Ivan was shopping for a safe with a smile on his face. He practically skipped along the concrete aisles with how much energy was in his body at this moment.

He looked up and released a little chuckle. You know, hardly anybody looks up at the ceilings of these big box stores anymore. Hell, he couldn't remember the last time he did so. It was all so very interesting. The shelves on either side were stacked high, with pallets of product still wrapped up tight in plastic and cardboard. And lining the ceiling itself were metal support beams branching out from the hidden pillars and large lights that illuminated all.

In the air was the slight smell of food, as this store was famous for its delicious pretzels and popcorn. Perhaps he would grab one on the way out. You know what? He definitely will.

He walked along until he found the safes. There were a few different brands, but he just chose the most expensive one. After all, money was soon to be an afterthought for him. It was better to not skimp on his big ticket to the rich life. Ticket in this sense being literal, as he had won the lottery! The actual lottery—not just the common idiom, but the actual lottery. 1.8 billion, and with the recent policy change, it was tax-free!

Humming to himself as he rolled his now much heavier cart towards the check-out, he grabbed a nearby banana bunch. After all, he would need to start eating healthy now if he really wanted to maximize his time spent as a rich guy. He wouldn’t say he was fat or anything. In fact, he was skinny. It’s just that he didn’t really have a lot of muscle, and he wouldn't say he was healthy either.

“I should hit the doctor's office.” After all, it would be supremely stupid to die of some kind of disease right after he got rich. Better to catch that stuff early.

He waited in the long line as patiently as a saint. After all, he was rich now, what worries did he have anymore? When he finally got to the till, he grunted as he lifted the safe, intending to put it on the conveyor belt leading to the clerk.

“I can just scan it from here, sir.” The brown-headed clerk, wearing a thick pair of spectacles with freckles adorning her face, looked me in the eyes.

Ivan paused for a second, then dropped the safe back into the cart and instead put his bananas near the till. With two beeps, it was done, and he took out his credit card to pay. 

He glanced at the teenage girl, wearing the bright yellow colours of the store, manning the till, catching the name off her name tag. “Thankyou Alex.” The girl slightly smiled at him. Man, he felt bad for her. Having to smile at people for a living. Because people like good customer service. Hogwash. If he could walk into an empty store and use a self-checkout, that would be best. It just felt so weird when people smiled at him because he knew it was their job. Did anybody else in this store smile at him? No. Because that’s weird. Who smiles at strangers?

In fact, why did he even use her name? That was so awkward in hindsight. The happiness from money was making him say weird things. Ugh.

Oh well.

“Here’s your receipt.”

Ivan reached out to take it, blinked, and suddenly the girl was gone. His eyebrows furrowed, and he looked around himself, wondering where she had gone. Looking at the others in the line behind him, everyone was acting normal, chatting with each other or looking at their phones. Except for one kid who was gaping at the spot the clerk had just disappeared.

“Uhmmm.” He leaned over the counter to see if she might be hiding behind it. But there was nobody there. “Okayyy. I guess I don’t need a receipt.”

His hands just touched the handles of his cart before there was a screeching of otherworldly sounds that rang in his ears and made him flinch and scream, his hands reaching up to cover his ears. Then there was a lurch, like he was in an elevator that just entered hyperspeed going up to the top floor, and he fell to the ground.

The screeching stopped, only to be replaced by other, more familiar screeching and yelling of humans echoing in the now darkened space. He managed to catch a few snippets of conversation from the general mutterings.

“Who shut the lights out?”

“Was there a tornado? I know that tornadoes can sound like that when impacting metal buildings.”

“It wasn’t a tornado, idiot.”

“Arthur! Where are you, my little knight?”

And of course, there was some lady screaming her head off like a rubber chicken. Why was there always one?

Ivan quickly moved his hands to secure his wallet, where the lottery ticket was neatly folded. He didn’t trust that somebody wouldn't take this opportunity to swipe it. Standing up, he quickly made for the exit, leaving his cart behind. He could always buy another safe, but this situation was sketchy as hell.

He felt a hand land on his shoulder, but he quickly slapped it away. “Stay the hell away from me dude.”

Someone in the back of the store screamed bloody murder but was suddenly cut off, almost like something had happened to them. Ivan couldn’t help but think of the worst.

“Ohhh. Fuck Fuck Fuck!” His careful walking speed quickly turned into a fast walk as he shoved people out of the way. There were a few spoken ‘Asshole’ thrown his way, but thankfully nobody moved to stop him again, and he got closer to the sunlight flooding in from the wide glass doorways.

The automatic doors didn’t open as he approached, making him huff in annoyance. “Fuckin power outage.” Ivan tried to pry his fingers between the doors, but to no avail.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Agh! Fuck it! I’ll pay for it later.” With that said, he got one of the carts from the side and charged the glass. Only for the cart to bounce off the glass like it was hitting a brick wall and his body to bend over as the cart handle jutted into his stomach. 

“Ugh. That hurt.” While clutching his stomach, he caught a flash of red light from the corner of his eye. Turning to it, he found an Exit sign over a door that was back behind the rows of carts.

“Damn it.” He strode over to the door, only for another guy to cut him off and head straight for the door at a similar fast-walking pace. Sighing, he followed behind the man and got out into the light. Only, things looked weird. The area looked… farther? 

“Wow. I really need to go to the doctor. Am I having a stroke or something?”

He stepped towards his beat-up old blue car and clicked his clicker, but there wasn't a beep. Ivan frowned at his keys and mashed the button like he did with almost every 1v1 game. He went to pull the handle, but the car door was still locked.

“What? My key batteries dead? Tch.” He inserted the key the old-fashioned way, unlocked the door, and then hopped into his scratched-up old leather seat. He turned the key in the ignition, and nothing happened.

He slammed his hands against the steering wheel in frustration. “Fuck!”

Leaning back, he took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself.

//

Welcome to the Realm!

Please follow the arrow to enter a tutorial zone and be Awakened!

//

The blue words had appeared again. This time, he watched as they dissolved into a pale blue mist before his eyes, disappearing. The mist then coalesced into a large blue arrow that pointed to his left, laying flat across his dashboard.

He turned his head left and watched as the arrow followed, now pointing straight in the direction he was facing, out his left window. It was lying flat on the black asphalt of the parking lot, like the blue arrow had been painted on. Like it was pointing to a handicap spot. But he knew it wasn’t. That arrow had not been there. It shouldn’t be there, and yet it was. It was almost menacing, like his brain was trying to gaslight itself that the arrow is there, but it shouldn't be, and yet it was, but it's not supposed to be, but it is. 

Ivan blew out a breath as his brain ran a mile a minute. “Welll Fuck.”

He wasn’t stupid. He was an avid fan of system apocalypse stories. He was just really hoping he was delusional or psychotic. Better than then in danger and poor again.

Opening his car door, he slammed it behind him and began walking after the arrow. He wished he owned a gun in this moment and that he was crazy enough to bring it with him in his car. Hopefully no monsters would spring up or something.

As he walked, he was joined by a few others, walking down the street in the middle of the road, the crowd flowing around the parked and wrecked cars. But there were no alarm sounds, at least from the cars. There were a few people shouting.

“Stay calm, everybody!”

“Don’t follow the arrow! It is the devil's work!”

One guy who was running stopped and took the time to yell at all of us. “Why is everybody so calm?! Monsters will appear soon! We need to run!” Before once again taking off.

Ivan decided to stick with the flow, but he was glad that the flow had just sped up a little bit at the man's words. He did not want to be eaten. Or bitten. Or stabbed. Whatever might happen, he did not want it to happen to him.

Also, he could see everybody else's blue arrows. Which, for some reason, was strange to him. He would have thought that only the person themselves could see their own arrows. But he guessed that wasn’t how it worked.

“Pretty crazy, huh?”

Ivan looked to his side, where a young teenager was keeping pace with him. “I guess.” He looked back to the front.

“Sooo.” The teenager started up again, intent on starting a conversation. “Do you read those system apocalypse novels? Because I can give you some tips about what might happen.”

“I’m familiar with them. Levelling, stats, magic, gods, monsters, all of that stuff.” Ivan put his wallet back in his back pocket. He would need both hands free if something snuck up on him.

“Oh! Oh. Okay. It’s just, you were clutching your wallet, and money seems kind of useless now that this is happening. So I thought-”

“Yes! I know! Money may be obsolete! I know that!” Ivan wiped at his eyes.

“Uhh. Are you crying?”

He turned to the teen. “Get out of here!” Ivan pointed forward. “Go run up there and bother someone else, you little shit!”

The teen blanched at his words and hurried away.

Damn it. His money! His poor money. People were frowning at him and shaking their heads. They could all stuff it up their asses. He was going to be rich, and now he’s just another peasant. A commoner. A regular person. Fuck!

It was another 10 minutes of walking before something odd happened.

“Ahhh! Get this thing off me!”

A lady was being attacked by a… pigeon.

Well, he thought it was a pigeon. Except that it was larger than normal. And it was also attacking a woman, pecking her head, and as far as he knew, that was not normal pigeon behaviour. Pigeons just kind of flew around unnoticed until they gathered in large crowds to eat bread and other shit. Also, this pigeon had run at the lady. On the ground. Like a turkey or a chicken. But it was clearly neither of those, it was a pigeon.

Thankfully, a man carrying a baseball bat swung it at the bird, but the pigeon jumped off before the hit could connect, and the baseball bat instead loudly rung as it struck the woman in the head.

Everybody stopped moving. The lady fell to the ground with blood spilling from her head. The man stood over her with a shocked look, his silver baseball bat marred with a bloody stain. He turned around and looked at the crowd. “I-I didn’t mean to! It was an accident.” Silence met his plea. “Ah shit.”

The man took off running, nobody moved to stop him. Ivan certainly wasn’t going to. He didn’t want to get wacked with that thing. He threw a glance at the body and then kept moving with a few others, while the majority of the crowd hung back, one guy checking the downed woman's pulse.

“Maybe I should go a bit faster.” Ivan muttered to himself as he broke into a light jog.

Soon, a few more screams were heard from around him as slightly changed animals began to attack the snaking line of people on the street. He could see a few rats, raccoons, more birds, and even a cat. One particular raccoon jumped out in front of him, its fluffy, striped tail now having a ridge on it that contained bone-white spikes.

Ivan gasped and stopped short, but thankfully the raccoon's eyes were not set on him, and instead attacked somebody else to his left. After that, he broke out into a full-on sprint, his eyes glancing back and forth from his blue arrow to the surroundings.

He ran for another 2 minutes before his blue arrow suddenly disappeared. Ivan stumbled and panicked for a second before he calmed as new words appeared before him.

//

You have successfully entered the Tutorial Zone!

//

“Phew!” Ivan heaved out a large breath of relief, followed by a gasp as he tried to get more air into his starving lungs. He had not run like that since forever ago. Luckily, he had escaped unscathed. But he couldn’t say the same for the crowd gathered in the middle of the parking lot, which he guessed was the tutorial zone. The faded black of the asphalt was marred with red stains, and he could see people clutching red-dyed fabrics to their wounds in an effort to staunch the bleeding. Although most of them had minor wounds, like a cut or bite, at least one guy was missing a hand, with a black sweater wrapped around the stump.

Looking over his shoulder, he could see a few changed critters stalking around the perimeter of the parking lot, looking inwards hungrily. “Hmm. I think I’ll join the rest of the group.” He did not want to test the boundaries of this new zone.