Lyra thought she was going to die.

  Her lungs burned with each desperate breath as she circled the armored hog, knife trembling in her sweat-licked palm. Three days into this nightmare, and this was how it would end—gutted by a mutant pig in a forest that shouldn't exist.

  Fucking hell, what am I doing? Her mind raced as she barely dodged another charge, the hog's tusks missing her thigh by inches.

  I have this 'Dao of the Knife' but I know nothing about it! I played some World of Warcraft growing up, but—this is real!

  The blue notification from earlier still hovered mockingly in her peripheral vision:

  [Dao Path Unlocked: Way of the Blade (F-Rank)]

  [Skill Acquired: Precise Cut (I)]

  Fat lot of good it did her. The hog's armored hide had turned aside her every strike, her pathetic knife barely scratching its plated surface. Blood trickled down her leg where an earlier charge had connected, the pain adding urgency to her increasingly clumsy movements.

  The creature circled her with unnerving intelligence, its beady eyes calculating and assessing. This was no ordinary animal—the Integration had transformed it into something primal yet tactical. For some unfortunate reason, it recognized Lyra as a threat. The beast feinted left before charging right, a maneuver that nearly caught her.

  I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. She thought grimly.

  Lyra had been backing up for so long that she found herself pressed against a lone tree in the clearing.

  Her back pressed hard against rough bark—she'd allowed herself to be cornered. The hog's muscles bunched as it prepared for a final charge.

  There was no chance for victory here. Her only attribute points had gone into Agility, not that it mattered anymore. Blade Dao or not, she was fiercely outmatched.

  "Screw this," Lyra hissed, throwing herself sideways as the hog committed to its final charge.

  She sprinted toward the tree line, abandoning any pretense of fighting. The thunderous stomping and enraged squealing behind her confirmed her worst fear—the creature was pursuing her, and it was faster than she was.

  This is it. This is how I'm going to die. Twenty-three years old, three days in this damn apocalypse, killed by bacon on steroids.

  Her foot caught on an exposed root, this was strange to Lyra as it was roughly 50 meters still till the treeline. She mused on the possibility of trees also having been adapted by the Integration and resulting in longer more powerful roots. This was a thought for another time.

  The fall sent her stumbling forward. She recovered, but precious seconds were lost. The hog's breathing grew closer, the ground trembling beneath its relentless charge.

  A flash of blue-white light erupted from the corner of her eye.

  What the fuck was that!?

  Lyra risked a quick glance over her shoulder and froze in disbelief. The armored hog that had previously been her cause of most certain death, was airborne. Its bulky frame tumbling backward in a comical arc that defied both physics and expectation. Its squeals transformed from predatory to panicked as it crashed into the underbrush twenty feet away.

  She stopped running, turning fully to confront this impossible sight. The source of the phenomenon stood where the hog had been moments before—a shirtless man of medium, lean build, holding what appeared to be a metal rod. Smoke rose from both the weapon and his arms, where faint blue electricity still crackled across his skin.

  Did he just send that thing flying?! Holy shit, what the hell is going on?

  The stranger's posture was poised yet relaxed, the stance of someone intimately familiar with combat. His eyes—sharp, calculating—scanned the area where the hog had landed, confirming it was no longer a threat before turning their intensity toward her.

  [Unknown Entity Detected: Lightning Dao User]

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The system's assessment only deepened her confusion. Lightning? How is that even possible? I thought I got my Dao due to me grabbing a knife to protect myself when the Integration happened.

  The man walked toward her with measured steps, the metal rod held casually at his side, trailing tendrils of dissipating electricity. A cold confidence that somehow terrified Lyra more than the hog chasing her moments before.

  Firstly, because at least she knew where she stood with a hog, it wanted to kill her and she wanted to kill it, but with this clearly dangerous man, she didn't know where she stood. Secondly, he had just launched the hog (that was most certainly going to kill her) hundreds of feet. She had no idea what he would do to her...

  ***

  Kain approached the woman cautiously, assessing her as he would any potential threat or ally. His right arm throbbed from the Lethal Voltage he'd channeled moments before—the energy had been barely contained, scorching pathways along his nerves that would need time to recover.

  He kept his expression neutral, betraying no hint of weakness. In this world, even the slightest vulnerability could prove fatal.

  The armored hog's carapace had been more resilient than he'd anticipated. He'd been forced to channel more lightning than was prudent, and even then, he wasn't certain the hit would penetrate fully. Fortune had favored him—the strike had found the microscopic gap between plating segments, a critical weakness he'd only noticed at the final moment before impact.

  [Unknown Entity Detected: Blade Dao User]

  Kain dismissed this notification. It was helpful to him to know her Dao was knife-related, but he already assumed this based on how she was only using a knife to fend off the hog.

  "You're bleeding," he stated flatly, keeping a calculated distance between them. "The hog caught you with its tusk."

  Her eyes narrowed slightly, wariness overriding her initial shock. Smart—in this new world, gratitude was a luxury few could afford.

  "I had it under control," she replied, her grip tightening on the knife despite the obvious lie.

  Kain couldn't help the slight upward curl of his lip. "Of course. Running away screaming is a classic hunting technique."

  A flush of embarrassment colored her cheeks, quickly replaced by defiance. 'What do you know about hunting? Are you a big game hunter or something? I was a receptionist at a gym before this! I know absolutely nothing."

  "Yes," Kain answered, the lie coming easily. "Something like that."

  Big game hunter? What does that even mean? The unfamiliar term rattled in his mind. His knowledge of pre-Integration society was limited to fragmentary colony records and stories passed down through generations. He'd been born seventy-five years after this moment—the early days remained largely mysterious to him.

  "What's your name? I'm Lyra. " The girl asked innocently.

  "Kain." He responded with a curt disinterest.

  "Where are you from?" Lyra pressed, her breathing still ragged from the encounter. "I haven't seen anyone else since this whole nightmare started three days ago."

  Kain's jaw tightened. "That doesn't matter anymore. I've had some... bad altercations over the past couple days. The past is the past—what matters is surviving now."

  The metal rod in his hand still hummed with residual energy, tendrils of lightning occasionally dancing between his fingers. He noticed her staring at the phenomenon with unmasked fascination.

  "Ok, well, for me, I know nothing about this System," she said, gesturing vaguely at the air around her. "It's like those RPG games my brother and I used to play. Levels, stats, skills—it's insane that it's real now."

  RPG? Huh...? Kain maintained a neutral expression, nodding as though he understood perfectly. In his timeline, entertainment technologies from before the Integration were artifacts—museum pieces at best, myths at worst. They weren't useful in the survival of the colonies as everyone was so busy with their roles and jobs in the citadel that they needed not for advanced distraction.

  "Do you have any advice?" Lyra asked, her earlier defensiveness softening into something more vulnerable. "I've been wandering aimlessly, eating berries, hiding from... everything. You seem to have at least some things figured out."

  Kain eyed the wound on her leg again, calculating. An alliance could be temporarily advantageous—two sets of eyes were better than one, and teaching basic survival skills wouldn't significantly disadvantage him if they eventually parted ways.

  "Are you hungry?" he asked, gesturing to the fallen hog that had crashed violently into a tree on the other side of the clearing and died instantly. "I can show you how to harvest it properly. The meat has properties that will help you grow stronger if prepared correctly."

  Guess the earlier humans weren't taught these necessary survival skills.

  Her face cycled through several emotions—disgust, consideration, and finally, pragmatic acceptance.

  "But let's be clear," Kain continued. "This alliance is temporary. I have things I need to do, and getting attached to strangers in this new world is dangerous. For both of us."

  She doesn't know that everyone who's ever held my Dao has been viciously hunted to extinction in the future.

  The lightning beneath his skin pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat as his Lightning Dao responded to the tension in his body.

  Lyra studied him for a long moment before nodding. "Fair enough. I've read enough post-apocalyptic novels to know how this works."

  Another reference I don't understand. Kain masked his confusion with a businesslike nod. "First lesson then: how to butcher an armored hog. Pass me your knife."

  He moved toward the dead creature, the girl's knife at the ready. The Integration had transformed ordinary animals into deadly adversaries, but it had also imbued them with properties that could accelerate human advancement—if one knew how to harness them.

  The Lightning Dao hummed within him, eager to be unleashed again. This wasn't the future he remembered—the colonies, the walls, the desperate last stands against insect swarms. This was something new, a chance to live in a world before the cemented horrors of the future.

  And for now, that meant teaching this stranger how to survive.