The soil beneath Rocky's feet was already dead, black in color, foul in smell, and eerie in sight. There was no hope of life, no matter where he looked. All was neither lost nor forgotten. The cemetery around him was deathly still, covered by a dark-reddish mist, and upon seeing the broken headstones from a distance, it felt as if a ghostly figure was observing him, monitoring his very actions.
Rocky, who seemed to have run out of breath, opened his mouth to taste the air, whose fragrance he had forgotten. The night air tasted stale, sour—as if the world itself had begun to rot.
Why me?
He pressed his palm to his chest, expecting to feel a heartbeat. There was one—sluggish, heavy—but it didn't feel like it truly belonged to him.
"You are selected."
The System's words echoed in his brain, like an image that haunts him.
Selected for what? Rocky muttered to no one. His voice sounded like it was wrong to bring a dead person back to the living, feeling like he had been forced to work for something that he himself doesn't know.
He looked at his hands. Dirt under his fingernails. Scars he didn't remember earning. He tried to dig through the haze in his mind, but memories slipped through his fingers like sand drifting from the palms.
A burning lab.
A man in white.
A monster behind steel doors.
And then nothing.
The graveyard stretched on, rows of forgotten names beneath crooked stones. He staggered forward, boots scraping broken gravel. His breath caught when the status window flickered back to life:
|=========STATUS WINDOW==========|
Name: Rocky
Race: Human (?)
Age: 19
Primary Task: Ensure Humanity's Survival
Memory Recovery: 5%
|=================================|
"Ensure humanity's survival…" He had a humorless laugh that echoed off moss-covered monuments.
"Humanity's survival? I can't even remember who the hell I am."
He wiped the sweat—or tears—from his cheek. A question clawed at him, more vicious than the cold wind blowing his torn shirt.
"Why me? Why did it pick me?"
A faint hum answered—the System, alive and patient, whispering in code only it understood.
But Rocky got no answer. Just the same hollow pulse behind his eyes, like gears turning in a place that shouldn't exist.
He turned, noticing the fog. There—in the distance—city lights flickered like dying embers beneath the crimson haze. If there were answers for his questions, maybe he would find them there, hidden in the ruin.
He clenched his fists. The cold air made his bones crackle—a reminder that he could still feel. That he was, somehow, alive.
"Fine." He took one step away from the grave that had spat him back out.
"You brought me back. Now tell me why."
"Silence."
Only the wind seemed to be whispering something, which he couldn't hear at all.
Nothing. Just the distant hiss of wind through hollowed bones of buildings.
Rocky then proceeded to walk forward, his foot sweeping over the dead soil, the broken grave. Each and every step made him sense something wasn't even right at the beginning—like his bones didn't remember how to move together anymore. The wind howled through the rusted iron gates at the cemetery's edge, carrying whispers that sounded almost like voices.
He paused at the gates, resting his hand on the cold, rusted metal. Beyond, the land away from the cemetery was in ruins: crooked frames of once-towering buildings, shattered highways that led to nowhere, and rivers of black sludge, which reflected the crimson haze that had already stained the sky. Now it is trying to stain the land
Somewhere out there, the last flickers of life were clinging on. And somewhere—hidden in all that decay—were answers.
He took a breath. The air made his throat itch.
"System," he said, "where do I start?"
Nothing. Just the distant hiss of wind through hollowed bones of buildings.
Then—a faint beep.
|=========DIRECTIVE UPDATE==========|
Nearest Human Settlement Detected: 12.4 km East
Vital Signs: Unstable
Memory Recovery: 6%
Recommendation: Seek shelter. Acquire resources.
|===================================|
Rocky squinted his eyes at the flickering text. 12 kilometers? He could barely stand on the ground with his wobbly feet.
Suddenly, out of the blue.
A low rumble can be heard across the plain, like thunder from nowhere. He turned toward the sound—eyes wide, his heart racing behind his ribs. In the distance, a shape moved through the haze. Something huge—too many legs, metal glinting where flesh should be. Its eyes burned with cold, mechanical light.
His breath caught in his throat.
"A… machine?"
No—not just a machine. A beast. A thing made of iron, bone, and hunger.
It raised its head, sniffing the air like a predator catching a scent. Rocky stumbled backward through the cemetery gates, nearly tripping over a half-buried gravestone.
The thing let out a sound—a screech like tearing metal and shattering glass—and turned toward him.
Rocky ran.
The ruined city lights flickered in the distance like a promise. Or a lie. Behind him, the monster started chasing him.
Gravel with decayed roots cracked under Rocky's feet as he pushed himself ahead. Each movement made his chest throb faster and faster, as if his heart would tear through it wide. While his thoughts and emotions raced, the metal beast growled one more time—a sound so loud that it made him clench his teeth
"Faster… just faster…"
The already dead world seemed to have collapsed around the edges of his vision. He leaped over a broken pipe, nearly falling, and crashed through the remains of rusted pipes. Metal scraped across his arm—he felt a pain so hot and sharp it brought him alive, a reminder that he was not dead.
"System! Any help would be appreciated—"
He gasped in between hard breaths, but the only reply that he received was the cold air and the metal rumble of the mechanical monster that was descending upon him.
The beast behind him stumbled forward on spidery, piston-driven legs—each step crunched the ground, which rained dirt and pieces of broken stone. Its single red eye flared brighter than a laser, locking onto Rocky like a sniper's targeting laser.
He stumbled upon an unbroken road. In the distance, the city's skeleton (steel rods) seemed larger—through the fog.
"Just get to the buildings… shadows… anything—" rocky thought to himself, wondering if would he survive
His feet got planted on the soil, which made him collapse, rolling across the dead grass and broken concrete. He spits a mouthful of blood. For a moment, he thinks about remaining there. Let the monster do it now, rip him apart—at least the questions would stop.
Something inside, something old—or maybe something new—screams at him to get up.
The screech came back. As it felt nearer. Rocky fought upwards, fighting the pain in his legs. A glance over his shoulder showed the machine-beast, its claws tearing through everything as it came on.
"Too close—"
He spotted a broken drainage pipe sticking out of a heap of debris ahead. A hole—just big enough to fit him through.
It was a hope or a tomb.
He didn't mind. He dived inside it as metal claws crashed down around him, spitting up shards of metal that landed on his back. He crawled in, and his hands and knees got torn open once they came in contact with cracked concrete and rusty wire.
Behind him, the creature slammed into the entrance of the pipe, too large to go through. Its roar shook the metal, the vibrations making Rocky's bones hurt. He pulled himself deeper into the blackness, each breath burning.
Then—silence.
He could feel his heartbeat, the cold drip of water somewhere in the tunnel, and the faint flicker of his status window.
|=========STATUS WINDOW==========|
Vital Signs: Critical
Memory Recovery: 7%
Nearest Human Settlement: 11.9 km East
Directive: Survive
|=================================|
Rocky lay there in the dark, blood on his fingers, the echo of his heartbeat mixing with the System's cold whisper in his mind.
"Survive."
He forced a bitter, some laugh through his cracked lips. "Yeah… sure… I'll try."
Outside, the mouth of the pipe scraped on the machine or whatsoever—then the sound was gone into the night, leaving the wind with a taste of rust.
He had to survive; otherwise, humanity would perish...
...
[To Be Continued…]