Chương 2: Chapter 1:“Terms and Conditions”

We all remember the major dates in our recent history. We can recall exactly where we were and what we were doing at the time. During the Gulf War, I was in junior high school; a freshman during the Waco siege, a sophomore when OJ Simpson had his televised car chase, and a junior when the Oklahoma City bombing happened. I was a recent high school graduate when Princess Diana died, and a soldier at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when Columbine happened.

When the Twin Towers fell, I was an Army Engineer, carrying tools up to the third floor of my brigade's HQ so I could continue remodeling the conference room. But the day I will remember the most was in mid-June, 2023. That was the day the world changed, and our way of life ended. At the moment the world flipped upside down, I was in an attic for the thousandth time. I was wiring up some can lights in the ceiling—the current fad for homeowners—on a single-story remodel about an hour's drive from home.

I was up there sweating, wearing my respirator, and snapping a quick selfie to send to my wife, Denise, with the hashtag #atticlife. It was a running joke between us; she always fussed and worried over me when I was working, and truth be told, I loved it. Suddenly, thunder crashed like the sky had split open directly above the roof. Now, I've never claimed to have PTSD, but during my year in Iraq right at the beginning of the war, my unit was mortared every other day.

Loud noises and explosions have always rattled me. Fourth of July and New Year's Eve are usually spent in my room with a good book rather than celebrating. Adrenaline spiking, I scrambled down the attic access ladder and found my stepdad, Frank, standing by the front door staring up at the sky. He had a look of pure shock and fear on his face. Another deafening thunder crack rattled the windows.

"Hey Frank, what the hell is going on out there?" I called out. Frank didn't answer. He just kept staring. I reached the doorway, looked outside, and the sight froze the breath in my throat. For as far as the eye could see, blinding violet lightning bolts were striking the earth in a chaotic rhythm. Across the yard, our boss, Dan, was just opening the door to his truck, about to step out.

"Dan! Stay inside the cab!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, hoping the rubber tires would offer him some protection if a bolt hit the truck. Grabbed Frank by his vest, I hauled him away from the open threshold and back into the safety of the house. For another agonizing minute, the world screamed. Through the living room window, I watched massive blue ripples rush across the sky, looking like a lake of pure energy that someone had thrown a handful of heavy stones into.

Ripple after ripple expanded through the atmosphere, blanketing the planet. As quickly as it started, it ended. The silence that followed was deafening. The job site generator had cut out. Frank's Bluetooth radio, which had been blaring his Pandora account, was dead. Even the distant, comforting rumble of Dan's idling truck had vanished. Out of nowhere, a single, resonant word sounded directly in my mind: INITIALIZE.

A blinking yellow light flared at the bottom right of my vision, tracking perfectly with my eyes no matter where I looked. When I focused my attention on it, a scrolling notice expanded across my sight, accompanied by a calm, melodic female voice reading the words directly into my head. [Congratulations citizens, your planet has reached peak occupancy and mana levels. It has been selected to join a vast coalition of human civilizations that have awakened to their higher abilities. Beware though, humans are not the only awakened civilizations in the multiverse, and only the strongest will survive.] [Your physical attributes, training, and experiences will now be tallied to determine the basis of your evaluation. Your skills and abilities are ranked at five levels: Beginner, Apprentice, Journeyman, Master, and Grand-Master. Each level is rated from 0 to 9. You will receive 3 attribute points and 2 skill points per level, however you have 5 extra attribute points for starting at level 1. You can access your stats anytime by saying or thinking "STATUS." No further information or training regarding your status screen will be provided. Good Luck Citizen… SURVIVE.] A floating status screen manifested in my vision, eerily similar to the heads-up displays of the video games I'd played throughout my life.

STATUS Name: Derrick Miller Race: Human Level: 1 Class: None Attributes Strength: 11 Dexterity: 15 Constitution: 8 Intelligence: 17 Wisdom: 12 Charisma: 18 Health: 40/80 (Regen: 6 pts P/M) Stamina: 115/115 (Regen: 7. 5 pts P/M) Mana: 170/170 (Regen: 10 pts P/M) Carry Capacity: 95 lbs Armor Class: 3 Skills Hand to Hand: Beginner 6 Blunt Weapons: Beginner 8 Axe Mastery: Apprentice 3 Sword Mastery: Beginner 5 Bow Mastery: Apprentice 3 Daggers: Beginner 7 First Aid: Apprentice 9 Building: Journeyman 5 Crafting: Journeyman 5 Wilderness Survival: Journeyman 2 Sneak: Beginner 5 Herbalism: Beginner 5 Arcane Minor Heal: Beginner 5 Tame Animal: Beginner 9 Unassigned Attribute Points: 5 Unassigned Skill Points: 0"The fuck?"

was the only thing that managed to leave my mouth.

"What in God's name is going on?" Frank asked, blinking rapidly as he clearly exited a screen of his own.

"I don't know, but it sounds like we're in big trouble," I said, rubbing my temples.

"Are you okay, Frank? Not hurt? Where's Dan?"

"No, I'm fine, just confused. Dan was still in his truck," Frank said, shaking his head.

"Let's go get him." I moved toward the door, my mind racing.

"We need to make sure the women are okay. I know Denise loves a good storm, but she's going to be frantic after whatever that was. My mom will be too." We stepped outside just as Dan climbed out of his truck cab, looking completely uninjured but deeply rattled. As we walked toward him, I instinctively reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. The screen was completely black. I mashed the power button several times. Nothing.

"Does anyone's phone work?" I asked.

"Mine is bricked." Frank and Dan pulled theirs out, tapping the screens fruitlessly. A sinking feeling formed in the pit of my stomach.

"Dan, try starting your truck," I requested. Dan climbed back in and turned the key. Absolute silence. There wasn't even the clicking sound of a dying starter or a low battery. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. As Dan swore under his breath, I looked up from my phone and fully took in our surroundings. The blood drained from my face. The landscape was a scarred hellscape.

Blackened scorch marks and large, smoking craters pitted the earth, and sporadic brush fires were breaking out across the dry grasslands. We were out in the county area, so houses were sparse, but in the distance, I could see thick plumes of black smoke rising from a couple of residential roofs. They were burning. Trying to master my rising panic, I walked over to my own truck. The ignition was dead, the instrument panel dark, and the fuel pump completely silent.

I grabbed a long, rubber-handled Phillips screwdriver from my bed-mounted toolbox, popped the hood, and bridged the positive and negative terminals on the battery. A bright spark arced across the metal. The battery still held a charge.

"I think we're in worse trouble than I originally thought," I said, walking back over to the group and wiping my hands on my jeans.

"The battery has juice, but the internal circuits are fried. The phones, the truck computers, the job site generator... that storm was a massive electromagnetic pulse. An EMP. Did you guys get a weird message and a floating screen in your eyes right after it hit?" Both Dan and Frank nodded grimly.

"Okay. I don't know about you guys, but my top priority is getting back to my family," I said, mapping out the geography in my head. We were in Central California. I lived sixty miles south in a small, agricultural dust-bowl town. Frank and my mom lived about ten miles east of that. Dan was a bit luckier; his place was about thirty miles away, right at the halfway mark.

"If the vehicles are fried, we're walking."

"Dan, was your wife home today?" I asked. She was a registered nurse who did part-time elderly care. Dan was in his mid-sixties and had already pulled a thirty-year retirement from law enforcement, only working construction because he couldn't stand sitting still. It was a running joke between them, but right now, the humor was gone.

"She was supposed to be home," Dan said, his eyes scanning the horizon.

"We need to get moving as fast as possible. I'm worried about your mother out there alone," Frank added, his voice tight.

"She shouldn't be alone, Frank. My middle son, Alex, was heading over to her place this morning to help her with some baking," I reminded him. Alex was nineteen, smart as a whip, and built like an absolute ox.

"Besides, mom was raised on a farm. The second the power cut, she'd know to fill the bathtubs before the well pressure dropped so they'd have cooking and toilet water. She knows where the shotgun is, too, and Alex knows how to build a fire. They'll hold the line." I leaned against the truck fender.

"Do either of you know what to make of that status screen?" Dan admitted he was completely blind to it, and Frank only understood the bare minimum. My own background came in handy here. I'd been medically retired from the military, working construction to supplement my VA disability because airborne operations and a year in Iraq had absolutely wrecked my knees, back, and stomach. But in my younger days, I'd been a bit of a nerd.

I wasn't huge into Dungeons & Dragons, but I'd played Vampire: The Masquerade, and I had spent an unhealthy amount of hours playing Skyrim.

"I have a decent idea," I started, breaking down the mechanics into terms they could understand.

"Strength dictates physical force and carrying capacity. Constitution is your health, stamina, and resistance to environmental damage or poison. Dexterity is your balance and speed. Intelligence and Wisdom govern your mental acuity and mana pool—which is basically fuel for magic spells. Charisma handles how people perceive you." I pointed down at my own body.

"Look at your equipment entries. Right now, my status says my bright neon-yellow construction shirt gives me a negative ninety percent stealth rating, which makes sense. But my denim pants and steel-toed boots actually give me an Armor Class rating. In fact, the boots have a damage value of six with a twenty-five percent critical hit chance."

"So, what do we do with the points?" Frank asked.

"In games, some people 'min-max'—putting all their points into one stat to become a specialized glass cannon or a hulking brute. Personally, I like being well-rounded. And looking at my health bar, we need to focus on survival. I'm sitting at forty out of eighty health right now." I looked at them.

"Are you guys missing health too?" They both checked and confirmed they were. It was a revelation. The System had evaluated our physical bodies exactly as they were; my chronic, grinding back and knee pain from years of jumping out of planes and repelling out of helicopters, and hauling lumber was being categorized by the System as actual, ongoing physical damage.

"Well," I muttered, focusing my mind on the arcane tab in my vision.

"I have a spell called Minor Heal. Let's see if this junk actually works." As I focused on the spell, the information materialized in my thoughts. It was a basic Beginner-tier spell capable of restoring a chunk of health, costing fifty mana with a one-minute cooldown. But there was a custom modifier attached to the bottom: Due to your experience and training in first aid, your casting time has been reduced to zero. That tracked.

From my time in the Army completing the Combat LifeSaver course, to annual law enforcement first aid and CPR certifications during my eight years as a patrol and K-9 officer, I was the guy people sat next to if they wanted to pass the medical exams. I exited the screen, focused my intent on healing, and instantly felt a profound, warm surge of power erupt from my abdominal core. I pressed my hand to my chest. The effect was instantaneous and staggering. A wave of soothing energy washed through my joints.

The constant, burning ache in my lower vertebrae vanished. The fluid grinding in my knees completely ceased. I checked my status screen: my health had jumped significantly, and my mana pool had decreased to match the cast. Tears instantly welled in my eyes. For the first time in over a decade, I was entirely free of physical pain. Seeing the sheer awe on my face, Dan and Frank stared at me.

"It worked," I breathed, wiping my eyes and laughing roughly.

"It actually worked. I've got a one-minute cooldown, but I can top all of us off before we hit the road. While my mana pool recovers, we need to strip the job site and the trucks for supplies and weapons. Treat this like an apocalypse scenario." While they began sorting through the gear, I allocated my five unassigned attribute points. I poured four into Constitution to shore up my fragile health pool and one into Strength.

The moment I confirmed the choice, a violent, electrical pulse of warmth rippled through my muscles. The oppressive afternoon heat suddenly felt far more bearable, and my carrying capacity immediately updated to 120 pounds. I also checked my other spell: Tame Animal. It gave me a base chance to bring beasts under my will, but the System had added another custom modifier: Because of your training and experience with canines, you have a fifty percent chance of taming canines or canine hybrids.

Six years as a police K-9 handler, working with specialized German Shepherds and Malinois, had given me a massive head start. But the phrase canine hybrids left a cold dread in my gut. Were we about to face monsters? Shaking off the worry, I walked over to my truck and pulled my medium olive-drab rucksack—my get-home bag—from behind the seat.

I wasn't a doomsday prepper looking for the end of the world, but as a lifelong student of survival who ran a small bushcraft and survival blog, I never traveled out of town without an emergency kit. I quickly audited the rucksack, ensuring my broken-down MRE components, Top Ramen, tuna cans, and my precious backpacking water filtration pump were secure. I changed out of my neon construction shirt into a long-sleeve camouflage shirt from my pack. Immediately, the negative stealth debuff cleared from my vision.

I tested my small flashlights, but like the trucks, their delicate microchips were fried by the EMP. I kept my heavy steel-toed boots on for the damage rating. Next, I unbuckled my construction bags from my thick utility belt, keeping only the leather loop holding my framing hammer—a twenty-three-ounce "Drive Master" with a long red hickory handle that had been with me since I was a private in the military, even accompanying me to Iraq.

I slid my heavy, seven-inch Tom Brown Tracker survival knife onto the back of the belt horizontally, and my dedicated skinning knife on the left hip. An hour passed in a blur of frantic preparation. Frank packed our large cloth lunch cooler with sandwiches, Gatorades, and extra water bottles from the job site. For weapons, he secured his framing hammer and pulled an eight-pound sledgehammer from the truck bed to use as a brutal, two-handed breaching weapon.

His background as a first-degree black belt in kick boxing and Tae Kwon Do meant he knew exactly how to throw his weight behind a strike. Dan emptied a rugged canvas DeWalt tool bag, stuffing it with beef jerky, granola bars, and peanuts from his cab. He rolled up a canvas drop cloth to use as an emergency shelter, an idea I immediately copied by strapping a drop cloth to the top of my rucksack along with my military poncho liner—my beloved "Woobie."

For a weapon, Dan grabbed a long, heavy-duty aluminum telescoping paint handle. He had spent years training in Jeet Kune Do under a direct disciple of Bruce Lee; in his hands, that aluminum pole was a lethal bo staff. After cycling through several casting intervals of Minor Heal, I managed to completely top off my own health and knit away the lingering ailments and age-related fatigue plaguing Dan and Frank.

We stood by the edge of the asphalt, fully packed, staring down at the sprawling, smoking landscape of Central California.

"I don't know what the main roads are going to look like right now," I said, adjusting the straps of my rucksack and looking south.

"Panic is going to set in fast, and looting will follow. The county is a mix of grasslands, wooded patches, and irrigation canals. I think it's better if we head straight south, breaking brush and moving as the crow flies. We avoid the roadways entirely unless we have no choice. What do you guys think?" Dan and Frank looked at each other, then back to me. They adjusted their gear, their faces grimly resolved.

"Lead the way, Derrick," Frank said. Turning our backs on the dead vehicles, we stepped off the asphalt and pushed into the brush, stepping into a new world.