The humid summer air felt heavy against my skin as I walked through the familiar pathways of the University of Korea. Around us, students were laughing, scrolling through their phones, and complaining about upcoming midterms. They had no idea that the world they knew was on a countdown, ticking down its final minutes of peace.
"Hey, wait up!" Minsoo puffed, jogging to catch up with my long strides. "You're acting really weird today, Senior. First you skip the pathology lecture, then you grab my hand like you're some kind of secret agent, and now you're marching off like you're going to war."
"I told you, things are changing," I said without slowing down.
My immediate priority was gathering equipment. In the initial phase of the Tutorial, the system wouldn't provide weapons until the basic parameters were initialized by the regional administrator. If you wanted to survive the first ten
minutes, you had to rely on whatever you could grab from the physical world.
I headed straight toward the campus maintenance facility near the edge of the grounds. It was a place where heavy-duty tools, construction materials, and emergency gear were stored.
Why are we going to the utility shed?" Minsoo asked, her laughter finally fading as she noticed the intense, unyielding look in my eyes. "Seriously, senior, you're starting to scare me a bit."
"Minsoo, do you trust me?" I stopped turning right outside the metal doors of the utility area and looked directly into her eyes.
Minsoo, do you trust me?" I stopped turning right outside the metal doors of the utility area and looked directly into her eyes.
She blinked, caught off guard by the sudden use of her name without my usual formal detached tone. "I—of course I do. We've been working together on projects all semester. But—"
"Then don't ask questions for the next thirty minutes. Just do exactly what I tell you to do."
I pushed open the door. The shed was empty, the campus maintenance staff likely on their afternoon break. My eyes immediately scanned the walls, bypassing the flimsy plastic tools until they locked onto what I was looking for: a pair of industrial-grade steel crowbars resting on the lower shelf of a heavy equipment rack.
I grabbed both of them. The weight was solid, cold, and reassuring in my hands
In a world where basic blunt force was the only thing that could crack the low-tier armor of initial spawn monsters, a high-density steel bar was worth more than gold.
I slid one into the large canvas backpack I had brought with me, and kept the other secured inside the heavy fabric folds of my jacket.
Crowbars?" Minsoo whispered, her voice laced with complete bewilderment. "Are we planning a break-in or something? Ryo, if this is some kind of elaborate prank for the department group chat, it's getting out of hand."
"It's not a prank," I said, checking my watch.
6:20 PM.
Forty minutes left.
"We need to move to a completely different sector of the city," I muttered, grabbing her wrist gently but firmly to guide her out of the maintenance area.
"A different sector? Our dorms are right here! My apartment is five minutes away!" she protested, though she didn't pull away from my grip this time. The absolute certainty in my movements was beginning to override her skepticism.
The campus isn't safe," I explained grimly.
In my previous life, the university grounds had spawned a massive, high-density rift during the opening minutes. Thousands of students had been trapped inside the central courtyards, completely cornered by the first wave. It had been an absolute slaughterhouse. I had only escaped because I had run blindly into an underground storage bunker, dragging an injured, bleeding Minsoo with me before she ultimately succumbed to her wounds.
This time, I wasn't going to let us be cornered. More importantly, I knew the exact layout of the regional grids. The city of Seoul was about to be partitioned into distinct tutorial zones, each managed by a different cosmic overseer.
Most people would try to stay in open, heavily populated areas, believing there was safety in numbers. That was the single biggest mistake of the first generation of players. High density meant higher monster spawn rates to balance the regional difficulty.
But there was another reason—a much bigger reason—why we had to leave the campus immediately.
The fake Hero, the man who would eventually rise to the top of the human leaderboards by stepping over my dead body, had started his tutorial in a specific district north of the river: Gwangbuku.
In the original timeline, an anomalous world event had occurred right at the coordinates of the Gwangbuku transit plaza. A hidden, legendary-grade item container—the Eye of the First Dawn—had defaulted into the area due to a system rendering error caused by the regional administrator. The Hero had stumbled upon it completely by accident while fleeing from a monster, using its passive stat boosts to completely dominate the early stages of the apocalypse.
That item belongs to me now, I thought, my jaw tightening as we reached the main campus gates. I will use his own foundation to tear down everything he builds.
I stood at the curb, raising my hand to hail an oncoming vehicle.