Chapter 3: Class Error: Do Not Select

The blacked-out option pulsed like a bruise in the center of Kai’s vision.

CLASS ERROR: DO NOT SELECT
Dungeon Breaker

Access Level: Invalid
Role Type: Undefined
Recommended Weapon: None
Party Function: Systemic Disruption

WARNING: This class is not available to players.
WARNING: Selection may result in account instability.
WARNING: Selection may result in termination.

Termination.

The word sat there, clean and corporate and bloodless, while a goblin drove a rusted cleaver into someone’s collarbone ten yards away.

Kai knelt in wet grass with mud under his nails, lungs burning from smoke and panic, the tutorial field collapsing around him in a riot of screams. The sky above the meadow was a broken dome of blue glass. Hairline cracks webbed through the air itself, glowing with the same pale-gold light as the System windows hovering over every dying player.

Someone sobbed for their mother. Someone else shouted that this wasn’t legal. A girl in a white starter tunic crawled past Kai with one hand clamped over the red ribbons spilling from her stomach, her eyes wide and furious as if she intended to file a complaint against reality before she bled out.

Across the field, the goblins kept spawning.

Not arriving. Not charging from a treeline. Spawning.

Kai saw it now that his gamer brain had forced its way through the terror. The monsters flickered into existence in specific points across the meadow—beside the shattered wagon, near the mossy boulder, inside the ring of white tutorial flowers. A pulse of blue gridlight, a distortion like heat haze, then three feet of green murder dropped screaming into the world with knives already raised.

The tutorial was bugged.

No. Worse.

It was farming them.

“Pick something!” a man shouted at him from behind a toppled fence. He had selected a class already. A wooden buckler hung off his forearm, and the word Guardian shimmered above his head in soft bronze letters. “Anything! You can’t fight without a class!”

A goblin leapt onto the fence and split his face open before Kai could answer.

Blood sprayed in a hot arc. The man toppled backward. His buckler dissolved into motes of dull light before his body even hit the ground.

Kai’s stomach clenched. He had seen virtual death a million times. Bodies ragdolling in esports arenas. Health bars vanishing. Avatars crumpling into pre-scripted animations while sponsors cheered and commentators screamed his old handle like it meant something.

This was not that.

This death smelled like copper and shit and torn grass. It had weight. It made noise when it landed.

His class menu trembled in the air.

Available Classes
Swordsman
Acolyte
Archer
Arcanist
Rogue
████████████

The hidden option throbbed again.

CLASS ERROR: DO NOT SELECT

Kai barked a laugh that scraped his throat raw.

“Oh, sure,” he said, voice shaking as a goblin shrieked somewhere behind him. “Because the murder tutorial has my best interests at heart.”

The System window flickered.

WARNING: Player Mercer, Kai is advised to select a valid class.
WARNING: Invalid class paths are subject to correction.

“Player Mercer, Kai,” he muttered. “Love the bedside manner.”

A new sound cut through the chaos.

A wet snuffling.

Kai turned.

One of the goblins had noticed him.

It was shorter than his hip, all wire muscle and jaundiced green skin, with ears like torn leather and a mouth full of needle teeth. Its left eye was cloudy. Its right eye gleamed with bright, delighted malice. It dragged a chipped bone saw behind it, the blade chattering over stones as it stalked toward him.

Over its head floated a red nameplate.

Tutorial Goblin Lv. 2
HP: 34/34

Kai had nothing. No sword. No spell. No stats he understood. No respawn.

Only a forbidden option and a lifetime of making terrible choices under pressure.

The goblin lunged.

Kai moved before thought caught up. His body slipped sideways, old reflexes firing with the vicious precision that had once made stadium crowds chant his name. The bone saw hissed past his ribs close enough to cut his shirt. He grabbed for the only weapon within reach—a broken wagon spoke jutting from the mud—and ripped it free.

Splinters dug into his palm.

The goblin recovered fast. Too fast. It spun, snapping its teeth, and slashed again at knee height.

Kai jumped over the blade by inches, landed badly, and nearly went down. Pain shot up his ankle. The goblin cackled.

The class window remained in his face, obscuring half his vision.

“Get out of my HUD!” Kai snapped.

Class selection required.

“Fine.”

The goblin sprang for his throat.

Kai slammed his hand through the blacked-out option.

For one impossible second, the world stopped.

The screams stretched into silence. Blood hung in the air as red beads. The goblin froze inches from Kai’s face, jaws open, breath sour with rotten meat. The cracked sky dimmed. Every System window across the field flickered at once.

Then a sound like a server rack catching fire tore through reality.

INVALID SELECTION DETECTED.
Player: Kai Mercer
Class: Dungeon Breaker

ERROR.
ERROR.
ERROR.

Black lightning crawled across Kai’s skin.

It didn’t feel like electricity. It felt like something had reached under his bones and started rewriting the marrow with broken glass. He hit the ground without remembering falling. His spine arched. His teeth clamped down on a scream and failed to hold it.

Menus exploded across his vision.

Applying class framework…
Failed.
Applying fallback architecture…
Failed.
Searching legacy permissions…
Match found.

Welcome, Dungeon Breaker.

Something opened inside him.

Not power. Not yet.

Awareness.

The tutorial field peeled apart in layers.

Kai saw the grass, the smoke, the bodies. Beneath that, he saw glowing lines like the wireframe of a level map. Spawn nodes pulsed under the ground in angry blue clusters. Invisible walls shimmered at the meadow’s edges. Threat tables hung like cobwebs between goblins and players, red strings connecting monsters to targets. Loot queues drifted above corpses like sealed envelopes waiting to be assigned.

And deep beneath all of it, at the center of the tutorial meadow, a heart beat.

Not flesh.

A core.

Blue-white. Buried. Protected by layers of rules.

The goblin unfroze.

Its momentum carried it into Kai.

They hit the mud together. Teeth snapped an inch from his nose. Kai jammed the wagon spoke crosswise into its mouth. The goblin shrieked, clawing at his chest, nails ripping through his shirt and into skin.

Pain flashed white-hot.

HP: 26/40

“Forty?” Kai wheezed. “That’s all I get?”

The goblin bit down. The wagon spoke cracked.

A new prompt burned red at the edge of his sight.

Class Skill Unlocked: Faultline Sight Lv. 1
Description: View unstable mechanics, dungeon rules, instance seams, and systemic weak points.
Passive: Active

“Great,” Kai grunted, holding the goblin’s snapping jaws away. “I can see how screwed I am in high definition.”

The goblin raked its claws down his forearm.

HP: 21/40

Blood slicked his fingers. The wagon spoke began to splinter.

Kai’s gaze darted past the goblin’s shoulder. One of the spawn nodes pulsed three yards away near the mossy boulder. Blue gridlight condensed, preparing to drop another trio of enemies into the fight.

He could see it. Not just the glow—the rule behind it.

Spawn Rule T-01
Trigger: Player count > 0
Interval: 12 seconds
Spawn Group: Tutorial Goblin x3
Limiter: Disabled
Safety Cap: Disabled
Origin: Tutorial Meadow Node C

Kai stared at the words while a monster tried to chew through his face.

Limiter disabled. Safety cap disabled.

“That’s not a bug,” he whispered.

The goblin’s good eye rolled toward him, bright with hunger.

Kai shifted his grip on the broken spoke, planted one foot against the goblin’s belly, and kicked with everything he had. The creature flew backward, taking half the spoke with it. Kai scrambled up, clutching the jagged remains like a dagger.

The spawn node flared.

He saw a seam.

It was thin as fishing line, a black fracture running through the blue geometry of the node. A label hovered beside it, jittering.

Weak Point Identified: Spawn Anchor
Integrity: 6/6
Interaction: Break

Before Kai could decide whether that was suicidal, the first goblin charged again.

Behind it, three more began to form in the blue light.

Kai ran at the node.

“Yeah, no,” he said. “I’ve played wave survival. This is how idiots die.”

The goblin veered after him. Its bone saw whistled at his hamstring. Kai hopped onto the mossy boulder, slipped, caught himself with one bloody hand, and drove the broken wagon spoke into the shimmering seam.

Resistance slammed into him.

It felt like stabbing a wall made of thunder.

His arms went numb. The world screamed. Lines of blue code snapped outward from the impact, wrapping around his wrist like burning chains.

Unauthorized mechanic interaction detected.
Remove hand immediately.

“Make me.”

The spawning goblins were halfway solid now, their bones sketching themselves inside translucent skin.

Kai twisted the spoke.

The seam cracked.

Spawn Anchor Integrity: 4/6

The original goblin leapt onto the boulder and sank its teeth into Kai’s calf.

Agony detonated up his leg.

HP: 14/40
Status: Bleeding (Minor)

Kai screamed through clenched teeth, lifted his free foot, and stomped on the goblin’s skull. Once. Twice. The third stomp made something crunch. The teeth tore free from his calf as the creature fell back, stunned but alive.

The node flared brighter.

Eight seconds? No, less. Spawn animation accelerated when attacked.

His brain clicked into match mode, the old cold place where fear became numbers and pain became input delay. The meadow narrowed. The screams blurred. The world became timing windows, hitboxes, breakpoints.

Kai slammed his shoulder into the wagon spoke, driving it deeper through the seam.

Spawn Anchor Integrity: 2/6

The half-formed goblins opened their mouths in silent rage.

Blue chains crawled up Kai’s arm, eating into his skin. Warnings stacked so fast they blurred.

System Correction Initiated.
Cease class action.
Cease class action.
Cease class action.

“You first,” Kai snarled.

He ripped the spoke sideways.

The spawn anchor shattered.

Sound vanished.

The three forming goblins imploded into cubes of blue light. The shockwave knocked Kai off the boulder and hurled him into the mud. The original goblin, still staggering, caught the edge of the blast and burst apart like a rotten fruit.

Hot black blood spattered Kai’s face.

Tutorial Goblin defeated.
EXP gained: 8
Currency pending…
Error: Payment route obscured.

Spawn Anchor C destroyed.
Dungeon Breaker EXP gained: 25

Kai lay on his back, gasping at the cracked sky.

For half a second, the field around him seemed to hesitate.

Then every goblin turned its head.

Not toward the nearest players.

Toward him.

“Of course,” Kai said weakly. “Of course that drew aggro.”

A chorus of shrieks rose across the meadow.

The red strings of threat snapped and reattached. Dozens of them speared into Kai’s chest, visible only through Faultline Sight. Goblins abandoned fleeing players mid-chase. They crawled over fences, bounded over corpses, and sprinted through burning grass with weapons raised.

Above them, more spawn nodes pulsed.

Six that he could see. Maybe more beyond the smoke.

His HP blinked in the corner of his vision.

HP: 14/40
Status: Bleeding (Minor)
Class: Dungeon Breaker Lv. 1
Skill Available: Break

Kai rolled onto his stomach, coughing mud.

A boot appeared in front of his face.

“You broke it.”

He looked up.

The girl with the stomach wound stood over him.

She should not have been standing. Her tunic was soaked red from ribs to thigh. One hand pressed against her belly, fingers glowing with weak white light. Her face was ash-pale beneath a fall of dark curls plastered to her cheeks, but her eyes were clear, sharp, and furious.

Over her head floated:

Lena Vale
Acolyte Lv. 1
HP: 9/32

“Observant,” Kai rasped.

“Do it again.”

“Working on the part where I don’t die first.”

She glanced past him. Her jaw tightened.

“Work faster.”

Kai pushed himself up. His wounded calf nearly buckled. Lena grabbed his arm and hauled, surprising strength in her small frame.

“You got a heal?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Fantastic.”

“It costs mana.”

“Less fantastic.”

“And I used most of it keeping my intestines where they belong.”

“Okay, fair priority.”

Three goblins closed from the left. Two more from the shattered wagon. Behind them, a spawn node bloomed near the tutorial signpost, the blue grid already knitting bones out of light.

Lena lifted a trembling hand. White radiance gathered around her fingers, thin and flickering like a candle in rain.

“If I patch you, can you break another one?” she asked.

Kai looked at the approaching wave, at the visible seams in the meadow’s rules, at the timer ticking inside every pulse of blue light.

“Patch my leg,” he said. “Not my HP.”

Her brows snapped together. “What?”

“I need movement more than health. Don’t top me. Fix the bleed.”

She stared for half a breath, then gave a short, grim nod. “You sound like my brother. He was also stupid with confidence.”

“Was?”

“Run first.”

She slapped her glowing hand against his calf.

Pain bit so hard Kai saw stars. Flesh crawled under her palm, knitting just enough to stop blood from pumping into his boot. His HP didn’t rise, but the bleeding icon vanished.

Status Removed: Bleeding (Minor)

“You call that healing?” Kai hissed.

“You asked for ugly.”

“I asked for functional.”

“Then be functional!”

A goblin reached them, swinging a hooked blade at Lena’s neck.

Kai shoved her down and stepped in, not away. The blade sailed over her head. He caught the goblin’s wrist with both hands and used its momentum, pivoting hard. The creature flipped over his hip and slammed into the mud. Kai stomped its weapon arm, snatched the hooked blade from its claws, and drove the point through its eye.

Tutorial Goblin defeated.
EXP gained: 8

The stolen blade fit badly in his hand, the grip wrapped for fingers smaller than his, but sharp was sharp.

Lena stared at him from the ground.

“Esports,” he said.

“That explains absolutely nothing.”

“It used to.”

Another goblin pounced. Kai ducked under the slash and carved across its belly. Black blood spilled steaming onto the grass. It screamed and kept coming.

Not enough damage. No weapon proficiency. No class scaling.

Lena thrust her palm out.

“Light, please,” she snapped, like arguing with a lazy coworker.

A thumb-sized bolt of radiance spat from her hand and struck the goblin in the face. It recoiled, blinded. Kai kicked its knee sideways, heard the joint crack, and finished it with a messy cut across the throat.

Tutorial Goblin defeated.
EXP gained: 8

A third came low. Too fast.

Its knife punched into Kai’s side.

The pain was so immediate and personal that his breath disappeared.

HP: 8/40

Lena shouted his name, though he hadn’t told it to her. Maybe the System had. Maybe she had seen his tag. Kai grabbed the goblin by its greasy hair before it could withdraw the blade and slammed his forehead into its nose.

Once.

Twice.

The goblin reeled. Kai hacked down with the hooked blade, splitting collarbone to sternum.

Tutorial Goblin defeated.
EXP gained: 8

Level Up!
Kai Mercer reached Level 2.
HP restored by 12.
Attribute Points gained: 3

Warmth crashed through him. Not comfort—repair. His side wound squeezed shut around the knife and spat the blade out. Bruises faded. His lungs opened. The bite in his leg dulled to a savage throb.

HP: 20/48

“Oh,” Kai breathed. “That’s disgusting. I love it.”

“Node!” Lena shouted.

The signpost spawn had nearly completed. Three goblins shimmered inside the blue light, weapons already rising.

Kai sprinted.

His body still hurt, but the level-up had sharpened something in him. The meadow’s wireframe returned in hard focus. He saw the node’s anchor buried not in the ground but in the wooden tutorial sign itself.

The sign read:

WELCOME, NEW HEROES!
Defeat monsters to earn your first reward!

“Cute,” Kai said.

He hit the signpost shoulder-first. It didn’t budge. Of course it didn’t. It was a game object, probably invulnerable scenery to anyone else.

But not to him.

Faultline Sight painted the weak point bright black.

Weak Point Identified: Decorative Object Constraint
Integrity: 8/8
Interaction: Break

The class skill pulsed in his chest, hungry and instinctive. Kai lifted the hooked blade and struck the black seam.

A metallic note rang out.

Break activated.

Dark cracks spidered from the blade into the signpost. The world pushed back. Kai’s arm juddered like he had jammed it into an engine. Warning windows stacked, but he ignored them and struck again.

Integrity: 5/8

The forming goblins became solid enough to move.

One stabbed at him from inside the spawn field. The blade punched through the blue membrane and sliced his cheek.

HP: 18/48

Kai leaned away, reversed grip, and hammered the seam with the pommel.

Integrity: 3/8

Lena stumbled behind him, raised both hands, and fired another weak bolt of light. It splashed across the goblin’s face and bought him half a second.

Half a second was plenty.

Kai drove his stolen blade into the heart of the signpost and twisted until his shoulder screamed.

The signpost folded inward like paper caught in a drain.

The spawn node detonated. The half-born goblins shredded into light. A ring of force rippled across the field, flattening grass and knocking two nearby goblins off their feet.

Spawn Anchor B destroyed.
Dungeon Breaker EXP gained: 25

Dungeon Breaker Level increased!
Class Level: 2
New Passive acquired: Rule Fracture

Kai staggered, grinning despite the blood running down his chin.

“Okay,” he said. “Now we’re gaming.”

Lena grabbed his sleeve and yanked him behind the remains of the sign as three thrown knives thudded into the wood where his chest had been.

“Celebrate after survival,” she snapped.

“That is healthier, yes.”

A dozen players remained alive, maybe fewer. Some had weapons now. A red-haired Archer on top of the broken wagon fired arrows with shaking hands. A Rogue vanished and reappeared behind a goblin only to vomit the second his dagger sank into flesh. Two Swordsmen fought back-to-back near the flower ring, shouting over each other in panicked rhythm.

But the goblins kept coming.

Spawn nodes A, D, E, and F pulsed across the meadow. With each broken anchor, the remaining ones accelerated. Kai could see the rules compensating, blue lines thickening as if the tutorial itself were clenching.

Adaptive Spawn Redistribution
Active Nodes: 4
Spawn Interval: 7 seconds
Spawn Group: Tutorial Goblin x4
Aggro Priority: Dungeon Breaker

“It’s adapting,” Kai said.

Lena wiped blood from her mouth. “Can dungeons do that?”

“Can tutorials mass murder their user base?”

“Apparently.”

“Then yes.”

A bell chimed somewhere overhead, bright and cheerful.

Tutorial Tip!
Teamwork increases survival odds. Form a party?

Kai stared at the message.

Lena stared too.

For one absurd instant, with smoke rolling over corpses and goblins howling in the grass, they both just looked at the cheerful prompt.

“I hate this place,” Lena said.

“Party invite,” Kai said.

“What?”

“It might share EXP. More importantly, it might let me see your position without turning around.”

“You want to party up now?”

“No, I want a latte and a lawyer. I’m adapting.”

She huffed something almost like a laugh.

Party invitation sent to Lena Vale.

She stabbed the air with two fingers.

Lena Vale has joined your party.

A small frame appeared under Kai’s HP bar.

Lena Vale HP: 9/32 MP: 4/40

“Four mana?” Kai said.

“I told you I was running on fumes.”

“Can you regenerate?”

“Slowly.”

“Define slowly.”

“Slower than those teeth.”

Fair.

Kai scanned the field. Node D near the flower ring was closest, but two Swordsmen already fought there and would get overrun if the next wave popped. Node A by the shattered wagon was swarmed. Node E pulsed beside a stone arch at the meadow’s edge. Node F—