Noah Kim's sneakers scuffed against cracked asphalt as he trudged home from school, head bowed against the October wind. His backpack sagged with unopened textbooks, the straps digging into shoulders still bruised from yesterday's locker shove. *"Fatass." "Ugly fuck."* The words looped in his skull, syncopated with the *clack-clack* of his phone—a blur of TikTok dances he'd never have the confidence to mimic. He didn't see the truck.
The horn was a foghorn. The grill—chrome, cold—filled his vision.
Then, blackness.
***
Consciousness returned as a sting. Cold seeped into Noah's bare skin, gritty stone biting his palms. His lungs burned—*ozone?* Like the air after a thunderstorm. Blinking, he squinted at the cavern around him. The walls glowed faintly, veins of bioluminescent fungi pulsing cobalt and sickly green. *Alien*, he thought, but his brain rejected the word. This wasn't a sci-fi flick. This was…
"Wh-where—" His voice cracked. A thousand other voices answered.
Naked bodies crowded the cavern—men, women, children—huddled, screaming, or catatonic. A toddler wailed as a bearded man vomited bile onto the stone. Noah's throat tightened. *Dream. This is a dream.* But the chill was real. The stench of sweat and urine was real.
A flicker tore through his vision.
**[System Initializing…]**
Text hovered in jagged crimson glyphs, edges warping like corrupted code. Noah recoiled, but the words followed his gaze.
**[Welcome to Genesis.]**
**[Survival Protocol: Active.]**
**[Designation: Human #4471.]**
"What the hell—"
**[Tutorial Reward: Fire Affinity (Basic) Acquired.]**
**[Skill Unlocked: Fireball (Level 1).]**
Heat flared in Noah's chest. His fingertips prickled, as if holding a match too long. Across the cavern, a woman shrieked. Flames erupted from her hands, searing the arm of a man beside her. Chaos erupted.
Noah scrambled backward, palms scraping raw. The system's text pulsed aggressively:
**[Fireball (Level 1): Conjure a 6-inch combustible sphere. Warning: User is not fireproof.]**
"Stop it," he hissed. The glyphs didn't care.
A hand gripped his shoulder. Noah whirled to face a gaunt man in his thirties, eyes wild. "You see it too, right? The fucking… numbers?"
Before Noah could answer, a voice boomed from the cavern's ceiling—a distorted, synthetic baritone that vibrated Noah's molars:
**"Congratulations, lab rats. You're the first iteration. Let's see how long you last."**
The ground shuddered. Stone cracked, and a chasm split the crowd, swallowing a dozen screaming bodies. Noah's Fireball skill flickered in his vision, taunting him.
"Use it!" the gaunt man yelled. "Burn something!"
Noah's hands shook. He thrust them forward, imagining the TikTok bonfires he'd binge-watched. A tiny flame sputtered to life—a pathetic puff of orange. It died instantly.
**[Mana Insufficient.]**
**[Reminder: Mana regenerates via pain or fear.]**
Noah's stomach dropped. Across the cavern, a shirtless teen with a jagged scar grinned, electricity crackling between his fingers. "Sweet," he laughed, before driving a lightning-charged fist into a crying woman's ribs.
The system updated:
**[Human #1129 Eliminated.]**
**[Human #883 Level Up: Lightning Strike (Level 2).]**
Noah vomited. The gaunt man grabbed his arm, nails drawing blood. "We need to move. Now."
But where? The walls were closing in, the air thickening with smoke and screams. Noah's Fireball glyph pulsed, hungry.
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