Ace had a choice to make.

  He pushed himself to his feet and spat blood onto the arena floor. His fangs extended as he tapped into the feral strength coursing through his transformed body.

  The System wanted a monster.

  Fine.

  It was time to stop thinking like a Marine and start thinking like a predator.

  He launched forward, his enhanced speed turning the world into a blur. The bear's massive form drew closer as Ace targeted its left flank—a probing strike to test its defenses. His claws raked out in a precise arc, black talons promising devastation.

  The nightmare bear's response defied physics.

  A low-frequency growl emanated from its throat, the sound visible as ripples in the air. The vibrations hit Ace's enhanced senses like a sledgehammer. His inner ear screamed as the sound waves disrupted his thoughts, turning his precise strike into an awkward stumble. He hit the ground hard, his shoulder smacking the floor hard enough to form a crater in the bloodsoaked sand.

  He pushed off the ground, trying to create distance.

  Too slow.

  The bear… flickered. There was no other word for it. One instant it stood its ground, the next it simply ceased to exist in that space and appeared beside Ace. No movement, no warning.

  Nothing but a shifting shadow.

  Its paw carved through the space where Ace's head had been a millisecond before. The displaced air crackled with dark energy, the near-miss close enough that he felt shadow-tendrils brush his cheek. Only raw vampire reflexes and blind instinct had saved him from being decapitated.

  The bear's burning eyes tracked him with predatory focus. Shadowy smoke poured from its fur in waves, each tendril reaching for him with hungry purpose. This wasn't just some monster—it was darkness itself given form and hunger.

  And it was playing with him.

  The System's laughter echoed through the arena. "Now you're getting it! Stop trying to win like a soldier. Start hunting like a monster."

  Ace flexed his claws, feeling the raw power humming through his transformed body. The tactician in him was still cataloging threats and plotting strategies, but something else was awakening—something that understood exactly what kind of fight this needed to be.

  Time to embrace the nightmare.

  The bear charged yet again, and its movements warped reality itself. Each step left multiple afterimages—dark echoes that made tracking its true position nearly impossible. Shadow leaked from its form like ink bleeding through fabric, and those burning eyes seemed to float through the very fabric of reality faster than Ace could track them.

  He launched forward, combining his inhuman speed with tried-and-true close-quarters combat. His claws raked low, targeting the bear's right leg—testing its guard while setting up his real attack. The beast's retaliatory swipe came exactly as expected, a brutal horizontal slash that would have torn him in half.

  It played right into his hands.

  Ace vaulted over the strike, his newfound strength turning his leap into little more than a blur. His fist connected with the bear's jaw in a thunderous impact that would have shattered concrete. Before the beast could recover, he twisted mid-air, claws aimed for its left eye, but something slammed into him.

  Pain exploded through his right arm.

  The bear's massive paw had snapped up impossibly fast, catching his limb in a vice grip. Shadow-wreathed claws punctured his reinforced skin despite its evolved crystalline glow, sinking deep into muscle and bone. The creature's strength was absolute, holding him suspended as easily as a child’s toy.

  Ace snarled, calling on every ounce of his vampire power. Tendons strained as he wrenched himself free, leaving strips of his skin behind. The wounds burned with creeping darkness that his healing factor couldn't touch, corrupt energy spreading through his veins like poison.

  “Health: 47%. Soul Meter: 100%." The System's voice echoed in his mind.

  He dodged another blow from the bear and held his wounded arm with his free hand. “What the ever-loving fuck is a Soul Meter?”

  “It’s a measure of your magical ability, silly,” the System replied, though she was still nowhere to be seen. “Too bad you didn’t pick a class. Magic sure would come in handy right now, wouldn’t it?”

  She giggled as he barely dodged another strike that would have taken his head off.

  "Great timing for a tutorial," Ace growled, rolling under a swipe that displaced enough air to make his ears pop. The bear's growl hit him again, the raw power of the sound turning the world sideways.

  "Oh, but this is the tutorial!" The System appeared nearby in a puff of smoke and clapped her hands in delight. "Every time you tap into those lovely vampire powers, that meter drops a little more. Use too much, too fast..." She drew a finger across her throat. "Dead. Fun, right?"

  The bear's claws missed him by inches, its shadow-essence burning his skin even without direct contact. Ace's thoughts raced, processing the new information while trying to stay alive.

  Limited healing.

  Limited power usage.

  A monster that was forcing him to burn through both.

  Delightful.

  It was time to change tactics.

  Ace launched himself at the arena wall, turning the stone into a springboard. He ricocheted between the obsidian pillars littering the arena with explosive force, each impact leaving craters in the ancient rock. The bear's burning eyes struggled to track him as he became a blur of motion, and he attacked from constantly shifting angles.

  Though he missed the first few blows, his claws finally hit their mark. Black blood sprayed from the nightmare bear as he scored deep gouges across the bear's hide. The beast's roar of pain shook the arena, but Ace was already moving, rebounding off a nearby pillar for another strike. His next attack opened the creature's shoulder, the crystalline light from his reinforced skin reflecting off spurting shadow-blood.

  "Now you're getting it!" The System's voice carried a teacher's pride.

  The bear's response changed the game.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Shadow-essence exploded from its wounds, filling the arena with writhing tendrils of pure darkness. They moved with terrible purpose, turning the air into a lethal web of smoldering whips. Ace twisted mid-leap, barely avoiding a tendril as it snapped for his throat.

  "Oh, did I forget to mention he could do that?" The System's giggle echoed off the walls. "Silly me!"

  Ace didn’t reply. His awareness shifted into overdrive. There were too many vectors. He couldn’t track them all. He relied on pure instinct, his newfound reflexes letting him dance between striking tentacles. Each near-miss left burning traces across his skin, his healing factor struggling to keep up with the accumulating damage.

  "Health: 38%."

  Fast as lighting, a tendril wrapped around his left ankle mid-jump. Before he could react, another snared his right arm. More followed, shadow-essence burning through his clothes, his skin, reaching for bone. The bear's growl rattled his skull as it pulled him downward with devastating force.

  The impact left a crater in the arena floor.

  Ace felt his ribs shatter. He tasted blood as his lungs threatened to deflate. His vampiric healing sputtered, trying to knit compound fractures while fighting the creeping corruption of shadow-essence. The crystalline glow of his reinforced skin flickered weakly.

  "Health: 24%." The System's voice dripped false concern. "Are you having fun yet?”

  “Loads.” Ace sat up and spat out more blood as he monitored the nightmare bear’s movement across the arena.

  “Tsk.” The System clicked her tongue in disappointment. “You know, this would be so much easier if you'd just embrace what you're becoming. You’re so close, but you’re still fighting it. Let the monster out, Sergeant."

  Ace teetered on his feet as he pushed himself up. The bear stalked toward him, its shadow tendrils writhing around its massive form like living armor. Those burning eyes held cruel intelligence—and worse, recognition. It saw him clearly now. Not as prey, but as something worthy of its full attention.

  Just great.

  Everything has a weakness. Find the pattern. Break it down.

  Through his pain-blurred vision, Ace tracked the bear's approach with the cold calculation of a Marine identifying enemy vulnerabilities. Its shadow tendrils created an ever-shifting barrier of pure darkness, writhing like smoke given life.

  But as his enhanced vision adjusted, details emerged from the chaos.

  The bear's joints caught the light differently—brief flickers where the shadow-essence thinned, unable to maintain perfect coverage during complex movement. Its burning eyes remained exposed, twin points of hellfire that refused to be masked by the surrounding void. And when it roared—

  There.

  Inside its maw lay a structural weakness in reality itself—a point where shadow-essence fought and failed to maintain cohesion. Ace's enhanced vision caught the details that would have been invisible to human eyes. The bear's teeth weren't just black—they were holes in space itself, obsidian daggers that cut through the fabric of natural law. Around them, light didn't just bend—it fractured, creating micro-fissures in the beast's supernatural defenses.

  When it roared, those fissures expanded. Shadow-essence poured from its throat like toxic smoke, but it couldn't maintain a stable form in that space. The chaos of its own power worked against it, creating split-second windows of vulnerability.

  Each roar forced the bear to choose between offensive power and defensive coverage. The shadow tendrils had to thin out, had to redirect their energy to fuel that reality-warping sound. It was a tactical necessity. After all, it couldn't project that kind of supernatural force without creating weak points somewhere in the system.

  It was just like timing a tank's recoil cycle. Different scale, same deadly principle.

  The bear's burning eyes caught his attention again, and Ace saw its whole combat pattern laid bare. It wasn't just strong—it was channeling power through specific anatomical points. Eyes for targeting. Throat for sonic attacks. Joints where shadow-essence had to remain flexible enough for movement.

  A complex network of supernatural abilities, all waiting for someone to drive a spike through the right circuit.

  His tactical assessment crystallized into a desperate strategy. Combat mathematics refined through years of warfare gave him an advantage, finally, over this damned thing. The beast wasn't just a monster—it was a complex system of supernatural abilities waiting to be disrupted.

  And over the years, Ace had gotten very, very good at breaking things.

  "Health: 19%." The System's voice carried a sing-song quality, like a teacher watching her least-favorite student struggle with an impossible equation. "You need blood, Sergeant. Or this little tutorial isn’t going to end well for you."

  As much as he hated to admit it to himself, he could feel the truth in her words. His healing sputtered like a dying engine, his vampiric regeneration losing its fight against creeping shadow corruption. Every breath sent shards of agony through broken ribs. His reinforced skin flickered with weakening crystalline light, the supernatural armor failing under sustained assault.

  But he'd found the pattern.

  The solution was going to hurt like hell. Then again, the best ones usually did.

  Ace pushed off the wall, letting vampiric strength launch him yet again into a complex series of rebounds. Each impact sent fresh agony through his broken ribs, but it kept him ahead of the shadow tendrils. The bear's burning eyes tracked him, its infrasound growl trying to disrupt his momentum.

  Not this time.

  He deliberately slowed, presenting an opening. The bear's massive paw swept toward him, its shadow-essence crackling with lethal intent. At the last possible moment, Ace twisted into the strike. The impact shattered his left arm, but it got him exactly where he needed to be.

  Inside the bear's guard.

  His right hand shot up, his black claws raking across one of its burning eyes. The beast's roar of pain rattled his bones, but Ace was already moving. He locked his legs around its throat, his enhanced strength letting him maintain the grapple despite its thrashing. Shadow tendrils burned into his flesh, but he didn't let go.

  His claws found the soft tissue under its jaw, and he ripped through its corrupted hide. Black blood sprayed as the bear's movements became even more desperate. They crashed to the ground together, man and monster, and they rolled in a desperate close-quarters battle that cratered the arena floor.

  "Health: 8%."

  Ace's vision dimmed as blood loss and shadow corruption took their toll. But beneath him, the nightmare bear's struggles weakened. It was losing too much blood, too quickly. The shadowy tendrils weakened, going limp one by one until they all dissolved into thin air. The nightmare bear’s remaining eye flickered like a dying ember.

  With his health this low, the hunger hit him like artillery fire.

  His fangs extended involuntarily as he stared at the bear's bleeding throat. The shame of his previous feeding warred with raw survival instinct, but as darkness crept into the edges of his vision, his disgust in what he was about to do became irrelevant.

  Ace bit deep.

  Power exploded through him. The bear growled softly, its claw pawing weakly at the air. Its blood carried concentrated shadow-essence, raw supernatural energy that set Ace’s every nerve ending on fire.

  His bones knit back together.

  His wounds sealed shut.

  Strength returned in a rush that left him gasping.

  "Health: 100%." The System’s voice was distant now, little more than a muffled murmur in the back of his mind as he lost himself in the bloodlust.

  When he finally pulled back, wiping black blood from his mouth, the System's slow clap echoed through the towering cavern. She stood amidst the corpse-littered arena as she watched him with a devilish little smile.

  "Now that's what I call embracing your nature." Her smile was razor-sharp, and her devilish eyes narrowed as she studied his face.

  Instead of replying, Ace simply wiped his mouth with the back of his already bloodstained sleeve.

  As his blurred vision cleared, he scanned the stadium seats above him. No one spoke. No one whispered to their neighbor. They simply stared at him, mouths agape, in the eerie silence that followed his kill.

  And, to his surprise, he could see every face. Every wrinkle. Every hair on these strangers’ mutated heads.

  “Sharpened vision,” he muttered to himself. “Even better than what I had before. An EXP Solute, I take it?”

  “You’re clever, Sergeant,” the System said cheerfully. “Look at you, learning so quickly.”

  He glared at her through the corner of his eye, but he otherwise didn’t acknowledge that she had said anything.

  Ace stood, and the movement carried a surreal grace to it. It was as though he had acquired perfect balance, and when he took his first steps away from the carcass, his feet moved without a sound. No scuffle. Not even a subtle shift of sand under his feet.

  Enhanced stealth.

  Now, that would come in handy.

  “Well done, my little monster,” the System floated upward until they were eye to eye. She set her hands behind her back and leaned forward, her nose nearly touching his. “I didn’t think you could survive that, but here you are, proving me wrong. Come on, let’s go meet the others. You have a class to choose, after all.”

  With one final look at the nightmare bear’s corpse, Ace ran his knuckles across his bloody jawline and turned his back on the beast. There had been enough murder in this ring to last him a lifetime, but he knew this wasn’t the end.

  In fact, in this bloody new life he’d been handed, he was just getting started.

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