Global Devourer: I Survive by Slaughtering Beasts

Chapter 6: The Hunted and the Hound

Through the glowing purple eyes of his zombie scout, Kai watched the cozy scene inside the sports complex.

Brandon was laughing, tossing a small bag of chips into Sarah's lap while the tall security guard captain leaned against a mountain of stacked supply crates. They were living like royalty while the rest of the campus starved.

Kai opened his real eyes back in the library armchair. His grip tightened around his iron pipe until the metal groaned under his strength. A hot, dark anger burned in his chest, but he did not jump up to attack right away.

"Rushing in like a wild fool will only get me shot by those crossbows," Kai muttered to himself, his voice cold and steady. "I need more power. I need higher stats before I break their little kingdom into pieces."

He stood up and looked around the fortified library. Chloe had done a great job. The windows were sealed with heavy steel plates, and the front entrance was blocked with three rows of thick wooden desks. The surviving students were sitting on the floor, too tired and scared to even whisper.

Kai summoned his three zombie thralls to his side. The dead track-jacket scout stepped back into the room, joining the other two purple-eyed guards.

"Keep working on the inner barricades," Kai commanded Chloe, his eyes scanning her sharp face. "I am going out to hunt. If anyone tries to open these doors while I am gone, kill them."

Chloe held her iron chair leg tight and nodded once. "Be careful out there. The purple rain is getting thicker."

Kai did not answer. He stepped out through a small side hatch in the library wall, slipping into the cold, purple-tinted fog of the campus yard. His three zombie thralls marched right behind him, acting as a meat-shield wall on all sides.

His target was the science building next door. It was four stories high, filled with dark hallways, laboratories, and dozens of mutated beasts waiting to be harvested.

The moment Kai kicked open the side door of the science building, three mutated hounds lunged out from behind a overturned vending machine. Their mouths were split open, dripping red foam onto the tiled floor.

"Kill them," Kai ordered mentally.

His three zombie thralls charged forward, throwing their dead bodies directly onto the hounds. The beasts bit into the zombies' dead flesh, but the thralls felt no pain, holding the hounds tight against the floor.

Kai stepped forward like a dark shadow. He swung his poison-coated iron pipe in two fast, clean arcs.

SLASH! CRACK!

The sharp pipe sliced through the throats of two hounds, while the third had its skull crushed instantly. Black blood splattered across the white laboratory walls.

"Extract," Kai commanded, placing his hand over the corpses.

[Target Killed! Extracting Attributes: +4 Agility, +3 Stamina!] [Target Killed! Extracting Attributes: +5 Agility, +2 Agility!] [Target Killed! Extracting Attributes: +3 Stamina, +4 Agility!]

A cool, electric feeling rushed through Kai's legs. His muscles felt lighter, his balance sharper, and his reaction speed doubled. He was growing stronger with every single kill, turning into a true apex predator in this apocalyptic nightmare.

He moved up the stairs, clearing room after room. He killed mutated vipers hiding in the ceiling, smashed giant zombie rats in the storage closets, and harvested every single beast core he could find. His Agility and Stamina stats surged higher and higher, making his movements smooth and silent like a panther.

By the time he reached the third-floor biology department, his body was covered in dark monster blood, but his eyes were glowing with fierce energy.

He kicked open the door to the main animal research lab. Cages were smashed, glass jars were shattered on the floor, and the room smelled like rotting chemicals and dried blood.

Kai raised his pipe, his sharp ears catching a faint sound near the back wall.

It was not a roar or a growl. It was a tiny, high-pitched whimper.

Kai walked slowly across the broken glass, his boots making quiet crunching sounds. He reached a heavy oak bookshelf that had fallen against the wall. Trapped underneath the heavy wood was a small creature.

It was an abandoned, starving runt pup. It was a runt Shadow-Wolf cub, no bigger than a small stray kitten. Its fur was pitch black, covered in dark purple veins that pulsed with faint magic light. Two tiny bone spikes were just starting to grow out of its skinny back legs. It was pinned tight beneath the heavy shelf, completely unable to move, its ribs showing through its thin skin.

Kai looked down at the tiny beast with cold, unfeeling eyes. In this world, everything was either prey or food. A beast core from a rare creature like a Shadow-Wolf would give his system a great boost in stats.

"Just another monster," Kai said softly, raising his iron pipe above his head. The sharp, green-poisoned tip aimed directly at the cub's tiny forehead.

The runt pup raised its small, trembling head. It did not try to bite. It did not growl.

As Kai raises his blade to kill the runt for its beast core, the cub licks the blood off Kai's boot and whines, triggering an unexpected system prompt: [Mutated Shadow-Wolf Runt detected. Attempt Beast Taming?]