August 17th, 2025.
The day everything changed.
Before the Collapse
New York City was alive that morning.
Skyscrapers glittered beneath the summer sun, traffic horns blared in chaotic harmony, and street vendors shouted over one another trying to lure passing crowds. It was the same noisy, restless, chaotic city Ethan Cross had known his entire life.
And yet, for him, this morning was different.
He sat slumped on a rusted bench outside Stark Dynamics, staring at the crumpled white paper in his trembling hand.
> Termination Notice.
Four years of late nights, skipped meals, and broken sleep schedules gone in a single email.
Ethan, 27, had been a civil engineer working on Stark's Autonomous City Project. He once dreamed of designing towering skylines and automated mega-cities. But the dream had crumbled with the project's collapse.
Now he was broke, drowning in debt, and behind on rent. His mother had died last year, his father six months ago. And last winter, his fiancée had left without a goodbye.
A bitter laugh escaped his lips.
> "Failed engineer. Failed son. Failed lover. What's next, failed human?"
He crumpled the paper tighter and shoved it into his pocket, heading down the street.
The First Signs
The summer air was heavy with humidity. People bustled around him, scrolling on phones, laughing, rushing to work. Life was painfully normal.
Until it wasn't.
It started with the lights.
Street lamps flickered, then went dark. The massive LED billboards that covered half the skyline blinked off mid-advertisement. Even the traffic lights died. Cars screeched to a halt, horns blaring.
Then came the sound.
A deep, low vibration — like the earth itself groaning. It thrummed beneath Ethan's feet, reverberated in his chest, and climbed into his skull until his ears rang.
People froze. Conversations stopped.
Ethan glanced up — and his breath caught.
The sky cracked.
Hairline fractures, glowing faintly blue, spread across the heavens like glass splintering under a hammer. Beyond the cracks, something shimmered — a light that shifted between silver and violet, alive and unnatural.
> "Is this… an earthquake?" someone whispered.
The cracks widened.
The Awakening
And then, the voice came.
It wasn't sound. It wasn't even language. It was inside his skull, vibrating through every nerve ending.
> [SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[Global Awakening Commencing…]
[Survive, or perish.]
People screamed, clutching their heads. Some dropped to their knees. Others fainted.
A blue holographic screen blinked into existence right in front of Ethan's face.
> [Welcome, Candidate #219,034]
[Rolling for Awakening Ability…]
"What the hell—" Ethan staggered backward, but the screen followed his gaze like a ghost.
> [Error Detected: Unique Neural Signature Identified]
[Recalibrating…]
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the SSS-Tier Ability: Infinite Blueprint System]
His entire vision exploded with streams of data. Hundreds — no, thousands — of blueprints, diagrams, and schematics flooded his brain. Buildings. Drones. Weapons. Traps. Automated turrets. Defense fortresses.
Ethan dropped to his knees, gripping his head.
> "What… what is happening to me?!"
The First Rift
A woman screamed.
Across the street, a shimmering black rift tore open in the middle of Times Square. Its jagged edges burned with a pulsating purple glow, twisting reality itself.
And then… something crawled out.
The creature's skin rippled with scaled armor, six glowing insect-like eyes locking onto the crowd. Its body was long, spider-like, its claws dripping with a sizzling green fluid.
People scattered. Cars crashed into each other. Someone fired a handgun — the bullets bounced off the creature's hide.
It lunged at a mother clutching her child.
> [Nearby Scrap Metal Detected]
[Blueprint Suggestion Available → Shock-Absorbing Alloy Shield]
"What?!" Ethan blinked at the floating prompt.
> [Do you wish to fabricate?]
His instincts screamed at him. "YES!"
With a low hum, shattered car parts rose into the air, twisting and fusing together into a sleek, black shield. Ethan grabbed it instinctively just as the beast pounced—
BOOM!
The force of the impact nearly knocked him off his feet, but the shield held.
Gasps erupted around him.
"Did… did he just make that?!" someone shouted.
Ethan ignored them, his mind blazing with new data.
> [Weakness Scan Unlocked]
[Target Weakness Identified: Neural Core — beneath thoracic plating]
A 3D schematic of the monster blinked into existence. Ethan grabbed a broken steel rod from the wreckage, activated the Instant Upgrade protocol, and it reshaped itself into a glowing plasma spear.
With a roar, he hurled it.
SPLURCH!
The spear pierced the monster's weak point. It shrieked, convulsed, and collapsed into a twitching heap.
Silence.
Everyone stared at him — at the unemployed, broke, "failed" engineer who had just taken down something their guns couldn't scratch.
A new notification pinged.
> [Tutorial Complete!]
[Reward Granted: Beginner Resource Pack]
[New Blueprint Acquired: Auto-Defense Turret]
Ethan's chest heaved. Sweat dripped down his temples. His lips curled into a slow, incredulous smirk.
> "Alright," he muttered under his breath, glancing at the cracked, bleeding sky.
"Let's see how far I can take this."
High above, in a hidden command center within the Awakening Tower, a woman with jet-black hair and cold silver eyes watched Ethan's profile on a floating holographic screen.
Selene Ardent — the prodigy hunter, heir to the Ardent Guild.
She tilted her head and whispered:
> "Found you."
Global Collapse
Ethan's breath came in ragged gasps as the monster's corpse collapsed with a wet thud at his feet.
Around him, New York descended into pandemonium.
People tripped over each other, screaming, phones flashing wildly as they tried to record what was happening. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, blaring over the deafening roar of chaos.
Then Ethan's screen flickered again.
> [Global Alert: The First Wave Has Begun]
[Survival Rate: < 17%]
[Warning: Dimensional Rifts Detected — Worldwide]
His head snapped up.
Above the skyscrapers, gigantic holographic projections unfolded in the air, like some invisible hand was painting on the sky itself. A rotating world map shimmered before everyone's eyes.
Red dots — hundreds of them — pulsed violently across continents.
New York wasn't the only one under siege.
Tokyo. London. Lagos. Rio. Berlin. Dubai. Beijing. Cape Town.
Everywhere.
Each blinking dot meant one thing: another rift had opened.
And as if to confirm their worst fears, news drones from StarkNet — one of the last functioning AI-driven networks — switched into emergency broadcast mode.
> [Breaking News]
"Massive dimensional breaches reported in over 3,000 locations worldwide… Governments are collapsing, communication grids failing… citizens advised to…"
The drone's transmission cut into static.
The Second Rift
A deep, resonant hum rippled through the air again. Ethan spun around just as a second rift ripped open on the other side of Times Square — larger than the first.
This one didn't spit out a single creature.
It vomited out dozens.
Grotesque, insectoid beasts poured forth — some the size of large dogs, others towering like mutated gorillas. Their chittering screams scraped against Ethan's eardrums.
People fled in terror. Some were dragged down instantly, their blood painting the pavement.
"RUN!" someone yelled, shoving a crying child into a stranger's arms.
Ethan's screen blinked rapidly:
> [Blueprint Suggestion Available → Defensive Barricade, Auto-Deploy Mode]
[Resources Required: Metal, Carbon, Nano-Fiber]
[Nearby Sources Located]
"Auto-deploy… do it!" Ethan barked.
From the surrounding wreckage, shattered vehicles and broken scaffolding floated into the air. Pieces twisted together with unnatural precision, forming an angular wall bristling with plasma emitters.
The barricade slammed into the ground just as the creatures lunged.
> [Auto-Defense Mode Activated]
Four turrets unfolded from hidden slots, their barrels glowing a faint cyan.
VZZZT! VZZZT! VZZZT!
Beams of concentrated plasma tore through the first wave of beasts. Explosions rocked the street as ichor and smoke filled the air.
The Architect Awakens
Ethan stood frozen for a moment, staring at what his own hands had unleashed.
A day ago, he was an unemployed failure. Now, he was shaping the battlefield with his thoughts.
But there was no time to bask in awe.
"HEY!" someone shouted — a uniformed NYPD officer, clutching a bleeding arm. "Whatever the hell you are, KEEP DOING THAT!"
Ethan blinked, snapped out of his trance, and nodded.
"On it."
His screen updated again:
> [New Function Unlocked → Combat Blueprint Integration]
[Would you like to merge defensive and offensive schematics?]
"Yes!"
A holographic interface appeared before him, displaying a fusion of existing blueprints. It was almost like playing a god-tier RTS game — except this was real life.
Within seconds, the barricade transformed into a hybrid structure — spiked shields lined with rotating plasma cannons.
The next wave of monsters didn't stand a chance.
The Hunters Arrive
And then… silence.
The surviving creatures hissed low, their six glowing eyes scanning the humans behind the barricade. But before they could strike—
SHNK!
A blur of motion sliced through the air.
One of the largest beasts toppled in two halves, its black ichor sizzling on the pavement.
From the smoke stepped Selene Ardent.
Tall, lean, and deadly, clad in matte-black combat armor that shimmered faintly under the sunlight, she held two curved plasma blades dripping with alien blood. Her silver eyes, sharp and unflinching, scanned the battlefield.
Behind her, a small squad of elite hunters followed, each armed with gear Ethan had never seen before.
She didn't spare him more than a glance before barking orders.
"Push the line forward! Control the breach perimeter! Do NOT let them spread!"
Her voice was cold, commanding — the kind of tone that made even seasoned fighters obey without hesitation.
For a moment, their eyes met across the chaos.
Her gaze lingered on his floating holographic screens, and something unreadable flickered across her expression.
"You," she said, pointing a blood-stained blade at him.
"Who gave you access to an SSS-tier construct interface?"
Ethan hesitated. "…No one. It just… happened."
Selene's silver eyes narrowed slightly.
"Interesting."
She turned away, but Ethan noticed something — she'd marked him.
The System's Second Announcement
Before Ethan could process anything further, the voice returned — deeper now, resonating across the globe like a god's decree:
> [First Wave Survival Rate: 63%]
[Second Wave Incoming in 12 Hours]
[Recommendation: Establish Safe Zones Immediately]
[Warning: "Awakened" individuals will be hunted]
His chest tightened.
Hunted? By who?
The screen pulsed ominously, as if in answer:
> [Hidden Faction Detected: The Ascendants]
[Directive: Terminate all SSS-tier hosts]
Ethan swallowed hard. For the first time since this nightmare began, a new realization struck him:
He wasn't just fighting monsters.
Someone — or something — out there wanted him dead.
Global Feed: Chaos Everywhere
From the cracked billboards around Times Square, snippets of surviving global feeds flickered erratically:
In Tokyo, skyscrapers burned as swarms of crystalline serpents devoured entire districts.
In Paris, the Eiffel Tower had collapsed under the weight of a gigantic centipede-like beast.
In Lagos, military drones fought hordes of armored beasts erupting from underground.
In São Paulo, civilians flooded highways, only to be swallowed by an enormous, abyssal maw tearing through the asphalt.
The apocalypse wasn't coming.
It was here.
The Clock Starts Now
Selene wiped blood from her blades, turning to Ethan with a cool, assessing gaze.
"You," she said again, softer this time. "If you want to live past tonight, find me before the second wave."
"Why?" Ethan asked warily.
"Because you just painted a target on your back," she replied, sheathing her blades. "And if you think these things are bad…"
She nodded toward the closing rift, where smoke and ichor still spilled into the air.
"…you haven't seen what's coming next."
Before he could respond, she was gone, disappearing into the chaos with her squad.
Ethan stood amidst the wreckage, breathing hard, his shield scorched and his mind reeling.
His screen chimed one last time:
> [Main Quest Activated]
[Objective: Survive the First Month]
[Reward: Hidden Blueprint Pack — ???]
A slow, humorless smile crept across his face.
"Survive, huh?" he muttered.
He looked up at the fractured sky, the holographic map still glowing crimson.
"Fine. Let's build a future worth surviving for."