“My name is James Lisbon,” Rue insisted.

  “Rue Hazard, I need to talk to you. Later, when we are alone.”

  “Fine,” Rue cursed under his breath, trying his darn hardest to stop himself from sighing out loud.

  Now, out of all people, Perez’s daughter knew about him. That was not good. She was the last person who should know.

  What to do now?

  He needed to get her and Ein both alone with him, to straighten things out, so he did not need to take drastic measures.

  “We have wasted a lot of time already. Can we let James talk? After that, we can eat,” Ein said, plopping his medical satchel down. Bread spilled out.

  “Or,” an old man also dressed in a military uniform rose and took the bread. “We can listen and eat.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Edna sighed.

  Once everyone got their bread, they arranged their sofas in a crescent to face Rue, who awkwardly held a piece of bread. He had to remove his helmet to eat this. Well, he could do it later.

  “First of all,” Rue said, looking at both Penelope and Ein, who chose to drag their sofas near him. “I awoke to the world like this. I want to know everything.”

  “Must be rough, lad,” the old man said as he munched.

  “Ben, no cutting anyone's story, all right?” Edna said.

  “I get it, Edna, lay off, would you?”

  “Ein, can you tell me first?” Rue asked.

  “Sure,” Ein said after making sure none of the humans wanted to talk. “I will simplify it.”

  ---

  I was just a military man. For years, I was. And I just happened to be back home for a much-deserved break. But it looked like the world did not agree.

  At first, it was just news. One would think the sickness was all the problem, but suddenly a meteor fell from the sky. Initially, it was just one, only the size of an aircraft. A jet shot down the meteor, and a huge rat fell out of its debris, crushing straight into a restaurant.

  When the cop arrived, the staff hid the rat because they found it interesting, but after a hard interrogation, they finally showed it in a bathtub in one of the staff’s apartments. What they found, however, was a melting bathtub, and the apartment floor would have melted all the way if left alone.

  The world did not take this seriously. Soon, then, on the other side of the world, a water jet descended from the sky, bringing a walking merman with its trident. One broadcast channel showed the merman taking a dozen point blank shots from a rifle. Bullets just bouncing off its body. Then it raised its trident, and a jet of streaming water cut apart three soldiers in succession, splitting them into six parts.

  The broadcast cut off after that.

  Back then, I was with Penelope. We were watching on TV. No one had believed the broadcast. Online, everyone said that it was artificial. But it did draw great interest. People planned to visit this supposed place where aliens appeared and killed soldiers. Shortly after, flights were closed down. And that's what started the first ounce of panic.

  On the second day, people started to disappear. Mainly those who were from the slums all over the world. Millions gone in the blink of an eye. Service stopped. The planes crashed. The trains derailed. The next thing we knew, a warning blared on our phones.

  Penelope and I tried to contact our family, but we had no way to do so. When we left the house to find her dad…

  The sky streaked with reds. It was afternoon when the sun was at its brightest. Shadows upon shadows passed by us, and meteors crashed down. One meteor blasted straight into a police center, and two dozen of the rats scurried around. They ate the green acid that bled out from the meteor’s chunk and began to slaughter everyone around them.

  The military tried its best. But only extreme solutions such as bombing were effective.

  So they did.

  They could not afford to hesitate because the whole world was under attack. They tried to aim. I know they did, but regardless, many died from the explosion along with the rats. The first wave of the rats was handled, but millions of humans died. However, it was not the end. More and more meteors fell down from the sky. By day's end, the meteors stopped coming, but by then, every means of defense we had had been exhausted.

  There were many evacuation shelters, but every shelter fell like nothing. Nothing could stop the man-rats. Still, we had to survive, don’t we?

  We got lucky. A shelter reached out because Perez was a renowned doctor, and they desperately needed one. So, we were taken inside the Arbeau Stadium.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The football stadium was big enough to host about ninety thousand. By sheer luck, no rats had entered the stadium yet. We managed to bar the gate quickly and completely seal it off. But we could only last so long. Our supply was for a week at best.

  I know it was still five or six days away for our rations to run out. But every military folk knew that no help would come. So, it was imperative to seize supplies, especially since everything just started. There should be plenty of food, which was why we were here.

  I was chosen to lead a team of thirty.

  Other than food, ehm, we were ordered to find, uh, afflicted blood. As best we could, because some people had gone a month without any injection.

  Well, that is everything.

  ---

  That was rather short.

  All of this happened within about two to five days? He did not remember how long he spent inside the cells.

  Rue rested his head back, enjoying the quiet for a moment as he thought.

  He needed more information, but in a way, because everything was so new, there was not much to go around. Also, Rue did the right thing in hiding his identity. They were still after his blood. Of course they did.

  He scowled. This just drove home how important it was to convince these people that they no longer needed the afflicted blood.

  Now, how should he go about this? How to explain this…system?

  Rue decided to buy more time as he sorted the information he knew.

  “What about the other shelter?”

  “The biggest ten thousand, they were in a hotel near us,” Penelope said. “But the rats found them. At first, they managed to barricade themselves and throw a grenade down. But once the rat found a shelter, it wouldn’t last long. The man-rat would come.”

  Right, Ein implied there were more than one of the Tall-rats. A level forty, multiple of them. That was troublesome. Rue needed to start thinking about hunting them down.

  Still, there were centers with ten thousand survivors. Now Rue had two options: The stadium or the hotel.

  Which would be easier to defend?

  Wait, actually, they could not just defend. There would be a new monster delivered by the system once the Tutorial started for them. Rue could not take too long either. He wanted to be in the second stage, preferably the moment it started, so that he could get the lay of the land rather than be thrown in the middle of everything, as he was currently experiencing.

  All right, let's do this.

  “What I am about to tell you will require suspension of disbelief,” Rue said, playing around with his bread. “But, it is the new reality.” He broke off the bread into two pieces.

  Silence answered him.

  “Ein said people disappeared. Well, I was one of them. The wound on my cheek has healed thanks to the strange power I have gotten. I met a fallen angel. Killed a Succubus. And found the reason behind the universe.”

  As Rue was about to start, he’d almost forgotten that he was using a fake identity. They would know about the system soon. Would it be wise to let them know about the special stage? They might be able to piece together the puzzle and find out he got a special tutorial because he had Mana Sickness. Okay, he had to mix in some lies then.

  Maybe, maybe he was overthinking. But, still, screw them. He did not owe them anything. He would save them for his armor, and that would be it; there was no need for them to know who he was.

  Ein might not remember me, but I do remember him at the edge of my mind. My life was not peaceful. But the brief peace I had, I kept dear inside me.

  I was born in an… orphanage. Yes.

  By ten, I realised that something was wrong. None of us were adopted. Then by eleven, we were trained in combat. It was brutal, but it gave us life. By fifteen, I fought in the Merland Liberation War. I had seen so much killing that I had grown sick of it.

  I tried to run at first.

  But special ops were kept close, especially by their fellow operators. We did not know each other's names even as we fought together. All we knew was those dark helmets and static voices. I was brought back really quickly, being put in detention for an entire year and then forced into another Liberation War.

  It was war after war I kept being sent to. Until I got this wound, I was in the hospital before I knew it.

  Why was a special operator being put in a public hospital?

  Well. Good question.

  Surely you know Rue Hazard?

  While I was injured, I was tasked to keep an eye on him. The damn government was using my rest as an extra mission.

  Then, I was suddenly inside a library with seven other people.

  A strange prompt appeared in my vision in a blue box.

  People were panicked, of course. But thankfully, there was a voice that led us for as long as we were inside the library.

  The voice explained the truth about the world to us.

  And the System.

  The flow of the universe. The reason behind everything. The very thing that creates us. Now, it tried to give us power, in the hope we could grow strong enough and create a bastion of the Last World and invite everyone in so the world could face these Darkling beings that had been scouring across space to destroy worlds.

  No, the Darkling was not the Blight Rat. The creature you are facing. They were a different entity.

  From then on, we were tasked to leave the forest and slay imps to eventually enter a rift where the monster resided.

  So we fought. I picked a class called Mage. The seven of us fought through these flying little creatures, which held tridents. We eventually entered the rift, which was a world of hell itself. It was so hot that breathing normally probably would have killed you. We had to fashion a mask from the Imp’s skin and wear it as we fought into a castle of bright orange made from magma stone, which permeated extreme heat.

  My Authority was called Authority of Frost, so I was completely useless in that world. But once we were inside the castle, the heat settled down, and I could use my magic. By then, my comrade—my strike team had exhausted their mana. I was the only one who could still use magic. So I advanced with two swordsmen on my side.

  We fought the Succubus who sat upon the throne of bones.

  She cracked the air with her whip. Fire extended toward us. The swordsman managed to use shields to stop it from hitting us.

  I kept firing off my Frost Shrapnel, over and over again.

  Until I brought her down.

  We won, but two of us died in the process.

  Not a second passed, and I was suddenly transported alone inside a library again, not knowing the fate of my friends. Then a fallen angel briefed me on the situation here, about why none of you were teleported.

  He told me that millions of worlds would be combined to form the Last World by turning worlds into pure mana. This caused the mana leakage, which had hit us. And those who received a lot of artificial blood from a Hazard would be missed by the system. Only those who had none of it, little of it, or were full of it would be teleported away and given power.

  You know, I met one Hazard. A girl with white hair. She despised us. And rightfully so, her eyes were so murderous that she was looking forward to our doom. I made peace with her and worked together, but I understand her…

  I apologised over and over as I realised that I was the source of her suffering, on both of my knees.

  Now, I have been tasked to plant a System’s seed, which will grow into a tree that will bear you fruits. And these fruits will be the solution to get rid of the Mana Sickness for good and get all of you into the tutorial.

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