It was a miracle that the management of the third floor of the condominium remembered to put a piece of wood keeping the fire exit door open. I guess they just couldn’t be bothered with us who lived higher up, but I guess they were thinking we were going to take the elevator anyways.

Luis’ condo essentially had the same layout as mine, barring actual furniture that he could afford, and appliances that were a bit out of my paygrade. The glass door that led to the balcony was boarded up by furniture large enough that we could place there. I didn’t have faith it would hold, but it made us feel better about our safety, even if it wasn’t entirely true. Barring the impromptu fort preparations, the place was nothing special. At least the couch right now felt like a luxury. Me, being the good friend that I am, decided to lay down over the entire couch while Luis sat across from me on a monobloc chair.

Luis was taller than me, around 5’10, towering over my 5’6. He looked like a typical Filipino teenager, only with a lighter complexion and a lanky figure. Curly hair and a permanent expression of worriment on his face. His hand held a knife with a wavy blade, the only object of value that seemed to remain on the goblin’s corpse.

“So this does five plus attack?” Luis asked, inspecting the blade.

“Yeah, whatever that means.”

I held out my hand for him to give me the knife, he handed it to me, handle first. I concentrated for a second, before a text screen popped up in my vision, right beside the knife.

[Goblin Dagger]

[A dagger forged by the goblin tribe with a wavy blade to maximize serrations. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s surprisingly reliable.]

[+ 5 Attack]

“I mean we were right that they were goblins.” I said.

“Not exactly a hard conclusion to come to.”

“I was still right though!”

I handed the dagger back to Luis. I already had a weapon, he didn’t. Better it stuck with him than me.

“So it’s like Solo Leveling.” I said.

“I guess?” He shrugged. “Out of all the genres to suddenly become real, I put the power fantasy one at the bottom, I’ll be honest. I expected anything supernatural to be more esoteric, not this easily digestible.”

“At least the power fantasy gives us a chance. I’m just happy we got this over horror.”

“Day’s not done yet, horror is definitely still possible.” He laughed.

“Jinx this for us and I’m giving you the most painful death.”

“I’ll make sure it looks cool, at least.” He shrugged. “So you’re sure there’s no character screen or stat selection? Maybe you just haven’t said the right word or gesture, or something.”

I decided to stop laying down and sat upright on the couch. I cracked my arms, ready to do whatever wild frenzy of gestures to prove my point.

“Look, whatever I say or do nothing pops up. Check this out.”

“Character screen.”

“Inventory.”

“Open stats.”

Every statement was accompanied by random hand gestures that felt right. No window popped up, no character screen, nothing.

Luis rolled his eyes. “I actually can’t check this out, only you can see the windows.”

“And I don’t see anything either. Nothing is working.”

“Maybe try something else? What was the first box you said you saw? Something about player finalization? Maybe say something like that.”

“Worth a try. Show player finalization progress.”

A text box suddenly appeared in my vision, my eyes widening in surprise.

[5/10 EXP until player finalization.]

I must have stared for a bit too long, as Luis had to snap to get my attention.

“Hey, hey. Did it work? See something?” He looked concerned, leaning in closer.

“Uh, yeah, it did. Same message like before though, five outta ten experience until player finalization, whatever that means. First level up maybe?”

“Yeah, probably. I’m honestly still concerned about how this all suspiciously lines up with all the novels where someone awakens a system that’s completely like a video game and just balls. Does this not seem off to you?”

“Agreed, but depending on our chances right now, I’d rather go ‘haha number goes up, brain happy’ while hopefully getting stronger, rather than probably dying to actual tutorial-level enemies. Speaking which, you should probably join me on that.”

His mood suddenly went down, giving me something close to a glare. “I’m not going to grind levels just because we can, overconfidence is going to kill us.”

Might have been a bit too forward with my statement, but I might as well stick to my guns now.

“Look, think about it this way. If this is permanent, eventually we’re going to have to kill one of these things. Taking game progression into account? Things are probably going to get harder, or worse, or whatever. The world is going to operate on these rules, and it’d be better for us to get a headstart and rip-off the band-aid now, instead of doing essentially nothing.”

I pointed to the glass doors of his balcony, boarded up by an overturned table, a shelf, and whatever other large object we could have placed as a barricade.

“That also probably won’t hold up for long in the face of a sustained harpy attack. Or well, what I assume are harpies.”

Before he could talk I tried to sweeten the deal a little further, trying to get all my points across before he shut me down.

“And if you do agree, I’ll even let you use my spear. I’ll do the close-quarter stuff in the meantime, god knows I dressed up for it.” Not exactly much in the way of points in my favor, but negotiation was tough when you were trying to drag your friend to jump into the conveniently placed skinner box of a system that seemed to be governing the apocalypse. “I’ll give you some time to think, because I’m going to do this alone or not, but it’d be nice to have company.”

Luis sighed, ruffling his hair. He definitely wasn’t happy with the idea, and neither was I, but I felt like if we were going to survive then we would have to stop being passive.

“God, you’re always so forceful.” He groaned, slouching on his seat. “Give me five minutes.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Luis sat with himself ruminating over my proposed course of action. It wasn’t my best argument, and I’ll admit half of what I said was just me trying to justify leveling up for the sake of leveling up. Not that I didn’t believe anything of what I just told Luis, but I’d be lying to myself if I said that I wasn’t insanely curious about what happens if I reached the final 5 EXP I needed to pass the threshold, and that it wasn’t a huge motivating factor. So I didn’t say that, and instead said what I said to Luis.

I looked up at Luis, who still seemed to be deep in thought. The time was going to pass anyway, so I opened my phone to check out how the rest of the world was faring.

To put things lightly, it was a shitstorm. My feed was filled with images and videos of the havoc happening. People wounded, monsters that looked way scarier than what was here in the Philippines, desperate attempts to fight back, and the various aftermaths of where that got them. Every news article, every Tweet, every message sent slowly put together a picture of a world crumbling down, unable to handle the sudden weight of the calamity it was forced to bear.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Jesus Christ, it had only been a few hours.

It wasn’t as if we couldn’t handle ourselves. Guns still worked, so guns were used. Victories were had, and most of the monsters seemed to be mob enemies, which people could deal with easily if they had the numbers or the smarts to take them on. It just wasn’t sustainable. There wasn’t a clear end to when the invasion would stop, or where the hell these bastards even spawned from. Already there were talks of pulling out the real big guns, and there was no way that was going to end well. All the news seemed to suggest that the more powerful monsters were spawning in the biggest cities. Landmarks, if you will. Your Hollywood blockbuster ones, where you’d see an entire movie be set in. New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, etcetera.

Or that might have just been survivorship bias. Maybe there were bigger monsters in smaller communities and they all just got killed off before they could send a message out, who knows. I didn’t know why our difficulty right now wasn’t that bad, Quezon City was the largest of its kind in the Philippines in terms of population and land area, but if that makes my spawn point easier then I wasn’t going to complain. And like Luis said, the day wasn’t over. I had plenty of time later to get proven wrong.

What was most odd was that despite all the mentions of people suddenly gaining powers or shooting fire to deal with the onslaught, there was no mention of an actual system. No mentions of EXP, leveling up, nothing. At most you got people comparing the situation to a game or some other type of fantasy story — the amount of manhwa references was insane — but other than that, it was radio silence for anything regarding concrete information for getting more powerful.

My scrolling was interrupted when I heard a loud sigh come out of my friend. I looked up. He still didn’t look happy, or in any state to make a rational decision, but it looked like he came up with an answer anyways. I let him speak.

“How prepared do you think we are?” He asked.

“As prepared as we’ll ever be. No progress can be made until we start.”

He scratched his head in frustration. “Fine, I’ll do it. I’ll take your offer of the spear, you can have the dagger.” He handed me the dagger, I got up to walk over to my spear, resting on the wall by the door. I gave him the spear.

“Any armor for yourself?” I asked.

“I’ve got taekwondo sparring gear somewhere. I’ll go get it.”

He walked over to the other room to find his stuff.

[Disagreement Settled! +1 EXP.]

[You are now at 6/10 EXP to Player Finalization.]

“Oh, that’s new.” I muttered to myself, my voice soft.

So I could get experience outside of combat? Well, it was experience, but I didn’t expect the system to be more open ended with this kind of stuff. I didn’t know the DM of this world encouraged roleplay, but I wasn’t about to complain. This… wasn’t something I needed to tell Luis. Not right now. It was an implication to tackle later, when we were more calm, collected, and done with the urgent stuff.

A few minutes passed and Luis came back, wearing foam armor, the kind you’d see equipped on students learning martial arts.

“Does that do anything against sharp objects?” I asked, because I didn’t really know if protection against bludgeoning did anything against slashing. I like my fantasy fiction as much as the next person, but I never really was into it enough to actually learn about armor and weaponry.

“It’s… alright? You’ll still feel the blow, but I imagine it’ll do enough to stop the penetration of flesh. I once sparred with a friend who did fencing with their blade and everything with this armor on. Got out mostly fine. Ignore that the sword was a practice sword.”

“Remind me why I’m going on frontline duty again and not you?”

“Because you suggested it, and I like staying alive when it comes to plans my friends roped me into.”

“Fucking pussy.” I joked.

“I’ll be one that’s alive at least.”

Preparations were done, it was time to get out and grind.

----------------------------------------

The lobby was in disarray, but not as much as I thought it would be. Glass windows were shattered, tables and chairs overturned. No blood, which was comforting. In the sense that I didn’t have to see gore, not within the implications. The guard was gone and there was no person at the concierge. I wondered why no one pulled an alarm or something, and it seems like that was as good enough of an explanation as I would get.

“Jayme, look.”

Beyond the shattered window was a highway in disarray. Blockades of cars prevented further passage, vehicles overturned and crashed. I saw a couple of fires in the distance. People too, but they were far enough that they were practically specks on the horizon. Said specks were only getting smaller, seemed like they were running out of the area.

“No dead bodies at least.” I said.

“Not the good implication you’re setting it up to be.”

We stepped out of the building. Being in the thick of things was a way different experience than seeing the carnage from above. At least without the cars going around the place was infinitely more walkable. The area was just a highway in front of the condominium, with Blue Bird de Manila sitting right across the road. The rest of the area was just apartment buildings and food places, buildings selling school supplies, salons, internet cafes, bars, etcetera. The perfect environment to capitalize on rich university students and their parent’s money.

We decided to just pick a direction and walk, towards the survivors down the road. If we went down that route we’d soon reach an overpass that would let us into Blue Bird, or go into the other university nearby, Crimson Scholar University. It didn’t take much before we saw our target, a goblin on it’s lonesome, seemingly away from it’s pack, if it had one.

I pulled Luis aside, hiding behind a parked car.

“Alright, here’s the plan. I’m going to go for the kill, maybe distract it or something. Actually, I’ll try and pin it down and kill it outright before it can signal anyone else. If I get in a tough spot, I’ll have to rely on you to go for the stab, alright?

“You sure? This is a lot of pressure on you.”

“I said I’d shoulder the danger, I’ll keep to that promise. You ready?”

He gave me a nervous nod. Not as ready as I’d like him to be, but it would be the best reaction I’d get for a long time. I pulled out the dagger from its makeshift sheath. It was time.

I jumped out of cover, running towards the goblin as fast as I could, going for the throat like I did last time. I wasn’t so lucky this time though, as the goblin seemed to just barely catch me at the corner of its eye, and moved accordingly.

It was going to be an actual encounter this time. So be it, I was going to have to fight anyway, let it be now. I swiped with my dagger. I had no formal martial arts training beyond a mandatory arnis class I had back in grade 11, and I sure as hell wasn’t practicing the basic forms now. It was a wild flurry of slashes that luckily managed to hit flesh, but nothing too deep. The goblin was as mobile as it was ugly, and moved out of the kill range of my attacks with relative ease.

“Jesus fucking Christ, just let me hit-”

It took my frustration as a cue to counterattack, immediately going for a direct stab. It wasn’t that tall, around the length of my leg. So it decided to try and get a stab there. Same wavy dagger that I was using, it pushed deep into my calf, blocked by the layers I wore underneath. It tried to pull out the dagger, but it seemed lodged in there by the cloth.

I didn’t bother with a taunt of victory, I immediately tried to go for the kill, stabbing my dagger deep into it’s shoulder. The goblin screeched in pain, green ooze flowing out of the wound. I tried dragging the dagger deeper, pushing. The goblin seemed to realize it was deadlocked, and wouldn’t have an opportunity to live past killing me. It started to push its own dagger deeper into my leg.

I felt the tip hit flesh, and go deeper, slowly.

I like to consider myself someone who goes outside a bit more than his peers, maybe get in a little bit of jogging or exercise. But at heart, I was never really much of an outdoors person. Prior to today, I never really broke a bone or got a major injury. At most I had a biking accident where I hit the road when I was being stupid and didn’t know how to balance, hitting my head and scraping my arm on the pavement.

That is to say, I never really knew pain until today.

It took all my willpower to constrain a scream, especially as the dagger on my leg kept going deeper.

Fuck, stay concentrated. Past the pain.

I tried my best to call for help, but keep my voice just below a scream. “Luis! Help! Now!”

Five seconds passed as I dragged the dagger down, green ooze traded for the red going down my leg. Beyond the pain, I felt a sort of warmth bleeding into the cloth, damp, moist, wet. A lot of synonyms to symbolize bleeding.

I looked back, seeing Luis frozen in fear. I never wanted to scream in anger at someone so much in my life right there, but I couldn’t. Pain brought a weird sense of clarity. I brought him into this, he didn’t ask for this, this was my plan to begin with. I said I would shoulder it right? I forced a laugh as I smiled through the hurt.

I didn’t bother trying to keep my voice down. It’d be impossible now. “C’mon Luis, it’s a clear shot! Get his ass!” I screamed, infusing as much enthusiasm into my intonation as I could.

It seemed to do the trick, snapping Luis out of whatever fugue he was in. His eyes narrowed into focus, gripping the spear, hands still shaking.

It’s all up to you now, I need you more than ever.

[Inspiration Successful! Stat Boost now active.]

Luis ran at a speed I didn’t think was possible, ramming the spear down the fucker’s throat with preternatural precision. It let off the grip of its dagger, falling to the concrete. Luis rammed the guy down with more pressure, unwilling to move until it itself stopped shaking. Soon enough, the deed was finished, and Luis pulled back the tip of the spear from the corpse.

Luis looked back at me with an expression of disbelief mixed with guilt. I gave him a grin muddled with pain from the dagger still in my leg. Before I could say anything, a message popped into my vision.

[5 EXP Gained!]

[Player is now at 11/10 EXP. Commencing Player Finalization.]

[Analyzing Player Affinities and Facets.]

[Stat Calculation in Progress.]

[Finalizing Player File in Database.]

[Congratulations Player! You have Reached Level 1!]

[Jayme Cardona - Level 1 Bard]