The morning that it happened had seemed like any other, to begin with.

Max’s alarm blared in his ears as he was pulled from his not-quite-restful-enough sleep. As his mind booted up, he tucked his head under his blanket. He struggled to pull his arm out of his warm, soft blankets and out into the cold morning air to turn it off, only for it to keep going after he pushed the ‘off’ button.

Now that he thought about it, it kinda sounded different from his usual alarm as well. Still, he couldn’t remember changing the settings at all. His attempts to shut off his alarms while also staying comfy in his bed had failed, Max was forced to pull his head out of the covers and open his eyes.

He was greeted by his room, still fairly dark, the only light being whatever peeked through his blinds and curtains. The air conditioning he had been relying on for the first few weeks of summer seemed to have turned off during the night, so he was a little sweaty, and his left eye twitched a little as he saw what looked to be a sky-blue dot in the bottom left of his vision, which seemed to be pulsing every second or so.

He moved his head to face it, only to find that it followed his line of sight, sitting in the bottom left of his vision, out of the way, but visible enough that it was bugging him. However, when he opened his eyes, the noise he had been hearing immediately stopped, and the blue dot stopped pulsing.

‘Had I been… hallucinating the noise or something?’

It reminded him a lot of the notification thingy that popped up on messages in certain apps whenever you received a new one… maybe he had stayed up too late messaging people and had messed with his own head?

Max pushed himself out of bed now that the sound was gone, and checked his alarm clock. It was still about half an hour before his alarm was supposed to go off… so why was he awake?

Yawning, he forced himself to blink a bunch, to get some of the sleep out of his eyes. As he exited his bedroom he paused, a rumbling noise from the street below his apartment building reaching his ears.

‘Are they doing construction or something? That must be what woke me up.’

Shrugging, Max plodded over to his tiny kitchen, opening the cupboard and grabbing out some generic brand cereal that was doing its best to imitate Nutrigrain, pouring some into a bowl. He yawned again, feeling weirdly tired. He hadn’t woken up that much earlier than normal, so why did he feel wiped?

As he was pouring the last of his milk into the bowl, the lights in his apartment all flickered, the electronics around him that were plugged into the wall rebooting. Because of this, his TV flicked itself on, the blaring sounds of the morning news’ intro music reaching his ears.

Wincing at the sudden noise, Max darted over to grab the remote, turning the TV off. He had only had it that loud the night before to drown out the noise of the… very enthusiastic couple that lived in the apartment above his.

He went back to the kitchen and pulled out his phone while he ate his breakfast. Now that he was out of bed and getting some food into his stomach, he could feel his brain waking up a bit more. And as it did, he felt himself growing curious.

‘That blue dot is still there… what the hell is it? Should I go see a doctor?’ His phone, and the offline idle-game combat he had been watching as he ate, had been forgotten, his eyes drawn to the blue dot that followed him around.

He tried covering it with his finger, but it just stayed in front of it. Used his phone’s reverse camera to check his eye, to make sure nothing was stuck to it, but nothing was there that he could see.

After a few other methods of trying to figure out what the hell the dot was, Max was forced to resign himself to the fact that he was going to be using a good chunk of his next paycheck to go to the doctor.

Shaking his head, he took another spoonful of cereal into his mouth, glaring at the dot, as if willing to grab it with his mind so he could squish it. He nearly jumped out of his seat as the dot responded to that, pulsing once before about half of his vision was overtaken by a line of blue.

ALERT!

“What the fuck?!”

His head darted around his apartment, to see if someone was playing a prank on him, but as usual, it was empty except for him, and the spider that hung out on the wall above his TV. Even as he moved his head, however, the blue bar followed his vision.

Max had to cough a little to stop himself from choking, having almost inhaled some cereal when the bar had first appeared. After he had prevented his untimely death, he put down his spoon and focused on the bar.

He tried mentally grabbing the bar, as he had done with the dot, and was pleasantly surprised when it pulsed once, shifting shape again, this time into a much larger screen, practically taking up his entire vision.

Luckily, it was slightly transparent, meaning that he wasn’t totally blind.

Welcome to the SYSTEM.

Your reality has been integrated into the SYSTEM

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Obtained: [SYSTEM Access]

Obtained: [MANA Access]

All surviving denizens of TERRA, as well as TERRA itself, will not face future SYSTEM modification.

Max blinked. He read the contents of the box again. And then again, for good measure. And then one more time, just to make sure that he wasn’t imagining things. And even after his fourth time reading it, he still couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t lost his mind, because this was crazy.

A small, subconscious part of him had expected this when the first ‘alert’ had shown up. He was enough of a nerd to have read a LITRPG before, and he was very much aware of the ‘system apocalypse’ version of such books…

The last line of the SYSTEM message struck him the hardest. All surviving denizens would not face any future modification. His heart was pounding in his ears as he finally noticed that the rumbling he had heard outside earlier had never stopped, in fact, it had gotten slightly louder.

A part of him wanted to check outside his window immediately, but the rest of him paused. He needed all of the information this ‘SYSTEM’ could give him before he did anything if he wanted to be one of those ‘surviving denizens’. Mentally pushing on the box, Max moved on to the next message.

Current Quest: [Locate a TEST FRACTURE and obtain a Class]

TEST FRACTUREs will turn into FRACTURES once 48 hours have passed

Time Remaining: 36 Hours, 23 Minutes, 32 Seconds.

[Most SYSTEM features require the user to be at least at Level 1]

Max read the message with a frown on his face. ‘OK. So most of the features of this SYSTEM won't unlock until I have a [Class]... and it looks like I’m on a bit of a time limit with these TEST FRACTURES, whatever they are. Wait…’

The formatting of the SYSTEM box was weirdly familiar to him, and the underline on the words reminded him of a link, like in Wikipedia or something. He tried focusing on the words TEST FRACTURE specifically and was happy to see the box pulse.

TEST FRACTURE:

A TEST FRACTURE is a lesser version of a true FRACTURE, designed to allow new initiates to the SYSTEM a safer than usual environment to begin their Levelling. SYSTEM initiates will complete a test tailored to them.

WARNING: This test will more often than not involve combat. Prepare yourself.

TEST FRACTUREs are temporary, and turn into regular FRACTUREs shortly after initiation into the SYSTEM. Anyone that missed a TEST FRACTURE must complete a true FRACTURE to gain their first Class

TEST FRACTURES and FRACTURES are locatable by finding the entrances to them, which are portals of various colours.

That… really wasn’t that helpful, having given him no information that he couldn’t piece together through the context of the words themselves, other than that last bit, but the fact that the SYSTEM had a ‘guide’ or ‘explanation’ feature was rather nice, all things considered.

He mentally pulled himself out of the explanation page, finding that he was getting the hang of using the SYSTEM much quicker than he had expected, not that he had been expecting to suddenly have a SYSTEM, that is.

Current Quest: [Locate a TEST FRACTURE and obtain a Class]

TEST FRACTUREs will turn into FRACTURES once 48 hours have passed.

Time Remaining: 36 Hours, 23 Minutes, 32 Seconds.

[Most SYSTEM features require the user to be at least at Level 1]

Using his mind to press on the box as a whole, this time, it pulsed again and moved on to the next box, and he could somehow sense that this would be the last of the SYSTEM boxes he saw until he had completed a TEST FRACTURE.

Maxwell Clark

[Class]: None

[Level]: 0

[Stats]:

- Strength: 1

- Dexterity: 1

- Endurance: 1

- Intelligence: 1

- Charisma: 1

- Luck: 1

[Ability List]

> None

[Spell List]

>

[Equipment]

> None

He felt his breathing tick up a little as he read [Spell List], the confirmation of magic existing acting like quicksilver through his veins, but he managed to stop himself from sprinting out of the door at that very second.

The TEST FRACTURE page had mentioned that the test he would have to go through once he got to the TEST FRACTURE itself would most likely involve combat, so he would need to prepare himself.

He had never actually fought someone before… unless you counted a couple of years of martial arts when he was a kid, and that one time he had hit a swooping magpie out of the air with his cricket bat.

Nodding to himself, he took a couple of deep breaths, giving himself a once over. He was well and truly awake by this point, his brain working in overdrive to think of all the things he might need.

He was fit, and pretty strong, as he had been playing cricket his whole life and was pretty good at it, so that was a good start. Still, if this was a SYSTEM as he had read about before, then it was likely that he would need some kind of armour or at least some physical protection.

Running back to his bedroom, he stripped off his pyjamas and quickly took a shower, before drying himself and darting to his closet. First off, thick, padded pants. He had been planning on getting a motorbike in the coming months, having finally saved up enough for a shitty one from his local dealership, and had some of the gear for it, luckily including special pants and shoes.

The pants were padded and made with kevlar, and the shoes, while looking like regular sneakers, had a steel plate that protected the bottom of the shoe, as well as covering his toes from above.

He slipped both of them onto his legs and feet, before grabbing out a long sleeve shirt and one of his thickest jackets. The shirt was just a plain grey long-sleeve shirt, but the jacket was a really nice winter wear jacket, fur-lined and included a hood.

He would have preferred to use a motorbike jacket alongside his pants and shoes… but they were expensive as fuck and he was pretty well flat-broke, not that it mattered if the world was going to shit.

He also opened the cricket section of his cupboard and grabbed one of his cricket bats, as well as a helmet. These were likely the most expensive parts of his cricket kit, a gift from his grandfather after he had gotten the winning runs on a grand final game a couple of years ago.

The bat was made of strong wood, with a metal core, it was heavier than most cricket bats but was also way stronger. It was a little clunky to actually play with, but if he was going to be using it as a weapon…

It would be more than enough.

Next came the helmet. As he strapped it to his head, his hair being squished by the padding, his hands moved on their own, the muscle memory of him putting the helmet on a million times guiding him.

Clipping the strap under his chin together, Max nodded to himself. Now that he was ‘geared up’ Max felt a little more confident in leaving his apartment… but something felt like it was missing. His chest area felt a lot more exposed than his legs and feet, so how could he fix that?

He paced around his apartment as he thought, and when his eyes landed on the kitchen he had an idea. Opening the pots and pans cupboard, he grabbed out some of his baking trays.

They were made of metal, flat, and small enough that he could probably shove them down in between his shirt and jumper! He unzipped his jacket and did his best to get the tray to stay on his torso, eventually needing to hang them over his shoulders with a bit of rope of duct tape like a vest.

Putting his jumper back on, he packed a backpack with some muesli bars and a couple of bottles of water, not knowing how far away the TEST FRACTURE would be, and grabbed his cricket bat.

Once he reached his front door, he reached down to the table next to his face mask and slipped it under the metal cage over his chin, a force of habit from the years he had needed to put one on every day. Once that was done, he opened the door to his apartment and left.

He didn’t know what was waiting for him down in the lobby of the building or beyond, but he was excited to find out.

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TEST FRACTURE Time Remaining:

Time Remaining: 36 Hours, 17 Minutes, 47 Seconds.

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