I looked back at Lyra, leaving the corpse nailed to the wall behind us. The acrid scent of scorched flesh still lingered in the hallway.

"What can you tell me about the bloodsucker?"

Lyra glanced at the body before answering. "His name was Tron Bluevsky. Rank Seventy-Three on the Most Wanted list. Vampire. Fifth Labor. Around eighty years old, give or take. He worked as a mercenary for hire. If someone had enough money, he'd kill for them. His record includes serial murder, rape, kidnapping, torture, human trafficking, extortion, illegal experimentation on civilians, and countless cases of unlawful feeding that left entire families dead. I hadn't heard anything about him taking assassination contracts in this parts, though."

I frowned.

No matter how I looked at it, he had come here for Lyra.

"Why was he targeting you?"

"You should be asking the vampire."

"I can't," I replied, noticing the sudden lack of heartbeat. "He's already dead."

People often lumped vampires together with zombies under the broad category of undead, but they weren't truly dead. Their hearts still beat. Blood still coursed through their veins. Their bodies still functioned, albeit differently from humans.

Everything had happened too fast for me to process earlier.

A fist-sized hole had appeared in the center of his chest, its edges blackened by tiny glowing embers. It looked exactly as though someone had driven a stake through his heart, except there hadn't been anyone close enough to touch him.

After all, I attacked him with the intention to subdue.

Someone had killed him from long range with an ability.

Before I could dwell on it any further, I heard sudden commotion.

"AAAH!"

"We're under attack!"

"Incoming! Incoming!"

The hallway erupted with frantic screams, followed by gunfire.

Without another word, I stepped past the doorway leading into the precinct proper.

The hallway opened directly into a massive atrium that connected to the station's main entrance. The spacious lobby had become a battlefield.

Men in black tactical gear occupied nearly every piece of cover. Their faces disappeared beneath black bonnet masks, while assault rifles, carbines, submachine guns, and shotguns barked deafening reports. Bullets chewed through concrete pillars, overturned desks, reception counters, and shattered glass as officers scrambled for cover.

Captain Morris stood in the middle of the chaos.

Unlike the others, he wasn't hiding.

His sidearm thundered as he sprinted from cover to cover. One attacker leaned out from behind a pillar, only for Morris to close the distance in an instant. His fist slammed into the man's face with enough force to gouge an eye clean out before another shot from his pistol dropped a second gunman. He pivoted immediately, driving an elbow into a third attacker's throat before firing twice into another who had tried to flank him.

"Push forward!"

"Suppress them!"

"Watch the stairs!"

"Reloading!"

"Move! Move!"

"Shit! He's right there!"

"Keep firing!"

"Cover me!"

"You idiots, stop bunching together!"

One of the officers spotted me emerging from the hallway.

"Sir!" he shouted. "Take cover! Get down!"

I ignored him.

The nearest object within reach happened to be a stapler resting on the reception counter.

I picked it up.

"Third Labor. Throw."

The stapler vanished from my hand. A split second later, it punched clean through one attacker's helmet and continued through the concrete pillar behind him before embedding itself somewhere beyond my sight. The man's body collapsed without so much as a twitch.

There had been fourteen.

One was dead, so thirteen remained.

"Sixth Labor. Flash."

Silver light engulfed my vision as the world folded around me. One step carried me across the entire atrium. I appeared beside a man crouching behind a water dispenser tucked against the corner of a wall. His eyes widened beneath his mask as he instinctively began turning his rifle toward me.

"Too slow."

I caught his face in one hand.

For a brief moment, I considered crushing his skull outright.

...No.

That would splatter blood all over my suit, so I decided on something else.

"Third Labor. Throw."

Instead, I threw him. His body became the projectile. He slammed into another attacker with explosive force, the collision pulverizing both of them against a concrete pillar before they slid limply to the floor.

Eleven remained.

"No!" boomed Captain Morris's voice across the atrium. "Hold your fire! We have a friendly ahead of us! Don't shoot the laborer on a suit!"

"Hold your shots!"

"He's in the middle! Don't shoot him!"

The officers immediately checked their fire, several lowering their weapons after realizing I now stood directly between them and the remaining attackers. The attackers continued there offensive as a rifle cracked ahead of me. I didn't bother looking. The nearest object happened to be a pencil lying on the reception counter beside my hand. I picked it up just as the bullet reached me.

Clack.

The pencil intercepted the round.

"Second Labor. Parry."

The bullet ricocheted away at a perfect angle, screaming across the lobby before drilling straight through an attacker's forehead. The pencil split cleanly in half from the impact. I glanced at the remaining fragment between my fingers. It was good enough.

"Third Labor. Throw."

The broken half of the pencil disappeared. It reappeared embedded through another gunman's eye socket before exiting the back of his skull. His body crumpled beside the first.

Now, there were nine left.

Well, make that six.

Captain Morris squeezed off another shot, the report of his pistol cutting through the roar of automatic gunfire. One of the masked attackers jerked backward as the round punched cleanly through his forehead before he collapsed behind an overturned desk.

At almost the same instant, golden threads streaked across the atrium.

Lyra had finally entered the fight.

Her glowing filaments danced through the air with deceptive grace. The first wrapped around a gunman's neck before tightening in a single fluid motion, separating his head from his shoulders. Without slowing, the remaining threads pierced another attacker through the chest from every direction, leaving him hanging like a grotesque puppet before the strands withdrew.

Now, only six remained.

I sprinted out from the threshold separating the office space from the atrium.

"Sixth Labor. Flash."

Silver light consumed my vision.

The world folded for an instant before unfolding again beside a vending machine near the entrance. One attacker crouched behind it, completely focused on exchanging fire with the officers. He never even noticed me.

I placed a hand against the vending machine.

"Third Labor. Throw."

The ability didn't discriminate between weapons and furniture. The entire vending machine vanished and reappeared less than a meter ahead, traveling with terrifying velocity. The gunman disappeared beneath several hundred kilograms of steel, glass, and bottled drinks as the machine flattened him against the wall with a sickening crunch.

Gunfire immediately shifted toward me.

Bullets hammered the vending machine, punching through its dented metal shell. The impacts shattered the glass front and sent cans exploding in every direction, but the frame itself remained largely intact.

"Good enough for me."

I grabbed the side of the battered machine.

"Third Labor. Throw."

This time I threw the vending machine itself with force. I dashed directly behind it as it rocketed across the atrium like an armored battering ram. The surviving attackers barely had time to react. The machine slammed into two of them with enough force to launch their broken bodies through a reception counter before crashing into a concrete pillar hard enough to crumple its own frame.

"Three more to go."

I closed the distance to the nearest attacker before he could retreat. Panic flashed across his eyes as his hand fumbled toward the grenade still clipped to his tactical vest. He yanked free the safety pin with trembling fingers.

"Too slow."

I plucked the combat knife from his belt before he even realized I'd taken it.

At the same time, I pushed against his chest.

"Third Labor. Throw."

He grabbed my arm. His other hand clutched the sleeve of my suit with desperate strength, trying to anchor himself in place. It was an admirable effort. Unfortunately for him, my Body stat exceeded his by an absurd margin.

His grip tore free and his body was launched backward like a cannonball. He struck the upper wall of the atrium with a thunderous impact before bursting apart into a crimson smear that slowly slid down the concrete.

The pair of grenades he'd released landed beneath my feet almost simultaneously. I reacted on instinct. One received a sharp kick that sent it skidding away. The other? I caught its trajectory with the stolen knife.

"First Labor. Parry."

The blade redirected the grenade in a clean arc, sending it back toward the last two attackers. The explosion erupted beside them. Fragments of concrete, steel, and shrapnel blasted through the lobby. Some of it still reached me. Several jagged fragments buried themselves in my right leg.

I glanced down.

Blood seeped through the tear in my trousers. The grenade I'd kicked had still caught me within its blast radius. Explosives were irritating like that, since their damage was fixed.

Back in the game, it had simply been a programming limitation. Here, people explained it differently. The Laws that governed each Labor demanded strict adherence to their own rules. Certain attacks ignored overwhelming statistics because that was simply how the Law itself functioned.

It was the reason I could still be stabbed to death while sleeping.

Or riddled with bullets if I became careless.

Being max level never meant being invincible.

"There is now only you," I called toward the last pillar where the surviving attacker had taken cover. "Surrender."

As I spoke, warm air flowed through my body.

"Eighth Labor. Breath."

The wounds knitted themselves closed.

The embedded shrapnel slid free from my flesh one piece after another before clattering onto the tiled floor. Even the tears in my suit gradually closed, the fabric restoring itself until it looked as though it had never been damaged.

For a heartbeat, silence blanketed the atrium.

Then the final attacker roared, his voice raw with fury.

“REVEROF EROM!”

He burst into motion from behind the pillar with an RPG already braced on his shoulder. His finger tightened on the trigger, and the rocket screamed straight toward me at the floor beneath my feet. He was trying to catch me in the blast radius, ensuring the explosion and shrapnel would devour everything around me.

I dropped into a lower stance, my breathing steady and calm. My grip on the stolen knife relaxed. The rocket’s path stood out with perfect clarity.

“First Labor. Parry.”

The blade met the nose of the incoming projectile with the gentlest touch. That single, precise adjustment was enough. The rocket’s trajectory bent sharply upward, sailing harmlessly over my head toward the station’s distant ceiling.

I wasn’t about to let it explode up there either.

“Third Labor. Throw.”

The knife vanished from my hand. An instant later, it reappeared beside the ascending rocket. The blade sliced cleanly through the warhead’s casing.

The rocket detonated high above the atrium in a brilliant bloom of fire, smoke, and sparks. Harmless debris rained down across the station as the explosion spent itself against the ceiling.

Before the attacker could even process what had happened, I was already standing in front of him. My foot whipped forward in a swift, brutal kick that struck the inside of his shin with devastating force.

Crack.

The bone snapped sideways with a sickening sound that echoed through the suddenly quiet lobby.

“AAAAAAAGH!”

The masked man collapsed, screaming in agony as he clutched his grotesquely bent leg. “My leg! My fucking leg! It snapped! It snapped!”

He writhed helplessly across the floor, howling in pain.

The firefight was finally over.