# The Last Sanctuary Khai’s miserable scream echoed through the dilapidated underground station, but before the sound could fully escape his throat, it was brutally choked off. Duc’s steel-reinforced boot slammed squarely into the thug’s jaw with a force that simply didn't belong to a human. A dry, sickening crunch of fracturing bone followed. Khai flipped backward, violently spitting out a mouthful of fresh blood mixed with yellowed, shattered teeth. He clutched his rapidly swelling face, attempting to beg for mercy, but could only produce pathetic, unintelligible gurgles. The aggressive, domineering bouncer from just a moment ago was now nothing more than a puddle of absolute terror. Ha Vy stood frozen behind him, both hands clamped tightly over her mouth, not daring to breathe. She was a doctor; the sight of blood didn’t frighten her. But the feral, clinical intensity of the violence this man beside her casually dispensed had completely paralyzed her mind. *Who is he, really? The man who had been guiding her... or a demon wearing human skin?* "Killing people... is not something I'm stingy about." Duc picked up the dropped handgun and tucked it into his waistband, his heel still pressing down heavily on Khai’s chest, squeezing the air from the man’s lungs. "But killing you right now will just attract more E-Classes down here. Listen closely, scar-face. I am leaving you your pathetic dog life. But if I ever see your face lingering around this station again..." Duc leaned in close, staring deep into Khai’s panic-stricken eyes. His gaze harbored a wrath frozen over thousands of years. "...I will strip you of the title 'Awakened' in a way that will make you wish you were never born." Duc finally removed his heel. Khai scrambled unsteadily to his feet, fleeing clumsily like a stray dog caught in a trap, not even bothering to look back at the flashlight and backpack he had dropped on the ground. Only once the sound of Khai’s footsteps faded entirely into the station’s darkened depths did Duc let out a heavy sigh. It wasn't physical exhaustion, but the immense mental toll of suppressing the memories of Loop 98. By all rights, he should have executed that traitor on the spot. But shedding that much blood at the entrance to their bunker was the quickest way to invite monsters. He also didn't want Ha Vy to witness a cold-blooded execution on the morning of their third day. She needed to maintain a stable mindset if she was going to use her abilities. "Pick up his flashlight and bag. Then follow me." Duc turned back to look at her. His voice had leveled out, the overflowing murderous aura from mere seconds ago already dissipating. Vy swallowed hard, nodding and obediently following his instructions. As she approached the dropped belongings, she found a duffel bag stuffed with packets of biscuits, bottled water, and several packs of cigarettes. Khai had clearly been looting the surrounding convenience stores before retreating into the underground. "Where are we going now?" Vy slung the scavenged backpack over her shoulder as Duc flicked his flashlight back on, casting a steady beam ahead. "The central control room. It's located on level B3. The bulletproof steel door there is secured by an independent electronic keypad that doesn't rely on the station’s main power grid," Duc explained tersely as he marched down the dormant escalators. "How can you possibly open an encrypted door? Are you a hacker?" "I was an unemployed IT engineer in my previous life," Duc said, a wistful half-smile barely touching his lips. "And in my 15th loop, I spent three entire days just repeatedly dying so I could test 9,999 damn numeric combinations until that steel wall finally yielded." Upon reaching level B3, the darkness felt absolute, and the temperature dropped noticeably, carrying the bone-chilling cold of the deep earth. The environment felt more like a forgotten tomb than a modern transit hub. At the end of a pitch-black corridor, a heavy, reinforced steel door stood resolute. Above its handle sat an electronic keypad, emitting a faint glow courtesy of its dying backup battery. Duc reached out and rapidly keyed in a six-digit sequence without a second of hesitation: `7-3-0-1-9-4`. *Beep! Clack.* The heavy door shuddered as the wrist-thick steel deadbolts retracted. Duc hauled the handle, pulling it open. A spacious room roughly fifty square meters across revealed itself, packed with dark monitoring screens, control cabinets, and a small kitchenette for the station staff on duty. Most importantly: it was incredibly secure. Duc flipped a switch on the local Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) unit. A dim LED bulb flickered to life on the ceiling, pushing back a fraction of the oppressive gloom. Vy looked around, dropping the heavy backpack onto a worn-out office chair. In the corner of the room sat several cardboard boxes carefully covered by a tarp. "What is that?" Vy asked, pointing at the cache. "Food, water, basic medical supplies, and a little ammunition." Duc walked over and pulled the tarp back. "Everything I managed to stockpile and stash during Day 1 and Day 2 of this current loop. I moved it down here right before I went to the hospital to get you." Vy was speechless. The terrifying meticulousness of his preparation made her feel profoundly small and useless in this apocalypse. "You prepared everything this thoroughly... for the entire 98 times before this?" "In my first loop, I ate moldy garbage out of a dumpster and had half my face bitten off by an F-Class. In my tenth loop, I starved to death on day six." Duc grabbed a bottle of water and chugged down half of it in one breath. Despite enduring countless trials, nothing could alleviate the underlying mental fatigue. "A person learns a surprising amount of things when the price for a mistake is a horrific death, followed by starting entirely over from scratch." Ha Vy collapsed into a plastic chair nearby, burying her face in her hands. Emotional exhaustion from their escape and the bizarre truths Duc had dumped on her were crushing her mind. "I... I don't think I can process this yet. Loops. Monsters. People butchering each other. And you... you're not a bad person, Duc. No matter how hard you try to play the cold-blooded killer." Duc paused for a fraction of a second. His hand, gripping the water bottle, relaxed ever so slightly. He glanced at the system notification lingering at the corner of his vision—reading [Humanity Erosion: 32.5%]. "Do not place too much trust in me, Vy," he warned her, his tone dropping into a solemn, detached register. "Humanity Erosion spares no one. The stronger you get, the larger the beast inside grows. I am toeing the line of completely losing myself. There will come a time... when I will no longer be the human you knew back in loop 73. There will come a time when I’ll start looking at you as just a tool." Vy lifted her pale face to look at him, her dark brown eyes harboring an unyielding spirit that had never been extinguished, even in the face of death. The [Healing] skill radiated a faint, shimmering light around her slender fingers. "If that time actually comes," Vy said resolutely, "I will use my power to snap you out of it. Or I'll slap you until you wake the hell up." Duc let out a soft snort of amusement and shrugged. He pulled out the chair directly across from her, propping his boots up on a desk. Even knowing Vy held many mysteries regarding her currently unactivated [Recall] skill, her presence at this moment acted as a sturdy anchor, grounding the fragment of his soul that was actively losing its way. "Let's put a pin in that for now. We need to focus on consolidating our strength. I am Level 4, you are Level 1. The D-Class monsters, and very soon the C-Classes, will begin their descent." Duc tossed Vy a rescue walkie-talkie. "On day four... the System will conduct a sweep of all Awakened. We will start being assigned mandatory task events in order to earn System Survival Points. To fill our experience bars quickly, we need to go hunt E-Classes." "You mean we have to actively go out and hunt them?" Ha Vy shuddered, recalling the serrated razor teeth of the beasts. "You are just a Support Class, you don't need to fight. I am the Predator." Duc began disassembling and inspecting the magazine of the handgun he had confiscated from Khai. Staring at the five cold, perfectly aligned bullets, he muttered to himself. "We won't just be hunting monsters. Tomorrow, the most psychotic bastard in this world will make his entrance... A man who goes by the name 'Shadow'." Duc narrowed his eyes, a chilling light shining through as if replaying the bone-deep slash that had ended his 98th loop. "Last time, he killed me. This time... I'm going to take his head before he gets the chance." --- Ha Vy remained silent. She stared at the silhouette of the man sitting in front of her. She finally understood. This wasn't a video game or a magic card duel where having power was a fun perk. It was a frenzied meat grinder, and Duc was the only person who could see its gears turning. During the night of the third day, safely ensconced in the silent basement, they rested to regain their strength, preparing for whatever horrors tomorrow would unleash. Meanwhile, in the wasteland of the surface world above, the desperate screams of the weak were systematically extinguished amidst sickening sounds of chewing and tearing. In the 99th Loop, the wheels of fate were spinning much faster than anticipated. The seeds of betrayal from past loops had already begun to shift, and no one knew what the System actually demanded of its struggling pawns. The veil of night fully blanketed Hai Van City, setting the stage for the bloody curtain rise known as the Dawn of the Fourth Day.