Chapter 3
As Jake slowly opened his eyes, the room came into focus, and he found himself lying on an old, creaky floor. The musty air filled his nostrils, and he wirying to recall how he had ended up here. The room was filled with a thick yer of dust, and the sunlight filtered through the broken blinds, casting a ghostly glow on the shabby furniture. A sense of unease crept over him as he took in the sight of roots and pnts snaking across the floor and walls as if nature itself was reg the abandoned space.
He stood up and took a tentative step forward, the floorbroaning under his weight. He reached out to touch the peeling aper, the faded floral pattern barely reizable underh the yers of . Each step stirred up clouds of dust, causing him to cough as he made his way across the room to the only window.
Peering through the cracked gss, he was met with a haunting sight. The street outside was lined with long-abandoned cars, their once vibrant colors now muted and rusted from years of . Weeds and grass burst through the cracks in the asphalt, reg the road as their own. Buildings stood like sileinels, their walls adorned with a b of crawling vines and wild foliage. The air outside was eerily still, punctuated only by the occasional howl of the wind or the distant call of a bird.
As Jake took in the desote se before him, a shiver ran down his spihe world outside felt frozen in time as if nature had pressed pause on the once bustling city. It looked like a se from a post-apocalyptic movie or a video game. How had he ended up in this fotten pce? What had happeo the world?
With a furrowed brow, Jake turned away from the window, determio uhe enigma of his presen this eerie, abandoned house. Sweeping the decrepit room with his gaze, he racked his brain, trying to remember what he’d been doing before ending up in this dreadful pce.
For a minute, nothing came to his mind. Then the memories came rushing back at him, and he remembered everything—being dog-tired and half-asleep while driving home from work, seeing strange messages about some mysterious System pnning to turn the Earth into something else, and then swerving off the road and crashing into a piree. And now he’d somehow ended up in this abandoned house in a desote world. What does it all mean?
As soon as the thought formed in his mind, a text message appeared before his eyes.
Wele, pyer! The Earth has successfully been ied into the Gameverse, and you have been brought back from stasis. Since you have been put in stasis, 6 years, 10 months, 27 days, 12 hours, 37 minutes, and 44 seds have passed.
“What the hell,” Jake muttered.
New lines of text tio materialize before his eyes.
And now you are almost ready to begin your adventure, pyer! In this world, you are a survivor and your task is quite simple—to survive by any means necessary.
Jake felt a chill run down his spihe System had turhe world into a post-apocalyptic wastend, in which he had to survive now. Such a prospect terrified him. What was he going to do? He was just a regur guy without any surviving experience.
Seemingly oblivious to his grim musings, the System kept texting him.
This is the st system message that you will ever get. All further information you will find on a personal digital assistant—a handheld PC, which will let you access all your stats as well as some other useful information.
Try to get a PDA as soon as possible to sign up as a new user. The System will register you and keep all the information about you in its database. After that, even if you lose your PDA, the System will still keep track of your progress, and all your personal information will bee avaible to you again as soon as you acquire another PDA.
That’s all. Good luck, survivor! Try not to die—after all, you have only one life! Have fun!
All the text disappeared after Jake read it.
“No, no, no,” Jake stuttered in panic. “You ’t leave me like that! What do I do now? At least tell me where I should go, what I should do, what to expect at all.”
He waited for a moment, but no system message appeared before his eyes.
Have fun!
“What fun?” Jake muttered angrily. “Surviving in a post-apocalyptic world is no fun, dammit.”
This whole situation was really beginning to stress him out. His heart hammered in his chest, and his breath was ing in ragged gasps. He was about to have a panic attack.
Jake leaned against the wall and sat on the dusty floor. Trying to rex, he closed his eyes and for the several minutes, box-breathed. His heart rate slowed, and his thoughts began to clear.
You got this, he said mentally to himself. partmentalize. You always were good at that.
Feeling a little better, he opened his eyes and stood up. So the System had told him that he o find a PDA. Where could he get one?
As soon as he thought that, there was a chiming sound that came from the other side of the room. He looked in that dire but didn’t notiything suspicious at first. There was only some dust-covered decrepit furniture there. Then the sound chimed again and was apanied by a small fsh of light a little off to his side. He looked that way and saw what looked like a small tablet or an oversized smartphone lying on a small round table.
Has to be a PDA, Jake thought with joy, gd it hadn’t taken him long to find one. He reached the round table and picked up the handheld device. Uhe rest of the room, it wasn’t covered in dust, looking brand-new instead. The device didn’t have any physical buttons, its smooth dispy shimmering uhe glow of the sunlight reag into the room. At that moment, one of the ers of the device fshed a small light followed by the now familiar chiming sound. Jake tapped the touchs, seemingly the only means of iion with the device, and the touchs lit up with a white color.
Bck letters in all caps fshed on the s—NEW USER IDENTIFIED. PLEASE WAIT WHILE YOU’RE BEIERED IN THE SYSTEM.
Jake stared at the s for a full minute, but nothing happened. Nress bar indicator was shown on the s, so Jake had no idea how long it would take for him to be registered.
A glimpse of movement to his right caught his attention. He looked that way in time to see someone—something—move outside the window.
Immediately alert, Jake crouched and crept back toward the window. Making sure to ceal his body so it wouldn’t be seen from the street, he cautiously ed his o peer around the edge of the frame. He saerson shuffling dowreet, moving like a zombie. He—it—was blood-stained clothes hanging in sherds from its skeletal frame.
“What the fuck,” Jake muttered.
He remembered that little game he’d pyed against the System while driving bae from work in his pickup truck. He’d been told that if he won, he’d bee a pyer, but if he lost, he’d bee a monster. However, it hadn’t been a fair game. The System had a huge advantage over him. He’d beeremely lucky to win the game to bee a pyer. If every single person oh had had to py the game with the same unfair rules—and Jake had no reason to believe otherwise—it meant that most of the people had lost aurned into monsters. So sidering that Earth had been transformed into a post-apocalyptic world, it was safe to assume that the creature shuffling dowreet had once been a human being but now was a zombie or a simir creature.
At that moment, the devi his haed a cheerful sound. It was much louder than the chiming sounds it’d been making before, and Jake winced in fear. He g the s and saw a new piece of text appear across the middle of the s—GRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE BEEERED IN THE SYSTEM AND WILL BE ABLE TO USE THE DEVI A MOMENT AFTER IT FINISHES SING YOU.
Jake wasn’t ied in that for the time being, though. He looked through the window at the creature he’d noticed earlier. The zombie no longer shuffled along the road. Instead, it’d turo face the house Jake was in. It must have heard the cheerful sound the device had just made. Their eyes met, and the creature emitted a high-pitched scream. Jake realized that having e to the window was a huge mistake on his part. He should’ve stayed out of sight somewhere deeper ihe room instead. However, there was no time to scold himself for that, because the monster suddenly burst into a run toward him.
