Alex swore for the tenth time in the last five minutes, the curse bitten off as his knuckles whitened on the worn surface of his gaming mouse. "Lag! Freaking lag again!"
On the massive curved monitor dominating his desk, his meticulously geared Night Elf Shadowblade, 'Void Kestrel,' froze mid-strafe. A microsecond stutter, a fatal hesitation in the chaotic dance of the 'Aethelgard's Legacy' raid encounter. The hulking, pixelated form of Grok'nar the World-Smasher, a boss notorious for its unforgiving mechanics, didn't pause. Its colossal stone fist swung in a brutally telegraphed arc that Alex knew he should have dodged.
Instead, Void Kestrel took the hit dead-on. The vibrant red health bar plummeted, flashing critical before vanishing entirely. A stylized skull icon popped up. Wipe. Another guild raid attempt ruined by the infuriating inconsistencies of his internet connection.
"Son of a—"
His screen didn't just show the wipe screen. It went black. Utterly, completely black. Simultaneously, the reassuring hum of his high-end PC tower silenced. The soft glow from the RGB lighting strips adorning his room winked out. The air conditioner, battling the stuffy heat of his fifteenth-floor apartment in the sprawling metropolis, sighed into silence.
Plunged into sudden darkness and an unnerving quiet, Alex blinked. "Whoa? Power outage?" He automatically reached for the power button on his PC, then stopped. Flipped the switch on his desk lamp. Nothing.
He slid his gaming headset off, the sudden absence of the low-level white noise making the silence feel even heavier. Outside his window, the perpetual midnight glow of the city – a tapestry woven from countless office buildings, streetlights, and glaring advertisements – was… wrong. Dimmer. Patchy. Entire blocks seemed to have gone dark, plunging swathes of the skyline into an inky blackness usually reserved for remote countryside. Only the pale, hazy light of the moon, filtered through the ever-present city smog, offered any real illumination.
A frown creased Alex's brow. Power outages weren't unheard of, especially during summer storms, but this felt different. City-wide grid failures were rare. He groped for his smartphone on the charging stand beside his monitor. The screen remained stubbornly black. He held the power button down, counting the seconds. Five. Ten. Nothing.
"Okay, that's weird," he muttered, pushing back his gaming chair. The wheels squeaked faintly in the silence. "Phone's dead? It was fully charged like an hour ago."
He walked to the large window that offered a panoramic, if usually light-polluted, view of the urban sprawl. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass, trying to make sense of the flickering, dying cityscape. A strange, low hum, almost below the threshold of hearing, seemed to vibrate in the air, a feeling more than a sound. It set his teeth on edge. Sirens wailed in the distance, their familiar calls rising and falling, then abruptly cutting off, one by one, like dying beasts.
An unsettling stillness settled over the city, punctuated only by the distant, muffled sounds of… something else. Shouting? Car horns blaring erratically, followed by the sickening crunch of metal?
A flicker of movement far below caught his eye. A car swerving wildly, headlights scything through the darkness before it slammed into a lamppost, the sound of the impact reaching him a second later. People were running. Not jogging, not hurrying – sprinting blindly, shadows flitting through the dying pools of streetlight.
The unease in Alex's chest tightened into a cold knot of dread. This wasn't just a blackout. Something was terribly wrong.
And then, it happened.
Flicker.
A faint shimmer, like heat haze, overlaid his vision for an instant. He blinked, rubbing his eyes. Probably just strain from staring at the screen too long, coupled with the sudden darkness.
Fwoosh.
This time it was undeniable. A rectangle of translucent, pale blue light coalesced directly in his field of view, about arm's length away. It hung in the air, steady and sharp-edged, displaying crisp white text in a font that looked vaguely familiar, like something out of a fantasy RPG – clean, slightly stylized, easy to read.
[Welcome to the 'System Initiation Protocol']
Alex stared, dumbfounded. His first thought was a prank. Some kind of augmented reality overlay? Had someone hacked his experimental AR glasses prototype he kept meaning to tinker with? But he wasn't wearing them. He reached out, fingers passing directly through the ethereal blue screen. It didn't waver. He waved his hand frantically. Nothing.
He turned his head. The blue box followed his gaze perfectly, staying centered in his vision. Panic began to bubble in his throat.
[Connecting to Planetary Core Matrix… Connection Established.]
[Assessing Viable Host Parameters… Initializing Stat Allocation…]
More text scrolled across the impossible interface. Alex's gamer brain, despite the sheer absurdity, started latching onto the familiar terms. System? Stats? Host? This was the language of games, of the virtual worlds he spent half his life immersed in. But this… this felt terrifyingly real.
"Voice command: Close window!" he stammered, the words feeling foolish as soon as they left his lips.
The blue box remained.
He thought, focusing intently, 'Status'.
The text shifted instantly.
[Status Window]
Name: Alex Mercer
Level: 1
Class: Undetermined
HP: 100/100 (Health Points)
MP: 50/50 (Mana Points)
Status: Normal
His full name. His name. And those bars… HP and MP. Identical to countless games. He could almost feel them, an abstract sense of wholeness represented by the full green and blue bars displayed on the UI. Mana Points? Did that mean magic? Special abilities?
'Log Out!' he thought desperately.
[Log Out: Function Unavailable.]
The simple, stark white text sent a chill colder than any power outage down his spine.
'Help!'
[System Help: Currently Unavailable. Please refer to Tutorial Prompts as they appear.]
Tutorial Prompts? This wasn't a game! This couldn't be happening!
Screams. Not distant anymore. Closer. Coming from the floors below him in the apartment building. Sharp, terrified shrieks mingled with guttural, inhuman snarls and the sickening thud of impacts against walls.
Alex stumbled back from the window, his heart pounding against his ribs like a trapped bird. He looked wildly around his dark apartment, which suddenly felt less like a sanctuary and more like a flimsy cage.
He risked another glance outside. The scene had deteriorated further. More fires had broken out, casting flickering, hellish light on the streets. He saw one of the things clearly now – skittering up the side of the adjacent building with unnatural speed. It looked like a nightmarish fusion of a centipede and a praying mantis, multi-jointed limbs tipped with scythe-like claws, mandibles clicking audibly even from this distance.
And the structures… The shimmering purple tear in the sky pulsed like a diseased heart, seemingly drawing the darkness into itself. The colossal black tower on the other side of the downtown area had solidified, an impossible monolith of obsidian that radiated a palpable sense of menace, dwarfing the surrounding skyscrapers. Buildings near its base seemed distorted, reality itself warping around its presence.
Thump.
Alex froze. The sound came from his hallway. Soft, shuffling.
Scratch… scratch…
Something was outside his apartment door.
He backed away from the window, every nerve ending screaming. He was on the fifteenth floor. Whatever was out there, it hadn't taken the elevator.
Thump. THUMP.
Heavy impacts now. Solid, deliberate blows against the wood of his apartment door. Not knocking. Trying to break it down.
"Who's there?!" Alex yelled, his voice cracking with fear.
Only the relentless pounding answered him. THUMP. CRACK. A spiderweb of fractures appeared on the door near the lock.
His mind flashed back to Grok'nar smashing his character, the helplessness of watching his health bar deplete. But this wasn't pixels and code. This was his door. His life.
The gamer part of his brain, the part trained to analyze threats and react under pressure, flickered through the panic. UI. HP: 100. Monster outside. Door failing. Action required. Now.
He scanned his messy room. Posters of game worlds and concept art seemed to mock him. Empty energy drink cans littered his desk. His gaze fell on the decorative replica sword mounted on his wall – dull, stainless steel, purely for show. Useless.
Kitchen!
He bolted, stumbling in the dark, navigating by memory. He yanked open a drawer, hands scrambling past useless gadgets until they closed around the familiar, heavy handle of the largest chef's knife he owned. Eight inches of sharpened steel. It felt cold, alien, and terrifyingly inadequate in his trembling grasp.
He turned back towards the living room just as the apartment door exploded inwards.
CRASH!
Wood splintered, the lock mechanism ripped free, and the door slammed open, hanging drunkenly from a single tortured hinge. Framed in the ruined doorway stood a creature vaguely resembling the thing he'd seen on the street, but smaller, hunched, and undeniably hostile.
It was vaguely humanoid, maybe four feet tall, with sickly green-grey skin stretched taut over sharp bones. Its limbs were too long, ending in dirty, claw-like nails. A crude loincloth of indeterminate material was its only garment. But the head was the worst – oversized, with a flattened nose, pointed ears, and a wide mouth full of needle-sharp teeth from which thick, viscous saliva dripped. Its eyes, disproportionately large, glowed with a malevolent red light.
Floating just above its head, visible only to Alex through the System interface, was more text, this time in ominous red:
[Goblin Scout - Level 2]
HP: 75/75
MP: 10/10
Status: Hostile
Goblin. Level 2. Alex's mind seized on the familiar terms even as raw terror threatened to paralyze him. Level 1 vs Level 2. Bad odds in any game. Worse odds when it held real teeth and claws.
The Goblin Scout let out a high-pitched, guttural screech and lunged, moving with a surprising, scuttling speed.
Game instincts screamed 'Dodge!' Alex threw himself sideways, crashing into his coffee table, sending mugs and game controllers scattering. A clawed hand slashed through the air where his chest had been, the wind of its passage raising goosebumps on his skin. The creature's foul, swampy stench filled his nostrils, gagging him.
He scrambled back, pushing the coffee table between himself and the monster. He raised the chef's knife, gripping it in a two-handed stance that felt awkward and wrong. This wasn't clicking a mouse button or tapping a key. This was heavy steel, imprecise balance, and the very real possibility of getting disemboweled.
"Get back! Get the hell away from me!" he yelled, trying to project a confidence he absolutely did not feel.
The goblin tilted its head, its red eyes fixed on him, then screeched again and darted around the coffee table with unnerving agility. It swiped low, aiming for his legs.
Alex hopped back clumsily, the knife held defensively. He tried a tentative stab, a motion born more of panic than skill. The goblin easily sidestepped, its clawed hand flashing out again. Alex twisted, feeling a searing pain across his left forearm as the claws raked through his t-shirt sleeve and skin.
[-8 HP!]
The notification flashed on his UI, accompanied by his HP bar visibly shrinking: [HP: 92/100].
Pain, sharp and real, flared up his arm. He gasped, stumbling back. It wasn't just a number on a screen. He was bleeding. This thing could kill him.
The goblin pressed its advantage, leaping forward, mouth wide in a terrifying facsimile of a grin. Alex reacted purely on instinct. He swung the knife wildly, horizontally. Not aiming, just trying to create space.
By sheer luck, the flat of the blade connected solidly with the side of the goblin's head. Thwack.
[Damage Dealt: 3 HP!]
[Goblin Scout HP: 72/75]
The damage was pitiful, but the impact startled the creature. It staggered back, shaking its head, giving Alex a precious second. He saw an opening, a brief moment where the creature was off-balance.
He lunged, putting his weight behind the thrust, aiming center mass as years of gaming had taught him. The knife plunged into the goblin's scrawny shoulder with a sickening, wet squelch.
[Critical Hit!]
[Damage Dealt: 25 HP!]
[Goblin Scout HP: 47/75]
The goblin shrieked, a high-pitched sound of pure agony this time. It thrashed wildly, ripping the knife from Alex's grasp as it stumbled backward, clutching its bleeding shoulder. Red – or maybe dark green? – blood spurted from the wound.
Simultaneously, another notification popped onto Alex's UI:
[Skill Learned: Basic Knife Proficiency (Passive) - Rank 1/10]
[Effect: Slightly increases accuracy and damage with knife-type weapons.]
Learning a skill? Now? The absurdity warred with the terror.
The wounded goblin glared at him, hatred burning in its glowing red eyes. It hissed, spat a glob of foul-smelling saliva onto the floor, then, perhaps deciding the fight wasn't worth the injury, it turned and scrambled back out through the ruined doorway, disappearing into the dark hallway with surprising speed.
Silence descended again, broken only by Alex's ragged gasping breaths and the distant symphony of chaos from the city outside. He stood frozen in the middle of his wrecked living room, staring at the blood – his blood – dripping from his forearm onto the carpet. He looked at the ruined door, then back at the System interface still hovering in his vision, his slightly depleted HP bar a stark reminder of his mortality.
The adrenaline began to ebb, leaving behind a shaky, nauseating weakness. He'd survived. He'd actually fought off a monster. But it wasn't a victory. It was a terrifying glimpse of the new reality.
His apartment, his sanctuary, was breached and unsafe. The thing that attacked him was just a Level 2 Scout. What else was out there? How many more were in the building? On the streets?
He looked at the System prompt again. Level 1. Class: Undetermined. He was weak, unprepared, and utterly alone in a world that had stopped making sense.
He needed to get out. He needed a better weapon than a kitchen knife. He needed… help. But where could he possibly find it?
His gaze drifted towards the window, towards the impossible tower piercing the night sky and the pulsating portal beckoning from the darkness. One thing was certain: staying here meant death. He had to move. Now.