Alex Chen died on a Tuesday.
It wasn't dramatic. No heroics, no last words, no flashing life review. One moment he was reaching for a box on the top shelf of the warehouse, and the next, the entire shelving unit was coming down on top of him. Thousands of pounds of merchandise crushed the air from his lungs in seconds.
His last thought was surprisingly mundane: I never even called in sick.
The darkness came quickly after that. Alex Chen, twenty-eight years old, warehouse worker, college dropout, orphan with no family and two acquaintances who might notice his absence—faded into nothing.
Or so he thought.
---
Consciousness returned like a splash of ice water.
Alex gasped, his lungs filling with air that tasted wrong—too clean, too sharp, carrying traces of something metallic and organic at the same time. His eyes snapped open to chaos.
The warehouse was gone.
In its place stretched a ruined cityscape. Buildings stood at impossible angles, some crumbling, others untouched. The sky above was wrong—tinged with purple, dominated by two moons that definitely hadn't existed before. And the sounds...
Growling. Screaming. The crack of what might have been gunfire in the distance.
"What the hell?" Alex pushed himself upright, his body feeling strangely light. He looked down at himself—the same clothes, the same hands, the same scar on his left palm from a childhood accident. But something was different. He could feel it humming beneath his skin, like a tuning fork vibrating at a frequency just below hearing.
A chime sounded directly in his mind.
[INITIALIZING SYSTEM INTERFACE...]
Alex spun in a circle, searching for the source of the voice. There was no one. Just ruins, rubble, and that alien sky.
[ERROR DETECTED]
[USER DATABASE: NOT FOUND]
[INITIALIZING BACKUP PROTOCOLS...]
[WARNING: SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED]
A translucent blue window appeared in front of him, flickering like a bad TV signal. Text scrolled across it, some readable, most corrupted into strings of symbols and question marks.
He stared at it, trying to make sense of the chaos. "What is this? Am I dead? Is this hell?"
[HELLO, USER. WELCOME TO THE GAME.]
The voice was mechanical, neither male nor female, carrying an undertone of static.
[YOUR AWAKENING IS COMPLETE. PLEASE SELECT YOUR STARTING BOON TO BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY.]
Three options appeared before him, but they were glitching so badly he could barely read them:
[OPTION 1: ???CE???NT WARRIOR - ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED]
[OPTION 2: ????? MAGE - ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED]
[OPTION 3: ?????? - ERROR: CLASS DESIGNATION NOT FOUND]
Alex's hands trembled as he reached toward the screen. None of this made sense. He should be dead. Crushed under a warehouse shelf. Not standing in some apocalyptic wasteland with a broken video game interface floating in front of his face.
"Is this real?" he whispered.
[AFFIRMATIVE. YOUR EXISTENCE HAS BEEN CONFIRMED. PLEASE SELECT YOUR BOON BEFORE TIMEOUT EXPIRES.]
[TIMEOUT IN: 00:59...]
The countdown appeared in red, pulsing urgently. Alex's survival instincts—dormant since the warehouse—kicked in. He didn't know what was happening, but something told him letting that timer hit zero would be very, very bad.
"I can't read the options! They're corrupted!"
[SYSTEM ERROR NOTED. COMPENSATION PROTOCOL ENGAGING.]
[RANDOM ASSIGNMENT IN PROGRESS...]
[ASSIGNMENT COMPLETE]
[CLASS: MIDNIGHT MONARCH - ERROR: THIS CLASS SHOULD NOT EXIST]
[SYSTEM ALERT: YOUR INTERFACE IS DAMAGED. PLEASE PROCEED TO A SYSTEM TERMINAL FOR REPAIRS.]
[NEAREST TERMINAL: 2.3 KM NORTHEAST]
The window vanished, leaving Alex standing alone in the ruins. His mind raced, trying to process what just happened. A class. A system. Like a video game. He'd read stories about this—isekai, litRPG, whatever you wanted to call it. But those were stories. This was—
A roar echoed from somewhere close.
Alex spun toward the sound. A hundred meters away, something emerged from behind a collapsed building. It stood eight feet tall, with matted gray fur, elongated limbs, and a face that was almost human but wrong—too stretched, too hungry.
[ALERT: HOSTILE DETECTED]
[THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: FLEE]
"Run. Right. Good plan." Alex turned and ran.
He sprinted through the ruins, his heart pounding, his breath coming in sharp gasps. The creature behind him howled, and the sound of its pursuit—heavy footsteps, claws scraping concrete—drove him faster. He ducked through a hole in a wall, vaulted over a rusted car, and ducked into what had once been a convenience store.
The darkness inside was absolute.
Alex pressed himself against the wall, trying to silence his breathing. The footsteps outside grew louder, then stopped. Snuffling sounds. The creature was searching.
He realized with growing horror that he had no weapon, no skills, nothing but his own two hands and a broken System that seemed about as useful as a phone with a cracked screen.
The creature's shadow passed by the broken window.
Then moved on.
Alex let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He stayed frozen for what felt like an eternity, listening to the sounds of the ruined city—more howls in the distance, the occasional crash, and beneath it all, a low humming that seemed to emanate from the ground itself.
When he finally moved, it was to check something. He raised his hand, trying to summon that blue window again.
[SYSTEM STATUS: CRITICAL]
[CURRENT TIME: 11:58 PM]
[MIDNIGHT PROTOCOL: PENDING...]
[2 MINUTES TO ACTIVATION]
Alex frowned. Midnight protocol? What did that mean?
He didn't have long to wonder. The window flickered, and new text appeared:
[WARNING: USER IS VULNERABLE DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS.]
[RECOMMENDATION: SEEK SHELTER UNTIL MIDNIGHT PROTOCOL ACTIVATES.]
[ERROR: USER ALREADY EXPOSED. PRAY.]
"Pray?" Alex whispered. "To who?"
The window vanished.
Outside, the howling started again—closer this time. Multiple voices.
Alex Chen pressed his back to the wall and waited for midnight.
He had a feeling his life—or whatever this was—was about to get very interesting.