Chad wasn’t having a good day.

Granted, every day had been pretty sucky since the whole ‘apocalypse’ thing happened, but this took the cake.

“CHAT!” he yelled into his phone. “I’m being attacked by a goddamn T-Rex!”

He jumped over a rock. Behind him, the T-Rex stretched out its foot and cracked the stone. The ground shook from side to side as the dinosaur chased after him.

This is such killer content!

Once he figured out how to get internet again, he’d upload this stuff and become super famous—after he, you know, survived.

“Mara, this is the part where you kill it!” he yelled out.

A loud boom echoed out. A slug of metal slammed against the T-Rex’s side, then bounced off, doing no damage.

The T-Rex roared and continued chasing Chad. He screamed—sorry, yelled in a manly way—his sunglasses slipping off his face.

He slipped and tumbled to the ground. The dinosaur loomed over him.

“Crit Stick, don’t fail me now!”

He reached into his inventory and pulled out a katana from his inventory.

“Quick Slash!”

The katana flew out of Chad’s sheath and slashed against the T-Rex’s hard skin. Like Mara’s shotgun slug, it failed to do any serious damage.

“Chat,” he said. “This may be the end. If I die, give it all to my cat.”

Right before the T-Rex could lean down and bite him, a streak of metal flew toward the T-Rex’s side. The T-Rex flew into the the air before landing with a loud thud. Sticking out of its limp body was a long spear-like weapon.

It was… dead?

Okay, that slayed.

“Mara, was that you?” he shouted. “You were lying when you said the guns were the only thing you had!”

“Wasn’t me.”

A figure emerged from the trees. Mara. She still had her shotgun in hand, red hair wrapped up in a ponytail.

Her eyes were locked on a segment of the forest. Chad’s heart began to beat in his chest. He manuevered the camera to the point Mara was looking at.

A man stepped forward. He was a thin guy—hollow cheeks, loose, ripped clothes that barely seemed to fit him. He was like a reed that’d been snapped at some point in the past.

Despite that, there was a clear layer of muscle on top of him. And… his arm. He was missing an arm.

He caught sight of Chad and raised his only hand.

“Um, hi,” he said. “Are you okay?”

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

Nathan shook internally.

People!

Actual people! Not a fish, and not his own mind! Other people, in the real world!

The guy was well-built and good looking, a blue mullet attached to his head and sunglasses covering his eyes. If Nathan didn't know any better, he'd think that he was an actor or something. The woman looked malnourished and thin, a slight slouch to her posture. Her hair was blood-red and her clothing seemed haphazarly chosen.

Neither of them responded to his greeting.

"Are either of you injured?" Nathan said.

Blue-hair looked at Red-hair and shrugged at her. She shook her head and—wait, where did that gun come from?

"We're fine, but you look like you've been through hell," she said, dismantling the handgun like it was a fidget toy. "Fighting one-handed must've been rough. You need a gun. Everyone needs at least one gun. Or five." She pulled out a second pistol. "I could teach you. The tutorial weapons are incredible.”

Nathan took an instinctive step back. He opened his mouth to respond before pausing.

How do I talk to people!?

He'd only been alone for, like, two weeks. Surely that wasn't enough to destroy his social skills!

Wait.

He never had social skills in the first place.

And now he was stuck with Gun Girl and Mullet-head.

Thankfully, the blue-haired guy finally spoke. "Yo. Thanks for the save. I'm Chad." He pointed with his thumb at the woman. "That's Mara."

"You really should let me help you pick out a weapon,” she said. “The recoil compensation on some pistols is perfect for one-handed shooting.”

Nathan glanced at Chad, hoping to see an equally concerned expression. The guy just shrugged like this was normal.

Nathan was about to speak when Chad maneuvered his phone to better catch Nathan and him in the shot. "Why don't you tell us about yourself, bro? Chat needs to know."

Nathan blinked.

"M-my name is Nathan!" He winced at how loud he was and quieted his voice. "I'm just a guy, I guess?"

Chad's eyes widened at Nathan's name before he nodded. "Being a guy is a respectable occupation."

"Being armed is an even more respectable occupation," Mara said, pulling out what looked like an assault rifle. Nathan's eyes widened. Was her inventory nothing but guns?

She caught him staring. "What? The monsters aren't going to shoot themselves! Well, technically that one did shoot itself when I rigged its—never mind." She looked at his arm stub.

Nathan opened his mouth. “Uh—“

"How'd you lose your arm?" she asked.

Chad staggered back and stared at her in shock. "Mara, jeez! You don't ask those kinds of things right off the bat!"

"Why not? You were thinking it too." Mara clicked her gun back together and smirked. "Besides, knowing what took it might help us pick the right caliber for payback."

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Nathan's gaze darted between the growing pile of weapons and Mara.

"I got unlucky. A monster took out my arm and ate it,” he said.

She froze.

"Did you get it back?" she said.

A dark satisfaction flickered inside Nathan before he snuffed it out.

"It's dead," he said with as little emotion as he could muster.

"Good.” She resumed cleaning her gun. “Nothing better than a revenge story with a happy ending. Except maybe a pump-action shotgun.”

Nathan wondered if it was too late to go back to his fish-only diet and hermit lifestyle.

Chad leaned in and whispered loudly.

"I don't actually know her that well," he said. "We met, like, an hour ago. So I don't know if she's some cracked psychopath or something."

"I'm right here," Mara said, rolling her eyes. "And I'm not psychotic, I'm passionate. There's a difference. Besides, who saved your ass when that slime thing tried to eat you?"

"You did," Chad said. "Though I'm still not sure we needed to use three different guns."

"The first two were to test its resistance to different ammunition types," Mara said. "The third one was just because it looked cool."

Nathan stared at the growing arsenal around her feet. One hour. Chad had known her for one hour and this was normal to him already. Maybe he was the crazy one for thinking this wasn't normal?

No.

No, this wasn't normal.

But they were real people. Weird, possibly unhinged people, but real ones! Nathan felt tears of joy welling up, even as Mara produced what was probably s a small cannon from her inventory.

"We should trade information and stories," Chad said. "Get to know each other, right?"

Nathan nodded. "I can get behind that."

They found a relatively secluded part of the forest and set up a campfire. Nathan pulled out three fish from his inventory, stabbed two into sticks, and set it up to cook. Meanwhile, Mara had arranged what looked like a small armory in a semicircle around her sitting spot.

"You guys want it cooked, right?" he said.

Chad tilted his head.

"Uh, yes?" He laughed. "I mean, there's not many other ways to eat it, right?"

Nathan ripped open the third fish and let the guts spill out to the side.

"Oh god, that reeks!" Chad said.

Nathan took a bite of the fish and paused. He wiped the spittle off his mouth and swalloed.

"Sorry," he said. "I got used to the smell. Forgot that not everyone is okay with that.”

Chad frowned. "It's fine."

"I barely noticed it," Mara said, polishing what appeared to be her—Tenth? Eleventh?—gun. “You know what else gets rid of bad smells? Gunpowder residue. Nothing quite like it."

Chad looked at the fish in Nathan's hands.

"Are you... eating it raw?" he said.

Nathan nodded.

"It's just sushi," he said.

Chad blinked. "I... I guess?"

They were quiet for a bit before Chad rolled his eyes, muttering about 'anti-social loners.'

"Says the guy who doesn't appreciate the subtle art of weapon maintenance," Mara said, somehow producing yet another firearm. Nathan was starting to wonder if she had an entire gun shop in her inventory.

"I'll start out," Chad said. "My name is Chad Mann."

Silence, broken only by the rhythmic sound of Mara field-stripping yet another rifle.

Chad coughed. "Most-subbed channel on Reflex?"

Nathan looked away.

"I've collabed with major celebrities? I went on tour and all my shows sold out? I was even in a Superbowl advertisement!”

Nathan shrugged. "Sorry man, I don't watch any of that stuff."

Chad's shoulders slumped. "Damn it, no one in the tutorial recognized me either. I was even on the national news for that last one. Where the hell have you guys been living?"

"Mostly in my apartment," Nathan said.

"At the range," Mara said. "They had terrible WiFi."

"Whatever," Chad said. "Anyway, it all happened just like it did for you guys, I'd bet. I was streaming in my apartment, we were doing a challenge: 'Rizzle dat Gyatt—'"

"Words cannot express," Mara said. “How little that interests me. Now, if you want to hear about the time I modified a pistol to fire explosive rounds—"

"I was getting to the main point, jeez." Chad swept his hand back through his blue mullet. "Anyway, there was this loud boom outside and I went to go check it. There's a weird purple vortex and next thing I know, this blue window's in front of me, saying something about how the apocalypse is a thing. Gave me 20 points, then chucked me into the tutorial.”

"What'd you pick?" Nathan said.

"Sword mastery, obviously." Chad reached into the air—his inventory—and pulled a katana from it. "I figured I could be a glass cannon, you know? High crit, high DPS build."

Nathan had no clue what half of that meant but slowly nodded like he understood. "Right."

"Swords.” Mara scoffed. "So uncivilized."

"Anyway—" Chad put the katana back into his inventory. "When we were summoned in, I was summoned with about twenty other people? We lost... someone... but other than that, it was pretty smooth. We beat the circle boss and got out. How was it for you guys?"

Mara paused her cleaning frenzy for the first time since they'd sat down. "Nothing special. I had the same story as you. Met some people, lost some people." Her hands unconsciously reached for another gun. "We killed the circle boss and got out."

Nathan blinked. "Man, you guys had it lucky."

"Bro,” Chad said.

Mara raised an eyebrow, her hands still moving mechanically over what looked like her fifteenth firearm of the evening.

Nathan drew back. "Sorry. It's just... you got summoned with other people."

"You didn't?" Mara said, looking up from her work.

"Yeah. One second I'm buying a toaster, the next, there's this giant skeleton monster about to kill me. I didn't meet another human my entire time in the tutorial."

Chad's eyes widened. He nodded slowly. "Okay, I get why you'd call us lucky. Two weeks on your own must've been... damn."

So he’d had two weeks.

"Well, at least you made it out, huh?" Chad said. He tapped his foot quickly, then stiffened. "Hey, what's your full name?"

"Oh, Nathan Lee."

"Like... the Nathan Lee?"

Nathan rested his arm over his lap. "What do you mean by that?"

"Like, the guy at the top of the Rankings!"

"Rankings?"

A window popped up in front of Nathan. A list of names with points, all of it sorted by rank.

And highlighted at the very top was Nathan Lee, 10,327 points. The next person was someone by the name of... Leviathan, 4134 points. Not even close.

Nathan noted the total number of players.

One billion.

Nathan's mood dropped before he pushed away the thoughts. No point in getting depressed.

"Oh," Nathan said.

"Are you that guy?" Chad said.

Nathan squinted his eyes at the window. “My name is highlighted, so I assume so."

"Damn. I guess it makes sense. You didn't have to split EXP with anyone else during the tutorial because you were alone. Of course you'd be at the top."

"But how come no one else even comes close?" Mara said, her cleaning motions slowing as she focused on the conversation. "Why was Nathan the only one to be summoned alone across the entirety of humanity?”

“Maybe everyone else who tried to go it alone died,” Chad said. “Riding solo is tough, after all.”

“Yeah, but across all seven billion members of humanity? Seems kinda crazy to me.”

They both turned to Nathan.

He shrugged.

"Yeah, I have no clue,” he said.

Chad clapped his hands together. "Did you get any cool rewards for exiting the tutorial? I got the Katana. I guarantee Mara got one of those guns.”

"No—wait." Nathan paused. "I think that it mentioned something about a soulbound town."

Chad gasped dramatically. “A soulbound town?!”

Nathan leaned in.

"...I have no idea what that is," Chad said.

Nathan glared at Chad.

"It's in the help page," Mara said. “I was trying to see if they had something new related to weapon modification. No dice.”

[Exiting a Circle]

[Classes]

[Soulbound Towns]

Nathan clicked [Towns].

[Soulbound Towns]

Sick of being a wandering hobo with zero property value? Tired of your only companion being a moth-eaten map and your own existential dread? Want to claim some real estate in the metaphysical realm? Welcome to Soulbound Towns—where urban planning meets the supernatural!

Existing in a dimension so exclusive it makes the 9 Circles look like a budget timeshare, these towns are YOUR personal playground. As the Ruler, you'll earn Town Points—think of them as magical municipal credits. Build factories that defy physics, upgrade infrastructure that would make city planners weep, and construct armies to raid other towns because why not? Conquest has never been so bureaucratically thrilling!

Entering is simple: Just will a portal into existence. Five minutes later, congratulations! You've got instant access to your own pocket dimension. But here's the catch - be stealthy. The last thing you want is an unexpected plus-one tagging along or some vengeful entity leaving a surprise at the portal exit. Discretion is your best friend... well, that and an impenetrable dimensional barrier.

Disclaimer: Management not responsible for interdimensional property disputes or unexpected demonic squatters.

Nathan stared at the article for a while.

Chad summed it up.

“You’re basically playing one of those crappy mobile city-builder games on the side.”

“I… guess so?” Nathan said.

“Well, open up the portal,” Chad said. “Dude, you’ve got to check it out.”

Nathan stood up and shut his eyes. He focused on summoning the portal. Five minutes passed and a whirl of light flashed across his eyes.

In front of him, a glowing blue portal had appeared. Flames didn’t lick its edges like the circle portal. Instead, it was more like a piece of glass. Reflective, almost unnoticeable.

He pushed his hand against it. It sunk into the portal. He pulled back.

Mara walked past him and walked in. Chad shrugged and followed after.

Nathan sucked in a breath and walked in behind them.