The timer hit 0.
A fresh window snapped into place across Elias's vision.
Meteor Apocalypse initiated.
Wave 1 / 10
Objective: Survive and destroy the Lithoids.
Text followed in clean, even lines.
Lithoids are creatures of EARTH element with many SPECIES. As waves progress, species will evolve and new, stronger species will arrive.
Warning: Lithoids can reproduce if allowed to extract mineral resources and create infestations.
Another block loaded in after a brief flicker.
Note: Your performance over the next 10 waves is being judged. Cultivation manuals will be rewarded to:
Top 25% of humanity – Less than E rank cultivation manuals.
Top 100,000 – D rank cultivation manuals.
Top 10,000 – C rank cultivation manuals.
Top 1,000 – B rank cultivation manuals.
Top 100 – A rank cultivation manuals.
Top 10 – AA rank cultivation manuals.
Top 3 – AAA rank cultivation manuals.
Next wave: 7 days. Good luck!
A final note slid into place.
Note: Aim for the chest!
The center gem has slivers of pure KI and, if absorbed (no cultivation manual required), will make you stronger. The more white light, the more KI.
NOTE: Everyone will have a kill counter and assist counter.
NOTE: ONLY unarmed attacks or WEAPONS that can be equipped in MAIN HAND or OFF HAND will count towards kills!
So basically, you couldn't just blow up the invaders with bombs or park a .50 cal and mow them down and expect the System to approve the kill. Heavy weapons and fixed emplacements didn't count. Handheld weapons did. If it could sit in your main hand or off hand—a crowbar, a sword, a handgun, even a rifle slung and fired from the shoulder—those kills registered.
Grenades sat in a gray area. The System treated them as something you could equip, but they still had to sit in a valid slot. One grenade could occupy the Auxiliary 1 slot, and another could be treated as an offhand weapon. That meant two grenades max for most people—one in Auxiliary 1, one in off hand—unless you were blessed enough to have alternates unlocked and could swap sets mid-fight. You couldn't just stuff your coat full and expect the System to pretend they all counted as equipped.
Some of humanity's cold tech still worked—guns, grenades, engines, basic machines—but as far as the System was concerned, real credit only came from what you did with your own body or weapons you actually wielded.
Until Ki tech showed up, humanity was stuck working inside those rules.
And the cultivation manuals…
Elias had a feeling he really needed to get one.
People with offensive powers already had a huge advantage. Anything that could punch through stone, crush cores, or control a fight meant better numbers on their counters, and better numbers meant better manuals.
A memory of his cross-country coach drifted up from the mess. The man used to say it every time someone complained about life being unfair.
"The fair is in August."
Country fair. Meaning there was no fair in life.
Standing there with a crowbar, cracked ribs, and no power, staring at a System that graded everything and handed out manuals to the top performers, Elias had a lot of unchecked emotions and thoughts he didn't know want to feel at the moment.
Then the sky changed.
Elias remembered tipping his head back and seeing red specks scattered across the dark, more than stars, all of them with a faint, steady glow. As the seconds passed, they moved—tiny points sliding in the same general direction, each dragging a thin red tail downward.
People started to murmur. A few pointed. Someone said, "Are those…?" and didn't finish.
Later, researchers would go over all of it and pin down the details. The "meteors" weren't meant to erase the planet. As they came in, they decelerated just enough that they only scorched what they hit instead of turning everything into a crater. They struck ground hard—kicking up dirt, cracking pavement, burning shallow bowls into fields and lots—but the shock stayed local.
After impact, the shells split.
Stone and packed earth broke along clean lines. Sections fell aside or lifted, and the things inside started to move—pulling themselves free, dropping to the ground, and spreading out from each impact point.
Lithoids.
They were classed as nature beasts, earth element. They formed from local material and tied directly into the new Ki of the planet. To reproduce, they needed minerals: rock, concrete, soil dense with the right content. Left alone in a place with enough raw material, they would turn it into an infestation—more bodies, more cores, more trouble to clear.
They didn't stop at stone.
They could also devour humans to increase their strength. Bone and flesh ended up feeding their cores. Over time it became obvious—killing people gave them faster gains. Humanity, from their perspective, was a good resource.
The pattern of the drops wasn't random, either.
Meteors only landed in uninhabited spots—wild land, empty city blocks, abandoned buildings, houses with no one living in them.
The first species to show up were called Rockmen.
As the red points in the sky grew into streaks, Elias felt a tight, simple warning run through him: danger.
His mind flicked back to the old man with the bat and the calm blue-gray eyes. Try not to die, kid. But if you do, it's a fine day to die. The words hadn't carried drama when he said them. They'd come out flat, almost conversational, like talking about the weather
He didn't want to die.
He wanted more than hand-me-down clothes and discount shoes, more than a house where the lights only stayed on because his mother worked herself raw. He didn't blame her for any of it. If anything, the thought of her and his sisters—thirty miles west, small town, small house—twisted something in his chest. He hoped they were okay. He hoped the rocks fell somewhere else. A part of him still held onto that simple, stupid optimism.
Looking back he learned life wasn't a fucking fairytale.
Over the arena and fairgrounds, the red trails multiplied until they blurred together. In every direction he could see them, dropping toward the horizon, vanishing behind distant tree lines and low hills. Each one meant something coming out of the ground. Each one meant people screaming, running, getting caught. A lot of humanity would end up as food or broken under stone.
He stood there with the crowbar in his hand, ribs still aching, and made himself breathe steady. He didn't want to stay at the bottom of anything—society, power, whatever this new world decided counted.
He needed a cultivation manual.
And the only way to get one was to kill enough of what was coming.