I awoke to a warning.

  Notice! There are eight hours left until the end of the tutorial “Regroup at Seattle Public Library.” Hurry up! Failure to meet up will result in elimination.

  I opened my eyes and saw moonlight peering through the open window of Columbia Center. It was past midnight. The staircase would be pitch black, and I had lost the flashlight in the prowler attack. For all I knew, it had run out of juice. Then, I’d be relying on filtered moonlight to fight against beasts like the prowler. It just wasn’t viable.

  Body and mind wrecked—natural forces turned against me—I drifted back to sleep.

  I woke to a loud series of chimes. I read the red pop-up, and it made me ill.

  Notice! There are two hours left until the end of the tutorial, “Regroup at Seattle Public Library.” Hurry up! Failure to meet up will result in elimination.

  I tried to stand, and to my surprise, I could. My head still hurt like hell, though. “I need to find some…” I winced and grabbed my head. “Advil.”

  A red pop-up filled my vision:

  Congratulations! You have completed the sub-tutorial “Survive.” You have earned an information request.

  “Good…” I muttered as I stared at the scene before me. The Obsidian Prowler lay with its mouth open, thick, yellow canines exposed—a desk leg stuck in its eye. The makeshift katana had stapled its skull to the azure bird’s neck. It was terrible to see such beautiful creatures hanging limp in the empty office space, but here we were, in Columbia Center, the apocalypse’s zoo—and it wasn’t a kind place for anyone.

  I laughed darkly at the absurdity of my killing them.

  I guess it was a platinum skill, I thought as I grabbed the desk leg. I paused, deciding to leave it in favor of obtaining a new weapon. Something about removing it just felt wrong, so I let go and focused on myself instead.

  “Information request,” I said. “What’s the state of my body?”

  Request Granted

  Like your class, your body is a paradox. Your core shattered under repeated stress and overheating, but your forced evolution healed it. In an ironic twist, this was a miraculous action. Cores get stronger like muscles: through breaking and healing, and yours was completely shattered. So, when your core forcefully evolved after Level 25, it reformed into a Lysan core, a core that will partially open and expand to accept more soul force as you approach your second evolution.

  Unfortunately, it’s still stressed. You are able to use Mana Sharpening, but if you use your Paradox skills, you can permanently damage your mind, body, and core. Thankfully, you have obtained the strength to fight with Mana Sharpening alone. Here are your current stats.

  Name: Kyle Taylor

  Level 31

  Evolution: 1

  Class: Paradox

  Adaptation Points Available: 1300

  Free Points: 210

  Status

  STR: 270

  AGL: 275

  END: 270

  PER: 330

  INT: 329 (3)

  Unique Skills:

  Time Ghost

  Grand Lock

  ???

  Adaptation Rewards (1)

  My eyes trembled. “W-What?”

  As you know, your body was already capable of killing normal humans with a single kick—but it wasn’t enough to lay a hair on the evolved housecat you just killed.

  “That was a housecat?” I cried.

  That is the nature of the world. You are rapidly growing in power due to the influx of mana, but so are other animals and people. In times of abnormal mana fluctuations, the animals and plants far outpace the Chosens. It’s a dangerous cycle. Thankfully, you’re currently far ahead of your peers and animals for this stage of the tutorial. Your stats are powerful, and your first evolution—which paves the way for future growth—has synced your mind to your mana channels, your mind to your new body, and has infused mana into your muscles and bones. Despite not having a stat increase, your evolution has permanently changed your mind and body, allowing you to challenge beasts like the Prowler without your skills.

  Do not be misled: your strength is not guaranteed. You will still need to be strategic, given the difficulty of your tutorial. That said, you do not need your Paradox skills. Therefore, it’s recommended that you not even view your Scale of Marico options. There is one option that is sure to capture your attention, but is guaranteed to destroy your core if used.

  I shivered at the warning, allowing my back to crash against the wall. I stared out the open window, watching the rising sun. It rose in the northeast in the summer, and it glittered off the shattered windows in Seattle’s skyscrapers. Who knew something so post-apocalyptic could be so beautiful?

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  I’m surprised another bird didn’t attack me, I thought glibly.

  (You feelin’ lucky, punk?)

  (Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.)

  I seriously need some Advil.

  It wasn’t hard to find some. The entire location was picked clean of furniture and computer equipment, leaving nothing but two dead humans, one sitting in the kitchen and the other lying dead beside the medicine cabinet. One man had lost an arm at one point and had tried to gauze it shut, as if that would do anything. He probably died of blood loss before the Shiki bug got him. The other was simply eaten. The whole thing was kind of bleak, considering that they had gone through so much effort to ransack other floors to barricade the stairs, only to accidentally let something worse than the zombies in.

  I emptied the entire cabinet of triple-antibiotic ointment, Band-Aids, and generic ibuprofen into my satchel, grateful that the man had chosen aspirin.

  Only ibuprofen did me any good on the headache front. It was a boon.

  I then wrapped my arm in gauze. Unlike the man, I only got a scratch from the glass wall, and it had almost healed. I still didn't want it ripping open or attracting beasts, so I did my due diligence.

  I then went across the room to open my can of Starbucks Doubleshot Espresso, only to remember that it and my yogurt cups had burst during my fight with the second Shiki bug.

  This blows… I thought, tossing aside my bag. Fifteen minutes… I’ll give myself fifteen more minutes…

  It wasn’t much time, so I hit the bathroom and washed my hands. As red and purple blood drained into the sink, splashing crimson onto the porcelain before fading and draining away, I looked at myself in the mirror. I had blood caked on my face, and there was dimness in my eyes.

  This is real… this is actually real… I wasn’t sure what “real” meant. It was a “tutorial,” but unless Mark Zuckerberg had turned Oculus VR into a fully immersive, sensory-accurate environment (instead of a cheesy world of 3D avatars) in the last thirty days, this world was real—and the stakes matched.

  (“Elimination.”)

  That word echoed in my mind.

  “Time remaining,” I whispered.

  A pop-up answered my call.

  Tutorial: Regroup at Seattle Public Library

  Time remaining: 01:26:13

  “You gotta move,” I muttered. “So buck up, buttercup.” I slapped my cheeks twice, strode out of the bathroom, and saluted the dead evolved creatures. “Thank you,” I said to them and meant it. If I survived, it’d be through my luck and their sacrifices. I then hit the stairs.

  The barricade had broken from the Prowler’s attack, so zombies had flooded the staircase, pressing against the small hole in the stairwell’s door that the Prowler made it through.

  I cracked my neck and slapped the door’s window five times. “Hey, uglies! Let’s go!”

  A collective moan went out—and then I stomped the door open. The metal door blasted into a maze of twisted metal, tossing aside zombies. The others turned to me as my mind slowed.

  “Let’s do this!”

  My first kick blew the spine out of a man’s back. I’d never forget the way that his Calvin Klein button-up twisted and ripped apart as it sucked into his stomach. All the buttons on it broke in a spectacular ripping motion, and then blood created this weird spray as his organs shot out of his back. It was a bleak image—

  —that started my descent. I grabbed a woman by the hair and smashed her skull against the wall before throwing her body into others like a bowling ball. Then, I ran to the barricade, ripped the leg off an armchair, and then bolted down the stairs, swinging the mana-sharpened club without rest. I felt like the Grim Reaper, reaping this year’s harvest of beleaguered underpaid corporate professionals as I pushed toward the first floor. It was easy—almost too easy. The morning light filtering through the staircase’s windows might as well have been spotlights under my evolved perception, and only zombies remained, as the Prowler had killed everything else.

  And yet, things were never so simple. I learned that when I pushed open the ground floor’s door, only to immediately pull it shut. There was a massive wall of spider webs that had captured about twenty cocooned humans, people who had likely tried to run out—only to get caught inside them. If the door wasn’t partially glued shut, and I didn’t have high perception, I would’ve probably experienced the same fate.

  Nope, nope-nope-nope-nope! I slammed the door. “Second floor it is!”

  The second floor wasn’t much better—but it was manageable. There wasn’t any webbing on the door, but there were about three hundred zombies who charged me. I didn’t hesitate. I ran into the lobby like a scene from Kill Bill, decapitating them at high speed. It was messy and gory, and kind of cool until I reached the food court—which was an arachnophobe’s greatest nightmare.

  There was spider webbing on the Piroshky Piroshky, forever locking away moldy Russian baked goods behind the counter. I was okay with never eating there again—but wasn’t okay with the spiders within it. They were the size of dinner plates—and they didn’t look friendly.

  Please don’t be a jumping spider. Please don’t be a—

  The spiders jumped—spider silk shooting out of their spinnerets. Yeah, no! I didn’t even try to cut them. I just dodged, thanking whatever god was responsible for letting me evolve before coming down the stairs!

  I dodged, ducked, and rolled past spiders as I shoulder-checked zombies. It was a nonstop grind on the way to the staircase—and then the chase abruptly came to a stop.

  Things were worse on the staircase—far worse.

  Columbia Center featured a very artistic staircase leading to the first floor. The golden staircase was wide enough to accommodate bridge trolls from fairy tales. There were desks on the left side of it, where people drank Monorail Espresso while researching world events instead of working. To the right, there was beautiful shutter-style wood that waved in surreal patterns. It was a beautiful area—

  And one hundred percent of it was covered in webs. All of it. Worse, there were dozens of humans (or zombies) that had been rolled up in cocoons on the ceilings and floors and literally everywhere. It was a brutal scene.

  “Okay…” I muttered. “This is gonna get grim.”

  I’m not sure when my brain became deranged enough to adapt to such grim situations—but it had. I ran back, killing two zombies before throwing them onto the webs like stepping stones.

  I then searched for more. Thankfully, the spiders and beasts seemed to avoid the zombies, who were rushing toward me. I released my perception and checked my watch as I waited for them to come to me.

  Tutorial: Regroup at Seattle Public Library

  Time remaining: 00:58:39

  This is gonna take forever.

  It did. It took me thirty full minutes to toss enough bodies onto the staircase to safely descend. After ten hops, I landed on the massive granite tiles and took a deep breath of relief.

  I made it, I thought. Now out the back door.

  The main entrance was covered with webs so thick that getting out was impossible, and all of it was filled with spiders. So I followed the lobby to the Cherry Street entrance, the one workers used to get into the building. That entrance was even worse. The doors and windows weren’t webbed, but the entire wall above it was a massive white in crimson spider nest. To my great relief, the nest wasn’t filled with hundreds of arachnids. To my existential dread, the single spider on it was the size of a monster truck wheel, and the cocoons around it held mutated canines the size of horses, bugs, and other mutant creatures. Worse, that red silk reflected light like sharpened blades. That spider was clearly an evolved beast, and all of its red eyes were trained on me.