[System Decay] Chapter 1: New Beginnings (Patreon)

The world ended sometime after 3:46 AM, Eastern Standard Time. Will knew this because that was what he’d seen the last time he’d checked the time on the cracked screen of his six-year-old laptop.

He continued typing up the final report for his internship. Allie, one of his fellow research assistants, had been supposed to finish up the part about her admittedly impressive findings, but she was irresponsible as she was intelligent, so she’d gone out drinking and he’d gotten one more assignment on top of everything else due in the morning.

“Another night on four hours of sleep,” he muttered into his battery-acid-tasting energy drink. “Only two more to go. Then I can do this at an office instead. Yay.”

Coming into university, he’d been told that he’d been meant for greatness. Solid GPA, almost a perfect SAT—the result of literal months of non-stop studying—and so much time invested in his projects that he’d alienated all of his friends.

The result of all the hard work he’d needed to achieve that? More expectations. Graduate college at the top of the class, get a high-paying job, always keep working. He struggled to pass his classes now, and he needed to burn the candle at both ends to make ends meet.

If this was what “greatness” was supposed to be, Will didn’t want any part in it. Endless nights barely sleeping, working his ass off to debug and write code that would earn someone else more money—what kind of life was that? He had no free time, his only friends were the ones who were equally as lost in the grind, and no hopes for anything more.

Will was looking at years or decades more of this. And, of course a premature grave when the wombo combo of long nights, sedentary lifestyle, and energy drinks caught up to him.

But his family needed him. A few years back, his dad had hurt his back so bad that he was incapable of working any of the jobs he’d had, and his mom’s treatments weren’t going to pay for themselves.

So he worked. If he didn’t, he would have nothing to go back to except the shitty retail job he’d quit a month into because the customers were mad.

His phone buzzed.

Lev: srry I couldn’t make it today, massive headache

Lev: can u cover my bit its almost done

Damn it. Will buried his face in his hands. Lev was a good friend, but this was absolutely not the time.

Will: seriously?

Will: you owe me big time for this

Lev: u know it man

He’d hit the gym early tomorrow, Will decided. He could squeeze out a couple hours between classes. Rock climbing, lifting, and beating the shit out of a training dummy always soothed him for a bit.

That would come after a night of awful sleep that he knew would be interrupted by the wastes of oxygen that spent their entire night partying, but that was an issue for later. For now, he had not one but two people’s reports to finish.

Planet Sol-3 “Earth” has crossed chaos threshold.

Multiversal defensive system initiating.

Prepare for impact.

“Great,” he told himself. “Hallucinations are a new one.”

Impact in [3] seconds.

Will blinked, rubbing his eyes.

[2].

“That’s a little too coherent to be made up.” He moved his head, and the number moved with it.

[1].

[0].

Impact confirmed at local coordinates [1.35 N, 103.82 E]. System activating.

The words hung there in the air, and Will realized that his music had stopped. He took his earbuds out and tossed them aside.

Was the ground underneath him rumbling, or was that just his imagination?

Please stand by for tutorial zone placement. Those within enclosed spaces are advised to exit at all costs.

Will stood up, suddenly awake.

“Am I dreaming?” he asked aloud. “Or—ow.”

He had stubbed his toe on the desk.

“Nope. Ow. No way I’d be that cruel to myself in my own head.”

With his toe and pride slightly wounded, Will shut his laptop lid and waited.

Definitely rumbling.

Shit. This part of the country didn’t get earthquakes often, but he’d grown up in California and he knew that you weren’t supposed to stay in high places. Something was up.

He grabbed his laptop and bag and left.

Halfway down the stairwell, Will saw the horizon shatter through a window.

It was a cloudless night. The stars shone coldly millions of light-years away, providing Will with just enough light to see the cloud of what looked like dust kicking up far off in the distance. The bursts of debris shot up so high that they soon occluded the sky.

In times of crisis, people tended to fly, fight, or freeze. As adrenaline pumped through his veins, bringing his sleepy mind into hot, sharp focus, Will clenched his fists.

As it turned out, he was the second. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise. When another kid had intentionally dumped his water bottle on Will’s head in high school, he’d socked him in the face so hard the other guy broke his nose.

He was a born fighter stuck in the wrong occupation.

But how was he supposed to fight this?

Do not panic. The tutorial zone selection abnormality is within bounds.

“Do not panic,” Will muttered. “Has telling someone that ever worked?”

The noise of the rumbling earth finally reached Will’s ears. It resembled what he imagined a tsunami would sound like mixed with a healthy helping of nails-on-chalkboard.

The building around him shook. The lights died as the wave got closer, and then the only way he could tell what was happening was by how quickly the stars in the night sky seemed to blink out. The sound permeated his entire body, shaking him so hard he thought his bones might liquefy.

A spike of dread ran through him—then, oddly enough, calm.

For some reason, the last coherent thought he had was, thank god I don’t have to show up for work tomorrow.

Then he was spinning. Pain coursed through his body, though not as much as there should have been given that he must have just been hit by a force that had been chewing through an entire city.

His heart leapt into his throat, which was odd. Wasn’t he supposed to be dying? Panic surged through him once more, but it slowly faded into confusion and dizziness before that too dissipated.

The panic that had dominated him fell away entirely, replaced with a whole-body sense of awe.

“Whoa. What the hell…”

Will was in space.

He could see the entirety of Earth beneath him—and, he realized, around him.

Whatever “impact” the strange words had been talking about had in fact been real. Two massive plumes of rock, ash, and assorted other used-to-be-Earth material marked the entry and exit points of whatever had just hit the planet, and huge chunks of the planet had simply broken off and were now flying in space around him.

Welcome to the multiverse, [William Li-Brown].

The world as you know it has just expanded. Your planet has fallen under the jurisdiction of the multiverse defense system.

8,792 years ago, your planet joined the Chaos Defense Contract. Due to your failure to produce a sufficient defense system of your own prior to crossing the chaos threshold, the alternative option as described in Provision III has been enacted.

Chaos threatens the integrity of all of our worlds. You may choose to fight against it by entering the tutorial with survival odds of [ERROR] percent or instead be teleported to a safe zone and serve [40 years] of labor, after which you will be released to a peaceful life.

Entering the tutorial will awaken your personal system, enabling you to wield magical powers and to increase your level and rank. Entering the safe zone will awaken your personal system after your term is complete.

You will no longer be required to serve when your universe has been secured.

The system is not cruel, but the world is. Choose.

Enter the tutorial?

[YES / NO]

The messages flickered across his vision, disappearing after he finished reading them. All except the last two.

Enter the tutorial?

[YES / NO]

“Well, I’m stranded in space, very confused, and talking to myself,” Will said. “I probably have severe brain damage, but this is definitely real.”

His night had been off to an awful start already. This was something else entirely.

Yet as he settled into his breathing cycle, he felt… surprisingly good. His night had begun with vanishingly few options remaining to him, and now?

He looked down at Earth. The old world was dead, and a new one had marched in to replace it.

Will had been looking down the barrel at a dead-end life full of monotony. Now, no matter how crazy this situation was, he saw opportunity.

Work. Commute. Sleep. Just minutes ago, his life had been set for him—a drone in a corporate world who would be forgotten within two generations.

Fuck. That.

He wasn’t going to repeat his mistake.

Will reached out and selected [YES].

Initializing tutorial…

ERROR: User [William Li-Brown] is not in a recognized tutorial zone.

Recalibrating…

Deviations in tutorial detected. Repositioning subject to nearest viable tutorial zone.

Will felt a sense of unease rise as his surroundings suddenly shifted, but it was quickly overpowered by excitement.

He was going to make the most of this. Or he was going to die trying. Either way, he wasn’t going to end up a wage slave.

Suddenly, he stood upon a chunk of land about the size of a football field. Strangely enough, he still seemed to be far off from the Earth, judging by the fact that he could still see the ruined planet dominating the sky when he looked up.

He could breathe here, which was odd enough. Even stranger than that was the relatively intact decor here. Will stood amongst living trees overlooking a grassy field dotted with rocks and facing what looked to be a cave with a quaint red wooden door opposite from him.

Text scrolled across his vision, and this time, a mechanized androgynous voice accompanied it.

Tutorial Zone - Corrupted Fragment

Difficulty: Extreme

This tutorial zone was originally part of Planet XZ-771, more commonly known as “Arcadia.” Arcadia was a land of swords, sorcery, and space travel, but as with 98% of planets, they failed to protect themselves. As one of many planets that failed to defend against chaos, Arcadia was able to save itself by choosing to be repurposed into part of the system’s initiation package.

Fragments of this planet have now been fused with yours. If you look up, you may notice that the occupied surface area of Earth has expanded by roughly 250 percent. Pieces of this planet and its people are now part of your world.

This fragment is tutorial-viable, but only barely. As it has been exposed to a significant amount of chaos, this segment of Arcadia has been corrupted. Each successive level of the dungeon beneath the cave possesses increasing levels of chaos and corrupted items.

Due to the location of this tutorial, you may select any point on your home planet to return to upon completion.

WARNING: Extended exposure to a high corruption zone is lethal.

Before he could ask what any of that meant or how he was supposed to survive in a place meant to kill him, another pop-up appeared in front of his eyes.

Spawn protection disabled.

“That’s not ominous at all.”

The ground rumbled in an uncomfortably familiar way under his feet. Will took a defensive stance instinctively, flashes of the unstoppable wave of destruction flashing through his mind.

“It’s not exactly the same,” he told himself. “For one, I’m in space on a magic rock.”

For another, the rumbling seemed directed, snaking its way from left to right and steadily approaching him. This wasn’t an earth-shattering impact.

Will crouched, prepared for the field to split beneath his feet.

He evaded the fissure that formed under him, but though he’d been ready for that, he wasn’t for what popped out of it.

Given the experiences he’d had today, he’d thought it reasonable to assume it’d just be another earthquake-adjacent thing.

Instead, a glistening arachnid the size of his torso leapt out from the fresh hole it had burrowed in the ground, jumping toward his face.

New quest: Begin the tutorial

Your new life has begun. Accept it or face life in a factory.

- Enter the tutorial cave within the next 15 minutes. [0/1]

- Failing this quest automatically ends the tutorial.

Reward: 10 bronze credits. Gain the tutorial helper. Gain the ability to earn achievements.

Will flinched at the sight of two things, one real and one hologram-like, popping into view at the same time. He stumbled backwards, narrowly avoiding it. He’d taken enough martial arts courses throughout his childhood to know how to turn his fall into a roll that ended with him in a crouch.

The… thing, whatever it was, gave him the shivers, and he was pretty sure that wasn’t just because it was more than a little creepy. It looked like a cross between a spider and a scorpion, and its carapace glistened with some smoky black substance that looked wrong, as if it was a texture in a game that hadn’t been fully rendered. The creature flickered as it moved, pieces of it distorting in his vision.

“Oh, hell no,” Will spat, stumbling backwards. “Spiders? Seriously?”

At least it didn’t look too much like a spider. It still had way too many legs, but with the scorpion-like tail, it was recognizably something else. Spiders creeped the shit out of him.

He continued moving backwards, looking for something he could crush it with. There were plenty of rocks here, weren’t there?

The not-spider thing skittered towards him faster than he could run backwards. Seeing this, Will stopped looking for a rock he could carry and let his focus narrow to just him and the arachnid.

As he focused on it, time seemed to slow, and a red tooltip appeared over the creature’s head.

Cave Scorpider. Level: Unformed 1.

Originally from Arcadia, these creatures are the result of a genetic experiment that evolved a unique way to reproduce. A favorite snack of cave goblins, these poor abominations have no armor on their undersides.

WARNING: This entity has been corrupted. Extended exposure to this entity may inflict the [Corruption] condition and may be lethal.

“Alright, asshole,” Will said, ignoring the parts of the text he couldn’t do anything about. “Come at me.”

He remembered how the scorpider had leaped at him the first time, and he waited. The thing’s body was super close to the ground, protecting its weak body.

Its legs tensed, and Will readied himself.

As it leapt for his face once again, adrenaline coursed through his body and he hit the ground on his knees, throwing his hands up above him like he was an outfielder trying to slide into a catch. He’d never been great at baseball, but the scorpider was a lot bigger than a ball.

He grabbed onto two slimy legs, forcing himself to ignore just how gross the creature was, and he swung it over his head.

The scorpider was surprisingly light—about the weight of the bowling balls at the dinky alley in the local shopping mall.

That mall probably didn’t exist anymore, did it?

He pushed the thought away. No time for distractions.

Will arced the corrupted monster into the ground. The impact of it briefly stunned the creature. Its legs flailed, exposing a discolored portion of its body that Will immediately identified as the vulnerable underside.

He didn’t think twice. Will stomped as hard as he could on the soft flesh, his blood running hot with excitement.

The creature’s abdomen popped like a water balloon filled with ink, splattering monster blood over Will’s sneakers with a satisfying squelch.

You have defeated a Cave Scorpider.

“Gross. Your corpse smells about as nice as you looked.”

The dark blood of the scorpider sizzled as it hit the grass, which reminded him that he had, in fact, stepped straight into the center of the thing’s abdomen.

“Damn it,” he sighed, withdrawing his foot. “I bought these shoes last week.”

He wiped his hands and feet off as well as he could on the grass, then gave up when he decided he wasn’t going to be able to get any more of the gunk off.

The odd smoke-like component to it was still there, he noted. The black distortion was slowly expanding, crawling across his skin and shoes even though he’d already wiped it off.

“That can’t be good.”

You have been afflicted with one level of [Corruption].

Will winced in pain as a burning sensation tore through his entire body.

“The hell is that?”

Condition: [Corruption]

Brought on by extended exposure to chaos. May also be inflicted by those wielding the Chaos or Corruption elements.

- All incoming damage is drastically increased.

- Continually applies chaos damage, which increases proportionally to the time the target has been corrupted.

- All attributes are reduced.

- Target cannot be magically healed.

The ground hadn’t stopped rumbling. Now that Will knew what that meant, he wasn’t keen on staying here. Especially since the supposed tutorial zone had dropped him right in what appeared to be the magical equivalent of Chernobyl.

He took one more look at the corpse—

Would you like to loot Cave Scorpider (Unformed)?

“Huh. Yes, please.”

Will watched in fascination as the creature’s flesh seemed to dissolve into the air, producing a thicker cloud of the corrupted smoke it had already been admitting. He took a few steps away to avoid breathing it in.

5 credits have been added to your inventory.

Scorpider Tail (Corrupted) has been added to your inventory.

Scorpider Fang (Corrupted) has been added to your inventory.

Before he could further interrogate what that meant, the earth cracked in another place. Then another.

Will took another step forward, then hissed in pain as the [Corruption] effect wracked him with a full-body shock. A silhouette diagram of the human body popped up in the top right of his vision, glowing a light greenish-yellow.

He couldn’t afford to deal with the rest of them now. Judging from context, that diagram represented his health, and in only a few seconds, the yellow-tinged green had darkened into stoplight yellow.

Will looked at the new scorpiders, then the door.

He made a run for it.

When he was really, properly sprinting, the arachnids couldn’t keep up with him, but they were in his way.

He leapt over one, cursing as a gash of pain sprouted in his leg, and he didn’t stop.

Further pain shot through his body as he ran, nearly making him double over, but he made it to the door without crumpling. Every part of his body diagram was glowing an angry reddish-orange.

Will opened the door. Whatever was on the other side was too dark for him to see, but he knew instinctively that this was the entrance into the tutorial cave.

He stepped in.

Quest complete: Begin the tutorial

Congratulations. You have now demonstrated mental and physical competence on or above the level of the average sapient 5-year-old.

Reward: You have earned 10 bronze credits. You have gained a tutorial helper.

Achievement earned: User

Whether you decided immediately or agonized for hours, you have entered the tutorial and have awakened your system. Fight, survive, and advance.

Reward: You have earned the Omnilingual universal ability. You have earned the System User universal ability. You have earned 100 credits. You have been granted 1 random elemental gem.

Achievement earned: Trailblazer.

You were one of the first 10,000 Users to select [YES] on the Tutorial. Congratulations on your decisiveness.

Reward: You have earned 100 bronze credits.

…

Achievement earned: Out of Bounds.

Your tutorial is occurring under abnormal circumstances. Please accept this formal apology from the Administrator. This adaption will prevent you from perishing due to a Tutorial Zone that is inherently lethal to your race.

Reward: Your random elemental gem has been changed to a superior elemental gem of [Corruption]. Would you like to bind the gem immediately? [YES / NO]

Magic. I’m getting magic.

Hell yes.

Congratulations, [William Li-Brown]. You may die today, but it will not be due to corruption.

Element: Corruption has been bound to the [Affinity] attribute.

You have earned the [Corruption Resistance] skill at bronze rank.

Initiating tutorial…