“Uh, halt! Who goes there?” shouted a man from behind a barricade of office desk that was acting as a check point to the skyway heading into the east wing.

“Nathan, it’s me!” Jenny placed her hands on her hips. “Move the desk aside so we can get in!”

“Ah, sorry Jen!” Nathan called back, sounding flustered. “Give me a sec, got to move this chair and…”

“No, wait a second!” Shouted another voice from beyond the barricade, then a man peeked over to glare at them. “Did you bring the supplies?” His bushy gray eyebrows knitting together in suspicion as he eyed me. “And who is that man?”

Jenny hooked a thumb over at me. “This is Jamal- I mean Tyrone, he’s security! Look!” She then gestured at Tyrone’s uniform. “And yes, I have the stuff. Let us in already, before more of those things show up. Tyrone saved me from a few of them, he’s strong, and said he’d help us. Oh, and he has a robot thing that…”

When she turned to gesture at Botnik all she found was empty air. Earlier, Tyrone told Botnik to use its camo mode to hide, he felt a highly advanced artificial intelligent companion would be too much of a distraction.

“Enough!” The man’s face only twisted further. “He could’ve taken that from one of their corpses for all we know! Does he have a weapon? We shouldn’t let someone who we don’t know into our safe area.”

“Well…” Jenny looked over at me shyly. “He did have a weapon, but it disappeared.”

“It disappeared? How? Explain it clearly, Jenny!”

“Hey, I’m standing right here! And look,” Tyrone pulled his security badge which was still attached to Tyrone’s belt on a retractable string. “Boom, Tyrone Henderson employee of H5T Security at your service. It even has my picture. Now open the damn barricade, before those spiders start getting curious.”

With some more grumbling, they finally opened the barricade. Though the man with the bushy eyebrows glared at Tyrone as if he expected him to flip out and start killing everyone and stealing their supplies. A small blip appeared at the corner of Tyrone's vision, a message from Botnik.

Botnik: Want me to scan him for you, boss?

You: Go for it.

Name: Ivan Gerlach. Level: 2. Class: Fighter

Botnik: He’s just a basic class?! Sword versus spear? Easy win! You can take him champ!

Tyrone chuckled, which caused Ivan’s glare to intensify. Now that he was obscured by the barricade, Tyrone recognized the man, it was the same guy he’d bumped into a few days ago.

You: Guess I was right about him being an asshole after all.

As they opened the way for them to get inside their safe area, Ivan scrunched his nose up like then smelled. Though there was probably some truth to that, Tyrone was covered in blood and monster guts.

The other survivors gathered around me, there were fewer of them than he’d had hoped for. There were just about ten of them, all looking half-starved, and half crazed as they questioned him about how the outside world was going.

“Are the national guard handling the monsters?

“We used to hear gunfire, but it’s been days since we last heard anything...”

“Got any food on you?”

Tyrone raised his hands to ward off the continuous onslaught of questions. “Whoa, calm down everyone! No, I don’t have any food, and I haven’t been outside yet.”

“Oh great,” grumbled a woman with a haircut that screamed for a manager. “Another mouth to feed, just what we need. Y’know we can only get so much food from the vending machines, right?”

“What?” Tyrone shook his head at the woman. “No, I’m not staying. Did you guys not get the notice about the dragon? Why are you even still here?”

“Don’t you think we’ve tried to leave!?” Ivan snarled as he walked over. “There used to be more of us, but every night, like clockwork, those spider-things come and pick at our defenses.”

“Suspicious that you managed to walk right in here without being bothered by the spiderlings. How’d you get in?” The snobbish woman squinted at me, her already thin lips going thinner as she frowned.

Name: Ericka Hanson. Level: 0. Class: None

You: Ericka? More like Karen.

Botnik: Huh?

You: Never mind.

“I just told you, I’m not from the outside.” Tyrone groaned. “I woke up a couple of hours ago at the north employees’ entrance, had to hide from some demon dogs, then I ran into Jenny and helped her with the spiderlings.”

“So, you’ve been asleep for three days?” Ivan glared. “You really expect us to believe that?”

“Got knocked out pretty hard by a piece of the ceiling.” Tyrone pointed at the bloodied bandage wrapped around his head. “I’m lucky to be alive, the brick nearly caved in my skull.”

“Lucky huh?” The woman and Ivan shared a look. “Or a bold-faced liar.”

“Ericka, please.” A man in mages robes said placatingly. “Let the guy breathe for a moment.”

Name: Sam Menke. Level: 1. Class: Aquatessence Mage

Evidently, Tyrone wasn’t the only one to receive boons, quite a few of them had used their boons to obtain special items like Jenny’s bag of holding, a classic fantasy item that despite its size could hold ten times what it should be able to. Basically, the same concept of Botnik’s compartment, only much larger.

Only a couple of them had a mind to use them to get a combat class. But what shocked him was that all the others had only received two boons, and none of them had thought of summoning a companion to help them out like he had. Though, he’d really only stumbled onto by accident.

“Do you need some healing?” said Sam, the man in the robes.

“Oh, it’s alright. It’s basically all patched up.” Tyrone tried to decline but Sam was already trying to get a better look at his sloppy paper towel bandages.

“It’s really not a problem, besides I get more experience if I use my magic to heal other than myself. Do you mind?” After a nod from Tyrone, who felt Sam wouldn’t take no for an answer anyway. Sam began to unravel the bandage from his head and let out a soft whistle when he saw the wounds. “Oh boy, you weren’t kidding! I can speed up the healing process, but you’re definitely going to have some scares. Hold still for me.”

After saying that, Sam uncorked a leather waterskin pouch he pulled out from under his robes. With some words that sound like utter gibberish, the water from the pouch snaked out and traveled up to coat Tyrone’s bloodied scalp.

He gasped in surprise as the water set into his skin, the feeling was like Icy Hot, it stung like alcohol as it cleared out any bacteria that was attempting to cause infection and then it cooled as it began to encourage the cells in his flesh to rejuvenate and heal faster than what they’d ever be capable of. It was a soothing treatment and Tyrone was already imagining filling a bath with the stuff and drifting off to sleep.

“All done and I even got a level up in my spell!” Sam grinned as he drew his magic water back into his waterskin.

Tyrone rolled his shoulders as he felt his muscles relax and smiled as the dull ache of pain was now absent. “Thanks man! I needed that more than I thought.”

“Back to the matter at hand,” Sam sighed as he pulled back his hood revealing his shaggy grey hair. “We’ve tried to leave three times already, we tried using the rear exit there.” He nodded to the door at the end of the hallway that led down to the parking ramp that was attached to the building. “But they always fill the stairwell with their webs, takes forever to hack through the stuff, and whenever we get to the exit the big one comes down and herds us back.”

“The big one?” Tyrone cocked a brow.

“The one that looks like a spider and a centipede melted into each other, it’s a damn nightmare. I could barely muster the power to heal the others last time.”

Sam then went into detail of how he had been in a state of shock as he used the boon interface to find a way to help the others all around him who were dying of grievous wounds. While the others wished for weapons, he was frantically trying his best to heal all that he could.

“This thing here,” Sam said as he held up the waterskin. “Is called the Ever-flowing Waterskin which always stays full of fresh drinkable water no matter how much I drink or use for my spells. A perfect match to my class...” He lowered his head then, a soft chuckle escaping him. “God, listen to me. I sound like I'm talking about a video game or some crap... We got dog sized spiders, magic, and freaking dragons. I’m kind of horrified of what’s happening out there y’know?”

They were both quiet then. Tyrone had been trying his best not to think too hard of how the world might have been suffering thanks to this damned magic system, but really the blame should be placed on the government for tampering with shit they shouldn't have.

“It’s smarter than the other ones,” someone said, snapping Tyrone from his thoughts. It was a woman he’d remembered seeing a few times, but he couldn’t remember her name. “It herds us like sheep.” She reminded him of a viper with her sharp features and piercing eyes, her brown hair framing her face like the hood of a cobra.

Name: Meghann Silvagen. Level:0. Class: None

Meghann was one of the others who’d used their boons to get an item. The first she used to get a gun, just a standard desert eagle which came with a few rounds of extra ammo.

“Damn, smart thinking” Tyrone nodded at the gun. “And it actually works against the monsters?”

“It has so far,” Meghann grinned as she patted the guns holster. “You guys are acting like this is a damn videogame with your swords and spears, what’s really going to end this insanity is pure gunpowder.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot” She grinned at her own joke.

“Why don’t you have a class? Didn’t the system offer you one? Since you’re doing all of this fighting it’d really help you out with the stat bonuses...” Tyrone inquired.

Her eyes darkened then and her grin faltered. “I thought I could ignore it... That I'd go to sleep and wake up back to how things were. There’s been a notification in the corner of my vision for the last few days or so. Sounds kinda dumb when I say it out loud...”

Meghann crumpled in on herself then, she still stood in front of Tyrone but her shoulders had fallen and the piercing gaze in her eyes had dulled as she stared blankly at her feet. Tyrone had seen that look, it was utter hopelessness, he had experienced it way before the end of the world so he knew what he had to say.

“You aren’t dumb.” he said reassuringly as he placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re afraid. And that’s okay.” Meghann looked up at him then, her eyebrows scrunched down as if he’d just spoken nonsense. Which he probably was, but he kept going.

“My mom once told me that being afraid keeps you alive at the most basic level, it’s a survival instinct. It is a necessary response to threats and dangers. It has protected us as a species from extinction many times over the centuries. But you can’t allow it to take hold and cripple you. Accept that class, it will help you. The one thing that saved me when I woke up was choosing a class, it gave me the strength I needed to fight. I think the only way we make it out of this alive is by working within this new system.”

“So, this is really our new reality huh?” Meghann sniffed and turned away as her eyes began to brim with tears. “I guess the Gunslinger class isn’t too bad of a class to unlock. What’s your class anyway? Motivational speaker?”

“Don’t worry, Meg.” Nathan grunted as he sat beside Sam, an off expression on his face. “We’ll wake up from this nightmare any time now, just like the others who vanished in the night. We wake up and it’ll be all over. All of it.”

Tyrone looked at the man, expecting a joke to follow, but Nathan just stared in a trance off into the distance. An uneasy feeling washed over him as he looked into Nathan’s watery eyes. They were green, but as Tyrone looked deeper there was something wrong there. His pupils were dull, as if they weren’t focusing on anything, and lacking any real emotion besides delirium.

Looking over to Sam, Tyrone frowned slightly but the older man shrugged and discretely twirled one finger beside his head. Turning back to Meghann he noticed that her tag information had changed.

Name: Meghann Silvagen. Level: 1. Class: Gunslinger

“Alrighty then,” Tyrone said, in an attempt to move the conversation along. “What about the dragon? According to the notice we have like five hours, so what’s the plan?”

“Bugs!” A man screamed from by the barricade, waving his arms frantically. “The bugs are back!”

“Him!” Ericka jabbed a finger at me. “He led them straight to us!”

“Ericka shut up!” Sam snapped. “You know that the spiderlings always attack around this time.”

New Quest Received! Quest: Cluster of Death! Info: A horde of spiderlings are on their way to claim their nightly meal. Objective: Survive the incoming onslaught. Bonus Objective: Kill 0/20 spiderlings. Rewards:100 credits and XP.

“Shit,” Ivan cursed as he read the prompt, then ran a hand through his greasy brown hair. “Sam to the wall, now! Meghann you too! Deborah and Jenny back them up!”

Before Ivan could even try to give him orders, Tyrone was already making his way towards the barricade. The power to the building had gone out right after the big quake, now that the sun had set the hallway that the spiderlings were pouring from was pitch back. The only sources of light on the barricade were a few candles and torches that barely shed any decent light.

“Botnik, stick close to me and shine your light down that hallway.” Tyrone ordered as he reached the barricade, Sam and the others gave him looks as he addressed the seemingly empty air. “Oh, you might as well come out of camo mode and say hi.”

“Uh, Tyrone.” Sam gave him a wary look, no doubt worried he may have snapped. “Who are you talking to?”

“Me!” Botnik blinked into sight beside Tyrone, his screen displaying a smiley face. “Nice to meet you, my name is Botnik! I’m a tech companion and I can…”

“It’s the robot from WALL-E!” Meghann exclaimed. “What the fuck!?”

“Oy, Botnik! The light.” Tyrone snapped his fingers and pointed down the hall where he could already see what seemed like hundreds of glowing red eyes staring back at them and getting closer.

“Righto, buddy!” Botnik chimed as it shot out a surprisingly strong beam of light emitted from its face screen and illuminated the dark hallway in front them.

With the hallway now lit up like it was daytime they could see everything in front of them and regretted it. There were hundreds of the little buggers, their crystalline eyes glistening in Botniks light. Everyone on the barricade gripped their weapons, and Meghann loaded her pistol. With a steady arm, she aimed her weapon, and squeezed the trigger. The bang of the gun shook Tyrone and the others from their shock. It sounded far noisier than a handgun should be.

“Got two new skills when I accepted the Gunslinger class,” Meghann beamed at him. “one’s called sure shot and the other is bullet spray, which basically makes my pistol fire like a shotgun. Pretty cool huh?”

Steeling himself, Tyrone hopped over the barricade, his spear flashing into his hands. With a flourish Tyrone swept his dark weapon around him, spiderlings were knocked back and sent flying. He may have been barred from his class spells and skills, but his spear was more than enough to deal with the spiderlings.

A grin spread on his lips as Tyrone’s lashed out at the critters, for a moment he began to think that the creatures weren’t all that dangerous, but then his face paled as a spiderling snagged at the end of his weapon with a wad of webbing.

“Watch out!”

Turning just in time to see a group of spiderlings launch themselves into the air, their fangs barred. Tyrone was helpless as his weapon was now glued down thanks to the webbing.

A watery whip soared an inch above his head, smacking the spiderlings out of the air. Tyrone looked to the source of the attack and saw Sam with his waterskin in hand, a torrent of water forming around him like a whirlpool. Catching his eye, the man gave him a wink.

“Got something on your back,” Tyrone heard another voice call out just as he felt something grip onto his shoulders, then just as suddenly it was gone. “Ah, got it!”

Turning to his right, Tyrone grinned at Nathan who had a skewered spiderling on the end of his makeshift spear. Seeing his grin, Nathan flung the dying bug to the side and gave a thumbs up.

“Who knew I had such a gift for pest control?”

Sam groaned. “We made a pact just yesterday that we’d stop with the bug jokes!”

“Sorry,” Nathan shrugged. “Didn’t know it bugged you so much.”

“I need some cover over here.” Tyrone called out as he took hold of his weapon. It took him a few yanks, but he managed to rip his weapon free from the wad of webbing. “Talk about a sticky situation.”

“Not you too!”

The others groaned at that, but still managed to keep the spiderlings from overrunning Tyrone as he pulled away the webbing. Nathan wildly swinging his mop stick about, Sam unleashing a torrent of water whips, and Meghann sparingly firing off shots. Even Jenny had made her way over and was swatting away spiderlings with a chair leg, all the while screaming a continuous torrent of curses that’d make a sailor blush.

With his weapon freed, Tyrone dug into the spiderlings with reckless abandon. With every swing of his spear a spiderling fell, he felt unstoppable. But there was also something nagging at him. For how much the others seemed to fear these monsters, they were dying far too easily. What could he be missing?

You: What are the levels of these things?

Name: Spiderling Hatchling. Level: 0

Botnik: Looks like these little buggers just hatched. Well, I hope they enjoyed their couple of hours of life! Back to the pits of darkness you eight legged freaks!

“That explains why they’re just throwing themselves at us.” Tyrone mumbled to himself.

“What’s wrong?” A woman with wavy black hair came to take position on his left, two wicked looking daggers in her hands.

Name: Deborah Antonello. Level: 2. Class: Rogue

“These thigs are just hatchlings, like they were just born maybe hours ago.” Tyrone grunted as he studied the spiderlings flowing towards them. “And they are way smaller than the ones I fought off Jenny earlier... Hey, Jenny! How many egg sacs did you say were in the dock area again?”

“Like a lot!” Jenny huffed.

“How many is a lot?” Tyrone gritted his teeth with irritation.

“Who cares?” Deborah shrugged at me, her large brown eyes rolling. “So, they’re baby spider monsters. Sounds like an easy win to me.”

“Yeah!” Jenny nodded. “These fuckers don’t know who they are fuckity fucking with! Back up you eight legged bitches!”

“Uh, I don’t think she’d ever really sworn before...” Deborah chuckled.

Tyrone just shook his head in astonishment as he watched Jenny bash a spiderling into a messy pulp, a frown taking form on his face. “Hold up. What usually happens when you kill a creatures’ babies? We might have to...”

“Strang dream huh?” Nathan nonchalantly cut off Tyrone, a lackadaisical expression on his face as he leaned on his mop spear beside me.

They were able to catch a breath for a moment as the spiderlings stopped trying to rush and were now just looming at the edge of the hallway. Tyrone turned to Nathan and gave him a quizzical look, his dull eyes staring right back. Or at least they seemed to be looking at him, really it felt like Nathan was looking right through him.

“I usually dream about cockroaches,” He muttered. “I hate those things, but spiders are definitely up there. Anytime now, y’know. We’ll be waking up, just got to wait for the alarm to go off…”

“Nathan, bro.” The way he casually talked was starting to nag at Tyrone. He felt that someone had to set the poor guy right, get his to snap back into reality or whatever their reality was now.

Snapping his fingers in Nathan’s face to get his eyes to focus, Tyrone tried he best to coax the man out of the brink of insanity. “This isn’t a dream. It’s real, the government fucked us over and now this is it. This is our new reality now. I know it’s a hard thing to cope with, man. But this is it. You saw the news before the earthquake, right? About the rip in time and space that unleashed all of these things? That wasn’t a dream! I wish it was, but... This is it now.”

Nathan blinked and for a moment Tyrone thought he saw a spark of sanity in Nathan’s eyes, but it didn’t last. A sloppy smile creased his lips and then he proceeded to tell Tyrone random facts about cockroaches. Tyrone wanted to reach out and slap the man, but deep down he knew that’d do more harm than good.

“Well at least you’re still fighting.” Tyrone said as he sighed in defeat.

“Yea that won’t work.” Deborah sighed. “We all tried to talk to him, but it never sticks. The guy’s brain is fried. Which is a shame, he used to be a real cool guy. He’d always keep Ivan’s ego in check.” She nodded ahead of them. “Hey, do you know why they are just standing there now?”

“I have no clue.” Tyrone shrugged, then a thought occurred to him. “Hey, where is Ivan?” He turned to the barricades and scowled as he only saw Meghann, Sam, and Botnik who was frantically bobbing in the air.

You: What’s wrong?

Botnik: My sensor is picking something up, something BIG.

“Hey, Ivan!” Tyrone cupped his hands around his mouth as he shouted. “Get your narrow behind down here, this is an all-hands-on deck type of situation!”

“Narrow behind?” Ivan popped his head over the barricade, his fad red with anger. “I’ll have you fired for talking to an employee in such a manner!”

Tyrone rolled his eyes as he heard Ericka holler something in agreement. “Fired? Dude, it’s the fucking apocalypse! Ain’t none of us got jobs anymore! Now get down here! These things are up to something, and we’re going to need that sword of yours. You too Ericka!”

“H-how dare you!” Ericka shrieked. “I’ll have you know that I’m not even armed, what do you expect me to do? Fight barehanded!?”

“She’d make great bait.” Deborah snickered causing the rest to start laughing.

“Hold it!” Tyrone shouted as he stared down the hallway, noticing that the spiderlings were parting at the rear to let something through. “Something is happening...”

An earsplitting screeched pierced the air, causing all of them to wince and clamp hands over their ears to protect their eardrums from bursting. The spiderlings erupted into a frenzy, their front legs waving in the air as to applaud the creature approaching from behind them.

“Okay, now this is something right out of my nightmares.” Tyrone heard Nathan say as he tilted his head to look up at the abomination that he had wished to never come across again. “That’s one big momma.”

Name: Cluster Queen. Level: 120. Class: Dungeon Boss.

Front half brown recluse and back half centipede, the thing filled the hallway with a deadly aura. Tyrone tried to wrap his mind around how the beast even managed to squeeze its way around the building with its Volkswagen sized pouch of eggs attached to its back, his stomach twisted when he saw how as it charged forward a few eggs the size of ostrich eggs pooped like zips. The vile greenish yellow slime from the popped eggs acted as lube for the monster to more easily charge forward.

"We’re so screwed!” Jenny cried out.

To deepen their horror and solidify their incoming doom another prompt popped up.

Bonus quest received! Quest: Big Momma in the House! Info: The dungeon boss has felt you killing her young and she’s furious! Your likelihood of survival is highly unlikely. Fighting is futile. Objective: Escape, survive and live another day! Rewards: Life