※ “A system that rewards anomalies shouldn’t be surprised when they multiply.”

  She walked until she found the thickest part of the meadow, a place where the grass rose almost to her knees and every step stirred multiple species into motion.

  She swept her hand through the grass; the stems were so dense she could barely push her fingers between them. Each handful she tore up contained dozens of individual plants, maybe more.

  A good place for contagion.

  A dense tangle.

  Plenty of surface area.

  She crouched and touched a single blade.

  “Let’s begin.”

  

  Pestilence — Mana: 140/170

  A shimmer. A promise.

  Then the rhythm began.

  Spark.

  

  Stack: 1, Mana: 139/170

  Spark.

  

  Stack: 2, Mana: 138/170

  …

  The numbers climbed with the gentle inevitability of breath.

  Her movements stayed small, controlled, almost lazy.

  She barely looked at the plant now; her hand knew the work.

  Spark.

  

  Stack: 64, Mana: 133/170

  …

  The grass around her stirred, unaware of anything except wind.

  She straightened her spine slightly.

  Spark.

  

  Stack: 1,024, Mana: 130/170

  …

  Her eyes half-closed.

  Spark.

  

  Stack: 8,192, Mana: 127/170

  Spark.

  

  Stack: 16,384, Mana: 126/170

  She let her hand fall to her knee, considering the trembling blade.

  It was overloaded, overburdened, oversaturated with a spell designed for blood, not cellulose.

  “One more precaution,” she said.

  Pestilence, directly at the same blade.

  

  Pestilence applied

  Stacks: 16385

  Duration reset: 300 s

  Mana: 96/170

  She stepped back.

  Just one meter.

  Just enough to stand in the exact center of the coming storm.

  Ten seconds passed.

  Then the world twitched.

  The grass within one meter collapsed in perfect unison—

  not wilted, not burned,

  but dropped, as if life had been a weight and someone had cut the string.

  The next meter… didn’t.

  Plants began dying at different moments.

  One immediately.

  Three more a heartbeat later.

  A cluster half a second after that.

  Each death threw its own stack wave outward,

  unsynced, overlapping, multiplying.

  The propagation didn’t advance as a line.

  It shattered into hundreds of micro-fronts,

  each one triggering another,

  each faster than the last.

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  “It’s not one wave.

  It’s all of them.”

  

  Pestilence propagation

  Stacks transferred to nearby biological entities

  But the number was meaningless now.

  Because each dying blade didn’t pass on one burden,

  it passed all of it.

  And every plant around it did the same.

  It didn’t spread outward like ripples on water.

  It compounded,

  every collapse feeding the next collapse,

  every death multiplying the weight it carried.

  A chain reaction pretending to be a meadow.

  The numbers stopped behaving like numbers.

  Stacks didn’t climb; they avalanched.

  Propagation no longer resembled cause and effect.

  It resembled failure.

  By the time the wave left the densest patch of grass, it no longer carried tens of thousands.

  It carried whatever number sits between reason and disaster.

  Heat rippled through the air as thousands of micro-deaths cascaded outward.

  Lisa raised one hand, not to shield herself, but to measure the vibration.

  “Resonance,” she noted.

  She exhaled softly.

  She had expected speed.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  She had underestimated hunger.

  The meadow fell like dominoes, rapid, clean, almost elegant.

  A rolling pulse of failure sweeping outward, erasing color as it went.

  Creatures tried to flee.

  The expansion stopped behaving like distance-per-tick. It became distance-per-heartbeat. Then per blink.

  A hare burst from the brush, bounding twice before vanishing into the wall of contagion, a flicker, a tremor, and then:

  

  Mob Defeated: Savanna Hare

  A mongoose followed.

  Its spine arched, legs stiffened, momentum broken mid-stride.

  

  Mob Defeated: Burrow Mongoose

  The contagion kept moving faster and faster.

  

  [Pestilence → Lv.2]

  [Pestilence → Lv.3]

  Further out, the air shifted as something larger fell.

  A striped kudu staggered once, as if tripping on its own shadow, then dropped sideways into the grass that was no longer grass.

  

  Mob Defeated: Striped Kudu

  [Pestilence → Lv.4]

  A vulture spiraled from the sky, wings folding in on themselves while still mid-glide.

  

  Mob Defeated: Glider Vulture

  [Pestilence → Lv.5]

  [Pestilence → Lv.6]

  The smell changed.

  Not rot, not fire,

  absence.

  The kind of smell that only appears when entire ecosystems forget how to breathe.

  Something heavy collapsed at the edge of vision.

  A tortoise flipped onto its back, legs curled tight against its shell.

  

  Mob Defeated: Riverback Tortoise

  [Pestilence → Lv.7]

  [Pestilence → Lv.8]

  The contagion surged into the far savanna, where the shapes grew larger, darker, more confident.

  Confidence didn’t help.

  A hyena went down mid-laugh.

  A charger fell while braced to run.

  A stalker froze as if noticing her for the first time, then buckled like wet cloth.

  

  Mob Defeated: Burrow Hyena

  Mob Defeated: Savanna Charger

  Mob Defeated: Hornback Stalker

  Then the earth shook.

  Not from impact,

  from vacancy.

  The final creature stood tall behind a distant rise: broad shoulders, bristled hide, tusks wide like shovels.

  It gave one defiant cry,

  a wet, high sound already dissolving in the wind,

  and its legs folded beneath it.

  

  Mob Defeated: Tutorial Boss: Alpha Razorback

  Something stirred above the canopy, neither wind nor sound.

  A shift in the System’s attention.

  As if another process had just noticed her.

  

  [Pestilence → Lv.9]

  [Pestilence → Lv.10] (Max for Level 0)

  The horizon went from green to grey in less than a breath.

  Then nothing moved.

  The meadow was no longer a meadow.

  It was a sheet of dull, uniform stubble, every blade equal in death.

  No insects.

  No birds.

  No sound except her own breath.

  She brushed her palms against her thighs.

  “Oops,” she said.

  Notifications slid into her vision like embarrassed clerks.

  

  Uncommon Feat Detected:

  You have killed a Creature 10+ Levels Above You

  Skill +1

  Total Skill Points: 4

  

  Record Achieved:

  First Entity to Kill a Creature 10+ Levels Above It (at Level 0).

  Title: The Lowborn Apex

  Skill +1, STR +2, DEX +2

  Total Skill Points: 5

  STR: 12, DEX: 12

  

  System Record: First Entity to achieve two titles at Level 0

  Reward: +4 Skill Points, +8 Attribute Points

  Total Skill Points: 9

  

  Record Achieved:

  First Entity to Max a Spell at Level 0.

  Title: The Forger of First Principles

  Skill +1, INT +6

  Total Skill Points: 10

  INT: 23

  

  System Record: First Entity to achieve three titles at Level 0

  Reward: +6 Skill Points, +12 Attribute Points

  Total Skill Points: 16

  

  Record Achieved:

  First Entity to finish a dungeon solo at Level 0.

  Title: The First to Walk Alone

  Skill +1, +6 Attribute Points

  Total Skill Points: 17

  

  System Record: First Entity to achieve four titles at Level 0

  Reward: +8 Skill Points, +16 Attribute Points

  Total Skill Points: 25

  

  STATUS — SYNC COMPLETE

  Name: Lisa

  Race: Human

  Class: Unselected

  Level: 0

  Attributes:

  STR: 12

  DEX: 12

  INT: 23

  WIS: 10

  Unassigned Attribute Points: 53

  Hit Points: 120

  Mana: 230 / 230

  Skills: 3

  Identify

  Magic Fundamentals

  Meditation

  Skill Points: 25

  Spells (1/1):

  Pestilence

  Cantrips (2/2)

  Clean

  Spark

  Movement Restriction: You cannot exit the Safe Zone until Attributes are distributed and a Class is selected.

  Then the System tried to respond.

  It did not go well.

  

  Tutorial Objective Complete:

  Boss Eliminated.

  Calculating Rewards…

  …

  

  Error: XP assignment failed.

  Reason: User Level = 0 (Class not selected)

  Error: Level Up blocked.

  Reason: Class not selected.

  Error: Instance cannot reset.

  Reason: Living entities remain within.

  Warning: Inconsistent World-State Detected.

  Attempting Recovery…

  Failure.

  The boundary around her flickered, stuttered, and then dissolved like frost under a rising sun.

  She tilted her head.

  “Well,” she said, “that was inevitable.”