Sarnav pushed himself to his feet, or at least he tried to.
His legs wobbled underneath him like someone had replaced his bones with rubber. The muscles in his thighs trembled with the effort of supporting his weight, and he had to grab onto a chunk of concrete rubble just to keep from face-planting back into the dust. His palm scraped against the rough surface, drawing blood from a shallow cut he barely felt.
The adrenaline was still pumping through his system, making everything feel distant and surreal. Like he was watching himself from outside his own body. Like this was happening to someone else.
But it wasn't someone else. It was him. Sarnav Kish, twenty-three years old, IT support worker, webnovel addict, and now apparently the host of some kind of system straight out of the stories he'd been reading since high school.
The blue screen was still there. Still floating in his vision like some kind of augmented reality overlay, except this wasn't AR. This wasn't some app on his phone or a filter on social media. This was real. As real as the dust choking the air around him, as real as the distant screams echoing through what remained of the building, as real as the cooling corpse he could see partially buried under rubble about ten feet away.
[HARMONY CULTIVATION SYSTEM - ACTIVE]
The text glowed with a soft blue light that somehow didn't hurt to look at despite the darkness of the basement. It was positioned at the perfect distance for comfortable reading, hovering about two feet in front of his face at eye level.
Sarnav waved a hand through it experimentally. His fingers passed through the display without any resistance, without disturbing it at all. The screen didn't flicker or distort. It just stayed there, perfectly still, perfectly clear, defying every law of physics he'd learned in school.
"Okay," Sarnav muttered, his voice coming out hoarse and raspy. His throat felt like he'd been gargling sandpaper. "Okay. This is happening. I have a system. Like an actual fucking system."
The words felt insane even as he said them. But then again, the entire world had just ended. Insanity was kind of the baseline now.
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO BEGIN THE TUTORIAL?]
New text appeared below the first message. Sarnav stared at it for a moment, his brain struggling to catch up with the situation.
"Can you hear me?" he asked the empty air, feeling like an idiot even as he did it.
[AFFIRMATIVE. VOICE COMMANDS, MENTAL COMMANDS, AND MANUAL INTERFACE ALL FUNCTIONAL.]
Mental commands. Right. Of course. Because why wouldn't a magical system respond to thoughts? That was basically standard for every system novel he'd ever read.
Sarnav focused on the screen and thought yes as clearly and deliberately as he could.
The screen flickered, and suddenly it expanded, filling most of his field of view with text and graphics that looked like they'd been pulled straight from a video game interface.
[TUTORIAL INITIATED]
[WELCOME, SARNAV KISH, TO THE HARMONY CULTIVATION SYSTEM]
[YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED AS THE HOST DUE TO EXCEPTIONAL COMPATIBILITY AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF AWAKENING]
[THIS SYSTEM OPERATES ON PRINCIPLES DISTINCT FROM STANDARD CULTIVATION METHODS]
"Yeah, no shit," Sarnav said, looking around the ruined basement as more text scrolled past. The emergency lighting was still on, bathing everything in that eerie red glow. He could see other survivors now, people stirring in the rubble, groaning and crying. A woman was trying to dig someone out with her bare hands, sobbing as she worked. An older man was sitting against a wall, staring at nothing, blood running down his face from a cut on his forehead.
And in the corner, partially buried under what looked like a section of ceiling, was a body that definitely wasn't moving. Wasn't breathing. Wasn't anything anymore.
Sarnav felt bile rise in his throat but forced it down. He didn't have time to be sick. He didn't have time to process the horror of what was happening around him.
He had to find his mother.
"Can we speed this up?" Sarnav asked the system. "I need to get out of here. I need to find my mom."
[TUTORIAL CAN BE ABBREVIATED. ACCESSING CRITICAL INFORMATION ONLY.]
The text changed, condensing into something more manageable.
[CORE FUNCTION: DUAL CULTIVATION]
[POWER IS GAINED THROUGH INTIMATE BONDS - BOTH PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL]
[ESSENCE GENERATED THROUGH INTIMATE ACTS IS CONVERTED TO CULTIVATION PROGRESS]
[BONDED PARTNERS ALSO BENEFIT FROM ENHANCED CULTIVATION SPEED AND SHARED ABILITIES]
Sarnav blinked. Read the text again. Then read it a third time just to make sure he wasn't hallucinating from shock or blood loss or whatever the hell was happening to him.
Then he started laughing.
It wasn't a particularly sane laugh. It was the kind of laugh that came from someone who'd just survived a building collapse during the apocalypse and been told that his magical superpower ran on sex. It was high-pitched and a little manic, and it made the woman digging through rubble look at him like he'd lost his mind.
Maybe he had.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Sarnav said between laughs, wiping tears from his eyes. The dust on his hands left streaks across his face. "You've got to be absolutely fucking kidding me."
[HOST'S REACTION INDICATES FAMILIARITY WITH THE CONCEPT]
"Familiarity?" Sarnav wiped more dust from his face, still grinning like a madman despite everything. Despite the bodies and the screams and the end of the world. "I've read like three hundred novels with this exact setup. Dual cultivation. Power through sex. The harem system. The whole thing where the protagonist gets stronger by fucking beautiful women and they all fall in love with him and form a massive harem that conquers the world."
He'd fantasized about it, honestly. What webnovel addict hadn't? The idea of having that kind of power, that kind of life. Beautiful women, unlimited strength, respect and fear and everything else that came with being the protagonist.
But he'd never actually thought it would be real.
[CORRECT. HOWEVER, THIS SYSTEM INCLUDES ADDITIONAL FEATURES BEYOND STANDARD DUAL CULTIVATION MECHANICS.]
[ABILITY SHARING: HOST CAN TEMPORARILY USE BONDED PARTNERS' ABILITIES]
[HAREM NETWORK: TELEPATHIC CONNECTION BETWEEN ALL BONDED PARTNERS (UNLOCKS AT 3+ PARTNERS)]
[PARTNER ENHANCEMENT: BONDED PARTNERS CULTIVATE 200% FASTER THAN NORMAL]
[LOYALTY LOCK: BONDED PARTNERS ARE BIOLOGICALLY INCAPABLE OF DESIRE FOR OTHERS]
Another screen popped up beside the first one, this one showing what looked like a character status page straight out of an RPG:
[STATUS]
NAME: Sarnav Kish
AGE: 23
RACE: Human (Malaysian Indian)
REALM: Awakened (F-Rank)
CULTIVATION PROGRESS: 0 / 10,000 Essence to Foundation Realm
PHYSICAL STATS:STRENGTH: 12 (Enhanced from baseline 10)
AGILITY: 12 (Enhanced from baseline 10)
ENDURANCE: 12 (Enhanced from baseline 10)
SPIRIT: 25 (Newly Awakened)
CHARM: 12 (Average)
LUCK: 10 (Average)
RESOURCES:HARMONY ESSENCE: 0
HARMONY POINTS: 100 (Welcome Bonus)
DAILY ESSENCE CAP: 10,000
ABILITIES: None (Acquire through bonding)
BONDED PARTNERS: 0 / 32
CURRENT CONDITION: Fully Healed (Emergency Protocol)
Sarnav studied the screen, his analytical mind kicking in despite the chaos. The numbers made sense, sort of. His stats had improved from the emergency healing the system had performed. That Spirit stat was new, probably the quantification of his cultivation potential or whatever. And that daily cap meant he couldn't just spam essence generation to power level instantly.
"So I'm weak as hell right now," Sarnav said, looking at his pathetic stats. Barely above baseline human. Rank F, the absolute bottom of whatever power scale this new world was operating on.
[AFFIRMATIVE. CURRENT POWER LEVEL: MARGINALLY ABOVE BASELINE HUMAN]
[HOWEVER, GROWTH POTENTIAL IS UNLIMITED]
[WITH SUFFICIENT ESSENCE GENERATION AND PROPER BONDING, HOST CAN REACH COSMIC GOD REALM]
"And I get stronger by..." Sarnav trailed off as the full implications really started to sink in. As he really processed what this system was telling him. "By having sex. By forming a harem. By doing exactly what every protagonist in every trashy webnovel I've ever read does."
[SIMPLIFIED, BUT ESSENTIALLY ACCURATE]
[INTIMATE ACTS GENERATE HARMONY ESSENCE. ESSENCE IS CONVERTED TO CULTIVATION PROGRESS. EMOTIONAL BONDS MULTIPLY ESSENCE GAINED.]
[DEEPER EMOTIONAL CONNECTION = HIGHER ESSENCE MULTIPLIER]
[FIRST-TIME BONUSES, VIRGINITY BONUSES, AND VARIOUS ACTS PROVIDE DIFFERENT ESSENCE AMOUNTS]
[ADDITIONAL BENEFITS INCLUDE ABILITY SHARING, PARTNER ENHANCEMENT, AND NETWORK FEATURES]
This was insane. This was absolutely, completely, utterly fucking insane.
And also exactly the kind of protagonist cheat ability he'd fantasized about for years while reading novels during his lunch breaks and bathroom breaks and late nights when he should have been sleeping.
But there was always a catch. Every system had limitations. Every power had a price.
"What's the catch?" Sarnav asked, because he needed to know. Needed to understand what he was getting into before he started building plans around this.
[MULTIPLE LIMITATIONS EXIST:]
[1. EMOTIONAL CONNECTION REQUIRED - STRANGER/CASUAL ENCOUNTERS YIELD MINIMAL ESSENCE (1X MULTIPLIER)]
[2. DAILY ESSENCE ABSORPTION CAP - CURRENTLY 10,000 (INCREASES WITH REALM)]
[3. PARTNER LIMIT - MAXIMUM 32 BONDED PARTNERS (SYSTEM HARD CAP)]
[4. HARMONY BACKLASH - UNHAPPY/ANGRY PARTNERS CREATE DEBUFFS AND CULTIVATION BLOCKS]
[5. BOND REQUIREMENT - CANNOT SIMPLY USE RANDOM PEOPLE AS CULTIVATION RESOURCES]
Thirty-two partners. A whole harem. And he had to actually care about them, couldn't just treat them like walking cultivation pills or exp farms. The system required genuine emotional connection, genuine relationships.
Honestly? That sounded fair. Better than fair, actually. It meant he'd have to be a decent person, have to actually form real bonds with people. Couldn't just be a scumbag collecting women like Pokemon.
The cultivation novels he'd read where protagonists treated their harem members like objects had always bothered him anyway.
The building shook again, a deep rumbling that sent more dust raining down from above. A section of wall collapsed somewhere nearby, and fresh screams cut through the air.
Sarnav was reminded, quite forcefully, that he was still in the middle of a fucking apocalypse. Still buried in a ruined building. Still separated from his mother with no idea if she was alive or dead.
"Can we finish this later?" Sarnav asked, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice and failing completely. "I need to get out of here. I need to find my mom. Please."
[TUTORIAL SUSPENDED]
[BASIC FUNCTIONS ACCESSIBLE VIA MENTAL COMMAND]
[THINK "STATUS," "INVENTORY," OR "SHOP" TO ACCESS RESPECTIVE MENUS]
[SUGGESTION: EXPLORE FULL FEATURES WHEN IN SAFE LOCATION]
[CURRENT PRIORITY: SURVIVAL]
The screens minimized to a small blue icon in the corner of his vision. It looked like a stylized heart with some kind of geometric pattern inside it. Sarnav could still see it if he focused on it, could feel it there at the edge of his perception, but it wasn't blocking his view of the real world anymore.
Good enough.
He picked his way through the rubble carefully, testing each step before putting his full weight down. The basement floor was cracked and uneven, covered in chunks of concrete and twisted metal and things Sarnav didn't want to look at too closely.
Other survivors were doing the same, moving toward what they hoped were exits. Some were helping each other, supporting injured people or working together to move debris. Others were just scrambling desperately for freedom, shoving past anyone in their way.
Sarnav saw one man punch another man in the face to get past him toward what looked like a small opening in the rubble. Saw a woman screaming at someone to help her, help her please, her husband was trapped and she couldn't move the concrete by herself.
He wanted to help. Wanted to stop and do something, anything.
But his mother was out there. Mythili was somewhere in this city, hopefully alive, hopefully safe, and he needed to find her.
Sarnav kept moving.
His phone was still in his pocket, the screen cracked but somehow still functional when he pulled it out. The battery was at 73%. No signal, of course. The cell towers were probably destroyed, and even if they weren't, the network was likely overloaded with everyone trying to call everyone else.
He pocketed it anyway and kept moving toward what he hoped was an exit.
The emergency exit stairs were completely blocked, crushed under what looked like multiple floors' worth of building. The main entrance was even worse, just a wall of rubble where the lobby used to be.
But there was a crack in the exterior wall. A gap maybe two feet wide where the concrete had split open. Sarnav could see daylight through it. Could feel air moving, fresh air from outside.
It was going to be a tight squeeze. He was going to end up with scrapes and bruises at minimum.
Sarnav didn't care.
He approached the crack, turned sideways, and started working his way through. The concrete scraped against his chest and back, rough edges catching on his shirt and tearing the fabric. Something sharp dug into his shoulder blade, drawing blood, but he kept going.
Kept pushing.
Kept moving forward.
And then he was through.
Sarnav stumbled out onto the street and into hell itself.
The world outside was unrecognizable. The street he'd walked down every day for the past six months was gone. In its place was a landscape of destruction that looked like something out of a disaster movie.
Buildings had collapsed like houses of cards, reduced to piles of rubble and twisted steel. The neat rows of shops and restaurants and office buildings were just... gone. Replaced by destruction.
Cars were everywhere. Overturned, crushed, some of them burning with thick black smoke rising into the air. Sarnav saw a bus that had been flipped onto its side, windows shattered, bodies visible inside.
The sky was wrong. It should have been blue, maybe some clouds. Instead it was tinged with an ugly orange-red color that had nothing to do with sunset. The color of fire and smoke and things burning, things dying.
And there were people. So many people.
Some were running, fleeing in panic toward... somewhere. Anywhere. Just away from the destruction. Others were screaming, crying, calling out names of loved ones they couldn't find. Sarnav saw a woman sitting in the street, rocking back and forth, holding something wrapped in a blanket. He didn't want to know what it was.
Some were trying to help. Digging through rubble with bare hands, calling out for survivors, organizing impromptu rescue efforts. A group of men were working together to lift a section of concrete off of someone trapped underneath.
And some people were already looting. Taking advantage of the chaos. Sarnav watched a teenage kid smash a store window and run inside, emerging moments later with an armful of stuff.
"Jesus Christ," Sarnav whispered, his voice barely audible over the chaos. "Jesus fucking Christ."
[CATACLYSM-CLASS EVENT CONFIRMED]
[ESTIMATED IMMEDIATE CASUALTIES: 38% OF GLOBAL POPULATION]
[ESTIMATED ADDITIONAL CASUALTIES (NEXT 48 HOURS): 12-15%]
[DIMENSIONAL ENERGY SATURATION: INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY]
[AWAKENING PHENOMENON: WIDESPREAD AND ACCELERATING]
Thirty-eight percent. More than a third of humanity, dead. Gone. Erased in a single afternoon because a rock from space decided to end the world.
And another twelve to fifteen percent would follow in the next two days from injuries, from collapsed buildings, from lack of medical care, from all the infrastructure failures that came with civilization ending.
Sarnav felt sick. His stomach churned, and he had to lean against a nearby lamppost to keep from doubling over.
But he couldn't afford to break down. Not now. Not yet. He had to find his mother. Had to make sure she was okay. That she was alive.
Everything else could wait.
He pulled out his phone again, tried calling Mythili's number. Nothing. The call wouldn't even connect, just immediately failed with a network error.
He tried sending a text message. The app showed it as "sending" but it never changed to "delivered."
No cell service. No way to contact her.
The courthouse. She'd said she was going to the lower levels of the courthouse when they'd talked. That was his destination. That was where he needed to go.
Sarnav tried to orient himself, looking for landmarks in the destruction. The courthouse was maybe three kilometers from his office building. East and slightly south. In normal traffic, in his car, it would be a ten-minute drive through the city.
Now, on foot, through this chaos?
He had no idea how long it would take.
But he was going to find out.
Sarnav started walking, pushing into the crowd of people. Everyone was moving, but nobody seemed to know where they were going. Just moving because staying still felt like dying.
The streets were packed with humanity in various states of panic and shock and grief. Sarnav had to navigate around people, squeeze between groups, sometimes just shove his way through when there was no other option.
A woman grabbed his arm as he passed.
"Please," she said in Malay, her eyes wide and desperate. "Please, my daughter, she's trapped in our apartment, please help me."
Sarnav wanted to help. Wanted to stop and do something.
But his mother...
"I'm sorry," he said, pulling his arm free as gently as he could. "I'm sorry, I have to find my family."
The woman's face crumpled, but she let him go. Turned to grab someone else, begging them for help.
Sarnav kept walking, guilt twisting in his gut.
He saw more signs of awakening as he moved through the chaos. Evidence that the system wasn't unique to him, that whatever cosmic event had triggered his awakening had triggered others too.
A man stumbled past him, his hands glowing with a faint blue light. The man looked at his own hands like he'd never seen them before, his expression a mix of wonder and terror. He reached out to touch a piece of concrete rubble, and Sarnav watched as the stone crumbled to dust under the man's fingers, disintegrating like it had aged a thousand years in an instant.
[AWAKENING DETECTED]
[ESTIMATED RANK: E]
[ABILITY: MATTER DEGRADATION/ACCELERATED DECAY]
So the system could analyze other people's abilities. That was useful. That was potentially very useful.
Sarnav kept walking, but now he was watching. Really watching. Looking for signs of the supernatural in the chaos.
And he saw it everywhere.
A woman whose long black hair was floating around her head despite there being no wind, each strand moving independently like she was underwater.
A young boy, maybe ten years old, whose skin had taken on a metallic sheen. He was crying, scared of what was happening to him, and his parents were trying to comfort him while also looking terrified themselves.
An elderly man in traditional Malay dress was kneeling beside an injured woman, his hands glowing with soft golden light as he pressed them against her bleeding leg. Sarnav watched as the wound visibly closed, flesh knitting back together in real-time.
[AWAKENING DETECTED - RANK E]
[ABILITY: MINOR HEALING]
[AWAKENING DETECTED - RANK F]
[ABILITY: HAIR MANIPULATION]
[AWAKENING DETECTED - RANK E]
[ABILITY: IRON SKIN]
The notifications kept coming as Sarnav walked, the system cataloging every awakened person he passed. Some had abilities that were obviously useful. Others seemed almost useless, random mutations that served no purpose.
And some hadn't awakened at all. Were just normal people, trying to survive in a world that had suddenly become much more dangerous.
Sarnav wondered what percentage of survivors would awaken. The system had said it was widespread, but what did that mean? Half? A quarter? Ten percent?
He'd find out eventually.
Another tremor shook the ground beneath his feet. Sarnav grabbed onto a bent street sign to keep his balance, his heart rate spiking as he waited to see if another building was going to collapse.
The tremor passed.
But it left behind something else. A sound. Distant thunder, except it wasn't thunder. It was deeper than thunder, resonating through the earth itself in a way that made Sarnav's bones vibrate.
[WARNING: DIMENSIONAL RIFT FORMING]
[DISTANCE: 1.2 KILOMETERS NORTHEAST]
[THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN]
[RIFT ENERGY SIGNATURE INDICATES POTENTIAL CREATURE EMERGENCE]
"Dimensional rift?" Sarnav muttered, looking in the direction the system indicated. "What the fuck is a dimensional rift?"
He got his answer a moment later.
The sky tore open.
It wasn't a metaphor. It wasn't poetic language. The sky literally ripped apart, a jagged line of impossible darkness cutting through reality like someone had taken a knife to the fabric of the universe. The tear was maybe six blocks away, visible above the ruined buildings.
And from that tear, from that wound in reality, something was emerging.
Something big.
Sarnav couldn't make out the details from this distance, but he could see the shape. Could see movement. Something massive pulling itself through the rift, forcing its way from wherever it came from into his world.
The sound it made was wrong. Not animal, not human, not anything Sarnav had ever heard before. It was a roar and a screech and a clicking noise all mixed together, reverberating through the air and making his teeth ache.
[RIFT CREATURE DETECTED]
[ANALYZING...]
[ESTIMATED RANK: D]
[SPECIES: UNKNOWN - CLASSIFICATION: PREDATOR]
[HOST CURRENT STRENGTH: F-RANK]
[COMBAT ASSESSMENT: CERTAIN DEATH]
[RECOMMENDATION: FLEE IMMEDIATELY]
"Yeah," Sarnav said, his voice coming out as a squeak. "Yeah, no shit. Fleeing. Definitely fleeing."
The crowd around him had noticed the rift too. People were screaming, pointing, running in all directions. The panic had been bad before, but now it was exponentially worse.
Sarnav ran too, pushing against the tide of bodies, trying to get distance between himself and whatever horror had just crawled out of that tear in reality while also trying to get closer to where his mother should be.
The roar came again, closer this time. Followed by sounds of destruction. The crash of something massive hitting buildings. The screech of metal being torn apart.
And then screaming. Fresh screaming, the kind that came from people dying in ways they'd never imagined.
Sarnav didn't look back. He just ran, his newly enhanced Endurance stat letting him run faster and longer than he ever could have before. His lungs burned, his legs ached, but he kept going.
His status screen flashed in the corner of his vision, a new window popping up with text that glowed urgent red:
[QUEST GENERATED: SURVIVE THE FIRST NIGHT]
[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE UNTIL DAWN (9 HOURS, 23 MINUTES)]
[BONUS OBJECTIVE: RESCUE FAMILY MEMBERS (0/1 COMPLETED)]
[REWARD: 5,000 HARMONY ESSENCE, BASIC SURVIVAL PACKAGE, BONUS REWARDS FOR FAMILY RESCUE]
[FAILURE PENALTY: DEATH]
One out of one?
Sarnav's mind caught on that detail even as his legs kept pumping. Not 0/2. Just 0/1. Did that mean the system only counted his mother? Or did it mean...
He couldn't think about that right now. Couldn't process what it might mean that the system was only counting one family member instead of two.
Dad's office was in the impact zone, Sarnav thought, pushing the implications away. Focus on Mom. Find Mom. Everything else later.
He would have laughed at the "failure penalty: death" if he had the breath for it. Like he needed the system to tell him that.
Sarnav kept running through the ruined streets of Kuala Lumpur, the sounds of the monster growing louder behind him, his mother somewhere ahead in this madness, and nine hours until dawn.
Day Zero wasn't over.
Not by a long shot.