A coldness was beginning to seep out onto the subway tracks as he continued down the pathway, and Zack felt that familiar chill to his bones that preceded every dungeon break portal. It wasn’t just because the temperature was low. Every dimensional rift was accompanied by mana, a type of energy that humans had never encountered before. That mana was what gave him that telltale chilling sensation.

A faint howling sound came from up the tunnel ahead, wind rushed into his face from the other side of the tunnel from a sudden change in air pressure. The howl all but confirmed his suspicions.

He was dealing with a Drakken wolf, a ferocious pack hunting white wolf beast that primarily hunted at night.

In his past life, the city was flush with Drakken wolves roaming the streets at night several years into the calamity. Thankfully, that hellish scenario would not arrive for quite a while. That was because the earliest dungeon breaks were infrequent and relatively small in scale. It was only until much later that the floodgates opened.

Zack moved forward cautiously, his steel pipe in hand. His body movements were fluid and efficient, with the practice of an experienced warrior who had fought against monsters for four years.

Still, he would never be able to beat an entire pack of Drakken wolves as a VIP 0 baseline human. The only reason why he had the confidence to advance at the moment was because Zack knew that this Drakken wolf would be alone. He knew this because monsters spilled out of dimensional rifts at a certain rate.

The Calamity Research Society took extensive data measurements of dungeon break activity, and found that the lower level dimensional rifts were roughly similar. Monsters emerged from lower level rifts at an increasing rate, with monster emergence episodes around every half an hour.

For example, the rift would appear, and then one monster would come out. Then, roughly thirty minutes later, two monsters would emerge. Thirty minutes after that, possibly three or four monsters would come out.

It was not an exact science, and measurements became far more complex as higher level dimensional rifts began to appear and patterns became more erratic, but the general idea was that there were fewer monsters present when a rift first opened.

Fortunately, this rift had only just appeared, and a young dimensional rift was easiest to tackle and survive as a baseline human. Encountering a single monster wandering from a newly opened rift was how Zack awakened for the first time in his previous life, and he was planning to try to replicate that scenario here.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr…

The Drakken wolf was getting close. Zack put his phone into his pocket, walking forward with both hands wrapped around the base of his steel pipe like he was wielding a baseball bat. Walking forward into the tunnel, the breeze was beginning to intensify, and he felt the wind causing his shirt to flutter.

Bzzzz.

The attack came suddenly, from the left. Thankfully, it was telegraphed by the vibration of his smartphone.

Drakken wolves were ambush predators that preferred the dark. As such, the dimly-lit tunnel was prime hunting grounds for them. It was no wonder that a pack of these demon wolves ripped apart all the surviving civilians stuck underground after the train crash in Zack’s previous life.

This time around, he could only hope that those same civilians took his advice to locate the utility pipeline and crawl above ground to safety.

Zack spun to the side, dodging the Drakken wolf’s lunge with adept movement, and swung his steel pipe at its head.

Thwack!

Zack went to the gym occasionally before the calamity, and had a decent stature. In terms of physical power, he would probably score a fair bit above average when compared to the average adult male archetype that a nature documentary would use as reference when describing shark attacks or the size of a seal.

Still, being above average in terms of physical power when compared to the average adult male was woefully insufficient when in combat with a demon wolf.

With a hideous snarl that revealed its yellowed teeth, the Drakken wolf shook its head from its impact wound. Its size was like that of a prehistoric monster, with a bulk that resembled a bear’s and piercing yellow eyes with thin pupils.

If Zack was not a regressor, he would be shitting his pants right now. No amount of schooling or office work ever prepared him for confrontation with a demon, and he remembered scrambling for his life during his first encounter with a Drakken wolf.

Times had changed, though. Zack couldn’t even count how many Drakken wolves he’d killed over the years. No, he was not as strong as he was previously, but with that extensive combat experience against this particular demon came a sense of familiarity.

They say you never forget how to ride a bike. Perhaps the same could be said about killing a Drakken wolf.

The wolf lunged once more, its jaw gaping its ferocious teeth. Zack ducked underneath, keeping a close eye on the wolf’s right paw. Sure enough, the right paw came clawing towards him, and he backed up ever so slightly as the deadly claws missed his torso by the slimmest of margins.

His movement was not nearly as fast as before, but he’d found against so many Drakken wolves in the past that he basically memorized their preferred methods of attack. Right-pawed Drakken wolves preferred to attack with a lunge first and then a paw swipe right after with their dominant paw.

To be fair, not every Drakken wolf attacked in the same way, but after the thousandth wolf, Zack instinctively knew a thing or two about their tendencies. There was a reason that he turned out to be the last surviving human, and that was because he was a natural at combat.

He slammed the steel pipe down onto its head with all the force he could muster up, and this time the hit landed cleanly and powerfully. The Drakken wolf growled in pain, but before it could recover, Zack unleashed another wide swing with the steel pipe like a baseball batter up at home plate looking to smash a home run.

With a wild swing, the steel pipe slashed through the air and connected with the Drakken wolf’s cheek, knocking its head to the side. Zack followed up with more consecutive swings, not letting up on his onslaught even as his elbow reverberated with each hit and his hands were shaking from every impact. He only had one chance to kill this demon wolf before it recovered, and that was a chance that he would not let go.

After a slew of consecutive beatings with the metal pipe which was starting to get bent out of shape, Zack saw that the Drakken wolf began to stagger. That was his cue. Taking the sharp jagged edge on the other end of his metal pipe, he jammed it into the Drakken wolf’s eye straight through its skull, killing it instantly.

With a nasty squelch and a practiced movement, he pulled the steel pipe back out from the now dead Drakken wolf. But that alone wasn’t enough. Using the steel pipe as a very crude scalpel, Zack cut through the Drakken wolf’s chest, right down its ribcage.

The squelching gorey sensation never got any better any time he did this. At VIP level 6 he’d be able to skip this whole gorey process with the automatic demon crystal harvesting, but right now he had to do it manually.

Sticking his hand into the dead Drakken wolf’s chest, he yanked out a palm sized glowing crystal. Demon crystals, one of the most valuable materials in the world. It was currency for the demon summoning app, and a hoard of the crystals was worth dying for.

The hide, fangs, and other materials from the Drakken wolf were also somewhat valuable, but right now Zack had neither the time nor the equipment to process any of that stuff.

With the demon crystal in his hand, Zack headed his way back to the utility pipeline before more demons would rear their ugly heads, and before the city’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force would show up and start to ask too many questions.

He took his smartphone out from his pocket, wiping his bloody hands on his pants before hitting the home button. The phone had been vibrating angrily throughout the entire fight.

A new screen now appeared on his phone, taking up the entire window. A flashy cartoon-like round red devil holding a trident emblazoned the screen, and Zack smiled as he saw what was written across the middle of the screen.

[Welcome to the Demon Summoning App.]

“Welcome back, old friend,” he said with a grin, placing the bloody crystal on top of the phone as it melted into the app like slime.

[120 demon crystals have been deposited.]

"Unlock physical manifestation," Zack said in a clear voice, his voice bouncing around in the tunnel.