"This way."
Ilwoo pressed against the concrete wall of an overpass, gesturing for Sena to follow.
The makeshift bandages were holding, but every movement sent fresh waves of pain through his back.
"We can take the alleyways to avoid most of the monsters out on the streets."
They'd been moving for forty minutes, taking a route that would have been impossible to explain to anyone who hadn't spent years memorizing map layouts for competitive gaming.
Construction zones, abandoned subway entrances, service corridors—all the forgotten spaces that existed between the official city.
"How do you know about these places?" Sena whispered as she followed him through a narrow alley between two buildings.
"It was just some mapmaking contest in real life. I never thought it'd come in handy."
He peeked around the corner, then waved her on.
"Turns out this thing was more useful than I thought."
Their shortcut was working. They had only come across two packs of shadow wolves, and both times, they avoided them by climbing higher and waiting until the wolves moved on.
His HP had stabilized at 48/100, and they were making better time than expected.
"We're close," he said, recognizing the familiar outline of their neighborhood grocery store. "Maybe twenty more minutes if we—"
Sena grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into his sleeve.
"What?" he started to ask, then heard it.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Heavy footsteps, each one shaking dust from the overpass above them. Something massive was moving parallel to their route, just out of sight behind the row of apartments to their left.
"Hide. Now."
Ilwoo pulled Sena behind a cluster of trash cans just as the footsteps grew louder.
The creature that emerged from between the buildings made the shadow wolves look like puppies.
It stood nearly fifteen feet tall, its body a twisted fusion of muscle and bone. Its legs bent the wrong way, like someone had tried to imitate a human using broken mannequin parts.
Its head was vaguely humanoid but stretched wrong, with eyes that glowed like molten gold and a mouth full of teeth designed for tearing rather than chewing.
Most disturbing were its arms—too long, reaching almost to the ground, ending in claws that could probably punch through car doors.
[??? - LEVEL 8]
Ilwoo's lips barely moved as he whispered, "Level 8..." His words were so soft they almost disappeared. Then he hesitated and swallowed hard. "And no... name."
The creature moved with predatory patience, its massive head swiveling as it scanned the area.
It knew something was nearby, the way it moved, the deliberate searching pattern, everything about its body language screamed hunter tracking prey.
Sena's breath faded away next to him. She had learned quickly that survival often meant disappearing into the shadows.
The creature paused directly in front of their hiding spot, its golden eyes fixed on the space they'd occupied just moments before.
It tilted its head, like a dog hearing a distant sound, then took a step closer to the trash cans.
Ilwoo's hand moved instinctively to his sword hilt, though he knew it would be useless. Level 8 versus level 2 wasn't a fight; it was basically a death sentence.
The creature's nostrils flared. It was smelling for them.
'Please keep walking,' Ilwoo thought desperately. 'Please just keep walking. '
For ten seconds that felt like ten minutes, the Stalker remained motionless, its attention focused on their hiding spot.
Then, as abruptly as it had stopped, it resumed its patrol, moving past them toward the commercial district.
They waited until the footsteps faded completely before either of them dared to breathe normally.
"That thing was looking right at us," Sena breathed raggedly, her face pale.
"It knew we were there. It just couldn't pinpoint exactly where."
Ilwoo's hands were shaking slightly, like his entire body was crashing with adrenaline mixing and blood loss.
"We got lucky."
"Lucky?" She stared in the direction the creature had gone.
"That thing was the size of a truck. With claws."
"Lucky because it was alone. High-level monsters usually travel in packs or have minions." He helped her to her feet, noting how she didn't flinch away from the blood on his shirt anymore.
"Come on. We need to move while it's distracted."
The final stretch to their apartment building was almost anticlimactic after the creature encounter.
A few shadow wolves were far away and easy to avoid. Some flying creatures flew overhead, but none seemed interested in the two humans moving carefully through the shadows of the buildings.
Their apartment building looked intact from the outside, though several windows on the lower floors were shattered.
The lobby door hung open, its electronic lock system dead along with the rest of the building's power.
"Home sweet home," Sena said, but her voice carried no warmth.
They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor in silence, both acutely aware of how exposed they were in the stairwell.
Every shadow could hide a monster, every sound could signal an attack.
Their apartment door was still locked, still exactly as they'd left it this morning. Somehow, that normalcy felt more surreal than anything else they'd experienced.
"Pack light, but make sure it's useful," Ilwoo said, once they were inside with the door barricaded.
"Bring food, water, medical supplies, anything we can't easily get again."
"What about clothes? Personal things?" Sena was already heading toward her room, moving quickly.
"Survive first, worry about comfort later." He took out his phone while grabbing things from the kitchen. "I need to see if there's any real news."
The phone had a signal, surprisingly, though most websites were either down or loading slowly.
Social media was chaos there were thousands of posts about monsters, government collapse, and conspiracy theories. But buried in the noise, he found something useful.
The ERO forums were still active.
Not the game forums—those had been shut down when the servers went offline for maintenance.
These were new forums, created in the last few hours, specifically for discussing what the community was calling.
"The Integration."
Players from around the world are reporting similar experiences. The same system notifications, the same monster types, the same progression mechanics. It wasn't just their city.
It wasn't even just their country.
"Sena, you need to see this." He called her over, scrolling through posts from Tokyo, London, and New York. "It's global. The whole world is going through the same thing we are."
"Everyone's getting game interfaces?" She read over his shoulder, her accounting background helping her to understand and grasp the situation quickly.
"Everyone. But not everyone's adapting well." He showed her a thread titled
# Non-Player Death Rates.#
"People without gaming experience are dying fast. They don't understand the mechanics, don't know how to read the system warnings."
"What about the government? Military?"
"From what I can tell, they're treating it like a conventional threat. Trying to fight level 8 monsters with regular weapons." He found a video post from someone claiming to be a National Guard soldier. "It's not working very well."
BUZZZ!
A new notification popped up on his phone, not from the forums, but from an app that he uses to watch streams. A livestream notification.
His throat went dry, and he pressed the notification button.
#LIVE STREAMING...#
#UNKNOWN PHENOMENON IN THE CENTRAL PLAZA#
Sena blinked at the screen, her lips pressed into a thin line.
"Unknown phenomenon?" She muttered under her breath, tilting her head, brows furrowed.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know."
Ilwoo's fingers trembled as he tapped the screen. The phone wavered, capturing a blurred sweep of the city center below.
The streamer was positioned on a rooftop somewhere, giving them a clear view of the financial district.
"—Okay, there's something moving in the plaza," the streamer was saying, their voice tight with barely controlled panic.
"Something's happening to the ground there. It's like...oh shit, do you guys see that?"
The camera focused on what had been the main plaza downtown. The concrete was cracking, splitting apart in perfect shapes. Light was seeping up through the fissures, otherworldly light, but something that hurt to look at directly through the phone screen.
"What... is that?" Sena's voice barely rose above a breath, her eyes fixed on the screen but her body stiff, unmoving.
[normey12]: IS THAT A PORTAL??
[evenly wings]: WTF IS HAPPENING?
[realty checker]: Guys, is that radiation or what???
But the streamer said nothing, unmoving, breath caught in their throat. Whatever it was, it wasn't done yet.
"It's getting brighter. And the cracks are spreading in a pattern. It looks almost like a magic circle or something. This is insane. This is actually—"
As the streamer sensed something, he froze mid-sentence. The camera zoomed in on the crack.
KRASSSSSHHH!
The ground exploded upward. Sending dirt and rocks flying.
What appeared was hard to explain. It was a tower, clearly, but not made of any material that should exist. Black stone that seemed to absorb light that hurt to look at, rising impossibly fast toward the sky.
Floor after floor pushed upward like the world's most terrifying elevator, and it showed no signs of stopping.
"How tall is that thing going to get?" the streamer asked, echoing everyone's thoughts.
The tower's emergence was having effects beyond just the physical. Every monster visible on the stream, shadow wolves, flying creatures, even distant shapes that might have been identified as monsters, were all moving toward it like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
"It's calling them," Ilwoo realized. "The tower is drawing the monsters ."
The building shook.
Not their building specifically, the whole city was shaking.
Through their apartment window, they could see the tower in the distance, still rising, its dark surface now visible from miles away.
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT]
[INTEGRATION PROGRESS: 50% COMPLETE]
[TUTORIAL PHASE ENDING]
[TOWER AND DUNGEONS NOW ACCESSIBLE]
[WARNING: DIFFICULTY HAS ADJUSTED]
"Fifty percent," Sena said, staring at the system message that had appeared on Ilwoo's phone screen.
"What happens at one hundred percent?"
Before he could answer, the shaking intensified. Books fell from shelves, picture frames crashed to the floor, and somewhere in the building, glass shattered.
Through the window, they watched the tower reach its full height—easily a hundred stories tall, dominating the skyline like a monument to the apocalypse. At its peak, a crystal formation pulsed with that same painful light they'd seen emerging from the ground.
"Towers," Ilwoo read from the system message.
"In games, they're known for being brutal. Each level is harder than the last."
"And what does ' difficulty adjust mean?"
"It means the level 1 wolves we fought this morning are about to become the easy monsters."
He checked his status window, noting that his bleeding had finally stopped, but his HP was still critically low.
"Now that tutorial's over. The real game is just beginning."
The tower's crystal peak pulsed once more, sending a wave of energy across the city that they could feel in their bones.
When it faded, the world felt different somehow—heavier, more dangerous, like the universe had shifted into a higher gear.
"We can't stay here," Sena said, packing the last of their supplies into a backpack. "If that thing is drawing monsters to it, and we're between here and there..."
"We're about to be right in the middle of everything bad coming this way."
Ilwoo slung his pack over his shoulder and rolled his arms, checking if he could still move properly. The bandages stayed in place. He wasn't at full strength, but he could still fight if it came to that.
"We need to find a place that's easier to defend."
"Where?"
He looked out at the tower, already noting how the monster movements in the distance had changed. More organized now, less random. Whatever the tower's purpose, it was turning isolated threats into coordinated ones.
"I don't know yet. But we'll figure it out."
He checked his sword, his status, and his remaining supplies.
"That's what parties do. We just survived hell out of whatever came our way."
"And if we can't?"
"Then we come back to life in whatever counts as an afterlife here." His lips curled into a weak smile.
"But honestly, I'd rather not see what that actually is."
The tower pulsed once more, and far away, a deep roar answered, something far bigger than the creature they'd been hiding from.
This was when the real challenge started.