The air in the Bangalore University of Technology library tasted of ozone and burnt plastic. A high, keening alarm was the only sound that could pierce the wet, rhythmic thuds coming from the main reading room.
Soumya Kanmani made herself as small as possible behind an overturned oak reference desk. Her knuckles were white where she clutched a thick textbook to her chest: Principles of Mana Saturation, Vol. 3. The irony was a bitter pill. She could write a ten-thousand-word essay on the theoretical energy output of a Blue Gate Intruder, but in the face of one, all that knowledge was just dead weight in her arms.
Scrabble. Click. Scrabble. Click.
The sound of chitin on linoleum. It was getting closer.
She risked a glance through a gap between the desk and a toppled bookshelf. It was just like the pictures in the IHGA public database. A Corridor Creeper. Dog-sized, with a segmented body the colour of a deep bruise. Its six legs were like black iron scythes, and its head was a cluster of unblinking, multifaceted eyes that drank the light. Blue Gate fodder. E-Rank trash.
But to the Unawakened, it was a god of death.
It paused, its head swivelling in a sickeningly smooth motion. Just moments ago, it had cornered one of the campus security guards, a kind man named Joshi who always saved the day-old pastries for the students. There was a brief, desperate shout, followed by a sound like a hammer hitting a watermelon. A thump-squelch. That was it. Joshi was gone.
Now, the Creeper was hunting for the next sound, the next movement. Soumya held her breath until her lungs burned. Her mind, a traitor in its panic, helpfully supplied facts. Its exoskeleton is weakest at the joints. Vulnerable to piercing attacks. Useless. Her only weapon was a ballpoint pen. Its primary method of attack is a rapid, straightforward lunge with its forelimbs. Useless. She had failed the physical fitness test every year since middle school.
The clicking stopped.
Soumya's blood went cold. Through the gap, she saw it. The cluster of black eyes was fixed directly on her hiding place. It knew.
For two years of college, she had lived and breathed this world from the safety of a classroom. She'd dreamed of the blue screen of the System appearing before her, of feeling mana course through her veins. A foolish, childish dream that had never materialized. Now, the dream's bloody reality was here to kill her.
The Corridor Creeper let out a low hiss, a sound like steam escaping a cracked pipe. It lowered its body, tensing its legs.
This was it. The end of a short, unremarkable life.
It lunged.
The world didn't slow down. It fractured.
Soumya's life didn't flash before her eyes. There was no montage of happy memories. Instead, a single, impossibly clear and detached thought sliced through her terror, as crisp and sterile as a line of code.
Its left foreleg lifts 1.2 seconds before the lunge. The angle of attack is always 33 degrees.
Where had that come from?
Then, the world was washed out in an explosion of sapphire light. A sound like a distant bell chimed, not in her ears, but inside her skull. And directly in her field of vision, superimposed over the lunging monster, translucent letters began to burn themselves into existence.
[CRITICAL THREAT DETECTED. FORCED AWAKENING PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
The Creeper's scythe-like leg was a blur, filling her vision, aimed straight for her throat.
[MANA AFFINITY CONFIRMED. INTEGRATING SYSTEM... SUCCESS.]
Time seemed to stretch, the monster's limb moving through thick molasses.
[WELCOME, HUNTER.]
The world snapped back to its normal, brutal speed.
A new, primal instinct screamed through Soumya's body, overriding every conscious thought. It wasn't a decision. It was a reflex she didn't know she had. She didn't think. She moved.
It wasn't graceful. It wasn't athletic. It was a clumsy, desperate roll to the side, a tangle of limbs and flailing terror that sent her crashing into the base of the bookshelf.
KRUMP!
The sound was like a car crash. The Creeper's leg, impossibly sharp and powerful, sheared through the solid oak of the desk, smashing the exact spot where her head had been a microsecond before. Splinters, the size of daggers, exploded outwards.
Soumya lay in a heap, gasping for air that wouldn't come, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She was alive. Aching, terrified, but alive.
Her trembling eyes focused on the space in front of her. The Intruder was momentarily tangled in the wreckage of the desk, screeching in frustration. But Soumya barely saw it.
She was staring at the impossible thing floating in the air before her. A shimmering, translucent blue window, radiating a soft internal light, filled with text that only she could see.