Ethan stared at the dust cloud from the Porsche's tires, his mind racing through scenarios.
Worst case: Kyle posts screenshots of the admin menu to social media. Within an hour, every hacker and power-hungry lunatic on Earth is searching for Dev Nodes. The System detects the breach and locks down early. Ethan loses his seventy-two hour window.
Best case: Kyle is too stupid or too scared to understand what he saw. He goes home, assumes he hallucinated, and Ethan never sees him again.
Ethan didn't believe in best cases.
He pulled up his own System interface with a thought. The standard blue window appeared, but overlaid on top of it was something new—a golden administrative panel that flickered with lines of raw code.
[ADMINISTRATOR INTERFACE — CLEARANCE: OMEGA-7]
[TIME REMAINING: 71:56:18]
[AVAILABLE COMMANDS:]
Player ManagementItem DatabaseSkill RegistryMap EditorEntity Spawning (LOCKED)Economy ToolsQuest EditorCombat Algorithms
Seventy-one hours, fifty-six minutes.
He'd wasted four minutes dealing with that kid.
Ethan forced himself to focus. First priority: understand the admin tools. Second priority: exploit them before the window closed. Third priority: find Kyle and make sure he kept his mouth shut.
He tapped on "Player Management."
A search field appeared. Ethan typed: Kyle Venner
Nothing.
He frowned. Tried: Venner
Still nothing.
The System hadn't fully initialized player databases yet. Right—Integration had just started. Players were being registered in real-time as the System scanned every human on Earth. It would take at least an hour before names populated.
He could search by proximity instead.
[SEARCH: PLAYERS WITHIN 1KM RADIUS]
Two results appeared:
[Player_0000000001: Ethan Cross — Lvl 1]
[Player_0000000002: Kyle Venner — Lvl 1]
There. Player ID #2. The System had assigned Kyle the second player slot on the entire planet, probably because he'd been standing near the Integration point when it activated.
Ethan selected Kyle's profile.
[KYLE VENNER]
[AGE: 19]
[LEVEL: 1 | EXP: 0/100]
[CLASS: Unassigned]
[HP: 100/100 | MP: 50/50]
[STATUS: NORMAL]
[PERMISSIONS: Standard Player]
Standard permissions. Good. Whatever Kyle had seen when he touched the Dev Node residue, it hadn't granted him actual admin access. He'd probably just glimpsed Ethan's interface bleeding through.
But "probably" wasn't good enough.
Ethan scrolled through the admin commands, looking for... there.
[FORCE DISCONNECT PLAYER]
[WARNING: This command will forcibly log a player out of the System for 10 minutes. Use with caution. Excessive use may trigger anti-cheat protocols.]
Ten minutes. Enough time to catch up.
Ethan selected Kyle's player ID and confirmed the command.
Somewhere in the city, Kyle's System interface would vanish. He'd panic. Pull over. Try to figure out what happened.
Ethan ran for his car.
He found the Porsche two miles away, pulled over on the shoulder of a highway on-ramp. The driver's side door was open. Kyle stood beside it, frantically tapping at empty air where his System window should have been.
"Come on, come on," Kyle muttered. "What the hell? Did it crash? Can the apocalypse crash?"
Ethan pulled up behind him and got out.
Kyle spun around, eyes wide. "You! What did you do?"
"Shut up and listen," Ethan said.
"My interface is gone! I had—it was right there, I could see everything, and now it's—"
Ethan grabbed Kyle by the front of his leather jacket and slammed him against the Porsche's hood. Not hard enough to hurt. Just hard enough to make him stop talking.
"Listen," Ethan repeated, voice cold. "In forty-eight hours, your father's money will be worthless. In seventy-two hours, monsters will spawn in your penthouse. You want to survive? Shut up and do exactly what I say."
Kyle's face had gone pale. "How do you—who are you?"
"Someone who's already lived through the next ten years." Ethan released him. "I know what's coming. The Tutorial Quest. The Monster Waves. The safe zones that aren't safe. The government collapse. All of it."
"That's insane."
"Is it?" Ethan gestured at the sky. The cracks were still there, bleeding blue light. System windows floated in the air all around them. In the distance, someone screamed—probably the first monster spawn. "Look around, kid. What part of today is sane?"
Kyle opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the sky. When he spoke again, his voice was smaller. "What... what did I see? When I touched you. That golden screen."
"Admin access. A backdoor in the System. And you're going to forget you ever saw it."
"But I—I could use it. We could—"
"No," Ethan cut him off. "You don't have admin privileges. You saw my screen for five seconds because you touched residue from the Dev Node. That's it. You try to access admin commands, the System will flag you as a hacker and ban your account."
"Ban my—what does that even mean?"
"It means you die." Ethan let the words hang in the air. "The System doesn't do second chances. You break the rules, it deletes your player profile. And when your profile gets deleted, your body goes with it."
Kyle's face went from pale to gray. "You're lying."
"Am I?"
The teenager stared at him. Ethan could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. The fear. The disbelief. The slow, creeping realization that the world had just changed in ways he couldn't comprehend.
Finally, Kyle whispered, "What do you want from me?"
"I want you to make yourself useful."
"How?"
Ethan smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. "You're rich, aren't you?"
Twenty minutes later, they were in a 24-hour hardware superstore.
The store was chaos. News of the System had spread fast—people were panic-buying, filling carts with bottled water, canned food, batteries. A fistfight had broken out near the camping section. A security guard was trying to restore order and failing miserably.
No one paid attention to Ethan and Kyle.
"I don't understand," Kyle said as they walked past the panicking crowds. "Why are we buying construction supplies? Shouldn't we be getting weapons? Food?"
"Food spoils. Weapons break." Ethan grabbed a flatbed cart. "Infrastructure lasts."
He started loading items onto the cart with methodical precision. Industrial generators. Welding equipment. Steel sheets. Concrete mix. Rebar. Power tools. A portable water filtration system.
Kyle watched, bewildered. "This is insane. What are you building?"
"A city."
"A—what?"
Ethan didn't elaborate. He moved through the aisles like he was shopping from a list—which, in a sense, he was. He'd spent ten years learning which supplies mattered and which didn't. Food? Useless after the first monster wave contaminated the water supply. Guns? Great until you ran out of ammo. Medicine? Critical, but hard to stockpile.
But construction materials? Tools? Those were force multipliers. A generator could power a hundred people. A water filter could keep a settlement alive for years. Rebar and concrete could build walls that kept monsters out.
In his first timeline, Ethan had wasted his savings on survival kits and freeze-dried meals. He'd watched those supplies run out in weeks while other, smarter players built fortifications and thrived.
This time, he wasn't making that mistake.
"How much is this going to cost?" Kyle asked nervously as the cart filled up.
"A lot."
"I don't have—"
Ethan stopped. Turned. Looked Kyle dead in the eye. "You have your father's credit card, don't you?"
Kyle's hand instinctively went to his wallet. "How did you—"
"Because you're wearing a two-thousand-dollar jacket and driving a Porsche. Rich kids always have Daddy's emergency card." Ethan gestured at the cart. "This is your rent. You want to survive the next week? You pay for it."
"That's—this has to be fifty thousand dollars worth of—"
"Try two hundred thousand."
Kyle's eyes went huge. "My father will kill me!"
"Your father will be dead in seventy-two hours if he doesn't figure out the System fast." Ethan's voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. "The penthouse he lives in? It's a spawn zone for flying monsters. I watched it burn in Year One. Everyone inside died screaming."
The color drained from Kyle's face. "You're... you're lying. You have to be."
"I'm not. And you can save him, if you're smart." Ethan leaned in close. "Buy these supplies. Help me build a safe zone. When the monsters come, you bring your father there. He lives. You live. Everyone wins."
Kyle's hands were shaking. "And if I don't?"
"Then you're useless to me. And I leave you here to figure things out on your own." Ethan straightened. "Your choice. Make it fast. We're wasting time."
For a long moment, Kyle just stood there, trembling. Then, slowly, he pulled out his wallet. Extracted a black credit card.
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay. I'll do it."
"Smart kid."
They loaded the supplies into a reinforced truck Kyle purchased on the spot—another sixty thousand on the credit card, but it had a cargo bed that could handle the weight. The store's loading dock workers helped them pack it all, too distracted by the chaos to ask questions.
By the time they finished, it was 1:30 PM.
Ethan checked his admin interface. Seventy hours, twenty-eight minutes remaining.
He needed to move fast.
"Where are we going?" Kyle asked as they climbed into the truck.
"District 9. There's an abandoned warehouse that's going to be very important soon."
"Why?"
"Because in three days, a monster horde is going to tear through this city. That warehouse is outside the primary spawn zones. It's defensible. And it's big enough to hold a hundred people."
Kyle gripped the steering wheel. "A hundred people? You're really building a—a settlement?"
"A fortress," Ethan corrected. "And you're going to help me."
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then Kyle said, quietly, "You really lived through ten years of this?"
"Yeah."
"Did we... did humanity win?"
Ethan thought about the Abyssal Devourer. The Titan that had killed him on the fortress walls. The billions dead. The cities reduced to rubble.
"No," he said. "We lost. Badly."
"Then why are you trying again?"
"Because losing slowly is still better than dying fast." Ethan stared out the window at the city. At the people who didn't know they had days left to live. "And maybe, this time, I can change that."
Kyle didn't respond. But his hands tightened on the wheel, and he drove a little faster.
They reached the warehouse at 2:00 PM.
It was exactly as Ethan remembered—a massive concrete structure with rusted metal siding, located on the industrial outskirts of District 9. Graffiti covered the walls. Broken windows gaped like missing teeth. The chain-link fence around it had more holes than metal.
It was perfect.
"This is your fortress?" Kyle said, staring at the building. "It looks like a crack den."
"It's got good bones. Strong foundation. High ceilings. Loading docks for vehicles." Ethan hopped out of the truck. "And most importantly, it's not on anyone's radar. No one's going to fight us for it."
He opened his admin interface and navigated to the Map Editor.
[LOCATION: 37.4892° N, 126.8986° E]
[DESIGNATION: UNCLAIMED TERRITORY]
[CLAIM AS CONSTRUCTION ZONE? Y/N]
Ethan selected Yes.
The warehouse shuddered. The graffiti faded. The rust dissolved. The broken windows sealed themselves with faint blue energy barriers. The chain-link fence repaired itself, links knitting together like living metal.
A System notification appeared:
[CONSTRUCTION ZONE ESTABLISHED: "ZONE ALPHA"]
[ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE: STRUCTURE REINFORCED]
[BASE DURABILITY: 1,000/1,000]
[CAPACITY: 0/150 OCCUPANTS]
Kyle stumbled backward. "What the—did you just—"
"Admin tools." Ethan walked toward the warehouse entrance. The doors swung open automatically. "I can't build everything with admin commands—the System has limits—but I can designate foundations. Reinforce structures. Mark safe zones."
Inside, the warehouse was cavernous. Empty. Echoing. But the concrete floor was solid, the support pillars were intact, and there was enough space to house a small army.
Ethan smiled.
This was where it would begin.
"Start unloading the truck," he told Kyle. "Generators go on the east wall. Water filtration system in the northwest corner. Stack the steel sheets near the loading dock—we'll use them for barricades."
Kyle just stared at him. "You're serious. You're actually doing this."
"You want to live past Day Seven? Start unloading."
Kyle hesitated. Then, slowly, he nodded and headed back to the truck.
Ethan watched him go. The kid was soft. Entitled. Useless in a fight.
But he'd just funded the foundation of humanity's best chance at survival.
That made him valuable.
For now.
Ethan turned back to his admin interface. He had sixty-nine hours left. Time to start building his arsenal.
He navigated to the Skill Registry and opened the developer-only section.
[RESTRICTED SKILLS — DEV ACCESS REQUIRED]
A list appeared. Hundreds of skills. Thousands. All of them tagged with warnings:
[DO NOT GRANT TO PLAYERS — GAME-BREAKING]
[ADMIN TESTING ONLY]
[BALANCE PATCH PENDING]
Ethan scrolled through the list, searching. He'd heard rumors about these skills in his first timeline—mythical abilities that only NPCs possessed. Skills so powerful they'd been locked away from players entirely.
And then he found it.
[PARALLEL PROCESSING — UNIQUE-CLASS SKILL]
[DESCRIPTION: Allows the user to equip and level 3 separate Class skill trees simultaneously. EXP is divided equally among active Classes.]
[STATUS: RESTRICTED — This skill was removed from player access in Beta v0.3 due to balance concerns. Only 3 NPCs in the current build possess this skill.]
[WARNING: Granting this skill to a player may cause unforeseen progression imbalances.]
Ethan grinned.
Unforeseen progression imbalances. That was exactly what he needed.
In a normal playthrough, players chose one Class at Level 10. Warrior. Mage. Rogue. Whatever. You were locked into that Class for life. Want to learn magic as a Warrior? Too bad. Want to tank as a Mage? Tough luck.
But with Parallel Processing, Ethan could be three Classes at once.
A Combat specialist. A City Builder. A Crafter.
He'd level slower—dividing EXP three ways meant each Class would progress at 33% speed. But the versatility would be worth it. He could fight on the front lines, manage his settlement, and craft his own equipment, all without relying on anyone else.
He selected the skill.
[GRANT SKILL: PARALLEL PROCESSING TO PLAYER: ETHAN CROSS?]
[WARNING: THIS ACTION CANNOT BE UNDONE.]
[CONFIRM? Y/N]
Ethan didn't hesitate.
[YES]
His System interface flashed gold. Pain spiked through his skull—not physical pain, but a mental overload, like his brain was being rewritten. He gasped, fell to one knee.
And then it was over.
A new notification appeared:
[SKILL ACQUIRED: PARALLEL PROCESSING (UNIQUE)]
[YOU MAY NOW EQUIP UP TO 3 CLASS SKILL TREES.]
[CURRENT CLASSES: 0/3]
[NOTE: Class selection will become available at Level 10.]
Ethan stood, breathing hard. His vision swam for a moment, then stabilized.
He felt... different. Like his mind had expanded. He could sense three distinct "tracks" in his thoughts now, running parallel but separate. It would take practice to use them efficiently, but the potential was staggering.
This was just the beginning.
He checked the admin timer: 68:43:12
Sixty-eight hours left. Enough time to—
A notification appeared. Not in his admin interface. In his standard System window.
[NOTICE: TUTORIAL QUEST ASSIGNED TO ALL PLAYERS]
[QUEST: SURVIVE THE FIRST NIGHT]
[DESCRIPTION: The Integration has begun. Monsters will spawn at sundown. Survive until dawn.]
[REWARD: CLASS SELECTION TOKEN]
[FAILURE PENALTY: DEATH]
[TIME UNTIL SUNDOWN: 4:12:37]
Four hours.
Ethan remembered this quest. In his first timeline, it had a 4% completion rate. Most players didn't take it seriously—didn't understand that "survive" meant actual monsters, actual death. They'd treated it like a game until the goblins started spawning in their living rooms.
But this time, Ethan knew what was coming.
And he had something no one else did.
He opened the Quest Editor in his admin panel.
The Tutorial Quest appeared, its code laid bare:
[QUEST_ID: TUTORIAL_001]
[PARAMETERS:]
Spawn_Count: 10,000 (globally)Enemy_Type: Goblin_Scout (Lvl 3–5)Spawn_Locations: Urban_High_DensityCompletion_Requirement: Survive_8_Hours
Ethan could edit this. Change the spawn locations. Reduce the enemy count. Make it easier.
But as his cursor hovered over the parameters, another notification appeared:
[WARNING: EXTERNAL ADMIN DETECTED]
[USER: ████████ | CLEARANCE: OMEGA-9]
[MESSAGE: "Interesting. A Returnee? You've got guts using a Dev Node. Don't touch the Tutorial Quest. I'm watching. — A."]
Ethan froze.
Omega-9.
That was higher than his Omega-7 clearance. Which meant this person—this "A"—could overwrite anything he did.
He typed back into the interface: "Who are you?"
No response. The admin signature vanished.
But the message was clear: Someone else had admin access. Someone more powerful than him. And they were watching.
Ethan closed the Quest Editor. Fine. He wouldn't touch the Tutorial Quest.
He'd just prepare for it better than anyone else.
He turned toward the warehouse entrance, where Kyle was struggling to unload a generator.
"Kyle!" Ethan shouted. "Forget the generator. We've got four hours before the monsters spawn. We need to fortify this place now."
Kyle looked up, sweating. "Four hours? How do you—"
"Just trust me. Move!"
Ethan pulled up his admin interface one more time. Navigated to Item Database. Searched for: Defensive Structures
A list appeared:
[Basic Barricade — 500 Credits]
[Spike Trap — 200 Credits]
[Watchtower — 1,000 Credits]
[Reinforced Gate — 1,500 Credits]
Credits. System currency. Which he didn't have yet—the marketplace wouldn't unlock until midnight.
But he didn't need to buy them.
He had admin access.
Ethan selected [Basic Barricade] and navigated to the "Spawn Item" command.
[SPAWN BASIC BARRICADE x10?]
[COST: 5,000 CREDITS]
[ADMIN OVERRIDE: BYPASS COST? Y/N]
Ethan grinned.
[YES]
Ten barricades materialized around the warehouse perimeter—solid steel walls, eight feet tall, anchored into the concrete. They shimmered with faint blue System energy.
Kyle screamed.
"What the—did you just—how—"
"Admin tools," Ethan said again. "And we're just getting started."
He spawned spike traps. Watchtowers. A reinforced gate. The warehouse transformed from a decrepit ruin into a fortress in minutes.
[WARNING: EXCESSIVE ITEM SPAWNING DETECTED]
[ADMIN ANTI-CHEAT PROTOCOL: FLAGGED]
[CONTINUED ABUSE MAY RESULT IN PRIVILEGE REVOCATION]
Ethan stopped. Right. The System had limits. Spawn too much, too fast, and it would lock him out.
He'd have to be more careful.
But for now, the warehouse was defensible. Not impenetrable, but enough to survive the first night.
He checked the timer: 67:54:09
Sixty-seven hours left.
Enough time to prepare. Enough time to exploit every advantage he could find.
Enough time to rewrite the future.
Kyle approached him, pale and shaking. "This is real, isn't it? The apocalypse. The monsters. All of it."
"Yeah," Ethan said. "It's real."
"And you... you're really going to build a city? Fight back?"
Ethan looked at the warehouse. At the fortifications. At the supplies they'd stockpiled.
He thought about the Abyssal Devourer. The fortress that had fallen. The ten years of hell he'd lived through.
And he thought: Not this time.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm going to fight back."
Kyle nodded slowly. Then, surprising Ethan, he squared his shoulders. "Okay. Then... then I'm with you. Whatever it takes."
Ethan studied him. The rich kid who'd been a spoiled brat two hours ago. Who'd nearly ruined everything by seeing the admin menu.
But who'd also just spent two hundred thousand dollars without hesitation. Who'd helped unload supplies without complaint. Who was scared out of his mind but still standing here, ready to help.
Maybe Kyle wasn't completely useless after all.
"Good," Ethan said. "Because in three hours, the real game begins."
He turned back to his admin interface. Time to find the next exploit.
But as he did, a notification appeared—this time, not from the mysterious admin "A."
From the System itself.
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: FIRST TERRITORY ESTABLISHED]
[REWARD: CONSTRUCTION INTERFACE UNLOCKED]
[NEW ABILITY: ARCHITECT'S EYE]
Ethan opened the new ability description:
[ARCHITECT'S EYE — RARE SKILL]
[DESCRIPTION: Allows the user to designate building blueprints and construction zones. Buildings constructed within designated zones receive +20% durability and -30% resource cost.]
[NOTE: This skill is typically granted at Level 25 for City Builder Classes.]
A City Builder skill. At Level 1.
Ethan laughed.
The System was rewarding him for moving fast. For establishing territory before anyone else even understood what was happening.
This was exactly the kind of advantage he needed.
He activated [Architect's Eye] and looked at the warehouse with new vision. Glowing outlines appeared, highlighting structural weaknesses, optimal placement for defenses, expansion possibilities.
He could see the future of this place. The walls he'd build. The homes for survivors. The training grounds. The armory.
This wasn't just a warehouse anymore.
This was the seed of something greater.
[CONSTRUCTION ZONE ALPHA RENAMED: "THE BULWARK"]
Ethan smiled.
The Bulwark.
Humanity's last fortress.
And this time, it wouldn't fall.
[END OF CHAPTER 2]