The darkness lasted only a moment.
Then Nate was somewhere else.
A forest stretched in every direction—trees taller than any he'd ever seen, their trunks wider than cars, their canopy so thick it blocked out most of the light. The air was warm and humid, heavy with the smell of moss and rotting leaves and something underneath it all. Something animal.
He looked up. Through gaps in the branches, he could see a sky that wasn't Earth's. It was purple, shot through with veins of orange light, like a bruise that covered the whole world. No sun. No clouds. Just that sick, pulsing glow.
He was definitely not in the parking lot anymore.
A notification appeared:
TUTORIAL FLOOR 1
Objective: Defeat 10 monsters.
Progress: 0/10
Time Limit: None
Note: Dying in the tutorial results in true death. There are no second chances.
Nate read the last line twice. Then he tightened his grip on the breaker bar and started moving.
The forest was quiet in a way that felt wrong. No birds. No insects. No wind rustling the leaves. Just his footsteps on the soft earth and the distant drip of water somewhere he couldn't see. Every few seconds he'd stop and listen, waiting for something to move.
It didn't take long.
The hound came out of the undergrowth fast—faster than the ones outside. Nate barely got the bar up in time, catching its jaws on the steel as it slammed into him. The impact drove him back two steps. The thing was heavier than it looked, all muscle and teeth and yellow eyes that burned with something like hunger.
[Feral Hound — Level 3]
He shoved it off and swung. The bar caught it across the shoulder, sent it stumbling. It recovered fast, circling now, more cautious. Learning.
Nate didn't give it time to think. He stepped in and brought the bar down hard, aiming for the skull. The hound dodged left—but not far enough. Steel cracked against its spine and it went down howling.
One more swing finished it.
[Feral Hound] defeated.
Progress: 1/10
Experience gained.
Nate stood over the body, breathing hard. His arms ached from the impacts. The bar was heavier than he remembered, or maybe he was just tired. He'd been swinging it for—what, twenty minutes? Thirty? Time felt strange in here.
He looked at his hands. At the bar. At the dead hound.
This was working. It was safe. Smart. The bar gave him reach, gave him power, kept the teeth away from his throat. Anyone with sense would keep using it.
But it didn't feel right.
He thought about the second hound in the street, the one he'd met with his knee. The clean impact. The way his body had known exactly what to do. That hadn't felt like surviving. That had felt like something else.
The bar was a tool. It was doing the job. But he wasn't here to do a job.
He'd spent six years doing jobs.
Nate looked at the breaker bar for a long moment. Then he set it down against a tree trunk and walked deeper into the forest with empty hands.
The second hound found him ten minutes later.
It came from above—leaping off a fallen log, jaws open, going for his throat. Nate saw it at the last second and twisted, letting the thing's momentum carry it past him. His elbow came up instinctively, catching it across the skull as it flew by.
The hound hit the ground, rolled, came up snarling.
Nate's heart was pounding. His hands were shaking again. This was stupid. This was so stupid. He had a weapon and he'd left it behind because—what? Because it didn't feel right? Because he wanted to prove something?
The hound lunged.
He slipped left, just like he used to in the ring. Weight shifting, feet moving, chin tucked. The jaws snapped past his ear and he threw a right hand into the thing's ribs as it passed.
The impact felt different without the bar. Harder. More real. He felt the bones shift under his knuckles, felt the shock travel up his arm and into his shoulder.
The hound yelped and spun, coming back at him. Nate met it with a knee—his left knee—driving it into the thing's chest. It folded, hit the ground, scrambled to rise.
He didn't let it.
Two more punches. Hard, clean, aimed at the skull. The second one caved something in and the hound stopped moving.
[Feral Hound] defeated.
Progress: 2/10
Experience gained.
Nate stood there, fists still raised, breathing like he'd just run a mile. His knuckles were torn. Blood dripped onto the moss—his blood, from where the thing's skull had split his skin.
It hurt.
He was grinning.
The next three came easier.
Not because they were weaker—they weren't—but because the rust was falling away. Fight by fight, his body remembered things his mind had tried to forget. The way to shift his weight before a punch. The angle to turn a charge into a miss. The rhythm of combat, that back-and-forth dance he'd spent years learning and six more years trying to bury.
It was still there. All of it. Just waiting for him to stop pretending.
The fourth hound caught him with a claw across the forearm. Deep enough to see muscle. Nate barely noticed until the fight was over, until he was standing over the body and the pain finally registered.
[Feral Hound] defeated.
Progress: 5/10
Experience gained.
Level Up! Level 2 → Level 3
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That warmth again. Spreading through his muscles, his bones, knitting something tighter. When it faded, the wound on his arm had stopped bleeding. Not healed—still open, still raw—but the blood had clotted faster than it should have.
He kept moving.
The forest changed as he went deeper. The trees grew closer together, the canopy thicker, the light dimmer. The ground turned from soft moss to tangled roots and standing water. More than once he had to climb over fallen trunks or wade through muck that sucked at his boots.
And the hounds got smarter.
The sixth one didn't charge. It stalked him, staying just at the edge of his vision, circling. Waiting. Testing.
Nate stopped and turned to face it.
"Come on," he said. His voice sounded strange in the silence. "Let's go."
The hound watched him with yellow eyes. Then it moved—not toward him, but sideways, disappearing into the undergrowth.
He heard movement behind him a second later.
Two of them. They'd been hunting in a pair, and he'd only seen one.
Nate spun as the second hound burst from the brush. He got an arm up, felt jaws clamp down on his forearm, felt teeth scrape bone. The pain was white-hot, blinding. He threw a punch with his free hand, caught the thing in the eye, felt it flinch.
Then the first one hit him from behind.
He went down hard, one hound on his arm, one on his back. Claws raking his shoulders. Teeth trying to find his neck. For a second—just a second—he thought this was it. Stupid way to die. Gave up a weapon because of feelings.
Then something snapped.
Not in his body. In his head.
The fear was still there, but underneath it was something older. Something he'd been running from for six years. The part of him that had always known what he was, even when he was pretending to be something else.
He stopped trying to get away and started trying to win.
His free hand found the hound on his back—grabbed fur, grabbed flesh, grabbed whatever he could reach. He yanked it forward, over his shoulder, slammed it into the one on his arm. Both hounds went sprawling.
Nate was on his feet before they recovered. Blood running down both arms now. Shoulder on fire. Didn't matter.
The first hound came at him and he met it head-on. Knee to the skull. It dropped. The second one lunged and he caught it by the throat, one-handed, squeezing until something cracked under his fingers.
He slammed it into a tree trunk. Once. Twice. Three times.
It stopped moving.
[Feral Hound] defeated.
[Feral Hound] defeated.
Progress: 7/10
Experience gained.
Level Up! Level 3 → Level 4
Nate leaned against the tree, chest heaving. His arms were shredded. His back felt like raw meat. The level-up warmth spread through him again, and this time he felt the wounds start to close—not all the way, but enough. Enough to keep going.
He looked at his hands. Covered in blood. Some of it his. Most of it not.
He should have been horrified. He should have been shaking, traumatized, wondering what the hell he'd become.
He pushed off the tree and went to find the last three.
The eighth and ninth were almost easy.
His body had fully remembered now. Every movement was instinct, reflex, muscle memory carved so deep that six years of neglect couldn't erase it. He flowed between attacks like water, slipping punches he couldn't see, throwing counters he didn't plan.
His stats said F-rank across the board. But stats didn't measure six years of training. Stats didn't measure ten thousand hours in the gym, the sparring sessions, the amateur fights, the countless repetitions that had turned conscious thought into automatic response.
The System had given him potential. But this—this was already his.
[Feral Hound] defeated.
[Feral Hound] defeated.
Progress: 9/10
Experience gained.
One more.
Nate moved through the forest, hunting now instead of being hunted. His senses felt sharper somehow, even though his Perception was still F-rank. Maybe it was just focus. Maybe it was the leveling. Maybe it was something else entirely.
He found the last hound in a clearing.
It was bigger than the others. Taller at the shoulder, heavier in the chest, with scars across its muzzle that said it had survived fights before. Its eyes weren't yellow—they were orange, almost red, and they watched him with something that looked almost like recognition.
[Feral Hound Alpha — Level 5]
The tag was different. The feeling was different too.
Nate stepped into the clearing and raised his fists.
The alpha didn't lunge. It prowled, circling the edge of the clearing, testing. It had seen him kill the others—or smelled it on him, maybe. It knew he was dangerous.
Good.
Nate moved first. Closed the distance fast, threw a jab to test its reaction. The alpha slipped it—actually slipped it, like a fighter, not an animal—and snapped at his arm. He pulled back just in time.
This thing could fight.
They circled each other. Nate threw combinations, probing, looking for patterns. The alpha was faster than the others, smarter, more patient. It didn't overcommit. It waited for openings.
Just like he used to.
He feinted low, then went high—a right hand aimed at the skull. The alpha ducked under it and lunged, jaws closing on his thigh. Pain exploded up his leg. Nate brought an elbow down on the back of its neck, felt the impact shudder through his whole body.
The alpha let go and backed off, shaking its head. Hurt, but not done.
Nate's leg was bleeding badly. He could feel the muscle torn, the strength draining out of it. He had maybe one or two more good exchanges before he couldn't stand.
No more circling. No more testing.
He limped forward, and the alpha met him.
The next few seconds were chaos. Claws and teeth and fists and knees, everything moving too fast to track. He took a hit to the ribs that cracked something. He landed a punch that split the alpha's ear open. It knocked him down and he kicked it in the jaw as he fell. He got back up and it was already coming at him again.
He caught it.
Both hands on its throat, just like before, but this time the thing was stronger, heavier, fighting back with everything it had. Claws raked his chest. Its jaws snapped inches from his face.
Nate squeezed.
The alpha thrashed. Twisted. Almost broke free.
He squeezed harder.
Something in his arms burned—not pain, something else. Something that felt like the warmth after a level-up, but sharper. Focused. Concentrated in his hands, his forearms, the muscles straining to hold on.
The alpha's struggles weakened.
Nate didn't let go until it stopped moving entirely.
[Feral Hound Alpha] defeated.
Progress: 10/10
Experience gained.
Level Up! Level 4 → Level 5
TUTORIAL COMPLETE.
He let the body drop and collapsed beside it.
Everything hurt. His leg, his ribs, his arms, his chest. Blood everywhere—his blood, the alpha's blood, all of it mixing together on the forest floor. The level-up warmth spread through him, and he felt bones shift, wounds close, pain recede. Not gone, but manageable.
He lay there for a long moment, staring up at the purple sky through the gap in the canopy.
He was alive. He'd done it. Bare hands, no weapons, ten kills.
A new notification appeared:
CLASS SELECTION AVAILABLE
You have proven yourself in combat. The System recognizes your potential.
Choose your path:
[Warrior] — Grade: F The foundation of all combat classes. Balanced growth in Strength, Speed, and Durability. A common path with common limits.
[Brawler] — Grade: F An unrefined path for those who fight without weapons or training. Focuses on Strength and Durability. Limited skill ceiling.
[Pugilist] — Grade: E A rare path for those who have walked the way of the fist before the System. Balanced growth with emphasis on Speed and Perception. Higher skill ceiling. Prerequisite: Prior unarmed combat experience.
Nate stared at the options.
Warrior was safe. Brawler was obvious. But Pugilist—
A rare path for those who have walked the way of the fist before the System.
It had seen him. The System, whatever it was, had watched him fight and recognized what he'd been. What he still was, underneath six years of brake jobs and oil changes.
Grade E. The others were Grade F. That meant something—he didn't know what exactly, but it meant something.
He reached for the notification.
Then he stopped.
This was the choice. The real one. Once he picked, he was committed. No going back to normal life, no pretending this was temporary, no waiting for someone else to fix things.
He thought about the auto shop. About Dale and the broken lift and the endless parade of cars that needed fixing. About the apartment he'd go home to, the TV dinners, the fights he watched on Saturday nights while his knees ached and his hands remembered what it felt like to hit something.
He thought about his knees. How they didn't hurt anymore.
He thought about the alpha, and the moment when something had burned in his arms. That sharp, focused heat.
The beginning of something.
Nate selected [Pugilist].
