"Just keep those adds busy for ten more minutes and we got this," Mark told his team.

They had been at this raid for nearly six hours, but the end was in sight. The MMORPG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, by the name of Tutorial, had cornered the market, and Mark was reaching the end of the hardest raid anyone had done yet. After spending nearly the last three years since Tutorial's release exploring, and looting, the galaxy of the game in the Correlus, Mark had decided to spend the last few weeks getting ready to take on the raid known as the Leviathan.

The raid was set on a massive abandoned space station filled with alien creatures. Most players were unable to even attempt it due to the level 150 requirement to enter. It was assumed that there had to be some max level requirement for it, but no one was high enough to be denied entry. At level 150 players would have hit their sixth class advancement, not including any race or profession advancements as well.

The twenty-five-person group assembled were some of the early players as well as the best around. All who had attempted it were just over level 150, with Mark leading the pack at 170. The raid group had battled their way through the monster-infested station and finally made it to the boss that the raid was named. A forty-foot-tall monstrosity of cybernetics and strange flesh, it was taking everything the party had to throw at it.

Small quadrupedal robots flooded into the chamber; the adds Mark had called out earlier. As soon as they appeared, Lars, the crew's heavy weapons expert, immediately tore into them with his massive rotary blaster cannon. Light flashed through the dark room as lasers flew from the cannon, showing more robots than the team was expecting.

"Gonna need some help with these, there's too many for just me," Lars' slightly panicked voice came across in the team's comms.

"Andrew, Vera, give him some help," Mark tasked the two other members with automatic weaponry.

Between Lars, Andrew, and Vera, they were able to beat back the oncoming wave of robots through sheer volume of fire. Vera's pinpoint accuracy was able to match Lars' damage output despite her lower rate-of-fire blaster rifle.

With the adds dealt with, Mark and the rest of the crew were able to focus on the Leviathan. Mark was able to detach a few of the more dangerous limbs with his ZR-6 hand cannon before it ran out of energy. Though he loved the gun, it still had some drawbacks, the high energy cost being one of those. Switching to his plasma cutter, Mark prepared to cut into the thick armored legs of the beast.

"Dan, what's the status on deactivating the cybernetics?" Mark asked the team's hacker, hoping for some good news.

"It's not going well. Each limb is a separate entity and I have to break into them one by one," Dan shouted to be heard over the noise of the battle.

"Looks like we're gonna have to take this thing down the hard way."

With the planning out of the way, Mark went to work on the legs of the beast with his plasma cutter. Mechanical parts and flesh went flying as he hacked into the stout legs of the Leviathan, slowly, but surely, bringing it down to where other, less agile members of the group could attack it with heavier weaponry.

It was going well until a stray limb with long talons struck Mark's character, dealing nearly half his hit point total in one hit. Mark immediately fell back to safety to try and make it to the team's med tech, or medical technician. The role that took the place of the healer in a more fantasy-based MMO.

"Damn it, I thought I was out of the way. Alex, can you get me patched up?" Mark asked, making his way over to the med tech.

"Yeah I can, but I'm running low on nanobots and I'm gonna have to start prioritizing who to heal," Alex replied, making it clear how close this fight was going to be.

"Alright, prioritize Lars, Andrew, and Vera they currently have the highest damage per minute, and if this boss has a stage two we're gonna need all the firepower we can get. Then focus on Gabe and Eli, they are keeping the attention of this thing and can take a punch without immediately going down like the rest of us." With the healing order sorted, Mark turned and saw that Byron, the team's heavy melee weapons guy, had managed to chew through the legs and the Leviathan was about to come crashing down, but still not dead.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Timber!" Byron's jovial voice came across the voice call as he laughed at his joke.

Everyone managed to get out of the way, but the impact still knocked some prone and it would be a few seconds before they could get back to outputting damage. Now that the Leviathan was in easy access for everyone's weapons, they went to work quickly eating through the thing's enormous health pool.

The 'Raid Complete' screen flashed in front of everyone's vision as cheers were coming from every member of the raid group. After a few minutes of discussing what loot everyone had gotten, as well as the massive amount of experience that was received, everyone signed off and said that they would meet back tomorrow to see if anyone had found any more high-level dungeons while they were stuck in this one.

Mark disconnected from the voice call and finished up his stream which had hit a total of nearly twenty thousand viewers. He immediately flopped onto his bed and fell asleep feeling the exhaustion of a marathon gaming session.

"Yo, what's up?" an androgynous and oddly happy voice asked as Mark was waking up.

"Huh?" Mark asked half to the voice and half to himself.

"Welcome to the game! Or should I say future? I'm never sure what to tell the sentients when they join. We'll call it both. Welcome to the game-future!" the voice rambled in a very excited manner.

Mark rubbed the sleep from his eyes and realized that he was sitting in an executive office with a large wood desk between him and . . . something. What was sitting in front of Mark was humanoid, but it kept morphing between a myriad of different races, most of which he had never seen. Sometimes it was almost an elf or an orc, but then it would shift into a gray-skinned Roswell-type alien and just as quickly it would be back to human. It was quite disconcerting to look at, leaving Mark to look around the room instead.

The room was as generic as it could get as far as offices were concerned and seemed to be an average of every single office worker he had ever seen. The walls were a bland beige color and the floors were covered in a gray carpet.

"Well I must either be on some kind of bad trip, or this is a dream," Mark said, finally coming to his senses.

"Nah, dude this ain't no dream, but you might call it a trip. It's not gonna be a long one anyways. We just gotta get you sorted so you can get on with your life. You did well in the Tutorial, so now you get some extras during the Introduction."

"So if this isn't a dream then what is it, because 'Introduction' doesn't really tell me much."

"Yeah, I guess I should explain. You are part of planet 10606 to be added to the System. The Tutorial was made to get you used to what your new life will be like. That's why it was as accessible as possible. You wouldn't want people pissed off because they had no way of playing it and now they're behind everyone else."

"Alright, I'll bite, but I'm still skeptical as to how real any of this is, so continue, I'm curious to see where this goes."

The being perked up after that and had a whole lot more energy behind what it was saying. "So, the Tutorial gets introduced whenever a planet with sentient beings reaches a certain point in their progression as a species. After three years, the System takes over and gives everyone classes, levels, professions, and ways to advance if they want it. As to your individual case, you went above and beyond. Even got into the top 10% of everyone to have played the Tutorial since its inception. Pretty cool when you consider nearly 100 trillion have played it."

One hundred trillion. Mark immediately spaced out at the enormity of that number. If all of this was real, which was a stretch, he couldn't imagine how many people that meant there were in the galaxy, or whatever section of space that the System encompassed.

The being continued talking through Mark's introspection but quickly realized it had lost him. "Oh, my bad. Someone from a planet of just under eight billion learned that there are more than 100 trillion sentient beings in the galaxy. I'll start back with that." The being paused, making sure it had Mark's full attention this time, and went right back into its rant. "Since you did so well, you have the honor of meeting me, the one behind all this. Most people will only get a short notification telling them what happened, but a few others will get to meet with me. I'm sure you are familiar with some of them, they were on that raid with you. The ones who chose not to play will be starting as citizens, effectively from nothing. Not to say that they cannot become something great, they do have the opportunity of a blank slate, but people like you, will have a leg up. Some will use it to help others, some will use it for their own gain, and a surprising percentage will simply squander it. I'm not here to judge. What they do with their lives is up to them."

The being shuffled some papers on its desk, ones that Mark was sure had not been there seconds ago and continued on. "Now, as far as you are concerned, let's get started with character creation.