Mike still had the core in his hand when the first message flashed across the panel in front of him. It wasn't elegant. It didn't have that clean, pretentious sheen of the show's system. It was as if someone had slapped an expensive screen in the middle of a live performance. The interface trembled, the letters glitched, some symbols began to flash, and for a second the air before his eyes seemed made of cracked glass, red lines rising and falling, codes colliding, windows opening and closing at an insane speed. The original panel tried to react. Mike saw words appearing halfway, ALERT, INTERFERENCE, CONNECTION, PROTOCOL, and then another voice came in. Not in the air. Not from the sky. Not around him. It came from inside his own head, dry, angry, and with a kind of lazy contempt that seemed too old for any theater.
"Congratulations, idiot."
Mike didn't move a muscle in his face. Only his eyes. An ordinary man would have already freaked out, would have asked who it was, would have looked around as if the answer might be hidden behind a rock. Mike just listened.
"Let me take this lousy system away from these lower-level beings, level seven. What an ugly thing. Noisy. Full of propaganda. Garbage management. I'll just absorb it. That way you'll have everything in one system and it'll be easier for you. And for me too, since I have absolutely no aptitude for patience."
The letters before him began to devour one another. That was exactly the feeling. Not copying. Not replacing. Consuming. Entire lines of the show's panel were swallowed by black stripes that glowed purple at the edges, as if an invisible mouth were chewing code.
All around, chaos was already taking shape. People running aimlessly. Someone tripping over a rock and falling on all fours. A man trying to pull the woman accompanying him by the hand and almost tearing her arm off. Two cars about seventy meters away, a white hatchback and an old pickup truck, surrounded by people who didn't even know if they had keys, gas, or a destination. Further away, another creature emerged from the bushes and made three people change direction at the same time, like pigeons flying from a firework. Mike turned half a step, his rifle always at the ready, never missing a beat.
"Yes, I am a system. And no, I'm not going to give you a cute existential speech. I was built by someone from a level nine, maybe ten, civilization. It's been so long that even I've stopped caring about the exact numbering. Let's just say that whoever created me got tired of this kind of cosmic Big Brother. Audience, shouting, ranking, camera, suffering packaged as entertainment. Tacky. Predictable. Little imagination. So, before disappearing or going crazy, they left some of us loose out there. I'm one of them. Congratulations again. You've just been found by something better."
Mike lowered the center of his sights slightly. Not for comfort, but for calculation. Three figures were moving in the tall grass almost a hundred meters away. Too small for humans, too fast for slow zombies. He memorized the spot.
"Get straight to the point," he murmured, finally speaking.
The reply came with an almost satisfied irony. "There you have it. You don't talk much. Good sign. I hate users who turn every warning into a therapy session."
The screen in front of him went dark and then back on. Now it was something else entirely. No flashy gold, no luminous borders trying to look divine. Dark background. Crisp letters. Clean lines. Pure functionality. As if someone had stripped away the makeup of a circus and revealed the machine hidden behind it.
Priority access established.
Integrated Support System.
DESIGNATED USER: MIKE.
STATUS: ALIVE.
IMMEDIATE RISK: INCREASING.
"Better," said the voice. "Much better. Let's be quick because there are some little creatures after you and I don't want to lose you right now."
Mike turned just enough to confirm. Two animals, similar to the first but smaller and thinner, were zigzagging across the cracked ground, taking advantage of the people's panic to approach without attracting anyone's attention. They weren't coming for him yet. They were coming for the larger group. Which, for Mike, meant only a few seconds before everything turned into a much uglier massacre.
"Before that," the voice continued, already spitting out information like someone throwing tools on a counter, "classes available in the classic scheme, because even absurd civilizations sometimes maintain what works. Warrior or Fighter. Versatile combatant. Master of weapons and armor. Can focus on physical damage or heavy defense, tank style. Barbarian. Brutal melee, high damage, high resistance, lower defense than the warrior and a brain generally compatible with river stone. Rogue. Stealth, traps, critical attack, infiltration, elegant theft with a hint of backstabbing. Mage or Sorcerer. High damage, area, utility, physical fragility of someone who has never carried a bag of cement. Cleric. Healing, support, buff, decent combat with medium or heavy armor. Druid. Nature, healing, field control, animal form. Can be useful or unbearable, depending on the user. Archer or Ranger. Distance, agility, sometimes an animal companion. Bard. Versatility, music, "Skill, buff, debuff, the class for those who want to make a theatrical entrance before dying. Monk. Unarmed combat, mobility, discipline, and a knee to the face. Paladin. Holy warrior, protection, healing, moral brilliance often incompatible with reality. Necromancer or Summoner. Summoning creatures, undead, and mystical trinkets to fight for you. And the Assassin class. I don't need to explain that one, right?"
Mike kept looking at the ground, not the screen. "Go on."
"Assassin comes with a built-in bonus. You can call it bush, you can call it ambush, you can call it theft. I call it professional honesty. You enjoy taking someone out without asking permission. The system recognizes this. It's happy."
A scream came from the left. One of the creatures had finally caught up with a man who was running erratically, only forward, without looking at the ground. The man fell, the monster sank its teeth into the back of his thigh, and the roar of pain spread even more panic. Mike was already raising his weapon, but something else made him hold back the shot for half a second. The second monster changed course. Now, for real. In his direction.
"Class later," Mike said.
"I think so too," the voice replied. "Just two more things. All items, except for the crystals. And learn the right name, you idiot, mana crystal. Except for those, everything you get from me is multiplied by ten. Got it? Ten times. Drops, resources, common items, tools, food, system-applicable ammunition, upgrade materials. Ten times. Save your luck. I also gave you an initial inventory of about five hundred thousand square meters."
Mike almost managed a smile, but the creature was already coming too fast for that.
"Don't think you're so great," the voice added disdainfully. "You'll want to store bigger toys later and you'll discover that space disappears faster than character in powerful people. Then you'll have to buy inventory expansion. And I'll give you even better news. You get a fifty percent discount on everything in my system. Half price. Unlike the thieving program managers."
The animal jumped.
Mike fired into the creature's arc. The silencer dampened the violence of the gunshot, leaving a drier, compressed, brutal sound nearby. The beast twisted in the air, hit in the chest, fell to its side, and even then still tried to gain traction with its front paws. Mike took a step back, adjusted his aim almost without thinking, and placed the second shot right between its yellow eyes. Its head hit the hard ground and didn't rise again.
The other one, the one attacking the fallen man, raised its blood-covered snout and sniffed out the new danger. Mike switched weapons before it could decide. Single shot. The animal's shoulder exploded backward. It spun, rolled, tried to run even though it was broken, and received the fourth shot entering behind its ear. The end.
The bitten man screamed and tried to push the dead body away as if he still didn't understand that he was already free of it. Or condemned for something else. It's hard to know yet.
Three cores emerged from the ground beside the dead creatures. The first, from the initial kill, was still warm in Mike's hand. The other two fell with a dark, crimson glow, pulsing like living coals beneath glass.
"See?" said the voice, satisfied. "That's what I like. Few questions, lots of results."
The panel reacted instantly.
SLAUGHTER CONFIRMED.
ACTIVE TACTICAL INTEGRATION.
CLASS POSTPONED DUE TO SURVIVAL PRIORITY.
REWARDS AVAILABLE FOR COLLECTION.
Then, a new window opened on its own, smaller and more practical.
LOOT DETECTED:
MONSTROUS CORE x3
DRINKING WATER 500ML x10
Sliced bread x10
ANTISEPTIC x10
COMPATIBLE AMMUNITION OF UNDETERMINED NAME: NOT GENERATED
NOTE: 10x MULTIPLIER APPLIED
Mike blinked once. So it was really true. Ten times. The system wasn't messing around on this point.
"Collect for the inventory," the voice said. "Visualize it. No need to put on a show with your hand in the air like some mystical idiot."
Mike looked at the glowing items near the bodies, focused on the idea of keeping them, and they vanished in a subtle visual breath, as if they had been pulled from beneath reality. The screen confirmed it.
INVENTORY:
MINIMUM OCCUPANCY.
AVAILABLE SPACE: EXCESSIVE FOR NOW.
"Good boy," the voice said. "And since we're on the same page, pay attention to something else. What you're seeing here is only one percent of the humanity around you. Humans have been spread all over the world. Fewer idiots dying quickly in the same place. Statistically more useful. Logistically more fun. For the show, of course. For me, it doesn't matter."
Mike scanned the field once more. Now some people understood the basics. Move, or die. One guy picked up a large rock and smashed a smaller creature that had jumped on a fallen woman in the face. Another tried to open the old pickup truck with a wire ripped from who-knows-where. A redhead in gym clothes snatched a backpack from a recently deceased corpse without any ceremony. The civilized world had taken less than five minutes to transform into something else. Mike respected that. The speed with which the mask fell always said far more about the species than any speech about kindness.
The voice returned, now in a tone almost like a bar conversation between assassins from different universes.
"Between us, I liked your weapon."
Mike ran his hand along the side of the rifle almost unconsciously. A minimal, intimate gesture, more automatic than emotional.
"M2010," the voice continued, and now there was genuine curiosity. "Steiner M7Xi IFS and Wilcox RAPTAR-S sights. CGS Hyperion titanium-printed silencer. PROOF Research carbon fiber barrel, with that honeycomb look on the handguard that screams 'I cost more than your car.' RRS TVC-33 retractable tripod with Anvil-30 head. High-density carbon fiber. Beautiful. Lightweight. Functional. And also a clip-on thermal sight, L3Harris CNVD-T style, with suppressor cover. Without that, the Steiner is basically aristocratic in the dark. And the ammunition… .300 Win Mag AP-incendiary. Tungsten core. Cruel. Efficient. Vain in the right way."
Mike showed no surprise. After being ripped from Earth by a system with an aristocratic bad temper, hearing a detailed analysis of his own weapon wasn't even among the ten most absurd things of the day anymore.
"That's it," the voice finished with a short laugh, "you were trying to kill someone with that gun. Tell me. What was the price?"
Mike finally let out a shadow of a smile. So brief it could have been a tic.
"It wasn't about the money."
"Lie."
"It wasn't just about the price."
"That's it. Now we're talking."
He started walking. Not running. Not aimlessly. Walking briskly toward a dark rock formation nearly two hundred meters away—a better position, a better view, partial cover, terrain high enough to read the movements of others but low enough not to become an inviting silhouette against the sky. On the way, he dodged a man wounded in the stomach who crawled, begging for help, and didn't even manage to form the complete word. Mike wasn't cruel for pleasure. He just wasn't suicidal out of compassion.