Chapter 1: Level One and Left for Dead

Caleb Wren was still reading his pathetic starter stats when his party shoved him into the monster pit.

CALEB WREN
Level: 1
Class: Civilian Courier
Rarity: Common
Health: 37/37
Mana: 3/3
Stamina: 42/42
Strength: 5
Agility: 7
Endurance: 6
Willpower: 4
Intelligence: 5
Luck: 1

Starting Skill: Jog — Move slightly faster while fleeing danger.

System Note: Every world needs someone to carry things.

He had just enough time to think, Luck one? Really? before two hands slammed between his shoulder blades and the floor disappeared.

Not floor. Asphalt.

The parking lot outside Ashford Mall had split open like a rotten mouth. Jagged cracks radiated through the painted lines and faded handicapped symbols, glowing faintly red from somewhere beneath. Caleb dropped through torn rebar, dangling electrical cables, and a dust-choked shaft that had not existed when he’d parked his delivery van there twenty minutes ago to hide from a sky full of screaming.

His breath left him on the way down.

So did his phone.

So did any remaining faith he had in teamwork.

He hit something sloped and slick, bounced, scraped his forearm against stone that had no business being beneath a suburban Pennsylvania mall, and tumbled into hot darkness. His shoulder struck first. Pain detonated white behind his eyes.

-9 HP
Health: 28/37

Numbers flashed in the corner of his vision, bright and clean and utterly insane.

Caleb groaned into the dirt. It tasted like rust, mildew, and old pennies. Above him, beyond the ragged mouth of the pit, daylight flickered around the silhouettes of four people. People he had known for all of fifteen minutes. People who had smiled, offered him a crowbar, told him they needed “one more body” to clear a low-level nest under the mall before the monsters spilled out.

People who had apparently meant his body specifically.

“What the hell?” Caleb shouted up, voice cracking. “Mara?”

The woman at the edge crouched, ponytail swinging forward, the sunlight catching the silver hoops in her ears. Mara Voss looked exactly as she had in high school, which was unfair because the world had ended and Caleb had been hoping for at least some cosmic acne as balance. Same sharp cheekbones. Same smooth brown skin. Same smile that could warm a room until you realized she was checking for exits.

She held his dropped phone in one hand.

“Sorry, Cal,” she called down.

Cal.

Nobody called him that anymore. Not since senior year, not since she’d borrowed three hundred dollars for a “family emergency” and vanished until her Instagram resurfaced with beach pictures and a boyfriend named Troy whose watch cost more than Caleb’s van.

“Sorry?” Caleb pushed himself up on his good elbow. Pebbles clattered down the slope. “You shoved me into a hole.”

“We need to know what’s down there.”

The guy beside her—Derek, maybe; all jaw, varsity jacket over chainmail that had appeared on him when the sky cracked—snorted. “Bait talks a lot.”

Caleb stared upward, blinking dust from his lashes. Behind them, the world continued to be ridiculous. Red emergency lights flashed across the mall’s broken glass doors. A minivan burned near the fountain entrance. Farther out, where Route 9 should have been backed up with commuters, a forest of black trees had grown through the highway in the span of minutes, branches tangled with traffic lights and power lines. Something the size of a bus moved between the trunks, dragging a stop sign like a tail.

The first hour of the Apocalypse System had not been subtle.

It began at 8:03 a.m., just as Caleb was arguing with a customer over whether “leave at door” applied when the door was missing. The sky had rung like a struck bell. Every phone in Ashford screamed. Blue-white windows popped into existence before every person on Earth, or at least every person in Caleb’s line of sight, listing names, levels, classes, and cheery death warnings. The old water tower folded into a spear of crystal. The Baptist church sprouted black wings. Half the cemetery rose. The other half complained on Facebook until the network died.

Caleb had received Civilian Courier.

His neighbor Mrs. Alvarez, eighty-two, received Flame Acolyte and accidentally incinerated a mailbox.

A toddler in a stroller outside the pharmacy received Beast-Tamer and immediately convinced three mutated raccoons to follow him around like bodyguards.

Caleb received Jog.

Now he lay at the bottom of a monster pit beneath the mall, watching the prettiest thief in Ashford explain his tactical value.

“There are rules now,” Mara said. She sounded regretful in the way people sounded regretful when they took the last slice of pizza. “The System gave us a quest.”

LOCAL EVENT: INFESTATION BENEATH ASHFORD MALL
Objective: Enter the sublevel and destroy the Burrow Matriarch.
Recommended Party Size: 5
Recommended Level: 2-4
Reward: Class Experience, Starter Loot Cache, Safe Zone Stabilization +3%

Caleb had seen the message too. Everyone in the parking lot had. It hung in his peripheral vision like a corporate memo from God.

“Recommended level two to four,” he yelled. “I’m level one.”

“Exactly,” Derek said. “If something eats you, we’ll know not to go that way.”

Another silhouette leaned into view: a skinny man with a blond beard and a pulsing green symbol over one eye. Simon. Class: Initiate Seer. He had introduced himself by predicting, incorrectly, that Caleb would become “important soon.”

Simon grimaced. “Mara, this is messed up.”

“Then jump after him,” Derek said.

Simon did not jump after him.

The fourth member of their party, Keisha, said nothing. She carried a fire axe in both hands and avoided Caleb’s eyes.

Caleb laughed once. It came out thin. “Okay. Great. Cool. Apocalypse speedrun. Lesson learned.” He reached for the crowbar they had handed him earlier. It had landed three feet away in a patch of gray fungus. “I’m coming back up, and when I do, we’re going to revisit this decision in a very honest conversation.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Mara said.

“I am at the bottom of a pit.”

“Caleb.” Her voice softened. That was worse. “Listen to me. We need the reward. The Safe Zone Stabilization. My little brother’s at West Ashford Elementary. The school’s inside the forming safe zone, but the barrier’s flickering. If this quest helps—”

“Then you come down first.”

Her face hardened.

There it was. The real Mara. The one behind the smile. Caleb had forgotten how fast warmth could freeze.

“You always did think being broke made you noble,” she said.

He stared at her, the crowbar cold in his hand. “And you always did think wanting something made it yours.”

For half a second, her expression cracked. Then Derek’s hand landed on her shoulder, possessive and impatient.

“Enough.” Derek looked down at Caleb like he was already a stain. “Move forward. Draw them out. If you survive, we’ll pull you up after.”

Caleb lifted his middle finger.

Derek smiled.

A rock whipped down the shaft and clipped Caleb’s forehead.

-2 HP
Health: 26/37

“Ow! What is wrong with you?”

“Move.”

The pit answered before Caleb could.

Something clicked in the dark.

Not one click. Dozens. Chitin on stone. Needles tapping glass.

The silhouettes above withdrew from the edge.

Caleb stopped breathing.

His eyes adjusted by degrees to the red glow pulsing from veins in the walls. He was in a tunnel, not natural, not modern. The stone had been chewed smooth in places and carved in others, as if a subway tunnel and a medieval crypt had collided beneath the food court. Pipes protruded from the ceiling, dripping oily water. Between them hung roots, old electrical wires, and webbing thick as insulation foam.

The smell worsened when the clicking grew louder.

Rotten meat. Wet soil. The sour ammonia bite of a neglected dumpster in August.

Caleb raised the crowbar.

A shape unfolded from the tunnel ahead.

It was the size of a German shepherd and built like a nightmare assembled by committee. Six jointed legs. A glossy black shell split by red seams. Mandibles working around a human-looking tongue. Its head twitched from side to side, blind white eyes reflecting the glow.

Ashford Burrowling
Level 2
Disposition: Hungry

“No,” Caleb whispered. “Nope. Absolutely not.”

The burrowling shrieked.

Caleb’s new skill activated from pure panic.

Skill Activated: Jog
Movement speed increased by 8% while fleeing danger.

He fled danger.

Heroically, even.

The tunnel sloped downward in the only direction available. Caleb sprinted, slipped in slime, and windmilled with the crowbar while the burrowling skittered after him fast enough to make his bones feel loose. Its legs struck sparks from the stone. Its shriek echoed ahead, behind, everywhere.

“This is not jogging!” Caleb gasped. “This is an insurance claim!”

A second burrowling dropped from the ceiling in front of him.

Caleb swung the crowbar on instinct. It connected with a crunch that vibrated up his arms.

Critical Hit!
-11 HP

The monster reeled. Greenish fluid sprayed his shirt, hot and foul. Caleb gagged but swung again, putting every ounce of unpaid rent, back pain, and accumulated customer service rage behind it.

-7 HP
Ashford Burrowling slain.
Experience gained: 12

The dead creature collapsed at his feet. Its legs curled inward with a dry rattle.

Caleb stared.

For one impossible heartbeat, triumph flared in his chest.

He had killed a monster.

With a crowbar.

At level one.

“Ha!” he shouted, wild and breathless. “Suck it, bug dog!”

The first burrowling crashed into him from behind.

-8 HP
Health: 18/37

Mandibles snapped shut on his backpack instead of his spine. The cheap nylon delivery bag saved his life and immediately began losing the argument. Caleb twisted, fell onto his back, and jammed the crowbar sideways between the creature’s jaws. Its breath washed over him, carrion-hot. Drool splattered his cheek and burned.

-1 HP
Acidic saliva resisted poorly.
Health: 17/37

“Poorly?” Caleb choked, arms trembling. “Define poorly!”

The burrowling’s tongue lashed against his face.

Caleb kneed it in the thorax. Nothing. He kicked again and again. One of its legs punctured his thigh.

-5 HP
Bleeding applied.
Health: 12/37

The red veins in the walls pulsed faster, like the tunnel enjoyed this.

Caleb yanked one hand free, grabbed a loose chunk of stone, and smashed it into one blind white eye. The orb burst under his palm.

-4 HP

The monster screamed and recoiled. Caleb rolled, dragged himself up, and hammered the crowbar into its head until the shell cracked.

-6 HP
-5 HP
Ashford Burrowling slain.
Experience gained: 12

Health: 10/37
Status: Bleeding (Minor)

The tunnel went quiet except for Caleb’s ragged breathing and the wet patter of his blood on stone.

He stood shaking over the corpse. His hands were slick. His forehead throbbed where Derek’s rock had hit him. His thigh burned with every heartbeat.

Above and behind, faint voices echoed down the shaft.

“Did he kill them?” Simon’s voice.

“Sounds like it,” Keisha said.

Derek laughed. “Useful bait.”

Caleb looked back the way he had come. The slope rose into darkness. He could try to climb. He could wait for them. He could trust the people who had thrown him into a nest of acid bug dogs.

He tightened his grip on the crowbar.

“New plan,” he muttered. “Survive, level up, haunt Derek.”

A soft chime sounded.

Congratulations!
You have reached Level 2.

Health increased by 5.
Stamina increased by 3.
You have gained 2 attribute points.

New Civilian Courier Skill Available:
Carry More — Increase inventory weight capacity by 10%.

Accept? Y/N

Caleb blinked at the message. “Are you kidding me?”

The System did not answer.

His health ticked upward, the pain in his thigh dulling but not vanishing.

Health: 15/42

He stared at Carry More. Somewhere above, the sky was tearing open and fantasy hell was invading Pennsylvania, but the universe still wanted him to deliver packages.

“No,” he said.

The blue window flickered.

Skill selection declined.
Unspent skill selections may be lost upon death.

“Then death better get in line.”

Caleb limped deeper into the tunnel, because the way back held murderers and the way forward held monsters, and at least the monsters were honest about wanting to eat him.

The passage opened into the ruins of a basement level he recognized and did not recognize at all. The Ashford Mall had been dying for years, a cathedral of clearance sales and empty kiosks. Caleb had delivered noodles to the nail salon, phone chargers to the repair booth, and once, memorably, a single cactus to the manager of a bath bomb store. Beneath it had been storage rooms, maintenance corridors, a boiler room where teenagers smoked weed, and a locked door everyone swore led to tunnels from the Prohibition era.

Now the basement had become a burrowed crypt.

Old cinderblock walls jutted from black stone. Fluorescent light fixtures dangled beside iron sconces burning with green flame. A broken escalator descended from the ceiling into nothing, its steps frozen halfway through fusing with a staircase carved from bone-colored rock. Shop signs lay half-buried in fungus: ORANGE JULIUS, GAMESTOP, FOREVER 21, each consumed by crawling red moss.

At the center of the chamber stood a fountain.

Caleb knew that fountain. It used to sit outside the food court, full of pennies, algae, and children with sticky hands. Now it had sunk through two floors and grown teeth. Water no longer trickled from the concrete dolphins. Thick crimson fluid bubbled from their mouths into a basin crowded with eggs the size of footballs.

Dozens of eggs.

Each one pulsed.

Caleb backed up slowly.

A whisper brushed the inside of his skull.

Intruder.

He froze.

“Nope,” he whispered. “Not listening to haunted egg fountain.”

Warm. Bleeding. Weak.

“That’s private medical information.”

From the far side of the chamber came the scrape of claws.

Caleb ducked behind a collapsed Pretzel Palace sign as three more burrowlings prowled into view. They moved around the egg basin, touching mandibles to the shells, chittering softly. One dragged a human arm in its jaws. The hand still wore a wedding ring.

Caleb swallowed bile.

People had died here already. Not abstract people on system notifications. Not glowing numbers. Real people. Mall walkers. Security guards. Teenagers cutting class. Someone’s dad.

His thigh dripped onto the stone.

One burrowling’s head snapped toward him.

Caleb clamped a hand over the wound.

Too late.

The creature shrieked.

All three charged.

Caleb ran.

His Jog skill flared again. He vaulted a fallen bench, skidded across loose tiles, and ducked under a cable as the first monster slammed into the wall behind him hard enough to crack cinderblock. He had no plan beyond movement, which was historically how he approached both fitness and debt.

A rusted maintenance door stood ajar ahead. Caleb threw himself through it and hauled it shut. Something hit the other side with a metallic boom. The frame bent inward.

He fumbled for a lock. No lock. Of course no lock. Why would the universe provide a lock when it could provide Carry More?

He braced the crowbar through the handle and a pipe bracket just as another impact rattled the door. The crowbar flexed.

Caleb stumbled backward into darkness.

The room smelled of dust, chemicals, and old rainwater. Shelves lined the walls. Paint cans, broken tools, plastic Christmas decorations, a mop bucket filled with something that glowed faintly purple. A skeletal maintenance worker sat in the corner, still wearing a blue Ashford Mall polo. Not undead. Just dead. Probably. Caleb was not in a position to be picky about corpse categories.

“Sorry,” he whispered to the skeleton, because he had manners under pressure.

The door boomed again.

The crowbar slipped half an inch.

Caleb searched the shelves with frantic hands. Screwdriver. Bleach. Extension cords. A box cutter. A flare gun with no flares. A plastic tub labeled HOLIDAY DISPLAY – DO NOT THROW AWAY.

He popped the lid.

Inside were tangled strings of lights, glittery reindeer antlers, and a novelty snow globe of the mall with tiny shoppers forever circling the fountain.

“Great. I’ll festive them to death.”

Another impact. The crowbar bent further.

Behind the holiday tub, half-hidden beneath a tarp, Caleb found a red cylinder.

Fire extinguisher.

The pressure gauge sat in the green.

He kissed the label. “You beautiful code-compliant angel.”

The door buckled inward. One mandible pierced the gap, snapping.

Caleb yanked the pin, planted his feet, and aimed at the opening.

When the crowbar finally gave, the first burrowling burst through in a storm of claws.

Caleb squeezed the handle.

A white cloud exploded into the monster’s face. It shrieked, blind eyes whitening further as chemical foam coated its head. The second slammed into it from behind. The third tried to crawl over both.

Caleb screamed back, because it seemed polite, and charged.

He swung the extinguisher like a club. The metal cylinder caved in the first creature’s skull with a wet crack.

-9 HP
Ashford Burrowling slain.
Experience gained: 10

The second lunged low. Caleb kicked the mop bucket into its path. Purple fluid splashed across its legs.

The burrowling’s limbs sizzled.

Improvised Hazard!
-6 HP
Status applied: Corroding

“Ha!” Caleb shouted. “OSHA violation, baby!”

It leapt anyway.

He went down under it, the extinguisher pinned between them. Mandibles scraped his chin. He saw himself reflected in its glossy shell: wild-eyed, bleeding, covered in dust and bug slime, a thirty-year-old delivery driver whose greatest pre-apocalypse achievement had been maintaining a four-point-eight customer rating while crying in traffic.

He drove his thumb into its broken eye seam and pushed.

The creature spasmed. Acid burned his skin. He pushed harder, roaring until something gave beneath his hand.

-4 HP
-4 HP
Ashford Burrowling slain.
Experience gained: 10
Health: 9/42

The third monster hesitated in the doorway.

Caleb lay beneath a corpse, panting, one hand smoking faintly.

“Yeah,” he rasped. “Think about your life choices.”

The burrowling shrieked and ran at him.

So much for introspection.

A blast of golden light struck the creature from behind.

It convulsed, outlined in fire, and collapsed twitching across the threshold.

Ashford Burrowling slain.
No experience awarded.

Caleb stared over the dead thing.

Mara stepped into view holding a short wooden wand wrapped in copper wire. Her leather jacket was spattered with dust. Behind her came Derek with a gleaming spear, Keisha with her axe, and Simon looking pale enough to qualify as a ghost.

“Caleb!” Mara said, as if she had found him after a long separation in a grocery store and not after pushing him into a nightmare tunnel. “You’re alive.”

He shoved the dead burrowling off his chest and sat up slowly. Every part of him had filed a complaint.