Marvel: Shadow Monarch

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Marvel: Shadow Monarch

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...

The door opened to reveal my worst nightmare.

Zombies. Actual zombies.

Oh, come on.

The chamber was maybe twenty meters across, carved from the same rough stone as the entrance. But what filled it made my stomach lurch.

Shambling corpses wandered, their rotting flesh hanging in strips from yellowed bones. The stench hit me like a physical wall—death, decay, and something else I didn't want to identify.

Some still wore tattered clothing, others were naked skeletons held together God knows what.

Their eyes glowed with sickly green light, and when they noticed me in the doorway, they all turned toward me with disturbing coordination.

This is not how I imagined my first dungeon.

My enhanced Perception kicked in automatically, analyzing the threats.

The information flooded my mind—pathetic stats across the board.

Zero mana, agility at four points, strength at twelve, health around ten. Their perception was just as terrible at four or five points.

Slow, weak as I was, nearly blind. But there are so many of them.

I counted at least fifteen shambling forms, maybe more lurking in the shadows. They were all starting to move toward me with the inexorable determination of the undead.

The nearest one was ten meters away, shuffling forward at a pace that barely qualified as walking.

Half its face was missing, jaw hanging by strips of rotted muscle. Its left arm was gone entirely, leaving just a jagged stump.

Each step made a wet, squelching sound that turned my stomach.

Come on, Lucien. They're basically moving training dummies.

But I hesitated.

They looked human—decayed and horrifying, but human. The faces were recognizable as having once belonged to people. People who had lived, breathed, and had families.

They're system's creations, I told myself firmly. Just exp points for me to level up, nothing more.

The nearest zombie was five meters away now.

Close enough to see maggots writhing in its eye sockets. Its remaining arm reached toward me with fingers that were little more than bone wrapped in leathery skin.

Do it. It's them or you.

I gripped my daggers tightly and stepped forward.

The first kill was the hardest. I darted forward, easily outpacing its pathetic movement, and drove both blades into its skull from behind.

The steel punched through rotted bone like wet cardboard. The zombie collapsed instantly, and whatever dark energy animating it extinguished.

That's... not as bad as I thought.

The second kill was easier. I was already moving as the first hit the ground, spinning to catch another zombie shuffling up behind me. A single dagger to the temple dropped it.

LEVEL UP!

The notification flashed in my vision, but I ignored it. Still had over a dozen shambling toward me.

What followed was systematic extermination. My enhanced agility let me dance around their clumsy attempts to grab me. My improved perception tracked multiple enemies at once, always aware of which ones were getting close and which I could ignore.

The steel daggers cut through rotted flesh and brittle bone like they were made for it. My enhanced strength meant each strike hit with enough force to drop a zombie in one or two hits.

LEVEL UP!

Another notification, another corpse. I found my rhythm—dart in, strike, move away before the others could react. Their pathetic agility meant they couldn't keep up, and their low perception meant I could attack from angles they never saw coming.

LEVEL UP!

Three down. Then four. Each kill became easier, both physically and mentally. Whatever these things had been before, they were clearly just monsters now—threats to be eliminated.

One managed to get closer than I liked, its bony fingers actually brushing my jumpsuit before I spun away and took its head off with a horizontal slash. Another lunged at me with surprising speed, but my enhanced reflexes let me sidestep and counterstrike.

LEVEL UP!

The notifications kept coming as I worked through the horde. Six dead. Seven. Eight. My movements became more fluid, more confident. I started using the environment—stone pillars to funnel them into single-file lines, always staying mobile.

LEVEL UP!

Nine. Ten. Eleven. I was breathing harder now, not from exertion but from adrenaline. The combat high was unlike anything I'd experienced—every sense heightened, every movement precise.

The zombies' greatest weakness wasn't their poor stats. It was their complete lack of strategy. They just shambled forward mindlessly, never coordinating, never adapting. I could take them one at a time or in small groups, always controlling the engagement.

LEVEL UP!

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. The room was littered with corpses now, truly dead ones this time. My jumpsuit was splattered with dark blood that didn't look entirely human, and my daggers were coated in gore.

But I felt good. Powerful. Like I was finally in control of my fate for the first time since waking up in this world.

The last zombie was different—larger, with more muscle clinging to its bones. It wore what looked like rusted military armor, and it moved with slightly more purpose than the others. Its stats weren't much better, but it retained some fragment of tactical knowledge.

Mini-boss, maybe.

It swung at me with a rusted sword that would have taken my head off if I'd still been operating at baseline human speeds. Instead, I ducked under the swing and drove both daggers up into its ribcage, angling toward where its heart would be.

The creature let out a sound between a growl and a death rattle, then collapsed like a marionette with cut strings.

LEVEL UP!

I stood there for a moment, breathing hard and looking around the chamber. Corpses everywhere, the stench of death hanging heavy in the air, and silence except for my own heartbeat.

I actually did it. I survived my first real combat.

At the far corner of the room, partially hidden behind a stone pillar, I spotted another door. This one was different—heavier, more ornate, with the same shifting symbols as the entrance but glowing faintly with their own light.

Boss room. Has to be.

I looked around at the carnage I'd created and let out a long breath. At one point, when I'd been surrounded by five or six of them at once, their sheer numbers had nearly overwhelmed me. If not for my enhanced agility letting me dance between their attacks, things could have gone very differently.

But I'd handled it. I'd adapted, overcome, and leveled up what felt like half a dozen times in the process.

Level seven, huh?

That gave me a lot of stat points to work with. I should probably allocate them before tackling whatever boss was waiting behind that ornate door. The zombies had been manageable, but boss monsters were typically several orders of magnitude more dangerous.

I wiped the gore off my daggers on a relatively clean piece of zombie clothing and took a deep breath. The metallic taste of adrenaline was starting to fade, replaced by a strange sense of accomplishment.

I'm not the same person who walked into this dungeon. I'm stronger now. Better.

The thought should have bothered me—how easily I'd adapted to violence, how natural it had felt to kill those zombies. But it didn't. This was survival. This was what I needed to do to get back to Anna, to get us both out of that facility.

Time to see just how much stronger I can get.

...

Want to read ahead of the public release? Support me on Patreon at "https://www.patreon.com/FreakyHaru" and get access to:

5 and 10 chapters of all my fanfictions.

Ongoing Projects:

Marvel: Shadow Monarch

Upcoming Projects:

DC/MARVEL: The Kryptonian Emperor(Under editing, shall be released Today)

Your support helps me keep writing and brings you more content faster!

Thank You

...