"Today is the day you all fill out your assignment preferences!"
Teacher Javion's voice is grave, final. He moves between the rows, placing a single sheet of paper in front of each student. The assignment form.
The room holds its breath. A thick, choking tension squeezes the air. Desks creak under white-knuckled grips. From the back, a choked sob breaks the silence.
"Teacher Javion, I don't want to graduate. I'm not ready to grow up!" A chubby boy's shoulders shake, tears spotting the form on his desk.
"Teacher Javion… where will we be assigned? Is it safe there?" Blue, another girl looks up, eyes wide and pleading, searching his stern face for any scrap of hope.
Bertram ignores them. His focus is locked on the paper before him. A cold, heavy dread settles in his gut.
This isn't the world from his old life, graduation here doesn't mean freedom.
It means exile. It means leaving the last flicker of safety behind and stepping into the grinder.
A century ago, peace shattered. Gates to another dimension tore open, and nightmares poured through.
One-eyed giants, ten feet tall and rippling with brute muscle, splintered human doors like kindling and pulled families apart with bare hands.
Packs of two-headed wolves, faster than any vehicle, turned city streets into blood-soaked hunting grounds.
In the skies, behemoths with spiraled horns snatched military helicopters from the air and crushed them in jagged maws.
And then came the otherworlders themselves, humanoid, powerful, and merciless. They invaded, they purged.
City after city fell into silent ruin.
Humanity was brought to the brink of extinction. Now, only one city remains. Dawn City. The final fortress.
It's divided into sectors, with a militarized buffer zone holding the line at its edges.
This city is the ultimate sanctuary, a privilege earned only by those who have bled for the survival of the species.
People like Bertram and his classmates? Their parents didn't make the cut. The Federation protected them, housed them, schooled them but only until graduation day.
The grace period ends now.
Upon graduation, they are ejected. Sent into the deadly wilds beyond the buffer to fight the very horrors that consumed the world.
An ordinary human stands no chance out there. Only those who cultivate martial arts or awaken to a supernatural ability can hope to survive a direct encounter.
Talent is everything.
It was tested the day they were first brought into the city's shadow. Bertram's result was a gut-punch: F-level martial arts aptitude.
No special ability. Nothing.
The rating system is simple and cruel: F, E, D, C, B, A, S. Your rating dictates your training speed, it slams the final lid on your potential.
It's your ceiling.
For Bertram, an F-rank means his lifetime limit in martial arts is the absolute bottom tier. Breaking through to E-rank is a fantasy.
And an F-rank combatant is weaker than the most basic otherworldly grunt. He hasn't even reached that pathetic benchmark yet.
His class is the academy's most ordinary, filled with kids just like him, low talent, no prospects, pure cannon fodder.
It makes the ritual of choosing their doom feel like a sick joke.
"Almost all the assignment locations are high-risk areas."
The postings are all on the front lines, encircling Dawn City.
They aren't jobs, they are human shields, sacrificial pieces on a board meant to protect the real prize.
Bertram draws a slow, steadying breath. He hasn't spent these last weeks idle.
While others panicked, he analyzed years of assignment data, casualty reports, deployment rotations.
He identified a handful of sectors, support roles mostly, where the death rates are… marginally lower.
Not safe. Just less immediately fatal.
He picks up his pen, the plastic slick in his grip. His handwriting is deliberate, controlled.
He fills in his three preferred postings, the words feeling like prayers etched onto paper.
Please. Let fewer people choose these. Let me get in.
If he doesn't get a spot from his preferences, the system will assign him randomly.
Random assignment means one thing: joining the Dawn Army. Guys on the street call it the Death Army for a reason.
Half the new recruits don't make it past the first month.
As Bertram is filling out the form, a yellow metallic disk flickers into existence right in front of his face.
The thing looks like a clock face, covered in intricate, glowing markings. At the top, two words burn: Infinite Life.
Just as confusion hits him, the disk blasts a stream of info straight into his head.
Host: Bertram
Level: Unranked
Martial Arts Talent: F-level
Special Ability Talent: None
One Unlimited Life Simulation Available…
What the hell?
Does this mean… my golden finger finally remembered me after all this time?
A sharp thrill shoots through Bertram. His eyes lock onto the disk, blazing with focus.
He knows about life sims. They let you run a simulation of your future based on your current situation, grab some intel, cheat the system.
Right now, with his future on the line, this golden finger is a gift from the heavens. He can test his choices. See if his plans actually work.
Bertram slams his pen down. He triggers the simulation.
The bronze disk in his vision whirls, spinning into a blur of light. Then, text scrolls.
[Year Z100, June 12: You get the placement form that decides your fate from your homeroom teacher, Mr. Javion. With a sliver of hope, you write down the three safest postings you dug up.
Year Z100, June 18: Results come out.
First option, East Zone 25 Health Management Office. 3,025 applicants. You are not selected.
Second option, West Zone 16 Logistics Office. 4,321 applicants. You are not selected.
Third option, South Zone 2 Cleaning Department. This place hardly ever hires. You heard about one open slot by chance and threw your hope at it. There were 3 applicants. Your final grades were the best. You got in.]
Hell yes.
Bertram's spirit soars. The cleaning department, its rookie death rate is under 20%. It's a safe zone.
The simulation text keeps going, cold and hard.
[On June 22, Year Z100, you're pumped about your assignment. Classmates look at you with pure envy. Then a notice slaps you down. You failed the follow-up political review. Your placement is canceled. You get randomly tossed into the Dawn Army instead.]
What? Bertram's mind races. His record is clean. His parents are gone. A political review? How?
[You're confused, then furious. On July 1, Year Z100, you join the Dawn Army for a mission outside the wall. A deep, bitter injustice eats at you. As you march, you piece it together. Among the three applicants, the guy who came in second, some bastard named Hayden used his family's connections to shove you out. You have no power, no backing. You have to take it.]
The anger is a live wire in his gut.
[On July 3, Year Z100, you are in Dawn Army Squad 36. Your squad is clearing out a ruined house. Three two-headed wolves surround you in a broken room. You watch, frozen, as your teammates get ripped apart, their bodies torn into by fangs. In that moment of pure crisis, you break through. Your meridians surge. You reach F-rank in martial arts.]
A breakthrough. In the middle of the slaughter, he finally hits the lowest rank.
[Fresh F-rank strength is nothing. You are facing three killing machines. You dodge one lunge. A second wolf smashes into your ribs. A third clamps its jaws on your leg, bone crunching. You go down. The last thing you see is the first wolf's jaws coming for your throat.]