Dawn of the Void by pwtucker

The story starts with our protagonist, James living in a abandoned subway station, when a holographic screen appears in front of him, telling him to acknowledge something called a "nemesis 1." Confused as any normal person would be, he ponders whats happening. He wants it to go away, so he says "acknowledge" and it goes away. Was it a projection? Some chip the government put in his head? He doesnt know. Then, the rats scurry out of the subway tunnels, followed by a screech. His intuition from years of living on the streets tells him that he needs to book it. But he approaches the noise and sees glowing red eyes. He books its and tries to run away, but the little shit wont go away. He then runs into a bar as the gremlin runs at him. It claws at him while he tries to kill it. Bystanders scream in fear as they see this. When he kills it, a message pops up, saying he killed nemesis 1 and is the 22788 (idk). he blacks out and wakes up in a hospital. He meets a woman named serenity and they decide to pair up to fight back against the nemesis'. Others are getting these, "acknowledge" screens, and a lot of them dont survive. So James and Serenity decide to hunt them down to try to level up after seeing a status screen. It goes well at first, but the gremlins call for help and corner them in a muffin shop, thankfully, James levels and dumps his points into "arete" which creates an aura that denigrates nemesis 1s, and they survive.

reach level 500, which raises the question. Why doesnt he run with around with his OP gremlin disintegrating aura, power leveling as much as he can while his aura is still effective? Serenity did that, going from level 3 to level 5 in one night. He even lazes around as he stays at serenity's place one day, as if millions werent dying every hour around him. Its even revealed to us that china has a level 13. After the "enlightenment" of "Arete" he strives to protect others more, so he would want to level up faster, no?