Chapter 4: First Blood, First Loot

The goblin’s spear should have gone through Callum’s throat.

He saw it in fragments: the jagged iron point flashing under the blood-red moon, the green knuckles wrapped around the shaft, the string of yellow teeth split wide in a shriek that smelled like rotten meat and old coins. His body was too slow. His stats were trash. His lungs still burned from the subway dust he had died choking on, and his left leg had gone numb where a stone-headed club had clipped him moments ago.

But the world stuttered.

Not slowed. Not paused.

Stuttered.

The spear tip jumped from a killing line at his neck to a harmless angle over his shoulder, as if someone had dragged a cursor across reality and missed the hitbox. The goblin’s momentum carried it too far. Its bare feet skidded in the mud of what had once been Madison Avenue, and Callum moved because there was no time to be amazed.

He slammed the broken parking meter in his hands down with both arms.

The metal post crunched into the goblin’s skull. Bone gave way beneath the blow with a wet, ugly pop. The creature folded to its knees, eyes rolling in different directions, and then collapsed against a cracked taxi half-swallowed by black thorn vines.

Corrupted Skill Triggered: [Target Misdirection?]
Effect: ERROR—Hostile attack retargeted to nearest valid null.
Warning: Null not found.
Compensation applied.

Callum staggered back, nearly tripping over a dead bicycle messenger whose orange delivery bag had been ripped open and scattered across the street. Protein bars. A shattered phone. A child’s plastic unicorn keychain blinking with a faint blue System glow, as if the apocalypse had appraised it and found it lacking.

“What the hell was that?” someone shouted.

A woman in a bloodstained blazer stood by the steps of a luxury storefront, clutching a kitchen knife in both hands. Behind her, six survivors huddled beneath the torn awning of a boutique that now displayed rusted chainmail instead of designer clothes. Their faces were pale, moon-washed, smeared with grime. They had all seen his status screen earlier when the System had branded him with the joke of a Class.

Glitchbound.

Worst option. Broken skills. Invalid level. Death penalty unknown.

The kind of thing people laughed at because the alternative was screaming.

They were not laughing now.

Callum glanced at the goblin corpse. It twitched once. A thin light crawled over its limbs, outlining it like a bad render, and then the body dissolved into ash. Two copper coins clinked onto the pavement beside a strip of dried meat wrapped in gray paper.

Goblin Skirmisher defeated.
+6 EXP
Loot acquired: 2 Copper, Rancid Jerky x1

His stomach twisted at the smell.

“Don’t eat that,” a man said from the awning. He wore a gym hoodie and held a chair leg like a baseball bat. “It’s probably poison.”

“Everything here is probably poison,” Callum said.

His voice came out hoarse, but steadier than he felt. His hands trembled around the parking meter. He adjusted his grip so no one would see.

Three goblins remained.

They had been laughing a minute ago. Little hyena yips, cruel and gleeful, as they chased unarmed people through the newly transformed street. Now their laughter thinned. They glanced from the crushed skull ash-stain to Callum, then to the red moon hanging impossibly low between the broken towers of Manhattan.

The city had become a dungeon while no one was ready.

Glass skyscrapers sprouted bone buttresses. Office windows glowed with violet eyes. Subway entrances breathed warm mist. Cars lay overturned among cobblestones that had pushed up through asphalt like the spine of a buried giant. Far above, bridges of black iron connected buildings that had never touched before, and things with wings crawled along their undersides.

Every few blocks, pillars of light rose into the sky where respawn shrines had awakened. The nearest one burned blue somewhere behind them, in what used to be Bryant Park. Too far. Too crowded. Too contested, if the screams drifting from that direction meant anything.

Callum kept his eyes on the goblins.

The tallest of them wore a necklace of finger bones and carried a hooked cleaver. Its name hovered above its head in red letters.

Goblin Gutcutter
Level 2

The other two were Level 1 skirmishers, spear and sling. Ordinary enemies, if anything in a world that had murdered Earth in an evening could be called ordinary.

Callum’s own interface still flickered at the edges of his vision like a cracked monitor.

Callum Vale
Class: Glitchbound
Level: 1? / INVALID
HP: 19 / 31
MP: 7 / ??
STR: 5
DEX: 6 ↔ 2
VIT: 4
INT: 9
WIS: ERROR
LCK: -1

Garbage stats. Broken class. One useful bug.

He had built a career on broken systems.

Before sponsorships dried up and message boards turned his name into a punchline, Callum Vale had been the kid who saw angles no one else saw. He read maps as arguments. He watched enemy teams rotate and knew what they feared. He found the crack in a ruleset, widened it with both hands, and drove a championship through it.

This was not a game.

The goblin blood on his sleeve was hot and real. The dead messenger at his feet was not waiting for a revive timer unless some shrine somewhere had claimed him. The woman under the awning was whispering a prayer and shaking so hard her knife clicked against her wedding ring.

But rules still existed.

And rules could be exploited.

The slinger goblin spun a leather strap overhead. A chipped stone blurred toward Callum’s face.

He jerked sideways.

Too slow.

The stone hit his cheekbone with a crack of white pain. His vision flashed. Warm blood slid down to his jaw.

-4 HP

The spear goblin rushed him.

Callum backed away, dragging his bad leg, putting the dead taxi between himself and the cleaver goblin. The spear jabbed. He slapped it aside with the parking meter and nearly lost his fingers to the follow-up. The goblin was fast, all wiry muscle and needle teeth. It thrust again, aiming for his gut.

“Here!” the blazer woman shouted.

A glass bottle spun through the air, trailing ragged cloth. Someone had stuffed it with liquor from the ruined store next door. Not lit. No flame. Just weight.

Callum ducked. The bottle smashed against the spear goblin’s shoulder. Brown liquid splashed. The creature hissed and twisted toward the woman.

Target shift.

The red threat line in Callum’s vision—something the System had started drawing after he chose his Class—snapped from him to her.

His corrupted skill pulsed cold behind his left eye.

Not a button. Not exactly. More like a cramp in the world, a bent piece of code waiting to be leaned on.

Callum focused on the threat line.

“No,” he whispered. “You’re still looking at me.”

[Target Misdirection?] attempted.
Input target: Hostile Unit
Output target: …
ERROR
ERROR
Nearest valid target not found.

The spear goblin’s head snapped back toward Callum so hard its neck cracked.

Its eyes bulged. For half a second, it looked confused.

That half second was enough.

Callum drove the broken end of the parking meter into its mouth.

Teeth shattered. The goblin fell backward, choking. Callum stepped in and kicked its knee sideways. It screamed, and he brought the meter down once, twice, three times until the scream became a bubbling hiss and the body turned to ash.

Goblin Skirmisher defeated.
+6 EXP
Loot acquired: 3 Copper

His arms felt like wet rope. Pain throbbed through his cheek. The slinger had already loaded another stone.

The Gutcutter moved.

It vaulted over the taxi with a speed that made the Level 1 goblins look like toddlers. The cleaver came down in a silver-black arc. Callum threw himself backward. The blade missed his chest by inches and buried itself in the asphalt, carving through old road like cake. A shockwave of grit spat into his eyes.

“Level two my ass,” Callum gasped.

The Gutcutter smiled.

Then it spoke.

“Soft ladder-meat,” it rasped in a voice like gravel in a blender. “Class-broken. Soul-stink.”

The survivors went silent.

The gym hoodie man took one step back. “They can talk?”

“Apparently this one got the deluxe package,” Callum said.

The Gutcutter ripped its cleaver free and lunged again.

Callum blocked with the parking meter. Sparks jumped. The impact shot pain through his wrists and slammed him against the taxi’s crumpled side. Metal groaned behind him. His HP dropped.

-7 HP
HP: 8 / 31

The world narrowed.

Red moon. Goblin grin. Cleaver rising.

Someone screamed his name, though he did not know when he had given it to them.

Callum slid down the taxi as the cleaver struck where his head had been. It punched through the yellow cab’s door, lodging deep. He scrambled under the goblin’s arm, shoulder-checking its ribs. It barely moved. He smelled swamp water and iron and something sweetly rotten in the charms tied to its belt.

The slinger’s stone whipped in.

Callum saw the red line too late.

It was aimed at him—but the Gutcutter stood between them for one heartbeat.

Line of sight. Friendly fire?

Most games disabled it for mobs. Bad design if they didn’t. But this world was built out of cruelty and shortcuts. The goblins had reacted to thrown objects. They tracked targets. They spoke. They were not pure scripts, but the System wrapped them in rules.

The stone flew.

Callum grabbed the Gutcutter’s bone necklace and yanked with all his strength.

The elite goblin snarled, stumbling half a step.

The stone cracked against the back of its head.

It did almost nothing.

The Gutcutter turned slowly toward the slinger.

The slinger froze.

For a blissful second, Callum saw the targeting web in his vision flicker: red lines, hostile markers, priority brackets. The System tried to decide whether an accidental hit counted as aggro.

Callum shoved his will into the flicker.

Not at the skill icon.

At the mistake.

At the place where the rules contradicted themselves.

[Target Misdirection?] activated.
Condition: Hostile attack received by hostile unit.
Threat table corrupted.
Primary target reassigned: Goblin Slinger

The Gutcutter roared.

It ripped its cleaver from the taxi and charged the slinger.

The smaller goblin shrieked and tried to run. It made it three steps before the cleaver caught it between the shoulders. The blow split it open from collar to hip. Ash burst upward in a greasy plume.

Goblin Slinger defeated.
Assist credited.
+3 EXP

Callum did not waste the opening.

“Bottle!” he shouted.

The blazer woman flinched. “What?”

“Fire! Anything!”

“I have a lighter,” someone said. A teenager, maybe seventeen, crouched behind a toppled newspaper box. He held up a trembling hand with a little silver rectangle. “I vape.”

“Congratulations,” Callum said. “You’re support.”

The teen blinked, then scrambled for another bottle. The woman in the blazer grabbed the rag from the broken awning and stuffed it into the neck. The gym hoodie man poured something clear from a cracked bottle of premium vodka, hands moving with sudden purpose now that purpose existed.

The Gutcutter turned back toward Callum. The cleaver dripped black blood from the murdered slinger. Its threat marker pulsed darker red, edges sharpening.

Elite Modifier Revealed: Blooded
Damage increased by 20% after killing a unit.

“That seems unfair,” Callum said.

The Gutcutter bounded toward him.

Callum ran.

Not well. His injured leg dragged, and every breath sawed his ribs. He cut around the taxi, hopped the curb, and stumbled through the shattered entrance of a coffee shop whose sign now read THE SLEEPING GRIND in letters made of tarnished brass. The interior smelled of espresso, mold, and wet fur. Tables had fused into mushroom-like growths. The menu board offered lattes, scones, and something called Bone Broth of Minor Regret.

The Gutcutter smashed through the doorframe behind him, taking half the wall with it.

Callum threw a chair.

The goblin batted it aside.

He threw another. Not at the goblin—at the ceiling sprinkler.

The chair bounced uselessly off a hanging iron lantern that had not been there yesterday. No water came.

“Worth a shot,” he wheezed.

The cleaver took a table in half. Splinters peppered Callum’s arm. He vaulted the counter, landed hard among spilled coffee beans, and grabbed the first thing his hand found: a metal milk pitcher. The Gutcutter jumped onto the counter after him.

Outside, the survivors shouted.

“Callum!”

The flaming bottle arced through the broken storefront.

It was a terrible throw. Too high, too slow, wobbling end over end with burning cloth streaming sparks.

The Gutcutter looked up.

Callum saw the red threat line flick from him to the bottle, then fail because the bottle was not a valid target.

His skull filled with static.

Come on.

He focused on the bottle’s shadow, on the goblin’s upturned eyes, on the System’s refusal to call a flying object an enemy.

“Valid enough,” he snarled.

[Target Misdirection?] attempted.
Input target: Projectile_Object_Improvised
Output target: Hostile Unit? Self? Null?
ERROR
Compensation applied.

The bottle teleported six inches to the left.

That was all.

Six inches.

It was enough.

The Molotov smashed across the Gutcutter’s face.

Vodka and flame washed over green skin. The goblin screamed. Fire clung to the oil in its hair, raced along the bone charms, bloomed across its shoulders in greedy orange sheets. It toppled from the counter, cleaver clanging to the floor.

The survivors cheered.

Callum did not.

The HP bar above the Gutcutter dropped from maybe eighty percent to sixty-five.

“Of course,” he muttered.

The elite rolled, beating at the flames. It slammed into the pastry display, scattering muffins that had grown tiny screaming mouths. Fire hissed but did not die. The goblin came up smoking, one eye burned white, its grin gone. In its place was something much worse.

Focus.

It hurled the cleaver.

Callum ducked behind the espresso machine as the blade spun over him and buried itself in the back wall. Pipes burst. A jet of scalding steam shrieked into the room.

The Gutcutter charged through the steam.