The world didn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ended with a system update.
At 08:07 AM, inside a crowded subway car on Paris Line 14, Elias stared at his tired reflection in the black window. He was thinking about his rent, his cold coffee, the sheer insignificance of his existence. It was the last time he would have the luxury of thinking about anything trivial.
Suddenly, a searing migraine pierced his frontal lobe. It wasn't biological pain; it was the screeching sound of a high-speed modem tearing through his bone marrow. All around him, passengers collapsed simultaneously—a wave of bodies falling like puppets whose strings had been cut in unison.
Then, silence. A digital, cold, absolute silence.
In front of Elias's eyes, lines of golden code began to scroll, burning themselves into his retinas.
[INITIALIZING SYSTEM: THE DEADLY HUNT]
[SUBJECT STATUS: OBSOLETE (LEVEL 0)]
[GLOBAL POPULATION CONNECTED: 8,142,905,112]
[CYCLE OBJECTIVE: CORE EXTRACTION]
"What the..." Elias stammered, his throat dry as ash.
A new window appeared, redder and more aggressive.
[LAW #1: THE LAW OF SLAUGHTER ACTIVATED]
[CURRENT VALUE: 0.0001 ESSENCE]
[ALERT: EXISTENTIAL DEFICIT DETECTED. IMMEDIATE HARVEST RECOMMENDED.]
The train screeched to a halt between stations. The lights flickered out, replaced by the pale blue glow of thousands of floating interfaces hovering before every passenger.
Next to Elias, a man in a suit—a corporate executive who had been reading the news seconds earlier—straightened up. His eyes were bloodshot, but his gaze was vacant, fixed on an interface only he could see.
"To kill is the only way to harvest this resource," the man recited in a flat, monotone voice, as if reading a technical manual.
He looked at Elias. Not as a man looks at a fellow human, but as a predator looks at a pile of meat.
"You're worth zero, Elias," the man whispered, pulling a metal letter opener from his briefcase. "But the System says if I take your Essence, I reach Level 1."
Elias backed away, but the car was too crowded. Law #2 (The Solidarity Tax) suddenly flashed in his mind:
[WARNING: COOPERATION DETECTED — HARVEST PENALTY: 50%. ISOLATION IS THE ONLY PATH TO ASCENSION.]
The man with the letter opener wasn't listening anymore. He lunged.
The first scream didn't come from Elias. It came from the back of the car. A woman had just strangled her neighbor with the strap of her own handbag. Then, a system message rose—audible to everyone—a divine synthesizer voice, the cold voice of Odin:
[FIRST SLAUGHTER CONFIRMED. PLAYER #4,892,102 — LEVEL 1 REACHED. COUNTDOWN START: 14 DAYS.]
Elias felt the metal tip sink into his shoulder. The pain was real, agonizing, but it was accompanied by a strange sense of clarity. In his mind, a golden compass pointed north, toward the depths of the tunnels, toward the Labyrinth.
He understood then. The subway wasn't a transport anymore. It was a test cage. A petri dish to see which of these eight billion insects would be monstrous enough to survive the first hour.
Elias grabbed the man's wrist, his fingers digging into the flesh with a strength he didn't know he possessed. A cold rage, injected by the System, replaced his fear.
"I am not... obsolete," he growled.
He struck. Again. And again.
When the man stopped moving, a spark of white light left the corpse and rushed into Elias's chest.
[HARVEST SUCCESSFUL: +0.001 ESSENCE]
[EVALUATION: PREDATORY DISPOSITION DETECTED]
[WELCOME TO THE HUNT, SUBJECT ELIAS]
There were 13 days, 23 hours, and 58 minutes left.