It had started with the darkness of nothing, and sometimes, that’s all one needs. Nothingness is greater a motivator than death itself in the pursuit to become something more.

Entry seven of the Primordial Tablets.

**

[Error #1617826 has been quarantined to locally affected area. Perish.]

Unmoving, the words hung before him, seeming to mock the man as he read them over and over again, hoping that his eyes were deceiving him. If they weren’t, he wouldn’t just be alone, he’d be caged, trapped within the sprawling crucible of the city, bound to war with beasts and unable to escape the dangers. Never truly. No way...

It was a vague memory, but Brock recalled the mention of Error #1617826 during his time within the cosmos, though among the other rapid notifications and the general terror of the situation, he hadn’t paid much attention to it or anything else contained in the floating texts. But now, it was clear to him. He was Error #1617826.

And the System didn’t particularly seem to want him to leave.

Numbly, Brock entertained the idea that his odd phasing issue originated from the fact he was now deemed as an Error. The quest prompt had said he was trapped in a ‘fluctuating state of being’, which looking back at the apparent certainty of which he had died during the inception of the System, probably meant he was fluctuating between life and death, the System unsure of which to deem him.

"Oi..."

If he knew how he would have made the window reappear, but no matter what he said, thought or willed, the quest would not return to his vision. Collecting ‘the Original Life from the Source’ was the quest’s main and only objective, and Brock briefly recalled it stating that doing so would stabilise his fluctuations. While it didn’t exactly specify whether stabilisation would lead to life or death, he knew that failure would mean a certain passing, or at least an approximation of it.

Wiping the budding tears from his eyes, Brock shakily got to his feet and gave the barrier one last spiteful flick, “…Why is my life so bloody hard?”

Even an attempt to alleviate his inner turmoil through lonely banter fell short, and all he could feel was how confused, scared and in pain he was. He was quite frankly over it, but he had an inkling of understanding that to be stabilised would mean his status as an ‘Error’ should be nulled, granting him free reign to leave.

At least he hoped it would. I'll die anyway if I don't find the Source.

Currently, Brock’s life was a bumbling mess, with one outcome, or the other, or the one other than that leading to certain death, potential death, or a month-long incarceration before – you guessed it – death. There were no good options here, only chances. But if there was anything Brock was familiar with, it was chances.

He wasn’t a gambling addict. Really.

"Keep it together man," giving himself a light smack on the cheek and earning only a pained wince, Brock forced himself to remain clear-headed for the time being and began right back in the direction whence he came. Optimistically, he put himself under the impression that the System, as much as it seemed to be an ass, wouldn’t have given him a quest it didn’t think he could complete. Meaning somewhere within this barrier, was the Source.

Once again, hopefully.

The question to ponder on was what it actually looked like. Green and glowing's a safe bet, but I doubt life's gonna be that easy for me. Brock doubted that a place that housed such a nonsensical energy, the energy that seemed to be what transformed the entirety of the cityscape around him, would be so simple.

While he was feeling a bit of pressure on his shoulders to find the place, he didn’t let himself stress over it, as he was still left with an entire month to search. And, while the location wouldn’t be obvious, it also wouldn’t be anything but grand. Not when it was as important as it seemed to be.

And so began the mind-numbingly boring trek back. Sure, the sights were lovely and filled with a strange sense of mysticism, but they lost their original charm the second time. Still, his surroundings at least offered him something to occupy himself with, and he pressed onward. What now...?

Inwardly, Brock began to form a plan. He would return to the office, albeit remaining careful and keeping an eye out for roving Pontiacs, and scrap together a slew of supplies: some sort of pack, water, food, a weapon, bandages, that sort of stuff. Then, once it was all done, he’d set out on his search for the Source, hopefully locating it before the month ended. It was a solid plan, in Brock’s opinion.

Now let’s just hope those assholes still aren’t around…

A bit under a quarter of a day later, Brock was prowling low through the streets, eying each building with an insane man's suspicion, ready to detect any sort of movement or sign of prior activity. Soon, he happened upon the Subway where breakfast had served itself to him, and mutely, he gazed to the corpse on the ground.

From what he could tell, it was in the same spot it had been when he’d left, though he couldn’t be sure. The various wounds upon it had long dried up, leaving it to look like a mangled mess of crusted red. Brock gagged at the sight, and promptly left, marking the Subway as a potential food supply when he finally grabbed a backpack or something. If there's one good thing going on lately, it's Subway.

On the way back to the office, he did see a few signs of beast activity in the way of ruined storefronts and dried gobs of drool on the asphalt. Judging from the state of the drool, it had seemed to have occurred a while ago, potentially during his walk to the barrier, or even the trek they took to arrive at the Subway, though he was sure he’d have heard the racket.

"Finally," soon though, he laid his eyes upon the familiar structure of the firm he’d worked at for the past two years. Quickly, he stiffened. The front of it, while only sporting a shattered sliding door before, was in utter ruins, an ocean of sharded glass strewn across the immediate area outside of it, the steel frames that once held them twisted and chomped.

Brock shuddered at the mere thought of those steel rending jaws clamping down on his arm instead of the claws. If they had, he probably wouldn’t have those limbs anymore. Lucky...

Taking a second to breathe in and out, Brock cautiously crept into the building and looked around, feeling satisfied as he spotted nothing out of the ordinary, compared to the destroyed state of the building’s lower exterior. Shoulders sagging in relief, he accessed the stock room behind the counter, convinced by sight that the beasts hadn’t truly been inside.

Within, he found a variety of stationery; paper and the lot. Though, nestled in between it all, he located an old leather messenger’s bag, the one their intern had used a few months back to deliver the office workers their work-related mail. It wasn’t all that big, but it would do. Brock hung the sash over his neck and began to make his way up.

The top floor, aka the ‘party’ floor, was known on a normal day as simply the ‘break’ floor. There was a reason Brock had stuck to an office job, despite having wanted to do more with his life. While normal businesses had a break room, they were given an entire floor, courtesy of their boss, Michael. The man was a living legend, and it was easily agreed upon that he was the greatest boss to walk planet Earth.

They had even gotten him a mug to officialise it. Wonder what he's doing now?

That aside, Brock entered the place through the stairway and walked over to the kitchenette, arming himself with the only cooking knife in the drawer. For safety reasons, it wasn’t sharp, much unlike the glass shard he had used previously, but it wouldn’t injure him with every use, and it’d get the job done. Promptly, he dropped it into the bag, only to freeze a second later as he caught movement from the corner of his eye.

...Uhhh.

Slowly, he craned his neck in the direction of the movement, his eyes widening in horror as his gaze settled upon the familiar form of a canine, the beast standing guard to the entrance of the stairway. It studied him curiously, before tilting its head to the side, a quadrio of crimson eyes tracking his every move, regarding him with an idle hunger. Its jaws cranked open, revealing two rows of dagger-like fangs.

"Shit!"

Pre-emptively, Brock dove to the side, barely avoiding the pounce he knew was coming. He slammed into the ground a few meters away, the bulky form of the Pontiac crashing into the kitchenette and rendering it to nothing more than a mass of mere splinters and loose cutlery.

Before it had even recovered from its own crash landing, Brock was already up and bolting toward the door, intent on escaping quickly lest any other pack members came searching too. His fingers barely managed to brush the handle as he was thrown to the ground, claws goring his shoulders while the beast pushed him down with its weight.

"Hagh!"

Sprawled upon the floor and hissing with pain, Brock glanced over desperately at the kitchen knife poking out of his bag and reached out for it. Above him, he felt the heated breath of the Pontiac cling to his neck, the beast looming over him hungrily, ready to devour him whole.

Straining his arm to the very farthest it could go, Brock finally managed to grasp onto the knife’s simple handle and began stabbing blindly over his shoulder, feeling physically ill as he felt the blade savage the flesh of the beast. Whimpering in pain, the monster jumped away and fled from its position on his back.

It was caught by surprise, however, as Brock‘s free arm shot out and grasped tightly onto its back leg, causing it to slip and land sideways, smashing a few beer bottles underneath its frame. Brock was presented with a chance to kill the beast and escape and he wasn’t going to let it pass him by no matter what.

“...Sorry, mate.” While Brock had always had a sweet spot for dogs, the beast would kill him if he didn’t do it first.

Pushing himself from the floor to over the beast, Brock brought down the blade into its neck again and again and again, watching sorrowfully as it spasm and whined, until it finally became limp, rewarding the man with nothing but a surge of fear and guilt. Taking several deep breaths and thanking God that his fresh wounds didn’t seem to be as bad as they felt, Brock slumped over the corpse and cried, unable to allow himself to do anything else.

**

It was a good five minutes of bawling his eyes out before Brock finally felt fit to move once more. He admitted that afterwards, he felt refreshed, as though it had allowed him to expel all his fears and uncertainties in liquid form. The experience was oddly cathartic, in a sad sort of way.

"I feel... like shit..." sighing as he felt the new stains of blood on his ruined suit, Brock stood and wiped the crimson clinging to his blade on his already filthy pant leg, before stowing it away once more in his bag. Even after the decisive victory the fight ended in, he didn’t dare let himself feel relieved, as he wasn’t out of the woods yet. The scuffle between him and the Pontiac had created quite an amount of noise.

Silently, the bloody man snuck over to the vertical windows overlooking the city below, squinting his eyes as he tried to see past the vines and clumps of moss. Surveying the outside area the best he could, he soon became satisfied as he spotted no oncoming beasts prowling the streets below.

Until seconds later, when he was no longer satisfied, a furry black figure streaking past the window and forcing Brock to scramble back in fear. His eyes stayed peeled to the windows for almost thirty seconds before he slowly rose to his feet and looked out the windows once more.

"What... the..."

His mouth was left gaping while he looked down in horror, a disfigured mess of black fur and crimson gore smeared across both the pavement and road alike. It took him only seconds to remember where the unfortunate creature had come from, and he began to back away, glancing up at the roof mutely.

There was three left… that means the last one is-

Brock wasn’t even given the time to finish his thought as the ceiling began to tremble above him, straining against a series of pounding blows. Without hesitation, the injured man skittered out of the way, watching on grimly as the concrete ceiling slowly caved in, showering the room with dust and revealing a snow-white coat between the widening cracks. I... I don't even know how to react at this point.

Then, with one final shudder, the roof collapsed, exploding in an impenetrable cloud of grey and reducing Brock’s visibility to hardly a meter ahead of him. A cold sweat traced a path down his forehead, a familiar weight beginning to settle over the area and subtly push him to the ground.

As the curtains of debris finally fell, Brock set his eyes upon the snarling form of the clear alpha of the wolf pack. Its fangs were barred, stringy clumps of drool spraying from the sides of its mouth and slopping onto the small hill of rubble it stood upon. Contrary to its ivory coat, the monster’s teeth were a sickly yellow.

Six glowing red eyes studied his every movement with the same idle hunger as its lesser counterparts, its wetted nose twitching ceaselessly as it scented both the blood of Brock and that of its own. With its hulking form, the creature just barely fit in the bounds of the building, its bristling fur brushing up against where the ceiling had once been. Ohhhhhh... shiiiiiiit...

Shivering with dread, Brock glanced to the claws on the beast’s monstrous paws, each one longer than his knife and far sharper too. He had no illusions about coming out alive if one of them so much as grazed him with their obscenely dangerous edge. In fact, just in general, Brock was convinced his life was soon coming to an end.

It appeared to be almost lazy as it cranked open its gigantic maw, barring a triad of teeth rows and the blackened interior of its mouth, the flesh seeming to have begun to rot away and slough off. Brock gagged, able to smell the stench of it from even half a dozen meters away.

Not daring to meet the beast in the eyes, Brock stepped back and focused his attention on the name hovering above it, obscured by a series of question marks. It let him neither glean the level or title of his killer, even in death.

For now, he’d just simply call it the Alpha.

“Nice… nice doggy…” Brock’s voice was beyond shaky as he tried his best to placate the car-sized beast with his hands. He gradually took a few more steps back, attempting to put some distance between them. Even so, he knew it would end up being futil-

Brock wasn’t even granted the time to react as he was slammed by an incredible force. The vivid sensation of jagged fangs sinking into his torso imbued him with pain so blinding he almost didn’t notice the wind slapping across his face as they began to plummet toward the ground, the inherent power in the beast’s jump enough to shatter through the few walls separating them from the outside. Oh... wow...

Blood oozed from Brock’s mouth in sputters as the wind buffeted his matted hair. Defiantly, he spent his final moments gazing into the eyes of the beast that had spelled his demise, to which it responded by narrowing them in disdain. It was faint, but within Brock could see the spark of intelligence hidden in its own gaze.

However, it seemed fate had other plans than for today to be Brock’s last.

The office worker’s eyes widened as his body began to flicker in sparks of reds and blacks and he slowly beginning to pass through the wolf, his ethereal state nullifying his air resistance in its entirety. The mutant wolf spun around in the air and snarled at him in fury, raking its claws through his incorporeal form to no avail. Its eyes grew wide.

I'm... phasing? Now?! He could almost laugh.

That clawed strike was the last move the creature ever made before its body smacked into the street below and exploded into a gruesome puddle of guts and fur. Brock, however, fell right past, phasing deep into the earth before finally shooting back out as he regained solidity, landing on the ground painfully and soaking himself in the monster’s viscera. Hah... hahahaha...

Limp, he simply lay there, his own blood pooling beneath him and merging with that of the Alpha's. His neck struggled as it tilted upward and let him look at his torso. He didn’t even have the energy to gag at the sight, only grimace lightly. His organs were strung out the sides of his body, his midsection brutally torn open, stray pieces of flesh and his spine the only things keeping him as one whole. By now, the once blinding pain had been reduced to a distant ache.

So, this is it huh? Brock let his head fall back into the pile of gore and he stared up at the big blue sky above him, the sun beginning to show the signs of dusk. I never even got around to finishing The Office…

As his vision slowly started to close in at the edges, a violet glow to the side of him caught his sparsely remaining attention, and he looked over, almost instinctually. His eyes laid upon the sight of a small purple crystal cradled amidst a clump of fur and muscle, no bigger than his fist. It pulsated lightly, illuminating the immediate surrounding in gentle radiance. A thin fracture ran through the centre of it, a luminous red fluid oozing out from within.

Just by looking at it, even as the edges of his sight became progressively more and more corrupted by the blackness of death, Brock could sense the immense, unadulterated power contained within the crimson liquid. It felt akin to the echoes in the void, though it was also different. One was a tempting promise, while this was a dangerous opportunity. It's... pretty...

Shakily, Brock reached his arm out and grasped the crystal, the ambient pulses of energy roaring through his muscles from merely the contact and reinforcing the limb to a peak he had never thought possible before. Beyond even the level of what he deemed human.

It was a sorry affair, but Brock managed to bring his arm above his head, letting him study the crystal and its contents in better detail. The crystal felt thin and brittle in his hand, and even as weakened as he was, he already felt the strange item flexing with tension at his pathetic grip. To him, it seemed like an egg, eager to be cracked open and have him devour what was within.

If I'm... gonna die anyway...

Left with no better idea as his life slowly faded from his body, Brock brought the item close to his mouth and squeezed. Instantly, he was rewarded as the crystal shattered to pieces and his mouth was set aflame with powerful energies as the fluid splashed inside and slid down his throat.

[Shard of Awakening used: 1/1]

[Welcome to the System, User: Brock Carter.]

…

A set of blurred words floating in his remaining vision and the shine of golden mist was the last thing Brock saw before darkness finally consumed him.