[Timer: 96:00:05]
Only three hours had passed since the onset of the cosmic invasion. Three hours were enough to collapse thousands of years of human civilization, along with all its achievements and arrogance.
Cities that took centuries to build were reduced to open mass graves. But the most terrifying truth didn't descend from the sky. The monsters weren't the sole cause of this horrific downfall.
It was the damned message from the "Cosmic Overlord" echoing in their minds.
That poisonous notification unleashed the true monster. The primal beast lurking inside every human, long chained by laws and religions, was finally set free.
There was no longer any law, morality, or values. The moment the System announced its bloody survival bounty, the masks of civilization shattered.
Anyone holding a weapon—be it a handgun, a kitchen knife, or a heavy sledgehammer—began harvesting souls with absolute brutality. It didn't matter if the victim was a crying child, a terrified woman, or an old man begging on his knees.
The new rule of this sick world was simple and direct: Kill to survive.
In a matter of minutes, humanity shed every ounce of empathy it had built.
Outside, deformed entities continued pouring from the spatial rifts without pause, turning streets into rivers of acid and blood. Meanwhile, political leaders, financial tycoons, and mega-corporation elites sheltered in the deepest, most fortified bunkers.
These shelters were designed with bleeding-edge technology to withstand direct nuclear strikes. The elite naively believed their money and power hadn't completely lost their value yet.
But the threat didn't come from monsters breaching those steel walls. It came from within.
Inside a luxurious, packed bunker in the heart of Seoul, where dim lighting reflected off titanium walls, a famous businessman backed away until he hit the cold metal.
His plump body trembled in terror, cold sweat dripping from his brow. His wide eyes were fixated on a scrawny college student wielding a survival cleaver dripping with fresh human blood.
"Don't kill me! I'll give you a million dollars... A million dollars to everyone here who lets me live!" screamed the billionaire.
This was a man who just yesterday controlled the fates of thousands with a single word. He actually believed his green paper still held weight on the scales of life and death.
A heavy silence draped over the lavish bunker, broken only by the sound of blood dripping from the cleaver. Then, the college student erupted into hysterical, manic laughter that shook the vault.
"Are you an idiot?" the young man spat with extreme bitterness and contempt, pure madness gleaming in his pupils. "The planet is burning above our heads, what the hell am I going to do with your fucking paper in hell?"
Taking another step forward, he raised his blood-soaked arm.
"Take your money and see if it buys you a spot in the grave!" he added with vindictive glee.
Without giving the old man a chance to scream, the student swung his cleaver high. With one brutal strike containing all his might...
SLASH!
He cleaved the billionaire's head perfectly in half like a rotten watermelon. A fountain of hot, sticky blood sprayed violently, painting the white walls and the faces of the shocked bystanders frozen in place.
This gruesome scene, which wouldn't have crossed humanity's most twisted nightmares mere hours ago, was now the standard routine across every inch of the dying planet.
The college student didn't just kill the billionaire out of class hatred. He needed to kill five more people to complete his quota of 10 victims and secure the Cosmic System's promised safety.
Simultaneously, in another world entirely beneath those direct massacres—in the dark bowels of the city—the nineteen-year-old boy sprinted with the agility of a feral cat through the sewer network.
He paid no mind to the pitch-black darkness wrapping around him like a shroud, nor the suffocating stench of methane filling his lungs. This had been his world for years. His maze, memorized by heart.
Suddenly, he froze.
His sharp ears picked up faint whispers echoing from the end of a narrow side-tunnel to his right. He approached with the silent footsteps of a ghost, cautiously hiding behind a massive rusted pipe to observe from the shadows.
In that dim corner, fourteen people were hiding. Young men and women, alongside two shivering old folks.
He recognized a few faces under the faint light leaking through a crack in the ceiling. They were just like him: homeless, the street scum of the opulent society living above them.
They huddled in a tight circle, shivering and gasping for breath. In their extreme naivety, they believed they had found temporary safety in this forgotten basement. But security in this new era was nothing but a fatal illusion.
As some drifted to sleep from sheer physical and mental exhaustion, one of the young women stood up with agonizing slowness. Her body moved with terrifying automation.
Her bloodshot eyes were dilated with pure insanity, reflecting an internal struggle where savage instinct had won out. Since reading the Cosmic Ruler's notification, her mind boiled with a single thought: Survive at any cost.
She pulled a filthy, rusted knife from her coat pocket. Without a blink or a tremor in her hand... the silent massacre began.
Slash! Stab! Squelch!
In a matter of seconds, moving with the frantic, bloody speed of a sewing machine, she stabbed eleven unarmed people locked in deep sleep.
She buried her blade repeatedly into necks, chests, and stomachs without an ounce of mercy. Their sleep was converted into inevitable death before they even realized who killed them.
Blood cascaded, mixing with the sewage. Only three people remained alive in the narrow tunnel: the panting, blood-drenched maniac girl, and two scrawny young men who scrambled backward until their backs hit the damp wall.
The cruelest, most horrifying irony of this scene was that the two boys didn't scream for help or try to stop her.
They seemed to have simply accepted this new, twisted reality. Yesterday, they were friends sharing a crust of bread; today, they were just numbers to be harvested for individual survival.
The young protagonist watched this nightmarish spectacle from his hiding spot behind the pipe with eyes as cold as death. He didn't move an inch to save anyone. He didn't blink out of sympathy. To him, this was a highly predictable bloody theater.
Suddenly... SWOOSH!
Two reptilian beasts dropped from the partially open tunnel ceiling.
They were nightmarish creatures resembling giant lizards, boasting buzzsaw-like jaws and glowing yellow eyes radiating predatory intent. The three survivors froze, the air catching in their lungs.
The filthy knife slipped from the trembling girl's hand. She screamed in absolute hysteria, pointing a shaking finger at the phantom screen only she could see.
"No! I killed eleven people! I completed the quest! I'm safe... stay away from me!"
But monsters don't read System screens!
Thick, acidic drool dripped from the beasts' maws as they slowly, gleefully approached the fresh human banquet reeking of blood.
In a moment of pure terror and human cowardice, the girl shoved one of the scrawny boys forward with both hands. He fell directly in front of the first beast—a grotesque attempt to buy a few seconds for her own life.
CRUNCH!
The first beast snapped the fallen boy's head off in one swift bite. It began swallowing his body ravenously. The sound of shattering bones and tearing tissue echoed in the narrow tunnel like firewood crackling in a furnace.
The second beast ignored the other boy plastered against the wall and lunged straight for the fleeing girl.
She wasn't spared, despite the blood of eleven people staining her hands, despite completing the "quest" the System demanded.
It was a lie. A sick, filthy, cosmic April Fool's joke.
Human intelligence and the arrogance built over millennia evaporated so quickly that they blindly believed a passing notification from an unknown entity playing with them like a child with an ant farm. The System granted no protection. There was no hidden "Aura of Safety."
The girl's hysterical screams echoed through the tunnels—screams of agony and torment that shattered the spine and deafened the ears.
The beasts didn't kill her quickly. They tasted her slowly, sadistically. The first beast severed her arm with its saw-like claws to chew on it, while the second lunged to rip her leg from the thigh.
Squelch... Drip.
She was eaten alive, forced to watch her own flesh being torn from her body in the most horrific spectacle imaginable.
Finally, in a finishing blow to end her suffering, one beast crushed her head between its jaws. Simultaneously, the other sank its razor-sharp fangs into her stomach and chest, spilling her entrails onto the floor.
A sticky, terrifying silence fell over the dark corridor, broken only by the grotesque sounds of chewing and human flesh tearing between alien jaws.
When the two beasts finished their heavy meal, they still weren't full. They raised their blood-drenched heads and focused their acute senses into the darkness.
With deliberate slowness, they looked toward the end of the dark tunnel, right where the young man stood hidden behind the rusted pipe.
Swoosh...
The darkness parted just a fraction. The cold, animalistic yellow eyes of the beasts locked onto the dead, abyssal eyes of the young man.
Not a single trace of fear crossed his face. This was the first true encounter in a world where survival belonged only to the coldest, and the most savage.