James sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the blue interface that still hovered in his vision. His hands wouldn't stop shaking no matter how hard he tried to steady them.
[DESIGNATION CONFIRMED: CHALLENGER]
[TUTORIAL TRANSPORTATION WILL COMMENCE IN 30 MINUTES]
[PREPARE ACCORDINGLY]
The words glowed softly in the dim light of his bedroom. Thirty minutes until his life changed forever or ended trying.
James already knew what the towers were, had grown up with their history drilled into him through news broadcasts and classroom lessons and his father's warnings. Everyone knew the story by now.
The towers had appeared in 2030 across one hundred and ninety-five countries simultaneously. Massive obsidian spires that pierced the sky in every major population center on Earth. Governments tried everything to destroy them, to enter them, to understand what they were or where they came from.
Nuclear strikes left no marks on the black surfaces. Drilling equipment shattered against the material. The finest scientists in the world studied them for a decade and learned nothing useful.
For ten years, the towers just stood there in silence while humanity panicked and theorized and waited.
Then in 2040, they activated all at once.
Every human being aged eighteen and older heard the same voice in their heads on the same day. The System offered them a choice between Challenger and Civilian, between risk and safety, between power and normalcy.
Three hundred million people chose Challenger on that first day. They vanished into the Tutorial, transported to some separate space that existed outside normal reality.
Seventy-two hours later, only sixty million came back alive.
Two hundred and forty million corpses materialized in designated zones across the planet. The Tutorial had an eighty percent death rate, and that number had never changed in the ninety years since.
Not with prep schools teaching combat to wealthy teenagers. Not with government-funded training programs. Not with decades of accumulated knowledge about Tutorial strategies and survival tactics.
Eighty percent of people who chose Challenger died in the Tutorial. Always. The number never budged.
James's hands clenched into fists on his knees as the reality of that statistic settled over him again.
His father had told him about the Tutorial during one of their last conversations before his death. Patrick Ganner had survived his own Tutorial back in 2104 and climbed steadily through the tower for eighteen years before it finally killed him.
The Tutorial wasn't part of the tower itself, his father had explained. It existed in a separate space that the System created specifically to weed out the weak before they ever saw Floor 1.
Seventy-two hours that somehow felt like seven days. You got assigned a class, received basic starter gear, and learned one skill to begin with.
Then you fought for your life against whatever the System threw at you.
If you survived, Floor 1 unlocked and you became a real Challenger with access to the tower. If you died, your corpse got sent back to Earth for the government to identify and return to your family.
The tower itself was three hundred floors stacked vertically through some impossible space. Each floor presented a mission that had to be completed before you could progress. Kill specific monsters, clear entire dungeons, survive against overwhelming odds.
Death was permanent inside the tower. No respawns, no second chances, no safety nets of any kind.
Floors couldn't be revisited once you cleared them and moved forward. There was no farming easier levels for experience or loot. You climbed or you stopped climbing, and stopping usually meant dying.
James stood up from the bed and walked to his small window. Rain still fell outside, streaking down the glass in thin rivulets. Somewhere out there in Dublin, other eighteen-year-olds were probably sitting in expensive prep school dorms or family mansions, surrounded by trainers and support staff and every advantage money could buy.
James had none of that.
He'd never attended Challenger prep school because his mother couldn't afford the fees. The cheap schools cost fifty thousand euros per year. The elite academies charged two hundred thousand or more annually.
Rich families enrolled their children at age ten and drilled them for eight years straight. Weapons training, monster biology, team tactics, tower lore. Everything designed to push their Tutorial survival rate above that brutal eighty percent baseline.
James got street fights in the slums and bootleg Tutorial survivor videos from sketchy online forums. He'd taught himself what he could from free sources and hoped it would be enough.
His father had died eight years ago in the tower when James was only ten years old. Patrick Ganner had been a mid-tier Challenger, successful enough to support his family but not wealthy enough to be famous.
The tower killed him along with his entire team during what should have been a routine floor clear.
James's uncles had descended on the family finances within days of the funeral. His father's brothers took everything they could get their hands on through forged documents and bribed officials and lawyers his mother couldn't possibly afford to fight.
Five hundred thousand euros in savings vanished into their accounts. Two hundred thousand euros worth of loot and equipment got liquidated and pocketed. Fifty thousand euros in guild insurance somehow never reached his mother's hands.
She lost the house fighting them in court. Lost her job from missing too much work. Lost everything except James and the determination to keep him alive.
Now she worked seventy hours per week across three different jobs just to afford this cramped flat in Dublin's worst neighborhood. She was killing herself slowly to keep them housed and fed.
James had chosen Challenger to escape this endless poverty. To earn enough money to move his mother out of the slums and into somewhere safe. To climb higher than his father ever did and prove himself.
To make his uncles regret every euro they'd stolen, every lie they'd told, every night his mother cried herself to sleep from exhaustion.
The System chimed in his head again.
[TUTORIAL TRANSPORTATION IN 20 MINUTES]
James turned from the window and started changing his clothes. He pulled off his dinner outfit and changed into tracksuit bottoms, a fitted shirt, and a zip-up hoodie. Comfortable clothes that would let him move freely.
He laced up his trainers and tied them tight. Drank water from the tap in their tiny bathroom. Tried to eat a piece of bread but his stomach rejected it immediately.
The note still sat on his desk where he'd left it before dinner. White paper with black ink spelling out a promise he intended to keep.
"Mum, I'll come back. I promise. —J."
He would make those words true. The System didn't care about promises or determination, but James would survive anyway.
Eighty percent died regardless.
James checked his phone. Fifteen minutes left.
His mother was in the next room, probably still crying. He wanted to go to her, to hold her one more time, but what would he say that he hadn't already said at dinner?
The choice was made. The transport was coming.
[TUTORIAL TRANSPORTATION IN 10 MINUTES]
His heart hammered faster now. Ten minutes until everything changed or ended.
He sat back down on the bed and stared at his hands. They were still shaking despite his best efforts to control them.
In the next room, he could hear his mother moving around restlessly. She hadn't stopped crying since dinner ended. She knew what was coming and couldn't do anything to prevent it.
James wanted to go to her. Wanted to hold her one more time and tell her everything would be fine. But he couldn't make himself move from the bed.
What would he even say that he hadn't already said at dinner? She knew his reasons. She understood why he was doing this even if she hated it.
Going out there now would just make it harder for both of them.
[TUTORIAL TRANSPORTATION IN 5 MINUTES]
[PREPARE ACCORDINGLY]
Five minutes left.
James stood up again and moved to the center of his small room. There was barely enough space to stand without touching the bed or desk, but he needed to be on his feet when the transport came.
He thought about his father's last words before entering the tower for the final time. Patrick had knelt down to James's eye level, put both hands on his son's shoulders, and spoken quietly.
"Don't be a hero, James. Heroes die first in the tower. You survive by being smart, not brave."
His father had been smart for eighteen years. Then the tower killed him anyway.
The System chimed one final time.
[TUTORIAL TRANSPORTATION IN 60 SECONDS]
[REMAIN STATIONARY]
[COUNTDOWN COMMENCING]
Sixty seconds.
James closed his eyes and focused on breathing steadily. In and out. In and out.
Fifty-nine seconds.
His whole body tensed as the countdown continued in his head.
Fifty-eight seconds.
He thought about everything that had led him to this moment. The poverty, the stolen inheritance, his mother's exhausted face, his father's grave.
Forty-five seconds.
This was it. The actual point where his life split into two possible futures. Dead in the Tutorial or alive on Floor 1.
Thirty seconds.
His hands had stopped shaking somehow. The terror crystallized into something cold and focused.
Fifteen seconds.
James opened his eyes and stared at the peeling wallpaper of his bedroom one last time.
Ten seconds.
He would survive this. He had to survive this.
Five seconds.
Everything went silent except for his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Three seconds.
Two seconds.
One second.
[TRANSPORT INITIATING]