“Solo-level boss?” Will asked, processing the notifications one by one.
The level ups were great, but Will was familiar with this kind of scenario from fiction and videogames alike. Honestly, he’d kind of expected more, but the tutorial being hadn’t been particularly clear with the level of power-scaling this apocalypse had.
And it did look like there was a power-scaling system. Apart from the tiers that every class and monster attached to it—everything at F-Tier so far—there was also the spell tiers, which seemed to match up with the class skill tiers. So far, he’d found the Inferior and Basic levels.
Apparently, bosses had their own set of tiers.
[Boss Difficulties]
You have unlocked an information panel!
In your new, Integrated world, the foes you face will progress alongside you at an expected rate. At any point in time, you can say the phrase “expected progress” to find the level you are currently expected to be at.
However, some of them will be significantly above the expected level. These will typically be referred to as boss enemies. The boss tier indicates the amount of manpower expected to effectively match one boss when prepared and stretched to the limit. Each successive tier is associated with increased Boss Credit rewards. In order, the tiers are:
Solo - A single Integrated at or above the expected level could kill this, given enough healing and cocaine. Typically challenges groups of two to four, despite the name.
Squad - At the expected level, one of you stands no chance. Two is a bare minimum, but the expected count required to take one of these down from full health is four. At least twice that is recommended.
Clan - Expected-level squads of four or above can actually handle this, given perfect teamwork. Fun fact: roughly 98% of Integrated squads do not possess “perfect teamwork.” Expected count: 10 or more.
Militia - You better be ready to work together. This tier of boss is most frequently defeated by ex-military groups of the Integrated world. This tier of boss most frequently defeats inebriated, incompetent groups of male Integrated that vastly overestimate themselves and their ability to use firearms. Expected count: 50-100.
Battalion - At this stage, your best option is to run. Either that, or hope a group much more powerful than you takes you under their wing. Expected count: 100-1,000.
Army - Yeah, good luck. The last time an Army-level boss showed itself before Main Event 25 was two hundred years ago on an Earth-sized planet, and it killed 2,712,321 Integrated before saturation nuclear bombing destroyed it. Oh, yeah, other planets exist. And your planet isn’t special for discovering nukes a century earlier than the median. Expected count: 1,000-100,000.
Nation / Planet - Please contact an administrator to find reports on previous Nation and Planet level bosses. Expected count: You’re better off not knowing.
Lots of information to unpack there. First of all, information panels were a thing. Will supposed that meant that sometimes, randomly, he’d just get to hear the System expound on a subject he was curious about?
He stared up at the sky. “That’s just lazy writing.”
Nothing responded. Oh well. It was worth a shot.
“In that case, can you tell me the power scaling for tiers and levels?” he asked.
[Integrated Tiers and Levels]
This information is currently not available. Please try again when you have advanced to E-Tier or when 50% of Main Event 1 has completed.
“Oh, fucking great,” Will muttered. “That figures.”
So they’d just taken down a Solo-level boss. Will could calibrate his scales for difficulty on that. It wasn’t looking great, but oh well.
Killing the boss had granted him a Solo credit, which he supposed he could use to buy something. The information panel told him that they were awarded for taking down bosses. Hopefully, that meant they could be exchanged for better prizes than just random cards.
“Hey, Waylan,” Will said, thinking of something. “Did you also get a Solo boss credit?”
“Yep,” the crow said absentmindedly, his eyes glossed over. He was very clearly engaged in his own tiff with the System.
So anyone that contributed would get one. Will wasn’t sure what the threshold of contribution was, but he supposed that wasn’t important right now. Instead, he opened his shop.
The store had expanded, featuring two new sections that hadn’t been there before.
The first read:
Combat Items
Baseball Bat (Wood) - 15 coins
Baseball Bat (Metal) - 25 coins
Knife (6 inches) - 25 coins
Airsoft Gun - 25 coins
Interesting. That list definitely didn’t encompass the entirety of the weapons that Will knew of, and they seemed to have been selected at random. Was the System tailoring the shop to him?
He bought a knife since he didn’t already have one, and it materialized in his hand just like his cards. It came with a faux-leather sheath that looked like it came straight out of a Disneyland gift shop, which Will discarded instantly before storing it in a pocket of the briefcase.
With that done, he scrolled further down, examining the other new section.
Credits Only
This part of the store is locked until the end of the first cycle of Main Event 1.
Will stared at it in disbelief, then sighed and closed the window. It couldn’t be helped, could it? If the System was trying to balance this apocalypse, this sort of thing was to expected. He set a reminder for himself to try it again once the time rolled around.
The skill points and coins were more than welcome, but Will was already prepared for those, along with the increase in mana capacity and the refill. Right now, what he was most interested in was the achievement.
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According to the tutorial being, just about four billion people remained on Earth, with the rest deemed as unacceptable for Integration purposes. If twenty-five percent of them faced a boss, that meant there were literally a billion other people undergoing the same experiences that Will and Waylan just had.
And of those a billion, something like nine hundred sixty million were now dead. That should’ve been sobering, but Will had yet to see other people, let alone see their deaths, so he brushed it off. It was the end of the world. Of course people were dying. He couldn’t do shit about it, so it wasn’t worth worrying about.
“I got a new skill,” Waylan announced. “Gravity Magic. Bought a new spell from the shop, too. It’s called Immovable Object.”
Will raised an eyebrow. That was further confirmation that he and Waylan had different shops that allowed them to progress in their own individual manners. Unfortunately, Will couldn’t exactly buy skills or spells—everything he did was bound to be random.
“How many coins do you even have left, Waylan?” Will asked.
“A few hundred,” Waylan hedged. “Like, uh, one hundred. Maybe a little less.”
Will just stared him straight in the eyes.
“I have enough healing!” Waylan defended. “I—oh, shut up, you can’t tell me what to do.”
“I haven’t said anything,” Will pointed out.
“Shut up anyway.”
He chuckled. “Sure thing, man. We’ve got an hour left to kill. Want to go try and level up?”
Waylan’s irritation melted like a snowball in a campfire. “Hell yeah.”
They had to manage their mana carefully, since there was every possibility that Main Event 1 would start immediately after the tutorial ended. Thankfully, Will had enough coins to buy tons of mana potions, and Waylan had impulsively hoarded a dozen of the things already. Still, he didn’t want to use too many of them if they didn’t need to.
The office building where Will had wasted a decade was reduced to rubble and snake corpse now, but Waylan told him that there was an alcove in the woods nearby that was teeming with enlarged ants.
As they walked towards what Will hoped would be a relatively easy training grounds and not a death trap, he decided to make use of the feature the System had mentioned during the boss difficulty explanation.
“Expected progress,” he said out loud. Waylan followed suit a moment later.
Current expected level: 5
“Not bad,” Will said, nodding approvingly. Their efforts had paid off.
“We’re fuckin’ badass, that’s what we are,” Waylan said.
The crow’s energy was infectious. “Hell yeah we are.”
Time was still ticking down. Will was tempted to buy some new cards, but the ones he had right now were functioning fine and he didn’t want to risk using up all his coins right now. The current Main Event was getting to be pretty easy. The next one was definitely going to be harder. He wanted to be ready to mass buy potions if that became necessary, so for now, he focused on training up his cards.
The ants were, as predicted, quite easy to kill. Just like the spiders, they were way larger than should’ve been physically possible—about the size of a golden retriever. Also like the spiders, they weren’t a big fan of Waylan’s bricks or Will’s magic. Even smacking them with rocks seemed to do the trick, though Will tried to minimize the amount of physical attacking he did. Leveling up was the name of the game here.
Unfortunately, these ants didn’t seem to provide that much experience. Maybe that was because Will and Waylan were both already three levels above what they were supposed to be at this late into the tutorial.
The upshot of that was that mowing through them was simple, and his cards were able to level some. He swapped them out once it became clear that the cards probably weren’t going to advance past level 4 in this place, and across the hour of pest extermination, he was able to level up quite a few. Resonance Wave, Web, and Chill all made it to level 4, while Hex, Oil Spill, and Heat Metal increased to level 3. The ants presented a significant enough threat with their razor-sharp mandibles to level up Shield to level 2 as well.
Will used two skill points to increase Deck Box by a level and Discard by one as well, which enabled him to cycle his hand more quickly by discarding both cards if he didn’t like them. He saved the last point.
Soon enough, the timer ticked down under half an hour, then under ten minutes. When it reached five, Waylan revealed that he’d purchased a gallon of gasoline alongside a firecracker. He demonstrated his Immovable Object skill by freezing the lit firecracker in place, keeping it five feet in the air as he poured gasoline onto the burning firework, sending gouts of flame every which way. The resulting fire killed any of the ants that they hadn’t managed to get on their own.
As the event timer ticked down under two minutes, Will found a nice-looking rock to sit on. Waylan joined him, and the two of them each retrieved a couple of mana potions to chug. Will chose to use the System option that allowed him to consume the potion without actually drinking it, not wanting the sour flavor of the solution in his mouth right now, while Waylan stuck his beak in and sipped away. Something about the lime-like acidity seemed to appeal to the crow.
“I wonder what happens next,” Will said. “I wish I had a cheat skill or something. Like, some advance future knowledge that lets me exploit an Event early on and reach godhood really fast.”
Waylan snorted. “And meet a load of big-breasted women that all wanna do you? In your dreams, fucko.”
“I’m surprised you’re familiar with the trope.”
“Don’t think I don’t know your culture. I know you humans well. Too well.”
Before Will could think of a way to ask what that meant, the timer hit zero.
[Main Event 0 — “Tutorial”]
[The Event has now completed. Congratulations on being one of the 2.6 billion survivors! Integration will continue after a short message from your local administrator.]
[You have been earned 1,000 coins!]
“Local administrator?” Will asked. Waylan cawed in confusion.
“THAT’S RIGHT,” a faintly masculine voice boomed. “IT IS I, YOUR LOCAL ADMINISTRATOR. YOU MAY REFER TO ME AS C-1, ADMIN, ADMIN C-1, OR GOD, BUT ABSOLUTELY NOT CHARLIE.”
Will winced at the ear-piercing volume of the announcement. Plugging his ears didn’t seem to help at all—in fact, it didn’t seem to originate from any specific direction. It wasn’t quite like the way the System spoke inside their minds, though. This voice was clearly different, and it didn’t sound quite as scripted.
“YOU MAY BE WONDERING WHO I AM. I WILL SHOW YOU A MANIFESTATION OF MY BRILLIANCE TO ACQUAINT YOU, BUT ALAS, MY TRUE FORM IS NOT MEANT FOR F-TIER EYES.”
An image flickered into existence in front of both Will and Waylan, blue lines coalescing to create a holographic projection of… something quite similar to the tutorial beings, only this one actually had a face. Not a complex face, mind you—in fact, it looked quite like the :) smiley-face emoticon, just animated. It was kind of disturbing to look at, but Will found that he couldn’t tear his eyes away.
“THE TUTORIAL TEAM WASN’T READY FOR THIS PLANET’S INTEGRATION, BUT FEAR NOT! I’M HERE TO TELL YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW… AND MORE!
“CONGRATULATIONS ON COMPLETING THE TUTORIAL. YOU HAVE NOW DEMONSTRATED THE COMBAT APTITUDE OF AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD ON MY HOME PLANET. IF YOU ARE NOT A TOTAL MORON, YOU HAVE GAINED SKILLS, SPELLS, OR AT LEAST ITEMS OF SOME KIND. MAYBE YOU’VE EVEN MADE FRIENDS. KEEP THEM CLOSE. YOU WILL NEED EVERYTHING YOU CAN GET SOON.”
“Jesus, can this guy shut the fuck up?” Waylan muttered.
“IF YOU ARE LISTENING TO ME, YOU ARE IN THE SECTOR THAT IS REFERRED TO AS THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA REGION IN YOUR TONGUE. I AM THE ADMIN FOR THIS AREA, AND—SHIT. I SAID THAT ALREADY. ANYWAY, YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE NEXT PHASE. THIS IS WHEN THE STREAM TRULY GOES LIVE. STARTING SOON, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO RECEIVE AWARDS BASED ON THE VIEWERSHIP YOU GARNER.”
“Viewership?” Will asked, barely able to hear himself over the ringing in his ears. “Oh. The tutorial guy did say this was livestreamed.”
“NOW, GO OUT AND—IS THAT ALL THAT WAS IN THE SCRIPT? SERIOUSLY? I COULD SWEAR THERE WAS MORE. OH WELL. IF THERE IS MORE, I WILL BE IN TOUCH WITH YOU. IF YOU’RE ALIVE, THAT IS. GOOD LUCK OUT THERE, AND REMEMBER: IF YOU’RE GOING TO DIE, LOOK GOOD DOING IT.”
As the projection finished its last sentence, it faded into nothingness without so much as a warning.
And the world around them lurched, as if they’d all been thrown for a ride in a blender. They spun and spun until Will couldn’t tell if it was him that was spinning or the Earth. Up became down and left became right as everything swirled around him, browns and greens and blues and greys twisting together in a mess of color.
The motion stopped just as abruptly as it had started. Will groaned, holding his head as he looked around him.
He took his surroundings in in silence, then paused as his eyes met Waylan’s.
“I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Will quoted.
“Yeah, no shit,” the crow replied. “We’re in California.”
“I—forget it.” Suddenly, Will felt every single one of his twenty-nine years sink into his bones.
They had been moved. Teleported, if Will had to guess. They’d been in the woods, and now… they were inside what looked to be a somewhat dilapidated McDonald’s.
Will was halfway through opening his mouth to suggest that they scout the area around them when the System spoke again, slamming sound into his mind and text across his eyes. From the way Waylan recoiled, he’d likely gotten it too.
[Main Event 1 — “Killing Game”]
[Your party has been teleported at random with 998 other living beings within your zone. There are now 1000 Integrated within a 2.5 mile radius. Integrated cannot leave the designated area of this Event until the conditions are met for it to end.]
[Main Event 1 ends when there are 100 surviving Integrated.]
[For every player killed, you will be gifted 500 coins. If you have the most kills of your designated area at the end of Main Event 1, your reward will be doubled.]
[Reward: 1,000 coins]
[Remaining players: 1,000]
The first screams started just under a minute later.