Adam's fingers flew across the keyboard, his eyes locked on the glowing screen as his character weaved between the claws of a Razorback Manticore. The beast's health bar ticked down—78%, 65%, 52%.
"Come on, come on," he muttered, timing his dodge frame-perfectly. His character's genes glowed with activation: [Swift Legs - Tier 2] and [Reinforced Bones - Tier 1]. It was not the best build but it was enough to handle a level 30 elite if he played it right.
The manticore roared, its tail whipping forward in the signature attack Adam had died to a dozen times before. He smiled. This time, he was ready.
Sidestep, counter, activate [Predator's Strike].
Critical hit. The beast's health dropped to zero.
[YOU HAVE SLAIN: RAZORBACK MANTICORE - LVL 30]
[+2,847 EXP]
[GENE ESSENCE ACQUIRED: TOXIC BARB GLAND]
"Yes!" Adam pumped his fist, then immediately opened his gene menu. The Toxic Barb Gland wasn't top-tier, but it was rare enough. He could either integrate it himself or sell it on the marketplace for enough credits to buy something better.
He glanced at the clock: 2:47 AM.
"Crap." School started in five hours. If his mom caught him awake at this time she was surely going to kill him.
But the Crimson Wastes dungeon reset in thirteen minutes, and the boss there dropped a gene he had been farming for three weeks. 'Just one more run', he told himself. The same lie he told every night.
Adam leaned back in his chair, rolling his stiff shoulders. His small bedroom was a shrine to Genetic Ascension—posters of legendary gene combinations on the walls, figurines of high-tier monsters on his shelf, and a second monitor displaying the wiki page he had practically memorized.
The game had consumed his life for the past two years. While other kids his age were worrying about grades, relationships, or college applications, Adam was theory-crafting optimal gene evolution paths and mapping hidden locations in the Shattered Continent.
His dad called it an obsession. His few remaining friends called it unhealthy.
Adam called it passion.
In Genetic Ascension, he wasn't just some average seventeen-year-old struggling through high school. He was [Apex_Predator], ranked in the top 1,000 players globally. He understood the intricacies of gene cultivation, knew which mutations synergized, and could recite monster attack patterns in his sleep.
The game made sense in a way the real world never did.
He navigated his character toward the Crimson Wastes portal, checking his inventory one last time. Potions, check. Backup genes in case of emergency, check. His pride and joy—a [Keen Eye - Tier 3] gene that had taken him two months to fully evolve—equipped and ready.
The dungeon loading screen appeared.
[ENTERING: CRIMSON WASTES - HARD MODE]
[RECOMMENDED LEVEL: 28-32]
[WARNING: DEATH IN HARD MODE RESULTS IN GENE DEGRADATION]
Adam cracked his knuckles. He had run this dungeon forty-seven times. He knew every spawn point, every patrol pattern, every—
The screen flickered.
"What?" Adam frowned, jiggling his mouse. The image distorted with pixels fragmenting into strange geometric patterns. "No, no, no. Don't crash on me now."
But this wasn't a normal crash. The colors on his screen began to bleed outward, spilling into his actual room like liquid light. Adam jerked backward, his chair wheels squeaking against the floor.
"What the hell?"
The light intensified, no longer confined to the monitor. It poured from the screen in waves, washing over his keyboard, his desk, his hands. Adam tried to stand, but his body wouldn't respond. The light wrapped around him like chains, warm and terrifyingly solid.
His bedroom began to dissolve.
The posters peeled away into nothingness. His walls turned transparent, revealing not his house but an endless void of swirling stars and genetic helixes. Terror seized his chest as his entire reality unraveled, pixel by pixel.
"MOM!" he tried to scream, but no sound came out.
Then the light swallowed everything.
---
Adam's consciousness flickered like a dying bulb.
Fragments of sensation reached him—weightlessness, then crushing pressure, then nothing at all. He heard sounds that might have been screaming. His screaming? Everyone's screaming?
Time lost meaning.
Then, abruptly, it all stopped.
Adam gasped, his lungs burning as if he'd been holding his breath for hours. His eyes snapped open.
He wasn't in his bedroom.
He was lying on his back in the middle of a street—*his* street, the one outside his house—but wrong. The asphalt was cracked and overgrown with strange bioluminescent moss that pulsed with a faint blue glow. The sky above was a deep crimson, like a permanent sunset, with two moons visible despite it being... what time was it?
Adam scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering. Cars were abandoned at odd angles, some with their doors hanging open. Houses stood intact but somehow hollow, as if they were stage props rather than real buildings.
"Mom? DAD?" His voice cracked.
A scream answered him—distant, terrified, distinctly human.
Then another sound. Closer. A wet, chittering noise that made his skin crawl.
Adam's head snapped toward the source. Something was moving in the shadows between houses. Something big, with too many legs and eyes that reflected the crimson light.
His gamer instincts kicked in before his conscious mind caught up. *Analyze the threat. Find cover. Survive.*
He turned to run—
And froze.
Floating in front of his face was a translucent blue window, exactly like the ones from Genetic Ascension*l.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[WELCOME TO GENETIC ASCENSION, HUMAN]
[YOUR SPECIES HAS BEEN INTEGRATED]
[SCANNING USER...]
[SCAN COMPLETE]
[NAME: ADAM VALE]
[LEVEL: 1]
[ACTIVE GENES: NONE]
[UNIQUE SKILL DETECTED...]
Adam's breath caught. Unique skill? In the game, unique skills were impossibly rare—less than 0.1% of players ever obtained one.
The window shifted.
[UNIQUE SKILL ACQUIRED: INFINITE GENE UPGRADE]
[DESCRIPTION: YOUR GENES HAVE NO LIMITS. THEY CAN BE UPGRADED INFINITELY WITHOUT LIMITS]
Behind him, the chittering grew louder. Multiple sources now.
Adam's hands trembled as he stared at the window. This couldn't be real. It had to be a dream, a hallucination, some kind of psychotic break from gaming too long.
But the moss glowing beneath his feet felt real. The screams in the distance sounded real.
And when the first creature skittered around the corner—a wolf-sized spider with a human face and crystalline fangs—the terror that flooded his veins was very, very real.
[MUTANT SPIDER - LVL 5]
The system helpfully provided its information, just like in the game.
Unlike in the game, Adam had no genes, no skills, no weapons.
Just knowledge.
And apparently, infinite potential.
The spider's multiple eyes fixed on him. Its human mouth twisted into an impossible smile.
Adam ran.