The hesitation in the goblins'' eyes was brief, but I saw it.
They had expected easy prey.
Instead, I had torn through two of them, and now the rest were starting to realize—I wasn''t like the others they''d hunted.
But I wasn’t stupid.
I wasn’t strong enough to fight them all. Not yet.
Survive for an hour.
That was my only goal.
[REMAINING TIME: 44 MINUTES]
Not long enough.
I flexed my fingers, feeling the warm blood dripping from my palm. My knuckles ached from the last kill. The wound on my arm throbbed, but the pain was dull—almost distant.
Something was changing inside me.
The goblins let out another shriek. Their fear turned to renewed rage.
Then, as if commanded, they charged.
I exhaled sharply, scanning my surroundings—except there was no environment. Just white emptiness in all directions.
No terrain to use.
No cover to hide behind.
Just me and an army of bloodthirsty creatures.
Fine.
Then I''d have to become the terrain.
A Predatory Dance
The first goblin reached me in seconds.
This time, I didn’t retreat.
I stepped into its attack—closing the distance before it could react.
Its jagged blade slashed forward. I tilted my head just enough for it to graze past my ear, feeling the wind of its strike brush against my skin.
Then—I struck.
My elbow slammed into its throat.
The goblin gagged, its beady eyes bulging in shock.
I twisted, grabbing its arm and snapping it backward at an unnatural angle.
Another goblin lunged from behind. I used the first goblin’s dying body as a shield, its ally’s blade plunging into its back instead of mine.
Before the second goblin could react, I wrenched the blade from its grip—ripping it free from the corpse.
Steel felt cold in my palm.
It felt right.
The goblin staggered back, now unarmed. I didn’t give it the chance to recover.
I drove the blade through its skull.
[Enemies Defeated: 4]
But there was no time to celebrate.
The others charged all at once.
I kicked the goblin’s corpse off my weapon and pivoted on my heel, barely dodging another attack.
Another goblin—smaller than the rest—dove at my side. Instead of dodging, I rolled with its momentum and twisted its neck in midair.
Snap.
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It dropped.
[Enemies Defeated: 5]
But they kept coming.
I dodged. Countered. Struck back.
One by one, they fell.
And I kept moving.
I had no time to think. No time to breathe.
Just react.
Just survive.
***
[REMAINING TIME: 22 MINUTES]
I couldn’t keep this up.
I was faster than them. Stronger than before. But my body was failing.
My breathing was ragged. My muscles burned. My vision blurred at the edges.
And the goblins weren’t stopping.
They adapted.
They started attacking together—one feinting while another struck.
A blade sliced through my leg.
I staggered.
A blunt club slammed into my ribs.
I gasped, dropping to one knee. My vision darkened from the impact.
The goblins pounced.
I tried to move.
Too slow.
One of them grabbed my arm—another seized my ankle.
I struggled.
They forced me down.
No.
I thrashed, but there were too many. Their claws dug into my flesh. Their blades hovered inches from my throat.
I refused to die here.
Something inside me snapped.
A pressure I hadn’t noticed before exploded outward.
The goblins froze.
For a brief moment, they all flinched—eyes wide with something I hadn’t seen before.
Fear.
Then I felt it.
A new sensation thrummed beneath my skin—a force coiling through my veins, buzzing beneath my fingertips.
Something foreign.
Something mine.
The goblins hesitated.
I didn’t.
I lunged.
A raw wave of energy surged through my limbs.
My movements became sharper. Faster. Lethal.
I ripped free from their grasp, twisting mid-air to drive my heel into the nearest goblin’s skull.
It caved inward instantly.
I landed smoothly, not even out of breath.
The goblins shrieked.
They sensed it, too.
The shift.
I exhaled.
Adapt or perish.
I was done running.
I dashed forward.
Too fast for them to react.
I weaved between their strikes, moving like I had always known this body—like I had always fought this way.
A goblin lunged.
I grabbed its throat mid-air and slammed it into the void.
Another swung its blade. I caught it with my bare hand—the steel barely scratching my skin.
I drove its own weapon through its chest.
The remaining goblins panicked.
Some tried to run.
I didn’t let them.
I moved through them like a phantom—each motion precise, calculated, devastating.
Blades found throats. Limbs snapped like twigs. The battlefield drowned in green blood.
And then—
Silence.
I was the only one standing.
The goblins were gone.
Nothing remained but their corpses, and the blood dripping from my fingers.
[TUTORIAL QUEST COMPLETE.]
[REWARD: BASIC FUNCTIONS UNLOCKED.]
[SUBQUEST COMPLETE: YOU HAVE BEEN MARKED FOR ADVANCED CHALLENGES.]I staggered.
The pressure in my body receded, leaving behind only exhaustion.
I looked down at my hands—at the blood smeared across my skin, at the bodies scattered around me.
It should have bothered me.
It didn’t.
I exhaled, steadying myself.
Then—
The void shattered. A burst of white light swallowed everything. A distant voice echoed in my skull—cold, emotionless.
[TRANSFER COMPLETE.]
And when my vision cleared—I was somewhere else
***
The blinding white void vanished.
The suffocating emptiness of the tutorial was replaced by—warmth.
A soft breeze brushed against my skin. The scent of flowers drifted through the air. My feet, once pressing against nothingness, now stood firmly on solid ground.
Grass.
I looked down.
Beneath me, a vast field of wildflowers stretched endlessly in every direction. Blues, yellows, and reds swayed gently under a breeze that carried the faint hum of rustling leaves.
Above, the sky was a deep, vivid blue—but unlike the skies of Earth, this one shimmered, streaked with thin golden lines, as if the heavens themselves had been laced with cracks of pure energy.
It was beautiful.
And yet—
I wasn’t alone.
Scattered across the open plains, tens—no, hundreds—of people stood in small clusters, all wearing the same stunned expression I must have had.
They weren’t ordinary civilians.
At a glance, I could tell most of them were military personnel, police officers, or people who had combat experience. Others were hunters, survivalists—anyone who had the means to fight back.
It made sense.
The Tower’s first test had been brutal. Only those who killed the goblins before the time limit had survived.
No second chances. No retries.
The rest?
I didn’t need to see their bodies to know what had happened to them.
A weight settled in my stomach.
I exhaled slowly.
I should have felt something. Guilt. Relief. Anything.
Instead, I just felt tired.
The survivors whispered among themselves, shifting anxiously as they took in their surroundings.
Some clutched weapons—knives, makeshift clubs, even guns—though I doubted firearms had done much against the goblins.
A group of men in tactical gear stood a few feet away, watching the area with trained eyes. Military, probably.
I scanned the field. No civilians. No children.
Everyone here had blood on their hands.
Even me.
A ripple of energy surged through the air.
I stiffened.
The others must have felt it too, because the entire field went silent.
Then—
[CONGRATULATIONS.]
The voice returned.
That same overwhelming presence, pressing into my skull.
[SURVIVORS OF THE TUTORIAL HAVE BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED.]
[A TOTAL OF 52,769,091 PARTICIPANTS HAVE PASSED.]
Murmurs broke out across the crowd.
Fifty million?
That sounded like a lot—until I considered just how many people had entered the tutorial.
Eight billion people had been thrown into this game.
Only fifty million survived.
The realization sent a chill down my spine.
And yet, the voice continued, completely devoid of emotion.
[YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE FIRST STEP OF ASCENSION.]
[PREPARE FOR SYSTEM INITIALIZATION.]