Junior shivered and tried to clutch his blanket a little closer.
". . . I held its arms and your dog finished it off," Millie was saying enthusiastically. She was standing in front of Junior's couch, miming her actions as she spoke, too excited to remember her audience couldn't see her. "That little shitter was stronger than it looked!"
"Is Achilles hurt?" Junior asked with concern. Upon hearing his name, the Golden Retriever at Junior's feet lifted his head to look at his partner while his tail thumped the floor a few times.
"Is that his name?" Millie looked at the dog almost proudly. "No, he's fine, I checked already. You picked a good name for him: he tore that monster into shreds like a legend!" She glanced to the side, where savaged remains of the little grey creature lay in a pool of disgusting fluids. "Uh, I mean that literally. You're . . . gonna need a new carpet," she added with a feral grin.
Junior absorbed that gruesome tidbit of information, then shrugged gingerly.
"That wasn't exactly why I named him, but given the circumstances, I'm grateful to learn Achilles has a warrior's heart."
As if aware he was being praised, the dog's thumping tail grew louder and he let loose a short bark.
Millie, on the other hand, now had a more serious expression on her face.
"After that I came to you. It . . . wasn't good. I started resuscitation and this crazy red light came out of you then vanished up into the ceiling." At this Junior flinched and Millie hurried to reassure him. "Whatever that stuff was, when it was gone, I continued to resuscitate you, and you started to recover. I cleaned up your arm, got some bandages from my survival pack and wrapped it up. The rest you know."
Junior sighed. "Thank you, Millie. You saved my life."
"Of course," she smiled brightly. "What kind of LITRPG cult fanatic would I be if I let my first follower die like some action movie extra?"
Junior attempted a weak smile, but it didn't last.
"I apologize for my skepticism. It seems you were right all along."
It was Millie's turn to sigh. "Not about everything, unfortunately. I got transported . . . somewhere, but there wasn't any Tutorial. I still can't access anything other than this damned notification that won't go away."
Junior glanced at his own blue screen.
Failsafe System Integration . . . Complete.
The words that had changed just before his terrifying experience remained. He didn't know what to think of that horrific nightmare. He shivered again. Ideally, he'd prefer to bury all memories and forget it as quickly as possible, but given the circumstances, that seemed unlikely.
In a world with blue screens and monsters, who knew what clues could be the key to continued survival?
Speaking of which, the screen that refused to leave his vision had gained additional lines of text. He hadn't had any idea what to make of them when he first regained his senses, but after hearing Millie's story, Junior felt the return of that same creeping dread from his nightmare.
Apeiron Cultivation . . . Unlocked.
Initiating Reclamation.
Error! Anomalous Rift Emergence!
Error! Apeiron Reclamation Interrupted!
He had nothing but questions without any clear answers. Millie, with all her quirks, might not be a reliable source of information - but she was all he had available at the moment.
Junior hesitated. Wait . . . was that actually true?
"Millie, have you checked the Internet with your phone?"
"Hmm?" The young woman was startled. Like Junior, she'd been a bit lost in her own thoughts. "No, I didn't bring one."
Junior's eyebrows raised slightly in a mild display of surprise. "Really? Why not?"
"Oh right, we didn't cover that before. . . well, you know. Anyways. Electronic communications, explosives and internal combustion, or pretty much any modern technology. In most LITRPGs, they're almost always the first things to go when a planet gets integrated into a System," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "So I left my phone in my condo."
Junior listened with a growing sense of incredulity. He considered what she'd just said and tried to take it at face value, but his inherent skepticism reared its head.
"But why?" he finally asked. "That makes so little sense! Those are all things ultimately based on well-understood principles of physics and chemistry. It would take a fundamental change in the nature of reality and the consequences would be-"
"Apocalyptic," Millie interrupted mildly. "Yep. Between that and monsters coming out of nowhere, the death toll is pretty insane. Why do you think I keep going on about Classes and shit like that? Without power, without some way to level the playing field, we're totally screwed. We'll just end up one of the nameless mountains of dead, unmourned and forgotten in the ashes of a dead world."
Junior listened to Millie's calm and measured speech, stunned. He realized that ever since a little blue screen had shaken his world, he hadn't truly grasped the implications. He'd been dismissive and condescending towards Millie and her beliefs.
He needed to stop that. Right the hell now.
That wasn't to say he would take everything she said with the unshakable belief of the newly converted, though. And there was certainly an easy way to test some of her fears.
"Athena, what time is it?" he asked with some trepidation.
"The time is 9:34 AM," the voice of the smarthome assistant immediately replied.
Neither of the two humans spoke for a moment.
Then Millie said:
"Huh."
Millie blinked at the ceiling as if it had personally offended her.
"Okay. That's not supposed to happen."
Junior's voice was quiet. "You mean the smarthome assistant?"
"Yeah. That's - okay, it shouldn't be working. Not if the System integration's real. All the stories, the wikis, they say electronics get scrambled first. This is . . . bad?"
"Because we're still online?"
"Because we're still online." She began pacing. "That means either the System isn't working right, or this isn't a standard Tutorial. And if it's not standard, then we don't know the rules."
"You're assuming there are rules to begin with."
"Of course there are rules!" Millie whirled, then paused. "Okay, probably. Usually. This might be . . . something different. A broken tutorial. A glitch. Or worse . . ."
Junior rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Define worse."
"Like… this world wasn't meant to integrate. Or something's hijacked the process. Or . . ."
Millie continued to mutter out possibilities but Junior's attention returned to his little blue screen. If Millie was right, and this system was broken, these errors he was seeing seemed to support her theory. He needed to tell her about them immediately.
"Millie, I need to tell you something," Junior spoke over her mutterings. "When I . . . woke up, I noticed my . . . System notification changed. There are . . . errors on it now, like you said." Junior quickly listed out the contents of his current screen. "This is kind of like what you were saying, right? Is my System broken? Was the monster somehow coming for me specifically?"
Junior couldn't see it but Millie's eyes had grown wide and her jaw slack as he spoke. But he did notice that she was silent for so long that he eventually called her name again.
"Millie?" he asked with concern.
The woman shook herself as if waking up from a daze. "Sorry, Junior. Right. I'm still here, just a bit stunned. Honestly, I don't know what that means. Apeiron? Reclamation interrupted? Whatever it is, that sure doesn't sound good. But something else is bothering me."
"What?"
Millie didn't answer immediately. She pulled out her water bottle, took a sip, then muttered: "I'm . . . not the main character."
There was silence again.
After a long pause, Junior exclaimed incredulously: "What?!"
Millie stared at him glumly, not that he could see. "The MC is always the one with the glitchy System and death-defying opportunities for rapid advancement. Both of which you've already had. Which means at best I'm a supporting character or at worst, cannon fodder."
Millie sighed despondently.
Junior shook his head back and forth. He couldn't believe his ears. Just when he was starting to take Millie seriously, she pushed him right back to utter skepticism with nonsense like this.
"Either way," she Millie continued, "I can guess that we're not safe here. If you're special to this System in some way, or glitchy, or both, then things are going to get interesting. Fast. If one monster made it through…" She glanced at the carpet, now ruined with blood and bile. "There might be more."
"So what do you propose? We leave? Call for help? Try to figure out what's going on outside?"
Millie nodded thoughtfully.
"That's a good idea, I should have thought of that. First, let's do a little fact-finding. Assess the local situation, then see where we go from here."
Millie strode over to the sliding door to Junior's balcony. She drew the curtains open enough to peer cautiously outside without revealing herself, unsure of the world that would greet her.