Entering Apocalypse in Easy-Mode
Chapter 534: Start

Chapter 534: Start

Clyde gulped his saliva and feel anxious, but only for a moment.

It was here.

The moment he had been waiting for, the moment he had been preparing for.

He looked up at the sky. It was still blue and still bright. But something was wrong. The air had become heavier now. A quiet pressure pressing against his chest.

Then he saw the crack.

It shimmered faintly in the air above, barely visible to the normal eye. It looks like a jagged fissure across the sky like a fault line running through reality. He had seen it once before, long ago, in the fragments of his old life.

Now it had returned.

A ripple of confirmation passed through his mind.

This was it. No more guesses and waiting.

The apocalypse — the Selection Stage — had begun.

And right on cue, the world responded.

The light around him dimmed slightly as the sky pulsed with a flicker of gold-red light, and then the prompt appeared.

[THE WORLD YOU KNOW WILL END IN SIX DAYS]

The system’s message appeared. Floating in the air before everyone’s eyes.

All at once, the pedestrian walkway erupted into chaos.

The screams and shouts was heard. Phones dropped. Bags hit the ground.

People stumbled backward, shielding their eyes or whiping their hands. The message faded but the panic remained.

Clyde stood still among the moving crowd with eyes steady and breath remained even. He wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t confused. He had seen this coming.

But Mina...

Where was she?

He turned sharply. His heart picked up speed. It was not from fear, but urgency. She had to be at the bus stop. That was their routine. That’s where she would be, hopefully.

Clyde broke into a sprint.

He weaved through the crowd as best he could. His movements were sharp and efficient.

He passed a café window. People inside frozen in place, staring at the sky or at each other with open mouths.

He pushed past a pair of panicked office workers and rounded a corner when suddenly violent sound cracked through the air behind him.

Like stone shattering.

He turned his head slightly as the ground buckled.

From beneath the ground a claw appeared.

A jagged and blackened claw pierced the asphalt and pavement like it was paper, dragging itself upward. Cracks spread like spiderwebs from the point of impact.

Another one. Then two. Then more.

From beneath the road, things began crawling.

Monsters with hunched, eyeless appearances. Their skin a twisted blend of stone and flesh. Their bodies pulsed with glowing veins, and their jaws unhinged far too wide for anything natural.

People screamed and scattered. Some tried to run. Others froze.

One man who were stood to close was grabbed by the monsters and pulled screaming into the ground.

Another fell as the sidewalk split beneath him.

But Clyde didn’t stop.

He didn’t scream.

He keep moving.

He leapt over a broken trash bin. Sidestepped a collapsing bike stand.

The world around him was falling apart, but his focus narrowed like a blade.

Mina was the priority ieight now. Jack, this body’s owner would want to keep her save.

He had prepared for this moment and now it was here again.

Clyde ran.

And the monsters, sensing something different in him, began to turn his way.

Clyde moved with terrifying speed and agility, weaving through the crumbling street like a shadow made flesh.

Around him, the world was falling into hell pretty quickly. People being dragged, torn, crushed, screaming for help that wouldn’t come.

Then five monsters lunged at him at once. Hulking things, their stone-flesh bodies rippling with unnatural strength. Their jaws opened wide as if to devour him whole.

Clyde didn’t flinch.

His eyes narrowed, calculating their trajectories, his body already moving.

He dropped low beneath the first swipe and drove his elbow up into the creature’s chin with brutal force.

A sickening crunch echoed as its head snapped back. Then he twisted his hips and planted a foot into its chest, launching it backward into two others behind it.

The fourth monster lunged, too close.

Clyde caught its wrist mid-swipe. "Too slow."

He pulled it forward and used its own momentum to slam it face-first into the ground. The pavement cracked. The monster twitched once. Then died.

The last one hesitated.

That was a mistake.

Clyde stepped in and drove his fist through its skull.

CRACK!

It collapsed instantly.

Then came the notification of him receiving minor Exp.

Clyde barely glanced at the floating text.

"I don’t care about that kind of small numbers right now," he muttered, already moving again.

More monsters were crawling up from the earth, tearing apart cars and chasing anyone still alive.

Some people saw Clyde moving like a powerful waerior and ran after him.

"Wait please! Let me come with you!"

"You’re strong, help us!"

"Please! My daughter !"

Clyde didn’t stop.

He slashed one monster apart that came too close to a running girl, then kept going.

He wasn’t heartless. But he didn’t have time now.

Mina was his goal for now. But if she was actually already died, then he can’t do anything about it.

Another monster pounced. Clyde ducked under it, swept its legs, and caved in its skull with a boot to the jaw as he ran.

The sound of carnage followed him. Explosions in the distance, screaming, sirens already overwhelmed. Smoke started to rise into the sky, painting the horizon black.

But he just kept running.

Then he saw the bus stop.

He saw the real sights as soon as he get close.

Blood was everywhere.

Smeared across the glass walls, pooled beneath the benches, splattered in arcs along the sidewalk. Limbs and torn pieces of bodies lay scattered, twitching or still.

A headless corpse slumped against a broken pole. A severed hand still clutched a phone.

Clyde winced, his jaw tightening. He stepped closer, scanning each piece, ignoring the iron stench in the air.

None of these belonged to Mina.

She wasn’t here.

That meant she was either still alive, or taken.

He’d take the first possibility.

Clyde looked up sharply as a new sound of snarling, slitherin and low chorus of grotesque howls reached his ears. The number of monsters nearby was suddenly increasing.

More were pouring in, attracted to the human live and the chaos.

And then animals began to change.

Cats arched and changed, their fur peeling away into scale-like plates. Birds circled overhead, their feathers darkening and hardening into blade-like appendages. Dogs foamed at the mouth as their bodies grew and twisted, bone and muscle reshaping into something else.

It had begun. Magic power was pouring and was warping reality.

Clyde took a slow breath, then toon the Silvercoil spear.

With a soft hum, it shifted, elongating into a sleek spear of silver. Magic flowed through it as his hand tightened.

"Let’s get this over with."

He charged at the monsters.

The first mutant dog leapt ay him then Clyde impaled it midair, and immediately cleaved through a cat-thing that lunged for his throat.

A sharp upward thrust pierced a bird mid-dive, pinning it against the bus stop glass.

More notifications blinked in the air. He ignored them all again.

The spear danced in his hands, precise and ruthless. Every movement honed from his memory, and the lingering fragments of his old power.

Still no sign of Mina.

He kept searching.

Then, the sky pulsed again.

A second system prompt appeared before his eyes and everyone else’s.

Glowing red letters, etched with subtle arcs of black light.

[THE FIRST Chapter HAS BEGUN!]

Title: "TEST OF SURVIVAL"

Objective: Survive for the next 6 hours.

Secondary Objective: Eliminate at least 15 Mutated Entities.

Bonus Objective: Save 3 civilians from death.

Time Limit: 6 hours.

Rewards will be calculated based on performance.

Failure Condition: Death.

Clyde stared at the floating text.

"Six hours, huh..."

He twirled the Silvercoil once, then charged forward into the smoke and fire.

He then remembered that he couldn’t afford to reveal too much.

So, he held back.

Clyde shifted tactics. He dodged cleanly. His footwork became sharper, lighter, more evasive than aggressive. Silvercoil remained in hand but he used it defensively now.

Then he saw three civilians huddled behind a broken car.

A middle-aged woman clutching her child. A young man in a hoodie trying to hold off a beast with a bent metal rod. Another monster was circling them, low and hungry.

Clyde didn’t hesitate.

He moved in a blur, sliding under a lunging creature and sweeping its legs. He slammed the butt of Silvercoil into another’s jaw, cracking its skull sideways.

The last one lunged for the child. Clyde threw a chunk of rubble and struck its head mid-air, stunning it long enough for the civilians to escape.

They scrambled away, breathless and terrified.

A prompt blinked beside him.

[BONUS OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: Saved 3 civilians]

He barely glanced at it. He didn’t linger. He didn’t speak to the civilians.

He turned and left.

He didn’t need thanks. He didn’t think about what would happen to them after. That wasn’t his concern.

He kept moving.

Clyde broke into a run again, darting between the smoking ruins of collapsed buildings and torn streets..

Then he saw Mina.

She stood on top of a crushed police car, sleeves torn, face streaked with dirt and blood. But her stance was firm. Her eyes blazed with focus.

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