Ray was once again in the black void of nothingness. He finally remembered what had happened in his supposed dream. Realising it may not have been a dream at all, maybe it was a premonition. It haunted Ray. He had followed the scene to the exact ending and hadn’t even paused to think about it. He couldn’t feel the stream, or the dirt, or the burn in his throat anymore, but he could remember it clearly enough that his stomach still twisted. The worst part was how familiar it had been. Like his mind had been shown the route and then forced to walk it anyway.

  [System Error…. Breaking Glitch Found…. Rollback Start…. Unsuccessful]

  [Error…. Error….]

  [System Override Accepted….]

  The system messages suddenly changed. Instead of being robotic, they began to sound more like a middle-aged man. It was still inside his head, but the tone had shifted into something smoother, almost like it was trying to sound reasonable. Ray didn’t like that. It felt deliberate, like it was trying a different method because the first one had not worked.

  [The System Welcomes Ray Atton. You have died. Errors have been overridden. Please accept the system to continue. Please think the term: I accept]

  Ray knew one thing. When someone wanted you to accept something blindly it was usually too good to be true. The fact that this “system” had made changes to its sound felt extremely suspicious to Ray as well. If it was truly a system, a machine, then it should not care how it sounded. The only reason to change was to influence him.

  “I Decline”

  [The system wishes to rectify its errors. Please accept so we may proceed]

  “Look here… I don’t know who you think this ‘we’ is, I thought you were ‘the system’. I have no intention of accepting something I don’t understand. It sounds like I’m being fucked sideways here”

  Back to the robotic voice.

  [Explanation Granted…. The System is a collective conscious… We wish for you to join us… Dictate Universe…. Consent Required…. Please Accept…]

  Ray was starting to get annoyed. “Mate… If you think I’m going to become some hive robot, you got another thing coming buddy. That’s a hard decline. Either let me die or send me back to earth, this is a stupid waste of time”

  [The System only wants what is best for… Individual Ray Atton…. Please confirm you have declined integration]

  “I confirm that I have declined integration, now do what you have to” Whilst Ray feared death, he feared being part of a collective more. He would rather die free then be a slave to this system.

  [Ray Atton… Choice Accepted… Please Wait…]

  It’s not like Ray could do anything else. He didn’t even think he was alive at this point. As far as he could tell, either he’d gone mentally insane, in which case, just shoot him now, or his planet had blown up and he was somehow stuck in a void. Either way, everyone he knew and loved was gone. He’d never see his parents, brothers, or friends again. Was life even worth living?

  While Ray was waiting, the thought hit him. He was alone. His family and friends, dead. It was at that moment Rays mind snapped, depression was sinking in. He had been running on anger and panic since the sirens, and now there was nothing to do but sit in the silence and let reality settle. The system had taken away the one comfort he had left, which was the idea that maybe he would wake up in his apartment and laugh about how stupid the nightmare was.

  “Just let me die. My life is over, why keep me here?”

  [Declined… Decision Made… You will be resurrected as: Outcast… We will provide you with the system benefit of your role… You will be resurrected as follows:]

  Ray could suddenly comprehend in his mind something that looked very similar to a character sheet from an RPG game. It wasn’t vague or hazy like imagination, it was clean and readable, like it belonged there.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Ray noticed that there was a button in the top right corner for more information. He clicked the button to be left with some additional tabs such as alignment and class which were both empty. Two sections drew his interest however:

  Ray sat on that line for a moment, staring at it as if staring would make it less real. Unique 1/1. Congratulations. The wording was so smug it almost felt personal, like the system was mocking him for having the nerve to refuse. He didn’t feel lucky. He felt cornered. The more he read, the more it sounded like a contract he’d been forced into without signing. You shun the system, the system shuns you, and the world conveniently rearranges itself so you struggle for it. The one time bonus was the part that stuck in his throat. Call the system to you. Return to the void. Make a final decision. It wasn’t a reward. It was a leash with a single yank allowed.

  He clicked through the other empty tabs again, hoping there was a hidden explanation buried somewhere. Alignment empty. Class empty. Everything that could actually help him survive was missing, while the punishments were written in perfect detail. Human-Error (F). Level 1 (F). Even the brackets felt like the system was stamping him with a defect tag. Ray had seen enough corporate systems to know what an error flag meant. It meant you were a problem to be managed, not a person to be helped. He wanted to ask what the F stood for, but he already knew how this worked. The system did not answer questions unless it wanted to, and it only offered explanations when it benefited the system.

  Ray forced himself to breathe, or whatever passed for breathing in the void, and tried to think like he did at work when something didn’t add up. What did he actually know? Earth was gone, or the system claimed it was. He was being moved to a place called Arkus. He wasn’t registered. The system had overridden something to deploy him anyway, which meant something had gone wrong and it didn’t want to admit it. Now it was punishing him for not accepting integration, but still keeping him alive. That told him one important thing. The system needed him alive for something, even if it didn’t want to say why. If it truly didn’t care, it would have let him disappear into nothing. Instead it had labelled him, punished him, and continued the process like he was still useful.

  Well that wasn’t ominous at all. The System clearly wanted him to have a hard time. He supposed that his luck had increased due to surviving an encounter like this one with the system, otherwise, everything was a disadvantage. Could he trade with anyone? This sucked.

  Further, Ray was a Human-Error. What did that mean? How did it effect things? There was no explanation of this anywhere. Before he could ask, the System began to speak in the male voice again.

  [We have denied your request at death. You will live but will be punished by the system. You will resurrect in the same place that you died. You will not be provided with any further items or help and will be unable to trade with System entities. You may contact us directly once. At this point, you may wish to change your decision. We wish you luck.]

  [Now Respawning in Arkus.]

  Ray opened his eyes. His head felt like it was splitting, he was laying face down in the dirt, throat still burning from the liquid he had ingested. He took about 5 minutes to sit up and when he finally did, he wished he hadn’t. He was clearly not in any condition to move.

  Once he managed to take stock of his situation, he had noticed that there weren’t one but two flashing lights in his peripheral vision. Based on the fact that the System had shown him something that looked similar to a character sheet, he assumed there might be a way to interact with these items.

  Ray stuck his hand out and spoke “Menu”. Nothing happened. “Info”…. “Character”. When he opened the menu, energy flooded into him. He felt invigorated, though he still had the splitting headache and felt sluggish. He also noticed a change.

  Well, that was handy. He must have levelled up when he killed the spider. Wait… He could level? Was he part of some game? It felt wrong, like all the hard work people did back on earth could just be accomplished by doing a few things to get experience.

  Ray stared at the number 5 for a long moment, waiting for his brain to catch up. Unallocated points. He had seen enough RPG menus to know what that meant, and a part of him wanted to dump them straight into whatever kept him alive. Vitality. Body. Anything that stopped him from folding over in the dirt like a dying animal. The problem was he didn’t trust the system enough to do it blindly. If it could label him Human-Error and Outcast without explaining what any of it meant, it could also punish him for choosing the wrong thing. The fact he was even having to think like this made him angry all over again.

  He tried to click the number, tried to focus on it like it was a button, but nothing happened. He tried to will the points into a stat and felt nothing change. No warmth, no confirmation, no prompt. Either he was doing it wrong, or the system didn’t let you change anything without following its process. That at least told him one thing. This wasn’t some power fantasy where you think hard and become strong. There were rules, and he was stuck inside them whether he accepted them or not.

  Ray forced himself to slow down and treat it like a tool instead of a miracle. Figure out what commands worked first, then decide what to touch. He remembered the title page in the void, the one time bonus that would call the system back to him, and he deliberately avoided saying anything that sounded like an invitation. He wasn’t about to drag the system back for a “final decision” while he was half dead and sitting in the open. If it wanted him to change his mind, it could wait until he had a weapon in his hand and his head screwed on straight.

  With one icon still sitting in his peripheral vision, he decided to keep exploring potential commands. He eventually realised the following commands would work:

  Aside from the above commands, he was tempted to shout ‘System’ but was afraid of his Titles effect if he did, so didn’t risk it.

  The other flashing icon was clearly a debuff, so he brought up the status screen again:

  “Well Fuck” Ray said out loud. He was weakened by 80% for 6 hours in total.

  Ray’s eyes stayed on the debuff longer than he wanted to admit. He hated that the system could weaken him with a single line of text, like his body was just another setting that could be turned down. His mind immediately started doing the ugly maths. If his health and mana were reduced by eighty percent, then any injury that would normally be manageable could kill him now. If there were more spiders, if there were predators, if there were people, he was in trouble. He looked at the pistol again, thought about the single bullet left, and realised how stupid it was to be carrying a weapon he barely understood while stuck in an even more unknown world.

  He forced himself to slow down and stop reacting for a second. He checked the ground around him. He checked the stream. He checked the tree line. He listened. If this was a game, then he needed to treat it like one, but without forgetting it was real. He couldn’t afford to do anything loud or stupid. He couldn’t afford to waste the last bullet. He also couldn’t afford to sit there and let something find him. Ray shifted his position so his back wasn’t fully exposed, tried to get his feet under him, and hated how weak his legs felt. The system had thrown him back in the exact same place he died, with the same danger nearby, and it had done it while he was crippled. That alone told him the system wasn’t just uncaring. It was actively spiteful.

  Ray tried to push himself fully upright and immediately regretted it. His arms trembled and his balance felt wrong, like his body was running on a fraction of what it should. He took one careful step and his legs nearly folded. It wasn’t pain exactly, it was weakness, the kind that made him feel old and useless in the worst possible moment. The system had dropped him back into the same clearing and then crippled him, and now he could barely stand long enough to decide where to go.

  He glanced at the stream and the pistol near it and felt a surge of frustration. One bullet was not much, but it was still something, and he didn’t like how exposed he was sitting there. He shuffled closer to the water, slow and awkward, trying to keep his eyes on the tree line while he moved. The whole time he had the uncomfortable sense that he was being watched. Not in a supernatural way, just that feeling you get when you’re outside and vulnerable and your instincts are trying to warn you before your brain catches up.

  A faint sound came again, not the spider this time, something lighter, like movement in leaves that stopped the moment he focused on it. Ray froze, holding his breath, waiting for a shape to appear. Nothing did. He told himself it was paranoia, that every forest made noise, that he was jumping at shadows. Still, he didn’t relax. He couldn’t. He started to reach for the pistol anyway, because weak or not, he wasn’t going to sit there unarmed and pretend things would work out.

  No sooner had Ray swore when he noticed movement all around him. Ray grabbed the pistol that lay next to him but before he could even lift it, an arrow knocked the weapon into the stream.

  “Krij Kol Ardot!” A purple woman screamed as she jumped down from a nearby tree, bow drawn.

  Ray slowly put his hands behind his head in surrender, he clearly wasn’t getting out of this any other way.

  “Ardot! Ardot!” the woman screamed.

  “Lady, I don’t understand a single word you’re saying. Speak up” Ray replied.

  The woman let out a sigh of frustration, pulled out a blue spherical ball, walked up to Ray and proceeded to shove it down his throat.

  “nghgf… nfgnnh… What the fuck!” Ray screamed.

  [New Skill Unlocked: Dark Elf Communication (Common - Passive) – Speak and Read the language of the Dark Elves]

  [New Skill Unlocked: Identify (Common – Active, Level 1) – Use to see basic information about the target]

  “There, now do you understand me?” The woman responded.