Luke wasn’t sure how to process what he was seeing. The sudden appearance of an ancient city and an otherworldly river filled with ghosts was a lot to comprehend. In some ways, it was even crazier than the blue boxes. From the looks of it, whoever lived here had carved a city out of the cavern itself.

The buildings started as simplistic monolithic apartment blocks near the river. The architecture there could best be described as blocky and utilitarian. Deeper into the city there was a shift towards larger buildings of more varied designs, but some structures stood out more than others.

The most notable outlier was a Gothic cathedral in the distance; the dark purple spires and marble arches stood in stark contrast to the surrounding architecture. It gave off an entirely different vibe, though Luke couldn’t say exactly why.

Amongst the taller building deep in the city, Luke thought he could see movement, so he squinted to make sense of it. His eyesight was sharper than before, but even so it was a struggle to make out details clearly.

His heart skipped a beat.

Looming head and shoulders above the tallest buildings, a horned giant strolled through distant streets. Its unnaturally slender form was a swirling mass of shadows and chills ran down his spine as he looked at it. He ducked out of sight, pressing his back against the cold metal of the train carriage.

If I can't see you, you can't see me, Luke thought, making the expression his new mantra.

It took almost a minute for his pulse to stop pounding, and for Luke to control his breathing. He tried to apply logic to the situation; to a creature that large he was an ant, and the chances it noticed him were slim.

He hoped.

Luke peeked out the window. Despite his fears, the giant continued to amble along lazily in the distance, and showed no sign of it changing direction. After a minute, Luke relaxed a little, though remained on edge.

Pacing up and down the carriage, he came to a stop by the mutilated corpse of the construction worker. It looked like something one might find in a butcher’s shop. Saliva pooled in the corners of Luke’s mouth as his stomach rumbled. He was hungry, and meat was meat.

That’s fucking gross, Luke thought, pushing aside the intrusive thought. His mind was his own.

Luke tried to feel remorse for his actions. Even for him, the response was muted. He felt different; less empathetic, but stronger both mentally and physically. I’m a [Murderhobo] with [Dormant Zombieism] and a low [Empathy] attribute. Whatever the fuck any of that means.

Though he couldn’t be sure, Luke guessed that the system was changing him, like a video game character. He wondered if he really had gone crazy, but now wasn’t the time to question his sanity.

Luke wasn’t insane.

Heightened senses spoke to Luke; they told him the truth of his new reality. He just needed to listen. From the rancid smell of rot to the feel of the crusty seats, everything was more real and vivid than ever before. He honestly felt more alive than he had in a long time.

Even if he was having a mental breakdown, all he could do was push forward.

That pragmatic logic drove Luke to make the most out of his accidental homicide. The guy couldn’t get any more dead. His eyes fell to the tool belt around the man’s waist, and the hammer that poked out. It was a good size, with a two-pronged claw for removing nails.

Such a weapon could cause some serious damage in the right hands.

After looting the corpse of everything that could be useful, Luke ended up with a few new acquisitions. He pocketed an old flip phone, a brown leather wallet, and tied the tool belt around his waist.

He couldn’t unlock the phone, but the screen would be useful for keeping track of time. His own smartphone only had a sliver of battery left, and even at full charge lasted a day at most. Progress at the cost of reliability.

As for the wallet, Luke had a feeling that cash and credit cards wouldn’t go far in this new world. He kept them anyway. The inside pocket contained a picture of a smiling teenage girl. She looked about eighteen, and bore some resemblance to the corpse. According to the credit card Patrick M Fenn was the name of the man he killed and the girl in the picture was presumably his daughter.

It was the toolbelt that contained the real prize: the hammer.

It felt good in his hand.

As he swung the hammer around the tool shimmered with a white light. The light show was odd, but only lasted a few moments after he first touched it. The humble tool had a nice heft to it, and Luke spent a minute getting used to it.

The last item of note was a screwdriver. Much like with the hammer, he spent a minute trying it out, and soon the train's weathered upholstery was full of holes. The screwdriver could function as a weapon, but was on the smaller side.

The hammer was a more natural weapon, but it didn’t hurt to have a backup.

Armed and dangerous, Luke felt more confident in his prospects. Now he needed a plan, or something close to resembling one. Calling for help would be a good start, but neither of his phones had any signal. Maybe the train driver had a radio, or some other way to communicate with the outside world.

If Luke was lucky, the driver would be alive, and the cheery Scotsman from the tannoy announcements was on the phone with the police, but he wasn’t optimistic.

A look ahead showed the rats were still devouring the corpse in the next carriage. One rat had separated from the others. It had broken off a large bone and was gnawing beneath the seats. The corpse wouldn’t occupy the others forever.

Before jumping blindly into danger, Luke thought it prudent to explore the system a little. He could feel some of its effects but he didn’t know how it worked. How far did the game logic extend? It would make survival a lot easier if he could respawn, but that wasn’t something he was going to test.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

He thought back to the last time he saw Nate, his brother and only sibling, when Nate let him try out his VR headset. The memory triggered a wave of worry, but he pushed the feeling aside.

Instead, he focused on imagining a heads-up display like the headset had. When the ploy worked, Luke almost laughed out loud. A blue menu appeared in the air in front of him, like a floating holographic display. Opening it was intuitive, like discovering a new muscle he could flex at will.

Luke Evans: Level 2 Human

Attributes

Concepts

Class

Status

Tutorial

The blue screen confirmed that the training system functioned like a game, with all the classic RPG elements. How and why didn’t matter in his current situation, so Luke just went along with it. He instinctively knew that he could select any of the listed categories. It was as simple as thinking about it. Attributes were at the top of the list and as good a place to start as any.

Attributes:

Will: 16

Empathy: 8

Wisdom: 11

Intellect: 11

Agility: 11

Strength: 15

Endurance: 11

Recovery: 11

Free Points: 1

That was all the information the screen provided. No additional context was shown or explanations given, but it sounded simple enough. Luke wasn’t stupid; he had played enough video games to make educated guesses.

However, it would be pure idiocy to treat this new world like a game. Luke had real blood, from a dead man, on his hands and beneath his fingernails.

After some thought, Luke held onto the free attribute point, rather than spend it on a whim. He had a long history of poor decisions, and a mistake here could come back to haunt him. A mistake like accepting an ominous sounding [Murderhobo] concept could have far reaching repercussions.

God, I’m an idiot.

Reading through everything, Luke did some basic maths. He confirmed that his attributes would have all started at ten, before taking account of his various modifiers. This implied that they worked on a relative scale.

After turning his life around, Luke was definitely stronger and physically fitter than the average man. He was in his late twenties, ate well, went to the gym regularly, and woke up early on the weekends to go on a park run. The last week of moping around eating junk food was an anomaly in an otherwise healthy lifestyle.

If the numbers were on an absolute scale, he would have expected higher physical attributes, and average or below average in others. Luke didn’t consider himself particularly empathetic so having a ten in both [Empathy] and [Strength] felt off unless they were both relative to his own baseline. This theory wasn’t much to go on, but if true, gave a bit of context to the numbers.

Luke mentally closed the attribute tab and browsed through the other options. The concept tab listed the [Murderhobo] and [Forerunner] descriptions from earlier. Accepting the concepts without thinking might end up making his top ten list of poor decisions.

On top of just listing the concepts, the blue box included progress bars with percentages listed beneath each. He was curious about the benefits of advancing a concept to the next stage. [Murderhobo] was almost at the next rank, but he was a little nervous about what that would do to him. Even if it was helping him keep a clear head, he didn’t want to become a monster… unless it was the only way to survive.

Concepts:

Forerunner (Copper, 4%): +1 all attributes. +5% experience gained.

Murderhobo (Gold, 89%): +5 Will, +3 Strength, -1 Empathy. +40% loot.

Luke took a moment to consider the implications of living in a world with experience and loot. It was absurd, and it wasn't as if people needed any more incentives to kill each other. He could only imagine what chaos it would bring. As if alien invaders weren't bad enough. None of that was Luke’s immediate problem, so he moved onto the next screen.

Status:

Location: Dungeon - London Underground

Effects: Dormant Zombie, +1 Strength, -2 Empathy (57 minutes)

Quests: None

This last little blue box contained several useful tidbits. It informed Luke that he was inside a dungeon, though the exact implications were unclear. His gut reaction was that it didn’t bode well for his chance of getting rescued.

The zombie effect being on a timer also gave Luke mixed feelings. On one hand, it meant he wasn’t stuck with it forever, and he wouldn’t miss the urge to feed on other humans. Even now the nearby corpse was giving him uncomfortable urges.

Yet, the prospect of losing the condition wasn’t entirely welcome.

Luke suspected that his lowered [Empathy] was blunting his emotions, which was helping him take events in his stride. Empathy was the last thing he needed, and the [Strength] bonus didn’t hurt either. He scratched the wound on his forearm absently, and considered if it would be worth letting himself get bitten again.

After a moment, Luke quashed the thought. Taking a life-threatening injury on purpose would be the height of stupidity, and he had plenty of practice bottling up his emotions without the [System] helping.

Shaking his head, Luke returned to the main menu of the training system. He examined the class tab and then the tutorial tab. Neither was especially helpful.

The tutorial tab simply stated that the tutorial wasn’t available. It explained that this was because he was inside a dungeon and that he should exit and try again. Luke avoided the temptation to punch the screen. With his luck he might have broken something important.

Deep breaths, he thought.

He might not be a sociopath, but Luke would admit he had anger problems.

The class tab was marginally more informative, which wasn’t saying much. It stated that class selection would become available at level ten. At least that gave him a goal to strive for.

Luke revisited his attribute screen. With his situation being so precarious, he had to spend his free attribute point. To leave it unspent was a decision in itself. He was working off very little information, but heading into another fight without using it would be a mistake.

Agonising over a single point was frivolous.

The only way through is forward, he thought, before allocating the point to [Endurance]. If his life had become a full-blown video game with save points and resets, he would have doubled down on [Strength]. In games ‘min-maxing’ was often the easiest path to success, but a glance at poor Patrick reminded Luke just how fragile the human body could be.

When Luke gained the attributes earlier, he hadn’t noticed any changes to his body; he had been preoccupied. This time, as he mentally moved the free point to [Endurance], he tried to pay attention. The [System] registered his intent, and the number went up.

Luke felt... something. His body became more substantial, as his skin toughened, and bones grew more dense.

Hammer in hand Luke headed towards the front of the carriage. Why was he so ready to throw himself into danger? He could survive for days in the carriage, hiding under the seats until help arrived. It was far less likely to get him killed.

The question was: who did Luke want to be in this new world?

Would he be the fat kid that was relentlessly bullied?

Would he submit to his lot in life, until he reached his breaking point again?

Luke wouldn’t let some overgrown rodents cow him. He wouldn’t let his fears get in the way of taking what he wanted. Tightening his grip on his new hammer, Luke stretched out the rest of his muscles. He could feel the power in his muscles.

As he took a deep breath, he felt adrenaline flow through his body once again. This time the build-up was gradual, like a gathering of storm clouds on the horizon. It was time to put this system to the test. Luke smiled.

It’s hammer time.