Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

The kitchenette cabinet was empty. All of it. Someone — probably the same panicked mob that had been fighting over a mop handle the night before — had cleaned it out down to a lone packet of expired green tea and half a jar of pickle that nobody, not even in the apocalypse, was desperate enough to touch.

Ethan stood there for a solid ten seconds, staring into the void of the cabinet the way a man stares into a void that has personally wronged him.

”No chips,” he said. ”No biscuits. Not even the sad crackers.”

Behind him, the system panel — which had followed him around all morning like an overly attentive intern — offered its usual brand of unhelpful commentary.

[NEARBY FOOD SOURCES DETECTED]

[LOCATION: SHARMA GENERAL STORE, 400M NORTHEAST]

[WARNING: LOCATION IS WITHIN AN ACTIVE MONSTER ZONE]

[ZONE THREAT LEVEL: 10]

[RECOMMENDATION: AVOID]

Ethan actually perked up at that. Sharma’s — the tiny store on the corner that sold everything from cigarettes to instant noodles to, crucially, the extra-spicy potato chips that Ethan considered a basic human right. He hadn’t thought about it in the chaos, but of course it was still there. Buildings didn’t just disappear because the apocalypse happened. Presumably the chips were still on the shelf, patiently waiting, completely unaware of their impending rescue.

”Level 10 zone,” he repeated, testing the words like he was trying to remember if that number meant anything. ”Is that bad?”

[ZONE LEVEL 10 IS CLASSIFIED AS ”ELITE.”]

[AVERAGE HUMAN SURVIVOR SUCCESS RATE IN LEVEL 10 ZONES: 12%]

[RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT ENGAGE WITHOUT PARTY SUPPORT]

Ethan considered this information with the seriousness of a man reading the calorie count on a menu he was going to order from anyway.

”Cool,” he said, and grabbed his hoodie off the floor. ”I’ll be careful.”

He was not, in any meaningful sense, being careful. He was being hungry, which in Ethan’s internal hierarchy of motivations ranked significantly higher.

The street outside the building looked like a movie set abandoned mid-explosion. Cars sat crumpled against lampposts, one flipped entirely onto its roof like a dead beetle. The asphalt had cracked in long red-glowing seams, faint heat shimmering off them, and the sky overhead had settled into a permanent bruised orange, like the whole world had a fever it couldn’t sleep off.

And the street was full of them.

Elite zombies — Ethan didn’t know they were called that yet, but the label would have fit — shuffled between the wrecked cars in loose clusters, their skin a mottled grey-green, joints bending at angles that made his eyes hurt to look at directly. These weren’t the shambling, slow-moving cliché from every zombie movie he’d half-watched while eating dinner. These moved in twitchy, sudden bursts, heads snapping toward sounds with unnerving speed, claws long enough to open a car door without a handle.

A group of actual hunters — Ethan could tell because they had matching armbands and were sweating through what looked like genuinely expensive tactical gear — were dug in behind an overturned bus about fifty meters down the block, trading short bursts of gunfire and shouted coordinates. One of them was bleeding from the shoulder. Another was screaming into a radio that wasn’t getting a response.

”Fall back! FALL BACK, the left flank is—”

”I can’t, there’s three more coming from the alley—”

Ethan stepped out of his building’s front doors, hands in his hoodie pockets, and walked directly down the middle of the street like a man taking a leisurely trip to a much less hostile grocery store.

One of the elite zombies noticed him first. It turned its head with that horrible too-fast snap, locked its milky eyes on him, and let out a shriek that made the hunters behind the bus flinch and duck lower.

It charged.

Ethan didn’t run. He didn’t reach for a weapon — he didn’t have one, hadn’t even thought to grab the void-touched dagger the system had generated for his avatar overnight, because it hadn’t occurred to him that he, personally, might need to fight anything. He just kept walking, mildly annoyed that something was now blocking his direct path to the store.

[HOSTILE ENTITY APPROACHING]

[THREAT ASSESSMENT: ELITE ZOMBIE, LV. 34]

[USER THREAT ASSESSMENT: NEGLIGIBLE]

[PASSIVE DEFENSE PROTOCOL: STANDBY]

The zombie closed the last few meters in a blur of grasping claws and gnashing teeth, aimed directly at Ethan’s throat.

And simply stopped.

Not slowed down. Not deflected. It hit an invisible wall of pressure a foot from Ethan’s body and stopped, like it had run face-first into a sheet of solid air, and then crumpled sideways onto the cracked asphalt, twitching once before going completely still.

Ethan hadn’t even flinched. He’d been checking his hoodie pocket for loose change.

Behind the bus, the hunter with the bleeding shoulder lowered his radio very, very slowly.

”...did that thing just die on its own?”

”I don’t— I didn’t even see him move—”

Two more zombies rushed him from either side, drawn by the noise, claws extended, jaws wide. Ethan sidestepped one of them without really trying — more like he was avoiding a puddle — and the creature’s own momentum carried it straight into an invisible pressure field that hummed faintly around his body, the same field that had dropped its friend a second earlier. It crumpled instantly. The second one didn’t even make it that far; it got within three feet, screeched, and simply keeled over like something had reached into its chest and switched it off.

[PASSIVE SKILL TRIGGERED: VOID AURA (LV. 1)]

[3 HOSTILE ENTITIES NEUTRALIZED]

[EXPERIENCE GAINED: NEGLIGIBLE — USER LEVEL EXCEEDS ZONE CAP]

Ethan reached the front of Sharma’s General Store, stepping over a fourth zombie that had apparently gotten too close a full ten feet back and dropped for no reason anyone but the system could explain. The shutter was half down, dented, glass shattered along the bottom edge. He crouched, ducked under it, and flicked on the small flashlight function on his phone since the power was clearly out.

The shelves were mostly untouched. Looters had apparently prioritized the pharmacy two doors down over the snack aisle, which told Ethan everything he needed to know about looters’ priorities being fundamentally wrong.

He found the chips. Extra spicy, family size, three bags left. He grabbed all three, plus a couple of energy drinks, plus — because he was a reasonable and prepared young man — a family pack of instant noodles that would probably last him a week if the world stayed this annoying.

Outside, the hunters behind the overturned bus had gone completely silent, staring at the teenager in a loose hoodie who had just casually strolled through a Level 10 elite zone, dropped four monsters without lifting a finger, and disappeared into a convenience store like he was running an errand.

”Who,” one of them finally whispered, ”was that.”

Ethan emerged a minute later, arms full of snacks, stepping over the fourth zombie again without really noticing it was there, and walked back the way he came — past the bus, past the staring hunters, past the wreckage of a street that no longer followed the rules of the old world.

”Excuse me,” called the hunter with the bleeding shoulder, finally finding his voice. ”Are you— sir, are you a Ranker? What’s your class—”

Ethan didn’t stop walking. He didn’t even really register the question over the crinkle of the chip bags in his arms.

”I’m just hungry,” he said, and kept going.

Behind him, the system quietly logged the encounter, added a line to a report nobody at Ethan’s pay grade would ever read, and said absolutely nothing else about it.