Elias remembered feeling helpless as he stared at the System window.
If he focused on the corner of his vision, another line flicked into place, pale text over the wrecked fair.
52 minutes 32 seconds.
The countdown ticked down in steady, uncaring numbers.
He tried opening the tabs one by one—CULTIVATION, BOND, ENLIGHTENMENT, POWERS, EQUIPMENT, OATHS. Each answered the same way.
None.
No tutorial boxes. No help prompts. No "Beginner's Guide to Not Dying in an Apocalypse." Just a bare STATUS, a timer, and the mess around him: twisted steel, dropped drinks soaking into dust, the faint smell of oil and spilled soda mixing with hot fryer grease and the metallic tang of blood.
He closed his STATUS.
His first priority sat clear in his mind: his mother and his sisters.
After about twenty minutes of people running around, shouting, and jabbing uselessly at black phone screens and dead machines, the pattern became obvious. Every piece of modern tech stayed lifeless. Engines didn't turn. Screens stayed dark. Anything that ran on the old laws of the world might as well have been scrap.
He really wanted to get home, but every obvious route was cut off. No working car. No working phone. Thirty miles of road between him and his family.
So he thought about it the way he could: logically.
The meteors—whatever they actually were—were coming. The System had made that clear enough. It would be a rough ride. Incursions, dungeons, beasts, all of that would follow. He couldn't reach home in time. He could, at the very least, avoid being empty-handed when everything hit.
Get armed.
That was something he could do.
He set his jaw and started moving, one hand pressed against his ribs. Each step sent a dull thud through his side. Gravel shifted under his shoes with a dry crunch. The fairground smells wrapped around him—cooling fryers, trampled grass, the faint sweetness of spilled lemonade, and underneath it all a raw edge of dust, oil, and hot metal.
He skirted a toppled food stand, weaving past overturned plastic chairs and a heap of plush prizes scattered across the ground, their synthetic fur streaked with dirt and sticky soda. People still shouted behind him: someone calling for help, someone else sobbing, a hoarse voice yelling orders that stopped and started as panic kept breaking through.
He pushed on until he reached what he was looking for—a small stage and booth where a magician had been performing earlier.
The booth still stood, curtains half-pulled back, a table shoved close to the front. Cards were scattered across the planks, some stuck to damp patches. A top hat lay on its side, brim bent. A silk scarf hung halfway off the edge, dragging in a puddle of spilled drink. Elias scanned the props until his eyes landed on the sword.
It lay on a hook behind the curtain. Shiny from polishing, fake gemstones in the hilt, the kind of thing meant to catch light under stage lamps. He wrapped his fingers around the grip and pulled it free. The weight settled into his hand, longer than anything he was used to outside of gym equipment.
He tested the edge with his thumb.
Dull.
Of course it was.
"Dammit," he muttered, breath slipping out between his teeth as his ribs complained at the movement. The blade had too much flex when he nudged it, the metal giving a little instead of holding firm. He pictured swinging once or twice and the thing bending or snapping.
He set it back on the hook.
He kept moving, ribs throbbing in time with his footsteps, until he found a maintenance area behind one of the larger rides. A metal gate hung partially open, chain twisted and loose. The air inside smelled like oil, dust, and old wood. Fluorescent tubes overhead flickered once and stayed dead, leaving the space lit only by the evening light spilling through the open side.
Tools hung on a board—wrenches, hammers, a dented toolbox, a coil of extension cord stained dark in places. A broom lay on its side across the concrete, bristles splayed and gritty.
In the corner, leaning against a stack of crates, sat a crowbar.
He stepped over a fallen bucket, its rim streaked with dried grease, and reached out. His fingers closed around the cool metal. The bar felt solid, the kind of weight that didn't pretend to be anything more than leverage and impact.
He drew it up and gave it a short test swing through empty air.
Pain lit up his side. His ribs protested the motion with a sharp, concentrated pulse, like a knuckle driven straight into a bruise. The sound of the swing cut through the quiet of the maintenance shed—a low whuff of metal moving through air—followed by his rough exhale and the faint clink as the end of the bar brushed a hanging hook.
At the time, pain still registered as a loud interruption, a single heavy note that pushed everything else aside. That would change.
Emotionally, mental, spiritual, physical—this new world would press on all four, again and again, until the pressure shaped him in ways he hadn't imagined standing there in that maintenance bay, crowbar in hand and dust motes drifting in front of him.
For the moment, he adjusted his grip, steadied his breathing around the ache in his chest, and glanced once more at the corner of his vision where the countdown kept sliding downward.
Elias checked the timer again.
37 minutes…
What next?
Some people still sat or staggered around, voices breaking, hands shaking. Others, like him, had started moving with intent—grabbing bags, tools, anything that could pass for a weapon or supplies. A thin line between panic and preparation ran through the fairground.
He needed resources.
He spotted a line of food trucks and concession trailers, metal sides catching the late light. Past them, a small stand with a familiar logo—Boy Scouts. The banner over the front advertised recruiting and donations. No one was there now.
He walked over, crowbar hanging loose at his side, and scanned the table. A plastic cooler sat behind a stack of pamphlets. He flipped the lid.
Water bottles, packed in rows. Clear plastic, sloshing when he shifted them.
He looked around and found a small kids' backpack slumped beside one of the folding chairs. Bright fabric, scuffed and streaked, with cartoon patches half peeling off. He unzipped it. A couple of thin books slid into view. He pulled them out and dropped them onto the chair, pages fanning open.
He stuffed six water bottles into the backpack, packing them tight so they wouldn't bounce, then swung the straps over one shoulder.
He glanced down at himself.
Jeans. A polo shirt. Black Nike athletic shoes. The shirt was smeared and splattered with dark, dried patches. The pattern didn't match any sting or cut on his skin. For a second he searched for the wound, fingers brushing the fabric.
Then it clicked.
His date.
Her blood.
Indecision crept back in, turning his thoughts sideways. He stood there, backpack on one shoulder, crowbar in hand, staring without really seeing, until the timer ticked down again.
30 minutes.
A new message cut across his vision.
System Announcement
Countdown halfway there!
As humanity is unenlightened and lacks any natural powers or cultivation the SYSTEM will commence a lottery.
Ten percent of humanity can win a relic!
Please spin the wheel, relics are while supplies last!
The first spin will commence automatically.
You may manually re-spin the wheel every 60 seconds till supplies run out.
Good luck!
Elias blinked a couple of times, then noticed a spinning wheel hovering in his view. Colored sections blurred together as it rotated, then slowed and clicked to a stop.
Please Try Again!
He triggered another spin.
Please try again!
The wheel spun, stopped, same result. Again and again, every spin ended on that line. No icon, no item, just the same answer.
Was his luck really that bad?
He went to spin again.
Somewhere nearby, a kid's voice broke through the noise—a boy who looked around twelve or thirteen, shouting that he'd won. Elias caught the edge of the words over the background of crying and scattered yelling.
Another message overlaid his vision.
Congratulations, humanity of Earth. May your powers serve you well!
Oh. The relics cannot be consumed till the timer hits 5 minutes.
The relics are equipped in the auxiliary 1 slot and will appear as a shiny red bracelet on the winner's right wrist, or another extremity if the right arm is unavailable, whose light cannot be hidden.
It cannot be given away, but if the host deceases the bracelet will unlock and must be transferred within thirty seconds to a new host's wrist or it will vanish.
Relic will be consumed on use.
Powers are very useful and will help keep you alive.
Good luck, humanity!
Honestly, looking back, it was kinda fucked up.
Every single human had a STATUS, including babies, the old, the infirm, all of them getting an automatic spin whether they could even stand on their own or not.
Humanity was kinda fucked up, Elias thought, thinking back on it.
The dumbass teenager who'd been shouting he was a winner now had a bright glowing bracelet wrapped around his right wrist. The thing shone a sharp red, light pulsing faintly against his skin and the front of his T-shirt. A few county sheriffs had moved in around him after some badass biker dudes started edging closer, eyes fixed on that glow. Brown uniforms, metal badges catching the fading light, hands resting near holsters out of habit, boots planted between the kid and the men with leather vests and road dust on them.
Elias watched the way the bikers' gaze kept slipping back to that red band, following each small movement of the kid's arm, then decided he'd seen enough.
He made himself scarce, shifting the backpack on his shoulder and putting distance between himself and the little knot of tension. Gravel and torn grass crunched under his shoes as he worked his way along the outer edge of the fair, the smell of cooling fry oil and spilled soda thinning out with each step.
Later, news and stories would make it clear how far people went. In parking lots, alleys, and living rooms all over the world, that same red glow had painted walls and hands just before going dark. People were murdered in cold blood for those relics—strangled, stabbed, beaten with whatever lay close.
Elias knew not everyone had a sheriff close enough to step in. Somewhere else, other winners stood out in crowds with the same bright bracelets and no one between them and hungry eyes. Another way the System was preparing them.
Elias held a bottom line.
But there had been a point in his life, after the tests and the soul ratings and being quietly abandoned as trash, when he'd been willing to do anything for power. No lines, no limits, just a desperate push for any advantage.
Luckily, he'd found himself again somewhere along the way.
The apocalypse was a fucking bitch.