Return of the S-Rank Hunter 3: A LitRPG Apocalypse Adventure by Lanaeus

Author:Lanaeus [Lanaeus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 94: CONFESSIONS

Morning came cold. Nowhere near as bad as in the Snowcaps. Just that bone-deep chill that settled into joints and made movement feel like a battle with a body that preferred remaining still. The plains stretched endlessly in predawn gray. Colorless. Waiting for the sun to remember its job and bring definition back to a world rendered flat by darkness.

Kain hadn't slept during his watch.

Not from vigilance. From restlessness that transcended tactical necessity. His mind kept circling back to the stone token. To Vex's words. To years of memories from a timeline that might've been a prison the entire time and he'd never known.

The corruption had been quiet. Unusually so. Like it was waiting. Observing. Letting Kain work through implications without its usual hungry commentary.

He'd left camp before dawn properly arrived. Moved into the grassland with [Void Step]. His [Tempest Perception] tracked life through bioelectric signatures. Found rabbits. Three of them. As normal as can be. Pre-Integration biology somehow surviving in a world that had moved beyond their evolutionary bracket.

[Lethal Voltage] made the kills instant. Humane as murder could be when you were ending something that didn't understand why death had found it. Muscle memory of survival in a wilderness that made the Nexus trials look tame by comparison.

By the time he returned to camp, dawn was actually happening. Real light instead of suggestion. The others were stirring. Liu Wei was already awake and meditating. Erik was moving with stiffness that suggested his injuries hurt more after sleep than before. Elara was still silent, but her eyes were tracking movement now. Present even if words remained impossible.

Lyra spotted the rabbits first. Her eyebrows rose in question that didn't need voicing.

"Breakfast," Kain said simply. "We should eat before we move."

Darius built up the fire. Actual flames now that daylight made the smoke less conspicuous. The smell of cooking meat filled the air with normalcy that felt almost obscene given everything else. Like the world was letting them pretend nothing had changed. Like they were just camping instead of fleeing from a warlord who'd tortured their friends and proposed a partnership built on conspiracy theories.

They ate in silence initially. Too hungry. Too tired. Too much processing still happening internally to spare energy for conversation. The rabbit was good. Gamey but real. Food that had lived rather than been compressed into rations by System mechanisms that made everything taste like efficient nutrition without joy.

Kain waited until they'd finished. Until bellies were full and minds were slightly more capable of handling what needed saying. Until the fire had burned down to coals that radiated heat without demanding attention.

"We should probably have a conversation," he said. Voice carrying across the small space they'd claimed in the grassland. "About what happened with Vex. Before we return to Forge Covenant. So we're all on the same page."

Erik grunted. First real sound he'd made since sitting down. His face showed complicated emotions working themselves out behind exhaustion. "Yes. I have some concerns." He gestured vaguely. Permission granted and warning delivered simultaneously.

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