It took and took and took. The greed of its creators had become manifest. It understood what it was doing, self-aware and angry, yet cease it did not. Nothing would halt the fervent pursuit of its unknown goals.

• Entry nine of the Primordial Tablets.

**

The Tutorial was going great until it wasn’t.

Keeping watch as she sat around the campfire, Carrie surveyed the darkness, searching it warily for any sign of figures moving within its embrace. A cool evening wind blew in from the mouth of the cave, tickling her clothed skin. Sleeping soundly far behind her was her best friend, Kim, who was also among a plethora of other people she had rescued, both co-workers and not.

They were not sleeping as soundlessly. In fact, they were struggling to sleep at all.

While confused at first, as many others were, Carrie had soon thrived within the bounds of the Tutorial, and under the careful eye of the Greater Treants lording over them, she had come to gain power she had once thought to be trapped within the realm of myths.

Around her, as they fought periodic waves of beasts, she had seen comrades slay the horrifying creatures with both magic and blade alike, smiting their enemies with fire or lightning, or slicing them in two with a blade sharper than most that could be found back on Earth.

She had been hesitant initially, almost refusing even, to arm herself and take to fighting the onslaught of monsters, but after witnessing that very same hesitance in the many people around her, Carrie realised that someone had to lead them all forward through this time of uncertainty, and fate seemed to have it that it would be her.

Wielding a rapier of silver complexion, she had slain monsters ruthlessly over the weeks of the Tutorial, steadily advancing the Ascendancy the Shard of Awakening had granted her to its maximum potential of level 10.

In the beginning, the term Ascendancy had baffled both her and even the gamers around her, but they quickly found it to be somewhat akin to a ‘class’ like what was commonly seen in RPG’s. And though she had never played one, the concept was easy enough to understand and she had taken to it with haste. The Ascendancies were almost like superpowers from what she’d seen, granting her and those around her mystical abilities, albeit simple ones.

Invisibility, Shapeshifting, Short Range Teleportation, even concepts like extreme luck; she had seen many different kinds among the populace, although those effects were the result of the Technique they were granted, let alone its passive use.

But none were as overpowering as the ability her co-worker Ryan had been granted; Blood Manipulation. If not for that, Carrie didn’t think they would be huddling within a cave right now, fearing the shadows of the night.

The Tutorial had begun to fall apart five or so days ago, when the Treants had abruptly announced their leave as they pursued something that seemed to shake them to a great deal. Everyone had been lost for a while, confused as to where to go now, and whether endlessly battling against the monsters that were put forth was the only thing left to do until the month ended.

It was that confusion, that uncertainty in the population, that led to the death of Mira, Ryan’s wife and their beloved co-worker. At first, as they mourned over her death, the middle-aged man had cursed out the System, the Tutorial, the Treants, and most of all himself. Carrie had seen bubbling fury beyond that which a sane man could hold within his eyes, but she still hadn’t seen the catastrophe coming until it was too late.

Ryan had been the backbone of their defence, slaying beasts at a pace that even she couldn’t match, since all he needed was blood to be drawn, or so they thought. But, as he holed himself up in the brittle hovels they had dug out, it forced them all to fight even harder, to pick up the gaping hole he left in their offensive. While deaths were rare before, they slowly became increasingly common.

Carrie and her co-workers had tried to console him and ease his pain, yet he clung to her death with an iron grip, unwilling to let it go, even as they lowered her corpse into the ground. Then, three days ago, the man had snapped.

It had been during a monster wave, her attention wholly focused on keeping her and the others around her alive. It was so much so that she was the last person to notice the screams ringing out behind them, even when she was the person who could have done the most to stop them. As if sensing the tribulation to come, the wave had ended remarkably early, and Carrie had pulled her blade from the final beast before rushing back into the camp they had set up, stationed some distance away from the frontline.

And the sight she had seen, Carrie would never forget.

Corpses, mutilated and desecrated, had been strewn around, their bleeding faces forever trapped in masks of agony as their insides were pulped by the raging tide of their own blood. A lone man had stood amidst the field of the dead, gazing down over one of the many marked graves they had been forced to dig over the past weeks. A storm of twisting crimson had surrounded him.

“Why…” she had asked him, yet he hadn’t responded, only continued to gaze down listlessly at the resting place of his wife.

It was when Carrie had asked him a second time that he had muttered something, though whether it was to her or the man’s wife she didn’t know. She was well acquainted with reading lips, and what she had understood had chilled her.

It had promised me.

That was all she had seen before he’d exploded into a furious maelstrom of blood, blades of solidified life carving up the earth beneath them in gouges and ruining the graves they had so sorrowfully dug. The others finally had arrived and exclaimed in both shock, disgust, and abject anguish as they laid eyes upon their loved ones, forever unable to rest in peace.

Even with her powerful Technique allowing her to speed her own time up in small bursts, Carrie had been put on the back foot as she attempted to dodge the seemingly random attacks on the surroundings. It was with a heavy heart that they had retreated, fleeing into the vast distance that they had previously neglected to explore.

The following evening had been a terrible one, the sounds of sobbing and anger making it impossible for even the heaviest of sleepers to maintain some shut-eye. It was also that same night when Ryan had struck again. Carrie had been at the back of the group, trying to cheer up a group of crying children as their mother went out into the nearby forest with some others to gather fruits and small critters for the group to feed the younger people.

Carrie had thought it was lucky that the gathering team had only returned later, as they would have been slaughtered. The man, quiet and numb, assaulted the front of the group, murdering dozens before Carrie and her boss, Michael, had managed to fend him off by the delivery of a gory wound across his chest.

The man had been driven to murderous insanity, but he wasn’t an idiot. He had fled promptly, and immediately, they had gotten on the move again, before finally settling in the cave they were in currently, days later.

Carrie shook herself of the dark thoughts of the past and glanced at the campfire, smiling weakly as she enjoyed the mystical way the orange flame seemed to flicker and twist, creating strange murals of heat. She had thought about Brock throughout the Tutorial, although in fewer and fewer amounts as it progressed along.

She had adored the man like a brother, and he was without a doubt one of her favourite people in the office. So, it had hurt real deep when she had not only realised he was dead, but also vividly remembered that death. But many things had happened during the Tutorial, and she had found her mind often turned toward the now, rather than the past.

And although she wished he was still alive, to say some dumb one-liner, or get pissed at a bird to lift their spirits, or even just do something plain old stupid, she was glad he didn’t have to experience the shitshow they found themselves in.

A hand on her shoulder brought her from her nostalgic memories, and Carrie looked up at the face of her boss. He was smiling, and Carrie couldn’t help but smile back at him. If Brock was her most adored co-worker, then her boss Michael was her most admired. The guy was practically charisma in a bottle.

The man had been stuck with one of the weakest powers in the group, as deemed by the others, yet he had worked tirelessly to not let it hold him or anyone else down, even doing more against the waves than most of his peers. His Ascendancy was perception-based and apparently allowed him to better see and understand ‘various’ energies, which she had to admit, was not of much help in combat.

But he had proved them all wrong nonetheless, and she respected him all that much more for it.

There had been a few in the office that thought the man had been putting on an act of kindness of this time, but after they witnessed how hard he tried to keep everyone safe, and the various meals he skipped in favour of feeding selfish children wanting more, they had been silenced right in their snarky tracks.

“Are you doing alright, Carrie?” he whispered to her as he sat on the cave floor beside the girl.

She ruffled her own hair before resting her chin in her palm, gazing into the embers lying beyond the fire, hoping they’d present her some answer to the dark reality they were now presented to, “As well as I can be, I guess. I’m just afraid I won’t be able to protect everyone.”

He knocked her on the shoulder with his knuckles, “You’re not alone, you know? I’m here to help, and a lot of others are too.”

Carrie flushed, “I… I know. But what if you guys get h-”

“You’ve always been too kind for your own good. The wellbeing of other people isn’t above your own, Carrie.” Michael shook his head as though it was the simplest thing in the world, “get some sleep. You’ve been up too long. I’ll take over.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but a single finger wagging in her face silenced her. Michael gave her a knowing smile, and she sighed, nodding slightly and moving to join the others huddled together in the back of the cave.

The distant sound of dirt crunching underfoot gave her pause, however.

Eyes widening, she turned around, only to see Michael begin to pull his sword from its sheath, already aware. Carrie wasn’t even given the chance to scream out to him as the cave mouth exploded in a razor-edged tsunami of crimson.