The Titan of the Tutorial had no right to exist.
That was Ethan's first coherent thought as the creature finished emerging from the shattered floor. It stood forty feet tall, a nightmare assemblage of stone and sinew that defied biological logic. Six arms, each ending in a different weapon—sword, hammer, axe, spear, morning star, and something that looked like a giant meat hook. Its head was a smooth sphere of polished obsidian, featureless except for a single vertical crack that pulsed with crimson light.
[C-Rank Boss: Tutorial Titan]
[Level: 15]
[HP: 10,000/10,000]
[Special Abilities: ???]
Level 15. Against a group where the highest level was maybe 5 or 6. With ten thousand hit points against weapons that dealt double-digit damage at best.
This isn't a boss fight, Ethan realized. This is an execution.
The Titan's obsidian head swiveled, its crimson crack surveying the arena. For a terrible moment, it locked onto Ethan—the one participant standing in the navigation zone while everyone else clustered in the center.
Then it chose violence.
Its hammer-arm swept downward, and three people ceased to exist.
[Participant eliminated]
[Participant eliminated]
[Participant eliminated]
No bodies. No blood. They simply stopped, their status windows graying out and fading as the System erased them from the server. The survivors screamed—some running, some freezing, some pathetically swinging practice weapons at the colossus that had killed their friends.
Ethan's Glitch Vision was working overtime, scanning every inch of the Titan for something, anything exploitable. But the creature was clean. Too clean. Its collision boxes matched its physical form perfectly. Its attack patterns had no visible tells, no cooldown indicators, no vulnerable frames.
"No," he muttered. "No, that's wrong. Nothing is that clean."
He activated [Debug Sense], burning 50 MP to get a deeper look at the Titan's code.
[DEBUG SENSE: ANALYZING TARGET...]
[WARNING: Target has partial debug immunity]
[PARTIAL DATA RETRIEVED]
The skill struggled against whatever protection the boss had, but fragments of information leaked through:
//TUTORIAL TITAN v2.3 //Purpose: Eliminate speedrunners, punish exploiters //Design note: Adaptive difficulty based on participant average level //BUG: Arena geometry not properly included in attack calculations //STATUS: Known issue, not priority—participants should not survive long enough to matter
Arena geometry not properly included in attack calculations.
Ethan's heart surged. The boss's attacks calculated damage based on hitting players, but they didn't properly account for the arena's obstacles. If players positioned themselves correctly—behind pillars, inside the training zones' elevated platforms—the attacks would pass through the terrain instead of being blocked by it.
That was bad for defense. But it also meant the Titan's AI didn't see the geometry as an obstacle.
Which meant it wouldn't avoid it.
"EVERYONE!" Ethan's voice cracked as he screamed across the arena. "THE PILLARS! GET BEHIND THE PILLARS AND MAKE IT CHASE YOU!"
Most people were too panicked to listen. But a few—the ones who'd survived the first night, the ones who'd already learned that hesitation meant death—moved.
Maya was among them. She sprinted toward the nearest support column, a decorative piece of tutorial architecture that served no apparent purpose. The Titan's spear-arm stabbed toward her, passing through the pillar as if it didn't exist—
—and lodging in the floor on the other side.
[TUTORIAL TITAN: Attack missed]
[Weapon temporarily stuck: 3.2 seconds]
The boss tried to pull its arm free, its AI struggling to process why it couldn't move. It didn't understand that the pillar existed. Its pathfinding and its attack calculations used different geometry maps.
"NOW!" Ethan was already running toward the Titan's exposed flank. "HIT IT WHILE IT'S STUCK!"
A Warrior—Kevin, he realized, the big guy from the survivor group—slammed into the Titan's leg with a training sword that shattered on impact. But the sword wasn't what mattered. What mattered was the red damage number that flickered above the point of contact:
[-12]
Twelve damage against ten thousand HP. Laughable. Except there were still over 200 participants in the arena, and the Titan had just demonstrated that it could be immobilized.
"Form groups!" Maya was shouting now, her crowd-control instincts kicking in. "Twenty people per pillar! Make it chase you, then attack when it's stuck!"
The strategy spread like wildfire. Desperate people would grab onto any plan, any hope. Within thirty seconds, the survivors had organized themselves into ragged clusters around the arena's support pillars.
The Titan's hammer-arm came down on another group, but they scattered in time, and the weapon lodged in the floor. Ten people swarmed it, dealing a collective 150 damage before it pulled free.
[Tutorial Titan HP: 9,850/10,000]
Progress. Glacial, bloody progress—another attack caught three participants who moved too slowly—but progress.
Ethan circled the battle, his mind racing. At this rate, they'd kill the Titan eventually. But the casualties would be devastating. Fifty percent losses? Seventy? The monster was still adapting, learning to attack where the pillars weren't, forcing groups to relocate.
He needed something bigger. A force multiplier.
His eyes found the completion monument in the center of the arena. The leaderboard pillar. Still glowing with its invitation to finish the tutorial first.
And beneath it, visible only to his Glitch Vision, the override code that the speedrunner trap had been built on.
The boss had been designed to kill speedrunners. But the kill mechanism was separate from the spawn mechanism. If he could access the kill code directly, bypass the completion trigger, and manually initiate the punishment protocol...
It would target him. Specifically and exclusively.
The Titan would stop attacking the group and focus its full fury on one person.
That's suicide, the sane part of his brain pointed out.
That's a speedrun, the other part replied. Hit the trigger, survive long enough for the group to DPS the boss to death while it's distracted.
Ethan had done harder runs. Probably. Maybe.
He ran.
The monument was a nightmare to reach. The Titan seemed to sense his intent, sweeping its meat-hook arm in a wide arc that caught two participants and sent Ethan diving to the floor. His HP dropped from a glancing blow:
[HP: 150 → 112]
But he kept moving. The monument's base was only meters away. His Glitch Vision highlighted the access point—a thin seam in the decorative stonework where the monument's code could be manually edited.
He slammed his palm against the seam.
[ACCESSING DEVELOPER CONSOLE...]
[WARNING: Unauthorized access detected]
[Initiating countermeasures...]
No time for countermeasures. Ethan's fingers danced through the holographic interface that appeared before him, navigating the tutorial's underlying code with the speed of someone who'd spent six years finding shortcuts in corporate software.
SPEEDRUNNER_PUNISHMENT.EXECUTE() TARGET: CURRENT_USER OVERRIDE: STANDARD_AGGRO DURATION: UNTIL_TARGET_ELIMINATED OR BOSS_ELIMINATED
He hit confirm.
[TUTORIAL TITAN: NEW TARGET ACQUIRED]
[AGGRO LOCKED: Ethan Cross]
[PRIORITY: MAXIMUM]
The Titan's obsidian head snapped toward him. All six arms raised simultaneously. The crimson crack in its face split wider, revealing a maw of grinding stone teeth.
It roared.
And Ethan Cross became the most wanted man in the tutorial.
The next three minutes were the longest of his life.
Running. Dodging. Weaving between pillars that the Titan's attacks phased through but which his own body could shelter behind. The monster was fast—impossibly fast for something so large—but its attack animations had wind-up. Frames where the arms pulled back before striking. Frames where, if you knew to look, you could predict exactly where death was about to land.
Ethan knew to look.
[HP: 112 → 89] —near-miss from the axe, shrapnel damage [HP: 89 → 67] —hammer strike hit the pillar behind him, shockwave clipped him [HP: 67 → 45] —spear thrust, had to take a hit to bait a stuck attack
Behind him, the survivors were doing their job. With the Titan ignoring them completely, they could attack freely. Damage numbers stacked:
[Tutorial Titan HP: 8,000/10,000]
[Tutorial Titan HP: 6,500/10,000]
[Tutorial Titan HP: 5,000/10,000]
Halfway there.
Ethan's stamina was failing. His HP was critical. But the Titan was getting sloppy too—its attack patterns becoming more desperate, less precise. More of its arms were getting stuck as it overcommitted to killing him.
"Just die already!" Kevin's voice, raw with fury, as he drove a sword into the Titan's ankle joint.
[-45]
That's more than his sword should do. Ethan's Glitch Vision caught it—the ankle joint had a damage multiplier, a weak point that activated when the Titan was below 50% HP. "THE ANKLES! HIT THE ANKLES!"
The call went up. Suddenly every melee fighter was targeting the same spot. The damage numbers doubled, tripled:
[Tutorial Titan HP: 3,000/10,000]
[Tutorial Titan HP: 1,500/10,000]
[Tutorial Titan HP: 500/10,000]
The Titan screamed—a sound like grinding boulders—and brought all six arms down in a synchronized strike.
The arena floor cracked.
Everything went white.
[TUTORIAL TITAN ELIMINATED]
[Participants Remaining: 189/247]
[Tutorial Phase: COMPLETE]
[ACHIEVEMENT: TUTORIAL SURVIVOR] You survived the Tutorial Boss. Reward: +1,000 XP, Title [Survivor], Random Skill Book ×1
[ACHIEVEMENT: DECOY MASTER] You held a boss's aggro for more than 180 seconds. Reward: +500 XP, Title [The Bait], +5 AGI
[LEVEL UP!]
[Ethan Cross: Level 5 → Level 8]
[+15 Stat Points]
[+3 Skill Points]
Ethan lay on his back in the rubble of what had been the tutorial arena. His HP was at 12. His clothes were torn, scorched, and covered in stone dust. Everything hurt in ways he didn't have words for.
But he was alive.
A shadow fell over him. Maya's face appeared, her expression caught between relief and exasperation.
"You're insane," she said. "You know that, right? Clinically, certifiably insane."
"Worked, didn't it?"
She didn't argue.
Around them, the survivors were picking themselves up, some crying, some laughing, all of them processing the impossible thing they'd just accomplished. 189 people had entered the Tutorial. 189 people had left.
No—wait. 247 entered. 189 survived. 58 dead.
Ethan's victory soured. 58 people were gone because some idiot had hit the wrong training dummy. 58 people who might have lived if the Tutorial Boss had never spawned.
"It's not your fault."
He looked at Maya. She was watching him with those too-sharp eyes.
"The trigger," she said. "It wasn't your exploit that set it off. It was an accident. Random chance."
"I know."
"Then why do you look like you're counting bodies?"
Because that's what QA testers do, he didn't say. They count bugs. They count crashes. They count the number of times the system failed and how many users were affected.
Before he could answer, a new notification appeared:
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT]
[Tutorial Phase Complete: Sector 447-A]
[Top Performers:]
[1. Ethan Cross - Level 8 - Class: ANOMALY - Achievements: 4]
[2. Kevin Price - Level 6 - Class: Warrior - Achievements: 1]
[3. Maya Chen - Level 5 - Class: Ranger - Achievements: 1]
[...]
His name. Broadcast to everyone. Along with his class—which wasn't supposed to exist—and his achievement count.
The survivors were staring at him now. Not with gratitude. With something between awe and fear. He was the guy who'd held the boss's attention. The guy whose impossible tactics had saved half the group. The guy whose "class" was listed as ANOMALY.
A man in expensive clothes pushed through the crowd. His status window marked him as Level 4, Warrior, and his equipment—actual equipment, not training gear—glittered with the faint shimmer of early-game rare items.
[Victor Kane]
[Level: 4]
[Class: Warrior]
[Guild: Apex Dominion (Founder)]
"Ethan Cross." Victor Kane's smile was all teeth. "I've been watching you. That was... impressive work. Unconventional, but impressive."
Ethan pulled himself to his feet, suppressing a wince. "Thanks."
"I'm putting together a guild. The best of the best. People who know how to win in this new world." Victor extended a hand. "I think you'd be a valuable addition."
Behind Victor, Ethan could see others gathering. People in matching armbands. A guild, already forming, already recruiting. Rich kid energy radiated from their leader like heat from a furnace.
Ethan's Glitch Vision flickered, automatically analyzing Victor's equipment. The items were good. Too good for a Level 4 who'd only been in the System for hours. Which meant either obscene luck or...
There. In the corner of Victor's status window, almost hidden:
[Premium Account: Active]
[Coins Purchased: 50,000]
[Gacha Rolls: 127]
Pay to win.
"I appreciate the offer," Ethan said, keeping his voice neutral. "But I work better alone."
Victor's smile didn't waver, but something cold flickered in his eyes. "Think about it. The safe zones are opening soon. Things are going to get... competitive. You'll want friends."
He turned and walked away, his entourage following.
Maya watched them go. "You just made an enemy."
"Probably." Ethan pulled up his stat allocation, finally dumping the points he'd been hoarding. 10 into VIT, 5 into AGI. Survivability and mobility. "But I wasn't going to be his hired exploit-finder. I've done that job before."
"At Nexus Interactive?"
He didn't answer.
A new notification pulsed:
[SAFE ZONE ALPHA: NOW ACCESSIBLE]
[Teleportation available in: 00:05:00]
[Prepare for the next phase of survival]
The Tutorial was over.
The real game was about to begin.