The transfer of system points was a rhythmic, digital chime that echoed sweet and sharp in my mind.
[Transaction complete. You have received 50 System Points.]
[Transaction complete. You have received 70 System Points.]
[Transaction complete. You have received 50 System Points.]
The pile of vacuum-sealed jerky and bottled water in our concrete alcove was dwindling rapidly, but my digital balance was swelling to a staggering size. In the first week of the tutorial, while most players struggled to scrape together double-digit points, I had successfully siphoned a small fortune right out of the Smiling Devil's territory.
From the corner of my eye, I watched Woojin. He had retreated slightly, whispering commands to three of his trusted, armed guards. His expression had returned to its flawless, benevolent mask, but his jaw was clenched so tight the muscles in his cheek were twitching violently. He realized that the psychological grip he held over the eighty-two survivors was being structurally dismantled by a commodity more powerful than his mental virus: basic survival resources.
"Hey. Step aside," a rough voice barked.
The crowd of civilians parted reluctantly as one of Woojin's main guards—the one who had racked the shotgun on top of the train car earlier—stepped up to our table. He didn't look at me. Instead, he stared fixedly at the remaining crate of food, a dark, conflicted emotion swirling in his eyes.
"I'm buying," the guard muttered, raising his hand to access his digital interface. "Twenty packs of jerky. Forty bottles of water."
Beside me, Minsoo's eyes narrowed. "That's a lot of food for one man."
"It's not for him," I said smoothly, a cold smirk playing on my lips. "He's buying on behalf of Woojin."
The guard flinched but didn't deny it.
Woojin was a master manipulator, but he was also highly pragmatic. He knew that if he couldn't force me to hand over the food for free, he had to buy it himself. If he let me keep selling directly to the survivors, his entire system-tax monopoly would crumble. By purchasing the bulk of my remaining stock, he could reclaim control over the camp's food supply, rationing it out to his followers later to reinforce their brainwashed loyalty. He was using his own accumulated points to patch the bleeding wound in his authority.
"One thousand eight hundred points," I stated, tapping my interface. "Transfer the points, and the stock is yours."
The guard's fingers trembled as he authorized the massive transaction.
[Transaction complete. You have received 1,800 System Points.]
"A pleasure doing business with your administrator," I said, stepping back and gesturing to the crate. The guards quickly hauled the heavy container away, casting dark, warning glares in our direction.
"Riyo," Minsoo whispered, leaning closer as she watched them walk away. "We just gave them back the monopoly. Won't they just use that food to tighten their grip on these people? We essentially armed him with the one thing everyone down here needs."
"Let them," I replied quietly, my eyes scanning the high, vaulted ceiling of the metro station. "They won't have time to eat it anyway. Look at the clock."
Day five of the tutorial was drawing to a close. The eighty-two players gathered in this single, stagnant coordinate had officially crossed the forty-eight-hour threshold. The air in the subway station was growing noticeably heavier, thick with an artificial, electric tension. The subtle, ambient mana paths that my Dragon's Eyes tracked were beginning to warp, twisting into erratic, violent spirals of purple and black energy.
Suddenly, a high-pitched, static hum vibrated through everyone's skulls.
"Argh!" Yoon Sul groaned, clutching his temples. "What is that? My Gamer interface is glitching out! The screen... it's tearing!"
Across the station, survivors dropped to their knees, covering their ears as the invisible, screeching frequency amplified. The battery-powered lanterns flickered violently, their steady glow dying out completely, leaving the vast underground junction illuminated only by the dim, orange flicker of dying campfires and the sparks of short-circuiting electronics.
Then, the concrete floor began to vibrate.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was a rhythmic, pulsing energy that seemed to emanate from the very center of the station's empty tracks. A dense, pitch-black fog began to seep out of the maintenance tunnels, pooling along the ground and swallowing the train tracks in an unnatural, shifting darkness.
"Look up!" someone screamed.
Above the central platform, the space itself fractured. A jagged, tear-like portal ripped open in mid-air, bleeding a sickly violet light. But what stepped out was not a standard tutorial creature.
It wasn't a goblin, a mutated beast, or even a low-tier Orc.
It was a tall, unnaturally thin bipedal creature. Its flesh looked like wet, decayed parchment, stretched tightly over a skeletal frame. It lacked eyes, possessing only a massive, circular jaw filled with rows of needle-thin, rotating teeth. But what made my blood run cold was its posture—it wore the tattered, decayed remnants of a high-ranking system administrator's robe, and a faint, distorted holographic halo flickered weakly above its head.
It was a Cull-Stalker—a high-tier system cleanser that only appeared when a tutorial zone's population became too stagnant.
The creature tilted its head, its jaw clicking and grinding as it peered down at the terrified crowd below. When it spoke, its voice wasn't a beastly roar, but a horrific, multi-layered echo that sounded like a broken, stammering record player.
"Y-You... people..." the creature rasped, its voice stuttering violently as if learning to speak human tongue in real-time. "S-Shouldn't... be... l-lazying... like... this..."
A collective shiver ran through the crowd. The sheer pressure radiating from the entity was immense, heavy enough to make several Level 1 survivors vomit from sheer terror.
"The s-system... does not... foster... cattle," the creature stammered, its circular jaw widening into a grotesque, hollow void. "T-Time to... c-cull."
Before anyone could scream, the creature raised a skeletal, elongated arm. The violet light from its halo flared.
Before anyone could scream, the creature raised a skeletal, elongated arm. The violet light from its halo flared.
Instantly, a massive, localized spatial distortion rippled through the entire station. A collective gasp echoed through the crowd as a bizarre, translucent vacuum effect swept over every single container, backpack, and storage crate in the area.
"My bag!" a survivor yelled, frantically ripping open his canvas pack. "The canned food—it's gone! It just turned into dust!"
"The crates we just bought!" Woojin's guard screamed in sheer panic, staring at the completely empty floor where our massive crate of vacuum-sealed food had been resting just a second ago. "Administrator Woojin! The food... it's all vanished! The entire reserve is gone!"
Every single scrap of food, clean water, and consumable ration in Sector 4-B had been instantly dissolved into raw mana, absorbed directly into the purple portal above. The system had completely wiped out their physical safety net. It was forcing a desperate, starving population into an absolute corner, stripping away any hope of passive survival.
At that exact moment, the crimson system interface screens forced themselves open in front of every single player in the room, flashing with a blood-red light.
[EMERGENCY QUEST: THE CULLING OF THE STAGNANT]
Difficulty: Scaled to Population (82 Players) — A-Rank
Description: You have gathered in a dense cluster and refused to progress. The system has confiscated all physical sustenance. To survive, you must endure the incoming onslaught.
Objective: Survive the first monster wave.
Time Remaining until Wave 1 Begins: 03:00
Note: The quest details and rewards will be updated upon the completion or failure of the initial wave. Survive, or become sustenance for the system.
"An A-Rank quest?" Yoon Sul gasped, his face completely pale as his Gamer mind analyzed the terrifying implications. "In the first week of the tutorial? Hyung, that's impossible! We're going to die! Even the dungeon bosses in this zone shouldn't be higher than C-Rank!"
It's not impossible," I said, my voice cold and calm as I drew my D-Rank Reinforced Steel Infantry Blade. The blade gleamed faintly in the dim, violet light of the portal. "It's just the system doing what it does best. Forcing the sheep to either grow teeth—or get eaten."
Across the station, the faint, desperate whispers of Woojin's mental control were completely shattered by the raw, primal panic of eighty starving people. The security of their makeshift fortress had dissolved in an instant.
Woojin stood in the center of the platform, his face devoid of its usual calm. His hands were clenched into tight fists, and his [Whisper of the Subconscious] skill was flaring wildly, trying to regain control over the panicked screaming of the crowd. But mental manipulation requires a foundation of stability; when faced with immediate, existential dread and an A-Rank system warning, the human mind reverts to pure, chaotic self-preservation.
Calm down!" Woojin's voice echoed, carrying a heavy, vibrating mana frequency that attempted to soothe the crowd. "We have the barricades! We have armed guards! If we stand together behind the train cars, we can bottle them up in the tunnels!"
"Stand together?" a survivor spat, his face twisted in terror. "With what? We haven't eaten a full meal in days, and now all our food is gone! We don't even have the stamina to swing a pipe!"
"He's right," another chimed in, pointing a trembling finger at the dark tunnels. "Look at the tracks!"
Deep within the darkness of the
maintenance shafts, the sound of scraping claws and wet, heavy breathing began to echo. Hundreds of glowing red eyes materialized in the dark, stretching back as far as the eye could see. The first wave was arriving, and they were hungry.
Minsoo stepped up to my side, her twin daggers catching the low light. "Riyo, what's the plan? We can't fight eighty-two players' worth of monsters on our own, even with your stats."
"We don't have to fight them all," I whispered back, my eyes locking onto the Cull-Stalker floating above. "We just need to survive the first wave. The system's difficulty is scaled to the crowd, but so are the rewards. The moment the first wave ends and the quest updates, the power dynamic in this shelter will shift permanently."
I looked at my system point balance. Over three thousand points. While Woojin's treasury had been emptied to buy food that no longer existed, I was sitting on enough wealth to purchase high-tier equipment directly from the system shop the moment the wave began.
"Yoon Sul, prep your buffs. Minsoo, stay on my flank," I commanded, adjusting my grip on my blade.
The three-minute timer in the air ticked down to zero.
A deafening, collective roar erupted from the dark maintenance tunnels. The black fog surged forward, and with it came a tidal wave of mutated, chitin-covered beasts, their jaws snapping as they rushed the barricades. The Smiling Devil's kingdom of sheep was about to face a slaughterhouse, and I was the only one who knew how to survive the butcher.