The town was in a mild state of panic when Alex and Claire arrived. People had formed a large crowd in its center and were talking over each other in scared, aggressive tones that only grew louder with every passing second.

Alex didn’t even bother trying to push his way through the mess. Nobody in the crowd knew anything more than he did about the initiation — and, even if they did, he wasn’t going to hear it over everyone yelling. Right now there was only one thing he wanted.

Food.

He scanned the buildings as he passed in hopes of finding a restaurant that had survived the apocalypse. Even if the world was ending, Alex highly doubted everyone would have immediately taken to their new life and started swinging swords around. A number of people, especially older ones, would probably try to stick to their routines and avoid having to fight anything.

And as far as old professions go, people are never going to stop wanting to be lazy and eat food made by someone better at cooking than they are. There still has to be some form of restaurant or the like around, right?

His prediction was correct. It only took a few minutes of walking through the town before he spotted the storefront of what looked to once have been an old Italian pizza place. It was a single, run-down story with murky glass windows. Beyond them were four wooden tables covered with old plaid tablecloths.

There was only a single man in the restaurant. He had a bushy black beard and a potbelly that fought to escape the confines of his stained white shirt and pressed against the edge of the table, bunching up the tablecloth around it. The man sat at one of the tables, head rested in the palm of his hand, as he pushed an unseasoned pancake around on a cracked plate. Something about eating pancakes in a pizza store felt sacrilegious, but Alex pushed the door open anyway.

The man glanced up from his meal. He wiped his nose with the back of a hand and a snort, then pushed back and rose to his feet with a grunt.

Dorriv - Human (Novice 1)

“You want something?” Dorriv asked. He spoke in a thick accent — Alex couldn’t quite place it, but it was definitely somewhere from eastern Europe. He hadn’t paid enough attention in geography or had anywhere near enough money to travel enough to say more.

“Food, if you’re selling,” Alex replied. His stomach rumbled to punctuate his words. Even Dorriv’s half-eaten food on the table looked like a feast fit for a king. He’d forgotten how starving he was. “I’m starving, and I’d kill for something edible.”

Dorriv grunted. He ambled over to an old gas stove at the back of the restaurant. He fished a box of matches out of his back pocket and lit one before twisting the knob to the burner. The stove ignited with a whoomp.

He wordlessly clanged a stained pan onto the stove and grabbed a bowl of beige liquid sitting on the counter beside it, pouring it into the pan. Dorriv didn’t so much look back at them once.

A few minutes later, he slapped a plate of pancakes down in front of Alex. They were covered with small burnt bits from previous attempts and were definitely a step past overdone, but he didn’t care.

Alex shoved the food into his mouth with his hands, barely pausing to breathe. The rest of the world didn’t matter. All that he saw was pancake. He didn’t even remember to think about offering anything to Claire until he was on his last bite. Alex paused with his hand halfway to his mouth and glanced up for the first time since having started.

“Did you want some?”

“No, I think I’m fine,” Claire said. “I’ve got my own food.”

Alex shrugged and popped the last scrap of food into his mouth and let out a satisfied sigh. “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I needed that.”

Dorriv grunted again. He seemed to like doing that. “You’re a fighter. Need you both to fight.”

“You mean with the monsters? I take it you aren’t planning to participate in defending the town.”

The portly man shook his head and gestured to the air above Alex’s head. “Not a chance. You got a higher number than I do. Means you’ve already been fighting. I don’t fight. I make food. I don’t want to get turned into it.”

“So you’re just hoping the others will defend the town?” Claire asked. It was clear what she thought of that particular plan.

Dorriv shrugged in response. “Have no choice. Don’t really care. This isn’t my town. My shop, but not my town.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked, but he got the feeling he already knew. The odd combination of buildings outside, especially with so many of them looking like they’d just been grabbed from a larger building…

“I lived in the outskirts of Detroit,” Dorriv said. He gestured vaguely around himself. “This isn’t Detroit.”

“Holy shit. The cities all got minced together?” Alex asked, his eyes going wide.

“Not all,” Dorriv said with a shake of his head. “Traveler came through here this morning. Came from Los Angeles. Sounds like most of it survived intact. But small places? Some got minced up.”

What else did the apocalypse cause? It’s only been a day or two since the system initiated, but I already feel like a fish out of water.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“We were out camping when the world ended,” Alex said with a nod to Claire. “Figured we’d just die in the nature, but we decided we wanted to live instead. Did we miss anything else big like that local announcement a few minutes ago? Is there something else that changed in the cities beside… well, the obvious, I guess?”

Dorriv ambled back over to his table and flopped down in his chair. It creaked dangerously under his weight as he took a bite of his pancakes. “Here? We just got tossed together like a bunch of hamsters. The traveler from Los Angeles said the big cities were a bit different, but I wasn’t interested in his story. I was busy drinking myself under the table at the time. He headed over to something he called a dungeon to the north of town.”

Okay, that’s not too bad. I’m not behind, then. It seems like some other people have already gotten close to my rank if Dorriv hasn’t mentioned anything about me being Novice 3. That means it might be difficult to get at the top of the leaderboard if I leave things as they are. I can’t waste any time.

And a dungeon… that sounds like a great place to get some challenge and get stronger before this event starts.

“Did the traveler come back?” Alex asked.

Dorriv shook his head sadly. “Not here. Figure he got killed.”

“Probably. Oh, hold on. I have a few dollars here somewhere to pay for my meal with,” Alex said. He reached for the money he’d taken from Jackson.

Dorriv let out a bark of laughter and waved his hand. “Forget it. Just kill some of those… things. My restaurant is my house now. I don’t have many ingredients left, but it’s all I’ve got. Keep it standing and I’ll consider the debt paid.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Alex said — and he meant it. If he was going to get to the top of the Local Leaderboards, he had to protect as much of the ramshackle town as possible. “Come on, Claire. Let’s get going.”

She blinked, then nodded and followed after him as he headed out of the restaurant.

“Shouldn’t we find somewhere to rest?” Claire asked. “Perhaps an inn?”

Alex came to a stop a in the shadow of what appeared to be a chunk of a skyscraper. He glanced over his shoulder at Claire. “Rest, yes. But I’m not sure we should do it here. I don’t have a way to hide my rank like you do. I don’t know what other people are going to try to do, but someone could try to take out the strong competition before the event starts.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “That would be horrible. Nobody can handle a horde on their own. What idiot would do that?”

“You really don’t know much about humans, do you?” Alex’s lips curled up in amusement. “Are Dhampirs just normally saints or something? There’s always someone waiting to take advantage of things in a crisis. I don’t think most people are like that, but it only takes one.”

“I — well, you’re probably right,” Claire said with a sigh and a wince. “I was a little sheltered when the apocalypse hit. By the time things really got moving, all the initial fallout had ended. I must have just missed it.”

“We can come back to the town later and try to get some proper rest, but there’s still daylight left,” Alex said as he started walking again, heading out of the town. He wanted to be on the move before the crowd broke. “Didn’t you say you were doing a dungeon before you fell into the Mirrorlands?”

“Yeah,” Claire said.

“How difficult was it? Doable for two people?”

“Depends on the dungeon, I think. I had a larger group, but we weren’t having too much trouble in the one we did. I heard some other people had it a lot harder.”

I should have expected that. It’s almost as if the System is modeled after a game — though, given that first message we got, it’s pretty clear it’s manufactured. By who or why, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter.

I knew I should have spent more time playing RPGs instead of studying for those damn useless classes.

“Great. Let’s go check this one out, then. It’s a huge opportunity,” Alex said, rubbing his hands together. “We can check it out and then head back to get some rest in a proper room after. How about that?”

“If you’re sure, then fine. Did you want to meditate first? We just killed someone pretty strong. It might have netted us enough power to get to the next level in our rank. Also, is your wound healed yet?”

“No? Why would it be—” Alex cut himself off as he touched the spot on his side where Jackson had cut him. It didn’t hurt. He pulled his shirt back, blinking in surprise. The wound was gone. There wasn’t even a slight scar anymore.

“Huh. Yeah, it is. How’d you know? Could you smell the lack of blood or something?”

“No. The stronger you are, the harder you are to hurt and the faster you heal. Even at early Novice levels, the healing is reasonably accelerated. It gets even faster after you eat and give yourself more calories to burn while recovering.”

“Huh. Convenient.”

Claire nodded in agreement. “Yep. So you’re probably in shape to keep moving, but are you sure you don’t want to meditate first? You didn’t say.”

Alex considered her question for a moment. He very well might have gotten enough, but reaching the next level would also make him stronger. Getting stronger meant the challenge was lower.

Not to say I don’t want to get stronger, but I need to balance it. Especially early on, I’ve got a lot of opportunity to get a lot of strength quickly by limiting my growth and increasing the challenge. As long as I don’t hold myself back so much that I just get killed, it’s better to see what I can do as I am now. Besides, I don’t know what the reward for clearing that trial will be. It might mess stuff up. I want to get as far as I can as I am now before I accept any gifts or whatever it is I got.

“I’ll do it tonight,” Alex decided. “I want to see how dangerous the dungeon is first. If it’s relatively weak, leveling up will just make it worth less.”

Claire inclined her head. “I probably should have expected that answer. You aren’t wrong, though. Doing this with just two people is going to be either a really smart move or a really dumb one.”

“Oh?” Alex raised an eyebrow. “How do we know which one it is?”

“If we survive or not.”

“Good metric. What do you think our odds are?”

“Considering where we came from?” Claire gave Alex a dangerous smile. “I’m not as insane as you are, but I remember how things were pretty early on. Compared to the Mirrorlands, this will be manageable. Hard for just two people, but manageable.”

They walked for a minute in silence before another thought struck Alex.

“Say, did you ever complete a dungeon?” He asked, tilting his head to the side. “Because from my… somewhat unrelated knowledge, I’m under the impression you get rewards for beating them.”

“Yeah, I did. And you do,” Claire said with a nod. “Depends on the dungeon and who did it. And the System. You know how it is by now.”

“Yeah, I think I do,” Alex said. Excitement built in his stomach as a plan started to piece itself together. It was still too early to act on anything — he needed more information about what they were up against first.

Challenging himself was only useful if it was calculated challenge. He wasn’t about to fling himself to his death. But… if his guess was correct, this dungeon would probably be relatively easy for a large group.

That meant it would be difficult for two people. Difficult, but probably possible.

And if two people can do it… I wonder if one can?