of his soul.
He bound his knuckles, his palms, and his wrists, securing the black leather with tight, unbreakable knots.
When he finished, his hands no longer looked like those of a naive orphan.
They looked like the hands of an executioner.
"From now on, only those who fight will survive," he swore, his voice dropping to a dangerous quiet.
He would no longer carry the weight of parasites.
Mercy was a luxury he could no longer afford.
If the Sovereign Coalition wanted war, he would give them a slaughter.
Should the world itself die, he would ensure that only those worthy of the new dawn remained to see it.
Standing up, he walked out of the concrete pipe and back into the biting wind.
His eyes, once filled with a bright, hopeful light, were now hollowed and dark.
Reaching behind his shoulder, he felt the cold, familiar grip of his cosmic weapon.
He pulls his cosmic rod from his back, but the once-golden thread has turned a deep, blood-red color.