Ethan had three hours and fifty-two minutes before sundown.
He sat on the concrete floor of The Bulwark, back against a support pillar, staring at his admin interface. Kyle was somewhere behind him, organizing supplies with the desperate energy of someone trying not to think about monsters spawning in four hours.
Ethan ignored him. He had work to do.
The mysterious admin "A" had warned him not to touch the Tutorial Quest. Fine. He wouldn't.
But there were other parts of the System he could touch.
He opened the Combat Algorithms directory—a sprawling maze of code that governed how damage was calculated, how skills interacted, how enemies responded to player actions. It was dense. Complicated. The kind of thing that would take a team of engineers months to fully understand.
Ethan had ten years of experience fighting these algorithms.
He knew exactly where to look.
He navigated to: Entity_Modifiers > Damage_Calculation > Special_Conditions
This was where the System stored edge cases. Bonuses against specific enemy types. Racial modifiers. Environmental effects. Buried in millions of lines of code, invisible to normal players.
And hidden admin flags.
Ethan found what he was looking for: Administrator_Backed_Entities
It was a tag the System used internally to mark NPCs or players who had received direct assistance from admin accounts. Buffs. Spawned items. Quest modifications. Anything that involved admin interference left a trace.
In his first timeline, Ethan had never known this tag existed.
But now, with admin access, he could see it. And more importantly, he could exploit it.
He created a new conditional modifier:
IF [Target.Tag == "Administrator_Backed"] OR [Target.SkillRank == "SSS"]
THEN [Attacker.PlayerID == 0000000001] >> [Damage_Multiplier = 1.5]
HIDDEN_FLAG: "Trojan_Override_Omega7"
ADMIN_SIGNATURE: [REDACTED]
Simple. Elegant. Brutal.
Any enemy who'd been touched by an admin—or who possessed an SSS-Rank skill—would take 50% more damage from Ethan specifically. The System would think it was a normal combat calculation. No flags. No warnings.
And the admin signature was redacted, buried under three layers of encryption Ethan had learned from a hacker in Year Seven.
Even "A," with their Omega-9 clearance, would have trouble finding this. They'd have to manually audit millions of lines of combat code.
Ethan hit [CONFIRM].
The code compiled. The System accepted it without protest.
A notification appeared:
[CUSTOM MODIFIER APPLIED: "TROJAN_OVERRIDE_OMEGA7"]
[STATUS: ACTIVE]
[TARGET SCAN: ONGOING...]
Ethan exhaled. Insurance policy, installed.
If he ever faced an enemy backed by admin powers—like, say, a tyrant with an SSS-Rank skill and Alice's support—he'd have a fighting chance.
He closed the Combat Algorithms and checked his timer: 67:03:45
Sixty-seven hours left.
Time to prepare for the Tutorial Quest.
Ethan stood and walked to the warehouse's loading dock, where Kyle had stacked crates of supplies in neat rows. The kid was sweating despite the cool air, his expensive leather jacket discarded on a nearby crate.
"How are we doing?" Ethan asked.
Kyle jumped. "Jesus—don't sneak up on me like that."
"Supplies?"
"Organized. Generators are fueled. Water filtration system is running. Food's stacked in the northwest corner." Kyle wiped his forehead. "I still don't understand why we need all this. The quest just said 'survive until dawn,' right? We've got walls. We've got traps. Can't we just... hide?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because hiding doesn't give you EXP." Ethan walked to the reinforced gate he'd spawned earlier. It was solid steel, eight feet tall, with a manual crank to open and close it. "The Tutorial Quest is a test. The System wants to see who's capable of fighting back. Players who hide will survive, but they won't level up. They'll stay weak."
"And that's... bad?"
Ethan turned to look at him. "In three days, a C-Rank monster horde hits this district. If you're still Level 1, you die. If you're Level 5, you might survive. If you're Level 10, you can fight back."
Kyle's face went pale again. "How do you know all this?"
"Because I lived it." Ethan turned back to the gate. "The Tutorial Quest spawns Level 3 to 5 goblins. They're weak. Stupid. Perfect for farming EXP. We're not hiding, Kyle. We're hunting."
"Hunting," Kyle repeated, voice hollow. "You want to hunt monsters."
"You want to survive?"
"Yes, but—"
"Then you hunt." Ethan pulled up his System interface. "Check your stats. What's your starting build?"
Kyle hesitated, then opened his own interface. "Uh... HP is 100. MP is 50. I've got 10 points in Strength, 8 in Agility, 5 in Intelligence, 7 in Endurance..."
Standard human baseline. No combat experience. No skills. Completely useless in a fight.
Ethan had expected as much.
"Okay," Ethan said. "Here's what's going to happen. When the goblins spawn, you stay behind me. You don't engage unless I tell you to. You watch how I fight, and you learn. Got it?"
"What if I die?"
"Then you were going to die anyway." Ethan's voice was flat. "At least this way, you'll learn something first."
Kyle stared at him. "You're kind of a psycho, you know that?"
"I'm a realist." Ethan walked past him toward the supply crates. "And if you want to stay alive, you'll become one too."
At 5:47 PM, the sun began to set.
Ethan stood at the reinforced gate, watching the sky turn orange and red. The System's blue cracks were still visible, glowing brighter as daylight faded.
Kyle stood beside him, holding a crowbar they'd found in the warehouse. His hands were shaking.
"How long?" Kyle asked.
Ethan checked his System timer: 00:13:22
"Thirteen minutes."
"And you're sure they'll spawn here?"
"They'll spawn everywhere. Cities, suburbs, forests. Anywhere humans are clustered." Ethan pulled his own weapon—a length of rebar he'd sharpened to a crude point. It wasn't much, but at Level 1, he didn't have access to real weapons yet.
In his first timeline, he'd fought the Tutorial Quest with a kitchen knife.
This was already an upgrade.
"What if we can't kill them?" Kyle asked.
"We will."
"But what if—"
"Kyle." Ethan turned to face him. "You need to understand something. The monsters aren't the enemy. Fear is. If you panic, you die. If you hesitate, you die. The System doesn't care about your feelings. It only cares if you survive."
Kyle swallowed hard. "That's... that's really not comforting."
"It's not supposed to be."
A System notification appeared:
[TUTORIAL QUEST: SURVIVE THE FIRST NIGHT]
[STATUS: ACTIVE]
[ENEMY SPAWN: COMMENCING...]
[TIME REMAINING: 08:00:00]
Eight hours. Sundown to dawn.
Ethan gripped his makeshift spear. "Here we go."
The air shimmered. Reality bent. And then, with a sound like tearing fabric, the first goblin appeared.
It materialized thirty feet from the gate—a hunched, green-skinned creature about four feet tall. Its eyes were yellow and feral. Its teeth were jagged. It wore scraps of leather armor and carried a rusty dagger.
[Goblin Scout — Lvl 3]
[HP: 150/150]
One goblin. Easy.
Then another appeared. And another. And another.
Within seconds, there were a dozen goblins standing outside The Bulwark's gate, chattering in a guttural language. More shimmered into existence further down the street—twenty, thirty, forty.
Kyle made a strangled noise. "Oh god. Oh god, there's so many—"
"Calm down," Ethan said. "They're just goblins."
"Just goblins? There's like fifty of them!"
"And there's two of us behind a fortified wall with traps outside." Ethan raised his voice. "This is exactly what we prepared for. Now shut up and watch."
The goblins noticed The Bulwark. They screeched and charged.
The first wave hit the spike traps Ethan had spawned earlier.
Three goblins impaled themselves immediately, their HP bars plummeting to zero. Their bodies dissolved into black smoke, leaving behind small piles of loot.
[+30 EXP]
[+30 EXP]
[+30 EXP]
The other goblins slowed, suddenly wary. But their AI was primitive—they couldn't retreat. The System had programmed them to attack until they died.
They spread out, trying to find gaps in the defenses.
"Now," Ethan said.
He cranked the gate open—just wide enough for a single goblin to squeeze through.
The nearest goblin saw the opening and charged, shrieking.
Ethan thrust his rebar spear through the gap.
The sharpened point punched through the goblin's throat. It gurgled, clawing at the metal, and collapsed.
[+30 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 2.]
[+5 Stat Points available for distribution.]
The rush of leveling hit Ethan like a drug. His body strengthened. His reflexes sharpened. The exhaustion from earlier faded.
He'd forgotten how good this felt.
Another goblin tried to squeeze through the gap. Ethan stabbed it in the eye. It died instantly.
[+30 EXP]
Another. Another. Another.
The goblins were too stupid to stop. They kept funneling through the narrow opening, and Ethan kept killing them. It was a slaughter.
[+30 EXP]
[+30 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 3.]
Kyle watched, mouth open. "You're... you're just farming them."
"That's the idea." Ethan pulled his spear free from a goblin's skull. "This is how you survive the Tutorial. You don't fight fair. You use terrain. You use traps. You abuse the AI."
"But that's... that's cheating."
Ethan laughed—a sharp, humorless sound. "Cheating? Kid, the System wants you to cheat. That's the whole point. Players who fight fair die. Players who exploit every advantage survive."
He killed another goblin.
[+30 EXP]
"Now grab that crowbar and help me. There's forty more of these things, and we've got seven and a half hours to clear them."
Kyle hesitated. Then, slowly, he stepped forward.
A goblin tried to slip past Ethan's spear. Kyle swung the crowbar—clumsy, panicked—and cracked it across the creature's skull.
The goblin staggered. Ethan finished it with a thrust to the chest.
[+30 EXP]
[Kyle Venner has assisted in a kill. +15 EXP awarded.]
Kyle stared at the dissolving corpse. "I... I did that. I actually—"
"Focus," Ethan snapped. "Another one's coming."
They fell into a rhythm. Ethan killed. Kyle assisted. The EXP rolled in.
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 4.]
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 5.]
By the time the last goblin fell, Ethan was Level 6 and Kyle was Level 3.
The System chimed:
[TUTORIAL QUEST: SURVIVE THE FIRST NIGHT]
[STATUS: COMPLETE]
[REWARDS DISTRIBUTED]
[+500 EXP]
[+1 Class Selection Token]
[Achievement Unlocked: Tutorial Veteran — Complete the Tutorial Quest with 0 deaths.]
[Bonus Reward: +1 Skill Point]
Ethan exhaled. His arms ached. His makeshift spear was bent and cracked. But he was alive.
And more importantly, he was Level 6.
In his first timeline, he'd barely reached Level 2 by the end of the Tutorial Quest. Most players hadn't leveled at all.
This time, he was already ahead.
He turned to Kyle, who was sitting on the ground, staring at his blood-stained crowbar. The kid looked shell-shocked.
"You okay?" Ethan asked.
Kyle didn't respond for a long moment. Then, quietly: "I killed something. I actually... killed."
"Yeah. You did."
"I thought I'd feel... I don't know. Guilty? Scared?" Kyle looked up. "But I just feel... nothing. Is that normal?"
"It's the System," Ethan said. "It dampens emotional responses during combat. Keeps players from breaking down mid-fight. The guilt will hit you later, if you let it."
"And you? Do you feel guilty?"
Ethan thought about the ten years he'd spent killing. Monsters. Players. Anyone who'd threatened his survival.
"No," he said. "Not anymore."
Kyle nodded slowly. "I don't know if that's inspiring or terrifying."
"It's both." Ethan extended a hand. "Come on. We need to loot the bodies before they despawn."
The goblin corpses had left behind a small fortune in starter loot.
Forty-seven goblins had dropped:
83 credits (System currency)12 Rusty Daggers (Common)6 Goblin Leather Scraps (Crafting Material)3 Minor Health Potions (Restores 50 HP)1 Goblin Chieftain's Tooth (Uncommon — Crafting Material)
Not much, but for Level 1–6 players, it was a treasure trove.
Ethan pocketed the credits and potions. Handed Kyle one of the daggers.
"Keep this. It's better than a crowbar."
Kyle took it hesitantly. "It's covered in blood."
"It's a weapon. Get used to it."
They returned to the warehouse. Ethan sealed the gate and activated his admin interface to check for nearby threats.
[SCANNING AREA: 1KM RADIUS...]
[DETECTED ENTITIES:]
23 Goblin Scouts (Lvl 3–5) — Status: Engaged with other players7 Players (Lvl 1–4) — Status: Surviving/Fleeing1 Player (Lvl 8) — Status: Hunting
Ethan's eyes narrowed. Level 8? Already?
That was impossible. The Tutorial Quest had only been active for three hours. Even with perfect grinding, no one should be above Level 6 yet.
Unless...
He focused on the Level 8 player's data.
[Player: Derek Venner — Lvl 8]
[Class: Unassigned]
[Status: ADMINISTRATOR_BACKED]
Ethan's blood went cold.
Derek Venner.
Kyle's brother.
And the tag: Administrator_Backed.
Alice had given him a boost. Just like she'd promised in her message. She was testing multiple players, and Derek was one of them.
Which meant Ethan's Trojan code would work on him.
He opened the combat logs and checked—yes, Derek's player ID was flagged. If Ethan ever fought him, the 50% damage bonus would apply.
But Level 8 was still dangerous. Even with the bonus, Derek would be a serious threat.
"Ethan?" Kyle's voice interrupted his thoughts. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Your brother," Ethan said. "Where does he live?"
Kyle blinked. "Derek? Uh, downtown. Why?"
"He's hunting. Level 8. Already stronger than anyone else in the city."
Kyle's face went pale. "That's... that's impossible. Derek doesn't even like video games. He's a programmer. He—"
"He's been boosted by an admin." Ethan closed the interface. "Which means he's not just another player. He's competition."
"Competition for what?"
"For survival. For territory. For power." Ethan looked at Kyle. "In my timeline, Derek became a tyrant. By Year Three, he controlled half of Asia. His SSS-Rank skill let him control other players like puppets."
Kyle shook his head. "No. No, Derek's not... he's an asshole, yeah, but he's not a tyrant."
"Not yet." Ethan turned away. "But if Alice is backing him, he will be."
"Alice?"
"The admin with Omega-9 clearance. She's running an experiment—seeing which players can survive the merge. Derek's her favorite. I'm just... a backup plan."
Kyle was quiet for a long moment. Then: "So what do we do?"
"We get stronger. Faster than him." Ethan pulled up his stats.
[ETHAN CROSS — LEVEL 6]
[HP: 180/180 | MP: 90/90]
[STR: 15 | AGI: 14 | INT: 10 | END: 12 | WIS: 8]
[Available Stat Points: 25]
[Available Skill Points: 1]
He distributed his points carefully:
+10 STR (for damage)+10 AGI (for speed)+5 END (for survivability)
His stats updated:
[STR: 25 | AGI: 24 | INT: 10 | END: 17 | WIS: 8]
Better. Not great, but better.
He still had a Skill Point. He opened the skill tree—
And stopped.
His Class selection. He'd earned a token from the Tutorial Quest. Which meant he could choose his first Class right now, instead of waiting until Level 10 like normal players.
And with [Parallel Processing], he could eventually have three.
But which Class to choose first?
He scrolled through the options:
[WARRIOR — Melee combat specialist. High HP and physical damage.]
[MAGE — Spellcasting specialist. High MP and magical damage.]
[ROGUE — Stealth and speed specialist. High AGI and critical hit chance.]
[CITY BUILDER — Territory management specialist. Unlocks construction abilities and citizen mechanics.]
[MERCHANT — Trade specialist. Economy buffs and resource management.]
All useful. But he needed immediate combat power. He could pick City Builder later, once he'd secured The Bulwark.
He selected: [WARRIOR]
[CLASS SELECTED: WARRIOR]
[CLASS SKILLS UNLOCKED:]
[Power Strike — Active | Cost: 10 MP | Cooldown: 5s] — Deal 150% weapon damage.[Endurance Training — Passive] — +10% Max HP.
Basic, but effective. He now had a reliable damage skill and a passive HP boost.
His HP jumped from 180 to 198.
He closed the interface and turned to Kyle. "Get some rest. Tomorrow, we start recruiting."
"Recruiting?"
"We need people. Fighters. Builders. Crafters. If we're going to survive the C-Rank horde in three days, we need an army."
Kyle rubbed his eyes. "An army. Right. Because that's totally a normal thing to build in three days."
"Welcome to the apocalypse, kid."
At 11:47 PM, Ethan's phone buzzed.
He'd been inspecting the warehouse's structure with [Architect's Eye], planning expansion zones, when the vibration startled him.
His phone still worked. Barely. The System was interfering with networks, but text messages were still getting through.
He pulled it out.
One new message. Unknown number.
"Little brother told me you've been helping him. Generous. But I think you're lying to him. Meet me tomorrow. Downtown. Noon. Or I'll come to you. — D.V."
Derek.
Kyle must have called him. Told him about The Bulwark. About Ethan's "future knowledge."
And now Derek wanted to talk.
Ethan stared at the message. In his first timeline, Derek hadn't made contact until Year Two. By then, he'd already built an empire. Already enslaved thousands of players with [Absolute Command].
But this timeline was different. Derek was moving faster. Adapting. Alice's backing was accelerating his growth.
Ethan typed back:
"I'll be there."
Three dots appeared. Derek was typing.
"Smart. See you soon, Returnee."
The message ended.
Ethan closed his phone.
Returnee.
Derek knew. Which meant Alice had told him.
She was pitting them against each other. A test. A competition.
Only one of them would survive to represent Earth in the Server Merge.
Ethan looked at the warehouse—his fortress, his foundation—and made a decision.
If Derek wanted a war, he'd get one.
But not yet. Not until Ethan was ready.
He opened his admin interface one last time before bed. Checked the Trojan code. Confirmed it was still active.
[TROJAN_OVERRIDE_OMEGA7: ACTIVE]
[TARGET SCAN: 1 ENTITY FLAGGED]
[ENTITY: DEREK_VENNER_0193 | TAG: ADMINISTRATOR_BACKED]
Good.
When the time came, Ethan would be ready.
He closed the interface and leaned back against the concrete wall.
Three days until the C-Rank horde.
Twenty-four hours until he met Derek.
Sixty-five hours of admin access remaining.
The clock was ticking.
[END OF CHAPTER 3]