Xen was laying half-dead on an operating table when the system apocalypse hit Earth.

The lab shook violently, and the world-renowned doctor he had hired for a million empire credits reeled back his scalpel just in time before accidentally gutting him—Xen's half-replaced organs were on full display as his flesh had been peeled back to allow the doctors to meticulously replace each one with a bionic alternative.

Fire alarms wailed as the operating table Xen lay on shook side to side. The metal braces around his arms and legs barely kept him from tumbling to the side, and the sprinkler system overhead activated, showering him in freezing water.

If not for the cocktail of drugs swimming through his veins and dulling his usually overactive mind, Xen feared the pain of being rattled about while in such a vulnerable state would overwhelm him.

But in his medically dazed-induced state, he found himself uncaring about the possible end of the world.

[Void corruption reached critical levels]

Mechanical words that sounded alien screamed into his dull mind.

[Planet Earth deemed compromised... inhabitants average system level considered too low for a survival rate above 10%...]

[Initiating pocket dimension protocol...]

Screams filled the room as the doctors armed with surgical tools stumbled back while gazing up at the cracking ceiling. Xen could not even move his head due to the rigid restraints that dug into his neck, so he was forced to watch as the ceiling gave way.

Flakes of paint and rubble fell toward him, and he winced, half expecting to be crushed to death, but his demise never occurred.

Instead, the debris paused and began to slowly float up into the night sky.

"Void corruption? Are aliens invading? Where are the stars!" Questions were hurled around the room by the panicked doctors, and Xen was starting to wonder if the drugs were making him hallucinate or if this was all a dream.

But the chilly air of a December night made him shiver to his core—yes, core, his heart had long been replaced—so he doubted this was some accursed drug-induced nightmare.

This was real—the world he knew was ending before his bionic eyes.

Streams of building materials floated toward a rift in the sky as if gravity had been reversed. First, it had been the roof tiles, then the older buildings with poor construction, and then Xen watched the hospital equipment keeping him alive begin to float upwards alongside the doctors.

"Grab onto something!" The lead doctor, an elderly man with a tuff of whispy white hair on his wrinkled head, called out to his associates. "I have platinum health insurance! The LPC will be here any moment to save us."

Ah, the life protection company. Xen couldn't help but frown upon hearing the name of the corporation his family had founded. As the last standing family member in his line, he had inherited it, but within years, it was ripped away from him by greedy shareholders that turned the company from one that attempted to provide affordable healthcare to a company that monetized death. So this old geezer could afford platinum insurance? How many of these off-the-books upgrades has he done? Platinum costs at least a hundred thousand credits a month.

Maybe it was the cold air, the insane situation he found himself in, or the fact the tubes that had been pumping chemicals directly into his brain mush were disconnected, and the neon blue fluid was flying around from the wiggling hoses—Xen wasn't sure, but his mind was slowly coming back. He was beginning to feel alive again.

Which he was eternally grateful for as he didn't like his chances of surviving the end of the world if he were to be left strapped to a surgical table.

Straining his neck muscles, he looked down the length of his body. He was completely naked and covered in blood and openings. He had taken out extensive loans and paid a million credits for this complete upgrade from Dr. James von Opid, the top bionic enhancer in Eden City.

His chest cavity was a sea of metal and blinking lights. Various suspicious-looking neon fluids rushed through clear plastic tubes, and his core, a contained miniature star, powered it all.

It was almost hard to tell where the metal enhancements ended and the human being he had once been begun.

He had paid top money that he didn't even have to become more than human, to escape the curse of mortality and ascend to something better, stronger, faster, smarter.

A superior lifeform. One capable of fighting against the LPC shareholders.

That is what he had been in the process of becoming, but of course, the world just had to end when he was hours away from becoming a walking immortal demi-god of biotech.

[Pocket dimension protocol has begun, citizens of Earth prepare to be transported away to a tutorial]

Xen's superior eyes noticed the shudder in the night sky as small tears appeared. Then, a powerful force he couldn't comprehend descended. He watched the doctors gingerly holding onto door knobs, bed frames, or anything that could facilitate a grip attached to the floor—begin to float away despite their best efforts.

"James!" A woman screamed as she was dragged away, flying up to one of the tears in space and vanishing through.

There was no reply from James.

Looking to his side, Xen watched the elderly doctor struggle to stay grounded. His teeth were clenched, and he could hear the doctor's bionic arm motors whirling as they tried to keep him rooted against the oppressive force.

"Hey... Doc." Xen slurred, his mouth not quite obeying his drugged mind's orders. "Turn my core on."

James glared at him, his whispy hair pointing to the sky as if he had been shocked with static electricity. "The upgrades are still far from finished," He shouted over the blaring sirens, "if your body fails to assimilate with the upgrades, your brain will shut down as it rejects your body."

Xen offered the doctor the most reassuring smile possible but failed to provide the desired calming effect. Did his long serpent tongue or razor-sharp teeth throw the doctor off?

"Doctor, it's the end of the world. Why would you care about medical procedures at this point? Also, does it look like my brain is struggling?" Xen grinned toothily, "Let's be honest, I was never even treated like a human, to begin with."

James gave him a long hard look and then snorted, "That's true. Your family literally got rich by monetizing death."

Not true, I have no control over the company anymore.

Xen rolled his eyes as he felt the metal braces dig into his chemically strengthened skin. "Just activate the core doctor. I can save you."

James seemed suspicious, but looking at his straining bionic arms dug into the floor's foundation that was overheated made him take a chance.

"You better keep me alive, Xen," James grunted as he freed one of his arms and quickly reached over, pressing a button on the top of the core.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

All the bionic enhancements activated at once as the power of a contained star flooded his systems. His inhuman howling accompanied the sound of metal creaking and finally snapping as Xen's body jolted up into a sitting position.

He was free from his prison but not from the torment of his mind. He had sounded confident, but he had just been a regular three-hundred-year-old human, despite his decades of corporate greed, surviving backstabbings, assassinations, and navigating the ruthless politics of the world's upper echelon.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Nobody was supposed to be this bionically far from human.

Xen felt his butt briefly leave the operating table as he experienced weightlessness due to the powerful tug from the sky.

"Grab onto something!" James grunted as he propelled his fingers through the concrete floor and grabbed onto a water pipe below the floor.

[Citizens do not resist the pull of the system. You are being sent to a tutorial world, so you may survive the destruction of your world]

Xen ignored the alien voice, no matter how enticing it sounded. The way he saw it, the threat to his life, was the system, not whatever it was trying to protect him from. Who was to say through those rifts in the sky was really a friendly tutorial world?

Aliens could lie, after all, as did everyone else. For all he knew, this was an act of war from another country that had unleashed some secret technology. If Eden City could create miniature stars and seal them within a fist-sized core to power Bioware, who's to say they couldn't telepathically project words into people's minds and suck them into the sky.

However, his theory began to crumble when the tug from the sky upon him ceased, and he fell back to the table. Yet the sky still pulled on James, his arms finally snapping from their sockets.

The elderly doctor stared wide-eyed at his bionic arms, which were still gripping the floor. A look of despair overtook the man as he began flailing around like a fish out of water as he was dragged upwards.

"Help me!" The man hollered at Xen, "You promised!"

Xen gazed up at the man with a wide grin, "I know the shareholders sent you to rinse me for all the money I have. What doctor could afford platinum life insurance?"

"You bastard, you fucking bastard," James screamed, "Fuck you and everything about your accursed family that is a tumor upon Eden City!"

Xen watched the doctor that had blackmailed him and charged him an extortionate fee for his bionic upgrades disappear into the night sky.

It was a bittersweet moment as he looked down at his body, which was very far from functional.

He felt his brain squirming around in his head as it screamed. An indescribable headache that threatened to eat away at his sanity plagued his broken mind. The fact that he had even been able to converse with the doctor was baffling, and despite his brain's obvious dejection, he still wondered.

Why wasn't this weird system voice thing interested in him anymore? He had definitely felt its pull on his body, and the deep indents on his wrists and ankles from the metal braces were clear evidence of that. Yet now that he was free from restraints, the sky left him alone.

[System resources below the minimum threshold, lowering reality shield and bracing planet for imminent impact]

"Well, that doesn't sound good." Xen wheezed, the pain relief medication fading into the background of his consciousness and the intense agony of his body being half dissected, hitting his upgraded nervous system in full force.

Unable to handle sitting up anymore due to the agony, Xen laid back on the operating table and looked up at the starless sky. Without the subtle moonlight or blinking distant stars, the night sky was nothing but an unsettling void of nothingness.

But then it began to crack.

Xen blinked, wondering if he was going delirious from the latent cocktails of drugs circling around his plastic arteries. What the...

The sky shattered, falling to Earth like shards of continent-sized pieces of glass. Then, all at once, the reality past the starless sky was revealed. A purple planet with grey oceans and black clouds, many times the size of the moon, appeared, looming overhead and rapidly growing in size—it was closing in.

I'm starting to think this is a bit beyond other countries or even aliens' capabilities.

[Bracing for planetary collision, shields up]

Once again, Xen felt a ripple of that mysterious force and saw a silvery glow that abruptly overlayed everything like an ethereal blanket. Was this the protection the weird voice was talking about? Why did it cover everything but him?

"Uh, weird system voice." Xen croaked out. Every tiny movement of his throat sent a bolt of pain throughout his body. "You didn't forget about me, did you? I wouldn't mind going to this tutorial too."

There was no answer. Gritting his teeth and ignoring the accursed pain, Xen rolled off the operating table, falling a meter to the ground on his right arm. Groaning, he tried to bury himself under the ethereal silver blanket, but it ignored him as if he didn't exist.

[Tutorial realities established... searching for suitable monsters to populate the instances as boss mobs]

"Me!" Xen shrieked out, discarding all the pride and nobility he had fostered for hundreds of years. He hated to admit it, but he feared death.

His one life goal was to seize back the company and live forever, yet nothing could save him from being squashed by another planet than this godlike entity. If he had to beg, then by god, would he fucking beg for mercy.

Xen's eyes widened as he saw a fox float upward toward the sky. Nothing was awe-inspiring about it until weird void-like energy wrapped it—mutating the fox into a feral creature. Its starved body was genetically altered right before his eyes. Not through bionic upgrades like himself, but its DNA was literally being rewritten to make it superior.

The oranged-tailed fox's muscles spasmed as if filled with maggots, its bones cracked and extended as razor claws that would give a grizzly bear a run for its money emerged from its paws. It was a harrowing sight of evolution to turn a previously malnourished city fox into a killing machine.

It's beautiful.

Xen almost shed a tear witnessing something only a god could perform. If only he could wield such power to constantly improve himself through evolution, then maybe he could alter his accursed fate.

He felt like he had been a frog, wallowing away in a well, content in his meager existence. All the politics he had endured, his companies worth trillions, and the wealth of knowledge he had fostered. None of it mattered in the face of extinction.

I refuse to become a dinosaur, a bunch of withered bones and bionic parts dug up by archeologists in a thousand years. I want to live. Forever.

Xen knew he was going insane, a hint of madness at the edges of his broken mind.

He had already lived far past that of an ordinary human, throwing away his humanity for profit and longevity. Becoming an immortal capable of fighting back against the shareholders had been a long, laborious, and lonely process.

And as he started up at an inventible, undefeatable end. He had not only been rejected and called insane by his friends, family, and country for pursuing the peak human form, but even the alien system had abandoned him as it deemed him as neither human nor monster.

He was just Xen—meaning something strange, different, or foreign.

Mother, why did you give me such a name? Did you know I would meet such a fate?

The motors replacing his withered muscles quietly whirled as Xen raised a hand toward the growing purple planet. Through the gaps in metal claws cleverly disguised behind silicon as hands belonging to someone in their early twenties, Xen watched the purple ball of death.

[Unknown Entity]

The words weren't spoken into his mind. Rather they appeared as an overlay of reality on a screen. As if he were in a VR game, something he hadn't wasted time on in decades due to his obligations.

What's it calling an unknown entity?

[Are you a Monster or Human]

A question?

Xen blinked, wondering if, once again, he was hallucinating. Knowing of impending death did weird things to a drugged-up mind, and he just wanted to make sure.

No matter where I look, the question follows. Mhm...

Thinking back, the humans were shepherded away to tutorial zones where they would likely be pandered to and taken care of while their world faced destruction.

But the monsters? They were muted by that void energy into perfect killing machines.

Xen looked down at his body, which was more machine than flesh and blood. He knew he wouldn't live much longer in this state as he had been in the middle of the most invasive surgery possible. Without the held of that void energy, he would perish.

To stay living as a human after all the effort he had made to escape being one. It would be ridiculous to choose anything other than...

Monster.

[Acknowledged]

Xen felt the pull, first by his chest, and then his limbs soon followed suit. Finally, he didn't even have the strength to raise his head as he floated upwards. His vision then darkened as the void-like energy that had mutated the fox enveloped him.

[Beginning upgrade to a Superior Lifeform]

Xen thought he knew pain. He could see into his chest cavity and the little remaining raw flesh at the rim, sticking to his carbon fiber ribcage. Yet the pain this void of evolution brought was like none other.

He didn't last five seconds before his brain was overwhelmed with sensory information and shut down.

***

Xen's ears twitched. He could hear the very distant chirps of birds and quiet chatter between scared humans.

His eyes opened, and he was greeted with a world of green flora. Titanic trees that were taller than skyscrapers loomed overhead, their branches so thick and long they could support homes.

[Welcome to the tutorial, as an intelligent monster, you will be granted a Status and full access to the system]

"An intelligent monster—" Xen paused. His voice sounded nothing like he remembered it. But, now that he thought about it, nothing felt familiar. His body was no longer riddled with pain. In fact, he felt nothing.

Sitting up from the forest floor he found himself on, he curiously raised his arm and gasped. It wasn't fake silicon that attempted to imitate youthful flesh. Rather it was a weird shadowy substance that looked like armor.

The rest of his body followed a similar pattern, except covering his vitals were white armor pieces, and he couldn't tell if he was human or some type of bug.

No... he was a monster. What had he been expecting?

[You have been designated as this tutorial instances Boss Monster]

The system's hard to listen to mechanical voice read out in his mind a message he had half expected. But then it followed up with...

[40 Earthlings remain alive—either become the hunter or the prey]

[Only the strong will survive]

[Tutorial ends in 30 days]

Xen felt an inhuman smile appear across his monstrous face. He could already hear a small group of five fellow Earthlings in the distance, a few miles from his current position.

Before he spent too long marveling at his new hyper senses or alien body, he first planned to check the Status page the system had mentioned earlier.

"Status." He whispered, unsure of any other way to communicate with the system. To his surprise reality was once again overlaid with a screen detailing his new existence.