Chapter 11: The City Outside

Li Hua checked her pack twice, tightened the straps on the makeshift shoulder holster holding a fire poker, and looked at Chen Gang. "You're sure about bringing Liu Peng?"

"He can still swing with one arm," Chen Gang said. "Left side, downward strikes. I taught him yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Liu Peng shifted his splinted right arm. The curtain rod and duct tape held firm. "You call that teaching?"

"I call it not dying." Chen Gang slung his fire axe over his shoulder. "Wang Shu, you're on watch for rear approaches. Don't engage unless we're compromised. Signal with two sharp knocks on any hard surface."

Wang Shu nodded. She hadn't spoken much since Wave 5. Her hands were steady though. That counted.

Lin Mei appeared in the stairwell doorway. She'd been sleeping — the first time in thirty hours. "Bring back mana potions if you find them. The System shop wants SP we don't have, so physical stores are all we've got."

"And antibiotics," Chen Gang said, touching his bandaged forearm.

"And antibiotics." Lin Mei's gaze shifted to Zhang Wei. "How far are we going?"

"Commercial district. Maybe two kilometers northeast." Zhang Wei adjusted the backpack Chen Gang had insisted he carry — empty, for now. "Pharmacy run was too shallow. We need volume."

"Then don't die getting it."

Chen Gang led them down the stairwell. At the ground floor, Fang Lei's people watched from the second-floor landing. Eight of them, clustered around the stairwell railing. Nobody spoke. Nobody volunteered.

Zhang Wei counted them anyway. Six armed. Two with proper weapons — a kitchen knife, a metal pipe. The others carried broken furniture and sharpened broom handles. They were Level 4 through 6. Fang Lei had taught them to fight, but not to cooperate.

The front door of Building 7 opened onto a street Zhang Wei barely recognized.

Two days ago, this had been a residential block — apartment towers, a noodle shop, a parking structure. Now the noodle shop was gone. Not destroyed. Gone. In its place stood a column of blue-black stone rising four meters, covered in glyphs that pulsed with faint light. A dungeon entrance.

"That wasn't there during the event," Li Hua said.

"System's been adding them since the patch went active," Chen Gang said. "Saw three more on the supply run yesterday."

Zhang Wei activated Code Sight.

The world doubled.

Reality remained — cracked asphalt, abandoned cars, a sky the color of bruised iron. But overlaid on top came the architecture. Data streams cascading from every surface. Spawn zones marked in red circles on the ground, their radius pulsing as timers counted down to the next monster cycle. Patrol routes traced in amber lines, showing where roaming mobs would path over the next fifteen minutes. And between them, threading through the corruption zones and dungeon borders, narrow corridors of green.

Safe paths.

"The dungeon entrance on the noodle shop site is Level 6 to 10," Zhang Wei said. "Solo-capable for Level 8 plus. We're not entering it." He pointed left. "That way. Green corridor runs along the old bus route. Twenty-meter-wide safe zone, no spawn overlap for the next twelve minutes."

Chen Gang looked at him. "Twelve minutes?"

"Then a Roaming Corpse patrol crosses from the east. We need to be past the intersection by then."

"Move," Chen Gang said.

They moved.

The city unfolded like a wound.

Every block revealed new corruption. Streets buckled upward where System geometry had replaced asphalt with something harder and stranger — a dark composite material that hummed underfoot. Buildings stood with their facades half-consumed by crystalline growths, blue and violet, pulsing with data. In one block, an entire office tower had been converted into a vertical dungeon — its windows replaced by iron grates, its entrance sealed by a shimmering barrier marked LEVEL 8-12, PARTY 2-6.

Zhang Wei fed the group data in clipped phrases. "Left here — Scrapper spawn zone, Level 4, two targets, twelve-second respawn cycle. Don't linger. Straight through, no engagement."

"Copy," Chen Gang said.

"Next corridor narrows. One patrol, Level 6 Shrieker, moving northwest. We pass behind it in forty seconds if we don't stop."

Li Hua grabbed Liu Peng's good arm and pulled him forward. Wang Shu moved silently at the rear, scanning behind them with the methodical attention Chen Gang had drilled into her.

The first engagement came six blocks from Building 7.

Three Blight Crawlers emerged from a collapsed storefront — Level 5 each, the same breed they'd fought during the Stress Test. But here, in the open, without building corridors to funnel them, they spread into a flanking formation.

"Spread pattern," Zhang Wei called. "Two flanking left, one center. The left pair has a three-second gap in their aggression cycle when they transition targets. Chen Gang, hold center. Li Hua, the moment they shift, hit the leftmost one's right flank — there's a weak point at the joint segment. Code Sight shows forty percent damage reduction on direct hits to the carapace, but the joint is exposed."

Chen Gang planted his feet and caught the center crawler's lunge on his axe haft. The impact buckled him backward — his wounded arm screaming — but he held. Li Hua circled wide, fire poker raised. The left crawler turned toward her, tracking her movement.

"Now," Zhang Wei said.

Li Hua drove the poker into the joint. The crawler shrieked, its left legs seizing. Chen Gang twisted his axe and buried it in the center crawler's head. Wang Shu — from behind, silent, precise — cracked the third crawler's carapace with a length of rebar while it focused on Chen Gang's feint.

Three kills. Twenty seconds.

XP GAINED: 45 (shared) ZHANG WEI — LV 7 → LV 8 STAT INCREASES: +2 INT, +1 WIS, +1 PER

"Eight," Zhang Wei said quietly.

"You leveled?" Li Hua pulled her poker free. "From sharing XP on three Level 5 kills?"

"Code Sight shows I was close to the threshold. The dungeon runs from Day 1 pushed me most of the way." He checked his stats. "Keep moving. We're burning the safe corridor."

They pressed northeast. The corruption thickened. Entire blocks had been overwritten — streets that bent at angles no road should follow, buildings that folded into themselves like origami, creating spaces that existed in more dimensions than three. Zhang Wei's Code Sight parsed the geometry without fully understanding it. The data was there — coordinates, spawn tables, loot probabilities — but the rendering was beyond what Tier 1 should process. He got fragments. Headaches followed each fragment.

He didn't mention the headaches.

"Intersection ahead," he said. "Two-minute window before the patrol cycles back. Cross single file, no talking."

They crossed.

The commercial district opened like a cracked jewelry box.

Storefronts gutted but still standing. A bank with its glass facade shattered inward. A supermarket with automatic doors frozen half-open, blue System glyphs flickering over the entrance — a minor dungeon node, Level 3-5, solo-rated. And beyond it, the real prize: a hardware warehouse with steel roll-up doors, one of them half-raised.

"Looting time," Li Hua said. "Quick passes. Batteries, rope, duct tape, medical supplies. No heroics."

Chen Gang organized it in seconds. Liu Peng and Wang Shu covered the entrance. Li Hua swept the warehouse interior. Chen Gang searched for pharmaceutical stock. Zhang Wei wandered to the far corner of the building, where Code Sight was screaming at him about something that wasn't a supply cache.

The terminal stood against the back wall, half-hidden behind collapsed shelving.

It looked like a public kiosk — a tall rectangular slab of dark metal, about chest height, with a smooth screen on one face. No buttons. No visible power source. The screen was dark but Code Sight saw the data flowing beneath it like a river.

SYSTEM_TERMINAL — TYPE: PUBLIC_ACCESS_NODE STATUS: ABANDONED (OWNER_LEFT_AREA: T-47:22:10) ACCESS_LEVEL: STANDARD_PLAYER CLASSIFIED_DATA: AVAILABLE

"Owner left area forty-seven hours ago," Zhang Wei murmured. "Someone was here before us."

He pressed his hand to the screen.

It woke.

Data flooded his vision — not just Code Sight's overlay, but the terminal's own output, projected directly into his perception. A full interface, unencrypted, showing backend architecture that normal players would never see.

The terminal displayed the class registry.

Twelve base classes. Full skill trees. Stat growth curves. Specialization paths. Every branching option laid out in neat columns, from Level 10 entry skills through Level 100 capstone abilities. Zhang Wei's eyes moved fast, reading like he'd been born to read this — because he had been, in a sense. Twenty years of game design. Ten years of reading skill trees in his own games. This was the same language, the same logic.

Vanguard: tank, frontline, damage absorption. Three specializations at Level 40 — Iron Commander, Juggernaut, Bulwark. High HP scaling. Moderate damage. Low utility.

Striker: melee burst DPS. Duelist, Blade Dancer, Berserker. Highest single-target damage in the game. Glass cannon by endgame.

Arcanist: magic DPS. Runecaster, Elementalist, Spellweaver. Flexible damage types. Utility spells alongside raw output. Code Sight pulsed when it passed over Arcanist — a flicker, nothing more.

Oracle: intelligence, future sight. Diviner specialization. Huang Zixin's class. Low combat power. Unmatched information gathering.

Nullifier: anti-system. Synthesizer specialization. Rarest class. Skill suppression, ability copying.

He read them all. Twelve classes, thirty-six specializations, hundreds of skills. He couldn't photograph it — no device, no System screenshot function. So he memorized. The way he'd memorized code reviews at three in the morning. Key structures, branching points, dependency chains.

The terminal flickered. Its battery — whatever powered it — was draining.

Zhang Wei pulled his hand away. The data lingered in his memory, burning. He'd need days to fully process it. But the skeleton was there. The architecture of every possible build, every viable path.

"Warehouse is clean," Li Hua called from the front. "We've got batteries, rope, two first-aid kits, and something that might be iodine. Chen Gang found bandages."

"Coming." Zhang Wei took one last look at the terminal, then followed Li Hua back to the group.

The return trip went wrong sixteen blocks from Building 7.

A Level 8 Riftclaw — bigger than anything they'd faced outside the Stress Test — dropped from a fire escape and landed in their path. It wasn't in any spawn table Zhang Wei had tracked. An ambush predator. Off-cycle.

"Back!" Chen Gang shouted.

The Riftclaw was faster. It opened with a sweeping claw arc that caught Liu Peng's splint and shattered it. Liu Peng went down screaming. Wang Shu tackled him clear of the follow-up strike.

Chen Gang met the Riftclaw head-on. His axe caught its forearm — sparks, not blood. The creature's hide was armored. Li Hua circled right, searching for the flank gap.

Zhang Wei's Code Sight locked on.

RIFTCLAW — LV 8 HP: 340/340 ARMOR: 78 (HEAVY — CARAPACE TYPE B) WEAK POINTS: VENTRAL SEGMENT (THREE SECONDS OPEN DURING ATTACK RECOVERY) ATTACK CYCLE: SWEEP → LUNGE → RECOVER → SWEEP RECOVERY WINDOW: 1.8 SECONDS

"Chen Gang, hold for the sweep. After the sweep, it lunges — dodge left. The ventral segment opens during recovery. One-point-eight seconds. Li Hua, that's your window."

Chen Gang blocked the sweep. The force drove him to one knee. The lunge came — he twisted left, wounded arm screaming, and the Riftclaw's underbelly exposed for less than two heartbeats.

Li Hua drove her fire poker through the ventral segment. Deep. The Riftclaw convulsed.

Wang Shu hit it with rebar while Chen Gang wrenched his axe free and brought it down on the same spot. The creature buckled. One more strike — Chen Gang, clean, through the skull plate where Code Sight showed the thin spot.

XP GAINED: 185 (shared) ZHANG WEI — LV 8 → LV 9 STAT INCREASES: +2 INT, +1 WIS, +2 PER

Nine. One more.

"Is everyone—" Chen Gang started.

The Riftclaw twitched. Not dead. Its remaining claws scraped asphalt as it tried to rise.

Zhang Wei picked up Liu Peng's fallen rebar. His hands were shaking — not from fear, from the split-screen pressure of Code Sight processing combat data in real-time while his body tried not to die. He stepped forward and drove the rebar into the thin spot behind the Riftclaw's skull plate.

The creature went still.

XP GAINED: 185 (solo — last hit) ZHANG WEI — LV 9 → LV 10 MILESTONE REACHED: LEVEL 10 CLASS SELECTION UNLOCKED SELECT YOUR CLASS WITHIN 72 HOURS OR RANDOM ASSIGNMENT WILL OCCUR

The notification hung in his vision, bright blue, insistent. Around him, the others caught their breath. Liu Peng sat on the asphalt, holding his re-splinted arm against his chest. Wang Shu was shaking. Li Hua wiped Riftclaw blood off the fire poker. Chen Gang's bandage had come loose, his forearm wound bleeding freely.

They'd survived.

Zhang Wei looked at the class selection prompt. Twelve options. He'd just read their full trees on the terminal. He knew the math, the growth curves, the endgame potential.

Then Code Sight layered over the prompt, and everything changed.

The class list appeared again — but different. Beneath each class name, where the terminal had shown clean skill data, Code Sight now displayed tags that the System's own interface concealed.

Vanguard — META_VIABLE Striker — META_VIABLE Ranger — META_VIABLE Arcanist — META_VIABLE Mender — META_VIABLE Marshal — EXPERIMENTAL Shade — META_VIABLE Mechanist — DEPRECATED Warden — DEPRECATED Oracle — META_VIABLE Riftwalker — EXPERIMENTAL Nullifier — EXPERIMENTAL

Three tags. META_VIABLE meant the System wanted players choosing that class — full support, stable scaling, intended design. DEPRECATED meant the System was actively steering players away — reduced skill options, weaker scaling, fewer specialization paths. EXPERIMENTAL sat in between — untested, volatile, possibly overpowered or possibly broken.

The System wasn't just offering choices. It was curating them.

Zhang Wei stared at Mechanist — Tang Yifei's class. DEPRECATED. The System was pushing humanity away from technology-based classes. Pushing toward straightforward combat and healing. Away from synthesis and creation.

He thought of the Developer's Note. Subject Species 7. Containment Protocol. Balance data.

The System wasn't building warriors. It was building the specific kind of warriors it wanted.

"Zhang Wei." Li Hua's voice. "You're staring at nothing. We need to move."

He blinked. The class selection prompt pulsed, patient and inexorable. Seventy-two hours. Then random assignment.

"One more thing," he said.

He looked at the class tags again, burning them into memory alongside the skill trees from the terminal. Twelve classes. Three categories. A hidden meta layered beneath the visible choice architecture.

The System was rigging the game.

And nobody else could see it.

"Yeah," Zhang Wei said, pulling the rebar free from the dead Riftclaw. "Let's go home."