The wet and sickening crunch of the creature's collapse echoed through the basement like a final, definitive sentence. For a heartbeat, the heavy metal door shuddered violently, straining against the invisible weight I had forced upon the world, before falling completely still. The steel was permanently dented inward, warped and twisted as if a hydraulic press had been applied to the exact center of its frame.
A small trickle of phosphorescent fluid began to ooze beneath the doorframe. It glowed with a faint, sickly silver light that illuminated the concrete floor before gradually fading into a dull, grey sludge. Silence descended upon the maintenance room. It was heavy and absolute, broken only by the frantic thrumming of my own heart in my ears.
I stared at the door, unable to process the sheer scale of what I had just done. The laws of physics, the very constants I had spent the last three years studying in leather-bound textbooks and dusty lecture halls, had bent to my will. They had responded to commands I had written into the fabric of reality with a pen made of liquid starlight. The quill pulsed once, then twice, before vanishing from between my fingers like morning mist caught in a sudden breeze.
The runes that had occupied my vision faded away. They melted back into the invisible fabric of reality as if they had never been there at all. The Astral Ink dissolved into nothingness, leaving no trace behind save for the jagged afterimage burned into my retinas. I swallowed hard, my breath coming in shallow, shaking gasps as my legs finally gave out. I slid down the wall until my back hit the cold concrete, my knees trembling beneath me.
A strange, hollow emptiness filled my chest. It was a physical sensation, as if I had reached inside my own soul and used up something vital and irreplaceable. The mana cost, I realized with a start. Fifty points had been drained from my pool, according to the skill description I had glimpsed earlier. It was a significant portion of my energy, and the price of playing god with gravity was a fatigue that reached all the way down to my bones.
Aurora slowly lowered her sword. The luminous light of the blade dimmed as her grip loosened, and she stared at the warped door with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"Holy shit," she whispered. Her voice was raw and barely audible over the distant hum of the building's machinery. The profanity sounded like a crack in a perfect, porcelain facade. "I thought my Lunar Blade was something, but that... Nate, what the hell was that?"
She gestured at the crushed door, her words failing her as she tried to quantify the destruction. I lifted my hand, staring at my own fingers as if they belonged to a stranger. I could still feel the phantom pressure of the quill and the lingering pulse of energy that had surged through me like a live wire.
"I just rewritten gravity," I said, my voice steadier than I expected it to be. "I increased the gravitational force in that exact spot by a factor I cannot even begin to calculate yet. Enough to collapse the molecular structure of whatever was on the other side."
I trailed off, the image of the creature being flattened into a singularity of gore flashing behind my eyes. Aurora nodded slowly, a deep understanding dawning in her blue eyes as she stepped closer. Her sword dissolved into a metallic mist, leaving her empty-handed as she reached out to steady my shoulder.
"So you are not a fighter in the traditional sense," she observed quietly. "You are more like a reality hacker. You don't just hit things. You edit the rules of the world."
"A reality hacker," I repeated, the term tasting strange on my tongue. "I don't create or destroy energy. I just rewrite the equations that define how it behaves. I edit what is already there."
"It makes sense," she said, examining her own palms. "My Lunar Blade is straightforward. I call the weapon, it comes. It draws power from lunar energy to cut through flesh and bone, but at the end of the day, it is still just a blade. What you did was something else entirely."
She shook her head in amazement. The tactical side of her mind was already beginning to integrate this new information. I assured her that her sword was equally incredible, recalling the way she had carved through the monsters upstairs like a reaper through wheat.
"It felt natural," she admitted. "Like I had been wielding it my whole life. The skill description says the blade is attuned to the wielder's combat style. Since I have done kendo for years, it took the form of a katana. It's an extension of me."
A soft, melodic chime rang in the air, drawing our collective attention to the space between us. A small, translucent window appeared before my eyes, pulsing with a gentle blue light.
[Experience gained: 75. Level up! You are now level 2. Stat points available: 5.]
Aurora glanced at me and gave a grim, tired smile. "Welcome to the game, Nate."
I stared at the notification for a long time. The reality of our situation was sinking in with a depth that was both terrifying and exhilarating. This was not just a freak occurrence or a temporary glitch in the universe. This was a system. It was structured, intentional, and governed by rules of progression and reward. It was exactly like a video game, but the stakes were our actual lives.
"Do you think there are others?" I asked quietly. "Other people who were granted classes instead of turning into those silver-eyed things?"
Aurora's expression hardened, the vulnerability of the previous moment being subsumed by the cold necessity of survival. "There must be. If we got them, others did too. And we need to find them before the things upstairs do."
She glanced back at the warped door, her eyes lingering on the dented steel. "But first, we need to get stronger. A lot stronger. The system isn't going to get any easier from here."
I nodded, still feeling the phantom weight of the starlight quill. If this was our new reality, then understanding these abilities was no longer an academic exercise in astrophysics. It was the only thing standing between us and the porcelain-cracked monsters.
I brought up my stat screen, looking at the five points I had just earned. I had to be smart about this. If I was going to be the "Admin" of this world, I needed the processing power to handle the equations. I allocated three points into Intelligence and the remaining two into Cosmic Insight. I felt a subtle shift in my mind, a clarity that was difficult to describe. It was as if a layer of static had been removed from my thoughts.
"I think I get my class now," I said, my voice echoing in the stale basement air. "The Astral Equationist. I am the one who balances the cosmic equations. In a world governed by the Moon's system, I have been handed the password to the universe."
The basement fell into an uneasy quiet after that. We sat on the concrete floor, letting the adrenaline slowly drain from our systems. My limbs felt impossibly heavy, as if gravity were exacting revenge for the way I had manipulated it. Aurora tilted her head back against the wall, her eyes closed. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. The metallic glow she had emitted during the fight was gone, leaving her looking almost normal, if anyone could look normal in blood-soaked clothes.
"Do you think—" I started to ask, but the words died in my throat. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to ask. I was thinking about my mother in Boston. I was thinking about the city outside and whether the skyscrapers were currently being repainted in shades of arterial red.
The silence was absolute, but it didn't last.
A shrill, piercing sound suddenly cut through the quiet.