When the countdown reached zero, there was fanfare, no warning sirens, no explosions, just a message from the System to everyone on the planet.
[Phase One of the Tutorial is over!]
[Beginning Phase 2; Survival]
[Prepare yourself!]
And then the gates began opening and the things that laid beyond started pouring out.
The Gates to fully activate in Western were not violent at first as they blossomed. Above the many Forests that dotted the land from the Ardennes Forest, the Black Forest, the Sherwood Forest and a dozen lesser woods whose names had been worn thin by history - the gates opened.
They were unique in their own way with some resembling arches grown from living wood veined with moonlight. Others were circles of floating petals rotating slowly, shedding pollen that shimmered as it fell. A few simply were distortions in the air where reality bent gently, politely, like a door being held open.
Emerald vines spilled outward from every Gate, not tearing into the world but rooting themselves, slipping into soil, stone, asphalt, bunker walls, the foundations of homes. Wherever they touched, the ground softened, accepting them.
The air changed. It grew heavy with the scent of rain after a summer storm. Of moss. Of blossoms that did not exist anywhere on Earth's botanical charts. Laughter echoed faintly, never quite close enough to source.
Roots shifted to make space. Leaves rustled in recognition. Old oaks and beeches bent as though greeting long-lost kin. Ancient roots entwining seamlessly with the Fey vines, mana flowing freely between them like shared breath.
From the Gates stepped the Fey in processions. Tall figures woven of bark and moonlight, skin patterned like leaf veins and starlit marble. Knights rode great antlered beasts whose hooves never quite touched the ground. Courtiers drifted like dandelion seeds on invisible currents. Winged beings unfurled stained-glass pinions that refracted reality into impossible colors.
They smiled with wicked joy as they stepped through the gates. Some kindly. Some cruelly. Some with expressions that did not map to human emotion at all.
Armies stood on stand by and diplomats were sent out but when they were disemboweled it was clear they did not come with the best of intentions. Different militaries of the nations experiencing these invasions scrambled.
Drones rose. Satellites locked on. Artillery crews acquired coordinates. The moment targeting systems focused on the Gates, reality lied. Distances doubled. Angles curved. Coordinates returned perfectly correct and entirely false.
Missiles launched and curved away mid-flight, spiraling harmlessly into clouds that hadn't been there moments before. Soldiers advanced on foot. And walked for hours. Without ever getting closer.
It soon became clear to them they were fighting some very alien and otherworldly forces with powers beyond their means. And the Fey were well known for their trickery.
-
When the Gates opened in Eastern Europe, the sun did not disappear. It simply stopped mattering
Across the Balkans, the Carpathians, the East European plains, the forests, the old cities and older ruins, darkness thickened as if the world itself had exhaled. The Gates did not blaze or roar. They bled like wounds of shadow opened in valleys, cemeteries, ruins, and mountainsides, leaking cold mist and whispers into the air.
Shadows spilled out and the things that came out didn't march, they poured out. Darkness thickened like fog, swallowing streetlights, vehicles, entire platoons. Soldiers fired flares; the light bent away, as if afraid. Night-vision feeds showed things with too many joints, limbs bending backward, eyes opening where none should be.
Machine guns roared. The shadows screamed not in pain, but delight. Fear itself became a weapon. Hallucinations spread faster than bullets. Tanks were crushed under phantom weights. Fighter jets twisted in the clouds, engines screaming, then vanished without a trace. Satellites feeding imagery back to command centers recorded nothing, their sensors unable to penetrate the dense, malignant shadows.
-
In the North Pole, the gates did not open quietly. It cracked the ancient ice wide open. Russian and Scandinavian icebreaker fleets and long-range artillery had been deployed preemptively, railguns humming in anticipation.
When the Giants emerged, the scale alone broke morale. They were mountains given legs. Stone-skinned. Frost-veined. Their footsteps registered as earthquakes.
Artillery fired. Shells impacted and chipped stone. Railgun rounds struck, punching shallow craters that immediately reformed as ice flowed back into place.
A Giant looked down. Not with anger but with mild curiosity. Then it picked up a glacier and threw it. The icebreaker fleet vanished beneath a wall of frozen ocean. Satellite feeds cut out moments later.
The march continued south towards the Arctic fjords of Norway, the glaciers of Svalbard, and the tundras of Siberia.
Their march was inevitable, inexorable. Mountains shifted. Rivers rerouted. Cities crumbled. The northern reaches became wastelands: Saint Petersburg, Stockholm, Oslo, Oulu mere shadows beneath the titans' feet. Even the most fortified military complexes shattered; naval fleets capsized in fjords as Frost and Fire Giants fought across ice and lava alike.
-
In West Asia when the gates opened there, it was no invasion but a release. From the Arabian Peninsula to Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains to the Black Sea, from the Levant and Sinai to the Caucasus, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caspian, reality unfasted as fundamental forces were unleashed.
They appeared as colossal forces made up of the very air, land, sea, flame, and lightning. They expanded, flowed, accumulated, and dispersed according to their nature.
Where fire or great heat existed, the elementals appeared from them, turning deserts into seas of glass and cities into warped silhouettes beneath shimmering heat. Where air moved, the elementals moved with the currents, stripping structures apart molecule by molecule, carrying sand, steel, and bodies alike into the sky.
Where earth stood for many centuries, the elementals formed from it, collapsing tunnels, raising ridges, grinding fortifications into rubble without intent or malice. Where water flowed, the elementals flowed with it overwhelming ports, erasing fleets, reclaiming coastlines long stolen from the sea.
The Elements did not hunt humans for the most part simply ignoring them as they ran rampant. Still humanity had no choice but to respond as the devastation these free spirited and wild beings were causing was catastrophic.
Coalition armies mobilized across the region. Missile batteries locked on to elemental signatures. Aircraft swarmed skies that no longer obeyed altitude or pressure. Naval forces attempted to secure coastlines as they always had.
However, what could you do to something made up of the very essential forces of the world? Bomb a water elemental in the sea and there was more water they could form from. Send drones and airplanes to hunt down air or lightning elementals and they would render you useless in the place they reign supreme.
Governments declared exclusion zones that expanded daily. Evacuations collapsed as roads cracked, ports vanished, and skies became hostile. Cities were abandoned not to enemy occupation, but to environmental sovereignty.
Some attempted negotiation. There was no response. Others attempted worship, sacrifice, or rituals. These efforts went nowhere as the simple truth was that Elements could not be reasoned with because they were not beings of intent. They were states of existence.
Survival came not through resistance, but retreat and adaptation. Human settlements withdrew to areas of relative stability; highlands, deep urban cores reinforced with manatech, subterranean structures shielded from elemental flux. Guilds and independent groups learned to read elemental tides like weather, predicting when regions would become lethal and when they might briefly stabilize.
-
When the Gates opened across Northern Africa from the Sahel, the Sahara Desert, Nile River, Atlas Mountain, the light of the sun sharpened to a cruel brilliance. It did not dim, flicker, or fail; it became a blade, illuminating everything with merciless clarity. The desert sands shifted unnaturally, the heat refracting into shimmering waves that bent perception.
From the Gates stepped beings of impossible stature and radiance. Their forms were living light of impossible geometry, their wings stretching across the horizons, their armor of light flowing like liquid crystal, and every wingbeat like the tolling of a bell.
Faces were calm and perfect with eyes that could see guilt and sin buried deep within the soul. They did not speak. They only witnessed and judged.
From Sudan to Morocco, Mali to Libya, Ethiopia to Guinea humanity scrambled to respond. Armies moved like shadows beneath the burning clarity of the sun, small but determined. Humanity fought because extinction was unacceptable, even if survival felt impossible.
Armies mobilized beneath a sky that burned with judgment. Columns of tanks, aircraft, and awakened forces surged across deserts and cities already warped by angelic presence. Firepower filled the air, but against beings of living law and radiant geometry, bullets and missiles were declarations of defiance more than solutions.
The angels carried order and virtue twisted into something cold and cruel. They spoke with voices that resonated in the mind, bending thoughts, making morality feel like a weapon rather than a guide. Their radiance burned in some instances instantly incinerated humans as they left survivors to feel the weight of judgment, fear, and adoration.
They were merciless, precise, and alien. Their law was absolute. Their virtue was cosmic judgment, and humanity was the flawed variable to be excised.
The sky roared with their incomprehensible motion. Sand became fire, fire became stone, and time itself fractured under their gaze. Some angels spun wheels of light that shattered the sun's reflection across deserts. Others hovered in the air like great statues, their many eyes observing, calculating, excising.
-
When the Gates opened across Southern Africa, the land shuddered in terror.
From the Kalahari to the Cape, Banub to Zambezi from the ruins of old mines to the depths of forgotten fault lines, the earth cracked open like a grin. The Gates did not shine. They smoldered. They bled heat and smoke and a pressure that settled into the lungs like a bad thought that refused to leave.
The infernal hosts did not descend in order or formation… they erupted from the depths of the earth. Flame poured upward from the ground. Cities buckled with the tremors. The sky darkened, not with clouds, but with ash and sulfurous haze. The air tasted of iron and bitterness, and everywhere, whispers promised power, survival, vengeance. Demons did not arrive as conquerors alone. They arrived as corruption made manifest.
Human resistance ignited immediately. Militaries, guilds, and awakened forces clashed with infernal hordes across savannas, cities, and coastlines. Fire met fire. Mana met hellflame. The land became a battlefield where victory meant nothing if it came at the cost of becoming what you fought.
The demons thrived on the chaos. Every battle fueled them. Every fear fed them. Every betrayal widened their foothold.
Southern Africa fractured into zones of constant conflict. Some regions burned continuously, infernal fortresses rising from the ruins. Others became hunting grounds where demons roamed freely, testing humanity's limits, pushing them toward desperation.
And yet, humanity did not collapse. Resistance endured not through purity, but through stubborn defiance. Entire communities chose annihilation over damnation, denying the infernal hosts the obedience they craved.
Armies that could no longer fight with bullets fought with cunning, traps, and desperate new powers. Families and villages barricaded themselves in caves, mines, and ruins, becoming thorned nests of survival.
Every clash was a maelstrom of fire, shadow, and blood, a war that reshaped the lands and people. Yet, despite the devastation, the human spirit; the ugly, stubborn, unrefined thing endured. And the demons learned that domination would be slower than they expected; it would be a war of attrition, of torment, of patience, and of fear but the war had already begun, and the land itself would never be the same.