I awaken to faint red light shining against my closed eyelids. The world around me sways every which way, and I feel like throwing up.

There’s something soft and warm under my head, like a fluffy, furry pillow. I grunt and crack open one eye, being met by an early morning sky tinged in shades of red and orange. When I try to get up, the nausea surges and punches me back down.

“Fuuuu…”

My vision is blurry. I take a hand to my eyes and rub them.

“Finally awake,” someone says. It sounds like Polly, but the voice is clear and crisp. “Had a good nap?”

I open my eyes again, and this time I can see. My pillow, as it turns out, is actually a huge wolf monster. It shifts around under me, its snout coming within inches from my face. A huff of warm air from its nose sends me scrambling, rolling and crawling away on my elbows.

“Chill, big guy.”

Everything comes back to me in a flash. The system, the monsters, my narrow escape from what I thought was certain death. I focus on the creature in front of me.

Luna - level 9 Direpup Female.

This creature is a pet.

“What the…” I start, but then I remember something else. Someone else. “Emily!”

I try to get up, I stumble, I try again. Luna pushes her snout into me, rubbing against my chest and licking my neck. I’m still dizzy, so I use the direpup for support. When I’m finally up, I take a look around.

We’re in a patch of forest, in a campsite of ruined tents and dented cars. Monsters surround us, all of them named pets that hover around level 10. A good dozen of the creatures are bunched up in the campsite with us, with the rest forming a perimeter a little distance away.

I turn on the spot, taking in the scene. My heart races until I spot Emily atop a camper van, bow by her side. She looks tired, ragged, and overall miserable.

I take a step towards her, fighting Luna off as the puppy whines. Emily jumps off the van and runs towards me. I tense up, expecting her to tackle me with a hug or something. That’s what sappy movie rules would dictate, anyway. But this isn’t a movie, and she slows down as she nears me.

Her eyes scan me up and down, a sheen of tears in them. She lets out a sigh of relief, pulls her hood lower to cover her eyes, and she plants herself by my side.

“Glad to see you’re okay, too,” I say.

She takes a step closer, burying her chin in her shirt’s collar.

The others giggle, which prompts me to take a better look at them. They’re the owners of the pets, I figure, and there are ten of them besides me and Emily. A bunch are teens, though a few are older, in their mid to late thirties. Most of them look like perfectly normal humans — if you ignore the torn uniforms and blood that are quickly becoming the new norm — but three of them are…different.

One’s a teenager that looks like a feral cat girl from an early 90’s anime, complete with cat ears, a mane of wild hair, and short fur over her entire body. Another one is a man that looks like he got half-way through turning into a werewolf before the process stalled. The last guy is the coolest, some combination of man and dragon. Obsidian scales ring his face and exposed forearms, and a large lizard tail swishes around behind him.

I don’t recognize any of them, but I do recognize those uniforms. A few years ago, when I moved out, I went to the local animal shelter to adopt a puppy. I was about to live completely alone for the first time in my life, so I wanted a pet to keep me company. He was a brown and black mutt I named Silvester, and we had two great years together until he snuck out one morning as I was leaving for work.

I hadn’t noticed, and he got run over by some asshole.

When I found him dead on the sidewalk that evening, I was so angry and devastated that I swore I’d never get another pet again.

The people at the animal shelter, the ones that had given Silvester to me, wore the exact same uniforms.

“What happened?” I ask.

“You were headed downtown, right?” Someone asks. It’s Polly’s voice again, so I turn to face them.

The speaker is one of the people, a woman with dirty blonde hair sitting by a smoldering fire pit. She seems like the oldest in the bunch, probably the only one to push forty. Her hair is braided in a tail that hangs over her shoulder, and she has an almost mischievous air about her. She’s about Emily’s height, but she has a generous hourglass figure.

Big chunks of meat skewered on sticks cook over the dying fire, dripping fat onto the embers. She takes one, pinches it between two fingers, and gives it a taste.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Okay. Come have breakfast, we’ll talk as we eat.”

“Is that…”

“Monster meat, yeah,” she says, taking another bite.

I want to say something about it, but my stomach churns with hunger. I’m tapped for calories again, so despite my reservations, I make my way over to the woman and plop down on the ground next to her. Emily and Luna follow me, the latter curling up next to me. The giant puppy paws at me and whines expectantly, so I comply. I give her head a few scratches until she calms down, and she settles her pony sized head in my lap.

“We skipped introductions, but I'm Jessica,” the woman says as she hands me a skewer.

“Jack.”

I taste test the meat, and despite lacking any condiments, it’s not bad. Tough and chewy, but it has a sweet, gamey taste.

After we exchange pleasantries, Jessica gets to work explaining things to me. Turns out that the bomb did go off after I passed out, and it killed about half of the horde. I check my interface, and the boss counter only shows two of them left.

We fucking got one, which makes me deflate with relief.

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“You were pretty banged up,” Jessica continues. “We barely pulled you back. I had to use, like, what? Ten rolls of bandages to stop the bleeding?” She looks at Emily, who nods. “You’re lucky that Luna here has some weird saliva that helps blood coagulate and boosts healing. She was licking you relentlessly.”

Luna huffs, as if in agreement. I look down at myself, finding that I am indeed wrapped in bandages. Hadn’t even noticed before. I lift an arm, sniff, and — yep, I stink like doggy breath. Emily chuckles.

“But you should’ve seen your friend over there,” Jessica says with a smirk.

I look to the side, shooting Emily a worried glance. She looks okay, there’s not as much as a scratch or a tear in her tracksuit.

“What?” I ask, looking back and forth between the two women.

“She was falling all over herself when she saw how you looked,” Jessica answers. “It took three guys to pry her off of you so we could work.”

Emily lets out something that bares a passing resemblance to a whine, then she plants her face into Luna’s fur. I motion for Jessica to skip the subject and move on with her story.

She thankfully takes the hint, and she starts telling me about her and her group's situation. They did indeed work at the animal shelter, and she was the manager on shift last night. The evening crew was getting ready to leave just as the night crew was rolling in, but then the system cropped up.

“We didn't know what to do,” Jessica says. “Everyone was scared. A few ran for their cars, but we saw monsters killing them. We decided to stay together after that.”

Problem was that they didn't have any weapons at the shelter. What they did have were a bunch of rapidly mutating pets in cages.

“One of the guys, Damien,” she said, pointing at the dragon dude, “talked us into picking beast tamer classes. Not all of them were fit for humans, but the system offered to turn us into…hybrids. As you can see, some of us took the opportunity. Most stayed human, though.”

After everyone had their classes, they tamed as many of the pets as they could. Most of them were advanced classes, but Jessica herself has a master class called Broodmother. Everyone else can hold between three to five pets at a time, but she wanted to save as many of the animals as she could.

Broodmother, as a master class, has no such limitations. It can hold as many pets as she can tame.

“There has to be a catch,” I say. “The class sounds too…broken.”

“Besides the increased experience for leveling?” Jessica complains. “The pets don't share any of the experience they earn. Not with each other, and not with me. I also don't get a say in how they mutate, but I’ll be able to breed them and pick certain qualities for the pups.”

“Okay, that is pretty bad.”

Both her and Emily — who'd been a silent fly on the wall during the entire conversation — nod at the same time.

“Some of the pets gained quite a few levels tonight,” Jessica continues, “but I'm stuck at level 3.”

I give her a tired smile. “Yeah, I have an expert class and I only got to level…”

Then I look at my attributes, and I see that I'm actually level 3 now.

“Level?” Jessica prompts me, seeing as I cut off abruptly.

“Level 3! I went up another one from the bomb, hell yeah!”

I pump my fists in the air and drop the half eaten skewer. Jessica laughs as I try to catch it, and I can see the hint of a smile on Emily as well.

“Congrats, but how come you picked an expert class? One of us wanted to pick one of those but he got two warnings.”

“There were three warnings, actually.”

I start explaining my night and choices to Jessica, simultaneously wading through the notifications and tabs. It's hard to focus on all of that at once, and I stumble over my words multiple times. But I don't want to wait either, I remember how big of an impact my last level-up had.

I find something very interesting in the notification folder.

A wave boss has fallen.

The credit for the kill goes to Jack Harrington.

The minions under the wave boss’s command are in disarray. Wave 1 out of 3 has ended. Prepare for the next wave.

At least there’s some good news to all of this, though I don’t like how the system tacked my name on there. I already figured out earlier with James that everyone received the same events, so this is more than likely a mass update. One that everyone has seen.

Whatever, not like most of Stelver doesn’t already know who I am.

I move on. Before I do anything with my attribute points, I decide to go into the class skills. Those are easier to spend, seeing as I only have two options. I have one point and two skills to choose from: ground pound and dash.

The rest of the skills are still gated behind the level requirement, blocking access until I reach level 10.

Out of the two choices, ground pound is a no-brainer. I’ve seen just how dense hordes can get, so a way to damage all nearby monsters, even if just a little, would pair nicely with the Frenzy skill.

Next up, I tackle the free attribute points. One goes into agility, and six into constitution, bringing my total health up to two hundred. I don’t want yet another close call on that front, I’ve had enough of them already. That leaves me with one more point, and I go back and forth between essence and spirit. I only have 20 mana at the moment, which is exactly how much the ground pound skill needs for a single use.

Decisions, decisions…

I focus on the mana bar to see more details. My mana regeneration rate is currently at 28 points per minute, though it depends on the ambient mana density. Does that fluctuate based on location? I have no damn idea. It does mean that I’ll get all of my mana back in less than a minute, but that’s a very long time in a fight. Not to mention that I might need to trigger skills back to back.

I settle on essence, dumping the last point into it and examining the changes.

Jack Harrington - Level 3.

Race: Human, Male.

Titles: Power Hungry.

Class: Wavebreaker (expert).

Class Stage: Basic.

Experience to next level: 3207/64428.

Health: 200/200.

Mana: 30/30.

Stamina: 190/190.

Attributes

Constitution: 14.

Strength: 16.

Agility: 12.

Perception: 7.

Charisma: 5.

Essence: 3.

Spirit: 2.

I gawk at the experience requirement for the next level-up. It’s not a cumulative amount, that’s just how much I need to go from level 3 to 4. That’s insane. Even though the monsters have been giving more and more experience as the night progressed and they evolved, my own requirements are quickly outgrowing them. I had to pull some downright insane stunts just to get this far.

“Jack?” Jessica asks.

“I’m fine,” I say, shaking off my stupefaction.

I made my own damn bed, so now I have to sleep in it. And it’s not all bad either, at least my attributes are skyrocketing with every level. While others might already be around level 10, I’m pretty sure I outshine them in that department.

We finish eating, and I feel much better afterwards. Luna gets the scraps, and after we put out the fire, we start packing up.

“Alright, let’s move!” Jessica calls out.