Outside his cubicle, phones rang with the steady rhythm of a workday grinding toward its inevitable conclusion.
He'd been adding data points for eight hours already, and his mind had reached that peculiar state of empty focus where the numbers meant nothing yet everything.
"Just five more columns," he muttered, reaching for his lukewarm coffee.
The building shook. Not in the gentle way of a passing truck, but with the violence of something fundamental changing. The fluorescent lights flickered, then died. His monitor went black. Papers flew from desks, floating around in the air.
Someone screamed. Then everyone screamed.
Magi set his coffee down carefully to avoid spilling it on his keyboard. He looked up just as the office windows shattered inward, glass exploding across the carpet in glittering shards.
Blue light filled the room. Not from emergency systems but from floating, translucent panels that appeared in front of every person.
Magi blinked as one materialized before him, hovering at eye level.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION]
[SCANNING SUBJECT...]
[ERROR: ANOMALY DETECTED]
[PROCEEDING WITH STANDARD ALLOCATION]
[AWAKENING COMPLETE]
'Awakening? What is this?'
Cubicle walls toppled as people stumbled back, batting at the air or falling to their knees. Girl from Accounting sobbed while clutching her chest. The good guy from HR ran in circles, trying to escape his own interface. The department head stood on her desk, shouting questions nobody could answer.
Magi read his display with mild interest.
[STATUS: AWAKENED]
[LEVEL: 1]
[ATTRIBUTES UNLOCKED: ALL]
[LIMITATION: BASIC SKILLS ONLY]
[SYSTEM ERROR #450921: IRREGULARITY DETECTED]
[SPECIALIZED PROGRESSION UNAVAILABLE]
Beneath that was a simple list:
-
Fire
-
Water
-
Wind
-
Earth
-
Lightning
-
Healing
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-
Sword
-
Barehand
He tapped the interface experimentally.
It responded like a touchscreen, opening submenus for each attribute. Each one contained a single entry: "Basic."
While his coworkers continued panicking, Magi's thoughts drifted to the quarterly performance report that was due by 5 PM.
He'd been very anxious about the afternoon meeting where he'd have to explain why three departments had missed their targets.
A strange calm washed over him.
"Luckily, I don't have to finish that report," he said, voice barely audible above the chaos.
He felt his lips twitch upward.
The ceiling crumbled. Screams ripped through the air outside, too deep and too wrong to be human. The servers were definitely down. A strange weight lifted off his chest. No servers meant no report.
"Magi!" Someone grabbed his shoulder. It was his friend from the cubicle next to his, eyes wide with terror. "What's happening? Are you seeing this too?"
Magi nodded. "Looks like some kind of system? Showing attributes and skills."
"This can't be real. It's a mass hallucination or a gas leak or—"
"Try using one of the skills," Magi suggested, curious to see what would happen.
Carson's eyes lit with manic energy. "Yes! Like in those games I told you about!" He thrust his palm forward toward the water cooler. "Fireball!"
Nothing happened.
Carson tried again, voice cracking. "FIREBALL!"
Still nothing.
"Maybe you don't have fire," Magi said, checking his own interface again. "What attributes did you get?"
"I have fire! Right here! It says 'Fire Magic Lv.1' but nothing's happening!"
Magi tilted his head. Carson's terminology didn't match his own interface.
'Different people, different abilities? That made sense.'
The building shook again. Dust rained from the ceiling. The emergency alarm finally activated, its wail cutting through the office pandemonium.
"We should leave," Magi said, standing up.
He tucked his phone into his pocket, grabbed his backpack from under the desk, and started walking toward the stairwell.
"Wait! You're just leaving?" Carson stumbled after him. "What about… everything? What about work?"
Magi paused. "I don't think work matters anymore."
The stairwell was packed with people rushing downward, some shoving, others crying.
Magi joined the flow, letting the crowd carry him. His mind felt strangely clear.
No deadlines. No targets. No performance metrics in his mind. Just the next step, then the next toward the exit.
They spilled out into the parking lot fifteen minutes later.
The sky had turned an unnatural purple, split by occasional flashes of lightning. Cars sat abandoned, doors flung open. In the distance, sirens wailed.
"What now?" someone asked.
Magi checked his phone. No signal.
A sharp crack split the air. The asphalt twenty feet away rippled, then broke open. Green, twisted hands emerged, pulling up squat bodies with bulbous heads and yellow eyes.
"Goblins," someone whispered. "Those are fucking goblins."
"How do you know?"
“From an anime I watched.”
There were seven of them, each about three feet tall, wearing crude leather scraps. They clutched sharp stones and jagged metal pieces. When they spotted the office workers, they grinned with needle-like teeth.
People scattered. Some ran back toward the building. Others fled across the parking lot. A few stood frozen in shock.
Carson stepped forward, face pale but determined.
"I can do this," Carson muttered. "I have Fire Magic."
He thrust both hands out, feet planted wide.
"FIREBALL!"
A tiny spark flickered between his fingers, then died.
The goblins cackled and charged.
Magi watched one break from the pack, heading straight for a woman who had fallen while trying to run. Without thinking, he pointed a finger at it.
He found the Fire attribute in his mind and activated it, applying no particular technique. Just heat, directed outward.
The goblin burst into white-hot flames. Its body disintegrated instantly to ash that drifted away on the breeze. Beneath where it had stood, the concrete glowed cherry-red, heat rippling the air above it.
Silence fell across the parking lot.
Even the other goblins froze.
Magi blinked in surprise. He checked his interface. His mana bar hadn't visibly decreased.
"How did you do that?" Carson asked, voice strangled.
"I just used fire," Magi said. "Basic one."
“Are you sure that’s basic?” Carson stared at him. “That’s—”
The remaining goblins broke their paralysis, howling as they charged the gathered humans. People screamed and ran.
Magi turned to follow the crowd toward the street. He glanced again at his mana bar, noticing it was barely dented.
'The goblin must have been really weak,' he thought. 'I should practice more.'
Behind him, the office building's windows blew out floor by floor, marking the end of the world he'd known. Magi didn't look back. For the first time in years, he felt something close to peace.
It wasn't excitement about magic or fear of monsters.
It was simpler than that.
No one would ask about the quarterly report tomorrow.