Jake thoroughly searched the remaining rooms of the one-story house. In one of them, he found a handgun lying on a small table. He didn’t recognize the weapon, but it kind of looked like a Beretta M9. He picked up the handgun and was surprised to find it lighter than he’d expected. Maybe it wasn’t loaded? He slightly pulled back on the slide to see if there was a round in the chamber. There was. He then dropped the mag and took a look at it, holding it in his left hand. The mag was filled completely, containing twenty rounds in total. He slid the magazine back into the pistol and gave the weapon another look-over. He noticed that the safety lever was on.

Jake then shifted his attention back to the small table. There were a few more items lying on it—a drop-leg holster and a few extra magazines. He put the pistol away for now and checked each mag. All of them were loaded to the full. He shoved them into his jacket pockets and then strapped the drop-leg holster around his right thigh. He picked up the handgun again and was about to slide it into the holster when a sudden idea came to his mind.

He placed the pistol back on the table and took out his PDA. He unlocked the device and activated the camera app. Pointing the device’s camera at the weapon, he tapped the SCAN button. The weapon’s stats immediately popped up on the screen. He learned that the handgun was called Bernetti, it was of common rarity, and its level was 1. It also had some stats like Damage, Fire Rate, Magazine Size, and so on. The handgun’s stats were nothing to write home about, but it wasn’t surprising at all. After all, the weapon was only level 1 and of common rarity. Still, it was better than nothing. In this new world, everything seemed to work like in a video game, so he should be able to find a better weapon at some point.

When Jake tapped on the screen to dismiss the info about the weapon, he noticed that another tab had been unlocked. It was called Inventory, and when Jake opened it, he saw the list of items he had on him—a few pistol magazines. Holding the PDA in his left hand, he picked up the pistol with his right and shoved the handgun into the drop-leg holster. As soon as he did so, a new entry appeared in the Inventory—the Bernetti pistol. Except for the Inventory, the PDA contained no more new info, so Jake slid the device back into the inner pocket of his jacket.

In one of the other rooms of the house, he found a rucksack lying on the floor in one corner. It was a good find. The rucksack was empty, but Jake was sure he would put it to good use pretty soon. He now was a survivor in a post-apocalyptic world, so scavenging would play a big role in his survival. He would have to carry a lot of things on him, of that he was sure. After putting the rucksack on, he continued to search through the house.

In another room, he discovered some kind of vintage radio sitting on a table. At first, he didn’t pay much attention to it, thinking it was broken and useless. However, when he was walking past the radio, it suddenly came alive.

“Brave survivors are needed,” Jake heard a voice coming from the radio. “A gathering of ex-human walkers led by a shambler was discovered in the area. Anyone who deals with them will be rewarded handsomely. This is a recorded message that is repeated every few minutes until somebody accepts the mission.”

After the voice finished speaking, Jake’s PDA beeped a notification sound. He took out the device and glanced at the screen. A piece of text hovered in the middle of the screen.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

New mission.

Objective: Kill 15 ex-human walkers within a particular area.

Additional objective: Kill 1 ex-human shambler for an extra reward.

Reward: 1,000 XP, 10,000 credits

Extra reward: Supply drop (x1) (Common)

Accept mission: Y/N

Jake tapped Yes, and the text disappeared. He saw that three more tabs had just been unlocked: Missions, Map, and Diary. He opened the first one. Sure enough, the mission he’d just accepted was listed in there. It didn’t give him any new information, so he switched to the next tab. The layout of the house filled the screen. Above it hovered two buttons, LOCAL and GLOBAL, and the former one was highlighted. He pressed the other button, and the layout of the house was replaced by the global map. But the only thing that was visible was the house he was in while the rest of the map was currently hidden by clouds of gray mist.

With his brow furrowed, Jake stared at the map for a moment. He was wondering if the world remained as it once was. Sure, Earth had been turned into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but what about the underlying geography of the planet? Had the tectonic plates been shifted to reshape Earth’s landscape to form new continents? Did the world still look as it had before or had it been turned into something completely different? He didn’t know what exactly had happened to the world, but from the very first system message, he’d learned that Earth was going to merge into the Gameverse—whatever the hell it was. Did it mean that Earth had become a part of a much larger world? Jake didn’t know the answer to this question, but he hoped he would find out at some point and decided not to give the matter any more thought for now.

A little way north of his current position, he spotted a marker in the area hidden by the gray mist. It had to be the location where he needed to complete his mission. There was nothing else on the map, so he closed it and switched to the last of the three recently unlocked tabs, which was called Diary. There was one entry in there—Day 1: The Awakening. He tapped on it, and a piece of info appeared on the screen.

Day 1: The Awakening

It’s been six years since the event known as the Collapse turned Earth into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I was fortunate enough to live through the Collapse, but now I have to learn to survive in this dangerous new world.

As Jake read the text, he furrowed his brow in thought. The text didn’t offer any explanations as to what was going on, and it didn’t contain any mentions of the mysterious System that had changed the world and integrated it into something called the Gameverse. The System had put him in stasis for six years and then teleported him to a random spot in some devastated city. However, the text didn’t mention any of that either. Overall, the text felt like it was written by a character who was unaware of being inside a video game instead of the real world.

Jake tried to write in his Diary only to realize he couldn’t input anything manually. The interface had no options for creating a new entry—there weren’t any buttons or a keyboard to use. He assumed new entries would appear in his Diary of their own volition from time to time. He didn’t know how often it would happen, but he figured he would find out soon enough. After closing the Diary, he saw there were still a few more tabs. Although they were currently locked, he was sure they would be unlocked in due time.

There was nothing else of interest in the house. Jake walked to the front entrance and opened the door a crack to peek outside. After confirming there were no mutants nearby, he opened the door fully and stepped out of the house.