The heat, the smell of smoke… it hit me as soon as my consciousness returned. I bolted upright. Looking around, I could see the orange glow all around. The house was on fire—and so was everything nearby.

  I ran to the nearest window. Flames were flickering on the other side of the glass. I debated going somewhere else, but it was the quickest way to get to the river. Water would be salvation. I just needed to get there.

  I cursed when I went to open the window. The heated window frame seared my hand, and the opening let the flames lick at my exposed skin. I activate Flight and started to rapidly Heal myself as I ran forward and out into the inferno.

  The house had shielded me somewhat from the terror outside. The entire world felt like it was ablaze! Everywhere I looked, there was fire. Everywhere except the river, that is. I flew as quickly as I could towards the safety of the water. The winds kicked up by the fires buffeted me—knocking me this way and that. The searing heat torched my hair and clothes.

  Relief washed over me as I plunged into the river. Any remaining fire on me went out, and Heal was able to fix the damage—and the pain. Being burned alive was not high on the list of things I wanted to experience again. Adrenaline had done its job of letting me evacuate while numbing my pain only as long as it needed to. Heal ensured that I never felt anything more than a slight discomfort—and the cold of being naked and wet at night.

  I shivered on the crossing of the river. I couldn’t fly too quickly—I was cold enough as it was! At the same time, I needed to get to the other side and find something to wear. The sooner, the better!

  As I crossed, I thought about the fire. The dead and dry plants must have only needed a spark. I remembered how they’d crunched under my feet the day before. With the desolation having spread as far as it had already, that fire was going to be an absolute menace! Anyone who had somehow survived the debuff would almost certainly perish in the flames.

  Part of me wondered if the flames had been set on purpose. Like if an authority had decided that the only way forward was to burn away the desolation and stop it where it was. I didn’t know if that would work, but I guessed it could—if it left nothing for the spreading disease to feed on and spread.

  I came in for a landing directly across the river from where Max’s house used to be. The far side of the river was a dancing orange glow as far as I could see. This side of the river was better. The trees were still alive—as were the plants below. They didn’t crunch underfoot.

  I found a nearby house that didn’t look occupied. Shivering, I let myself inside. A search revealed clothing that I could wear. They weren’t a perfect fit—too big, mostly—but they would do to keep me warm. That house is where I passed out for the rest of the night.

  When I woke the next morning, I ate whatever was in the abandoned house before going outside. That’s when I noticed the desolation making its presence known. The grasses were now dead. The trees dying.

  Interestingly, the dead grass seemed to follow—roughly—the same path that I had when I went into the house the night before. That’s when I realized what was going on. Since the debuff was applied to me, I had unknowingly passed it along to whatever was nearby. Sure, it didn’t affect me much, but it would do its designed mission and spread.

  And if I was spreading the desolation simply by existing, wouldn’t that also be the same for anything else infected? It made sense to me. The fire wasn’t going to stop it… and birds were why. They would fly away from the flames—for as long as they could, at least—spreading the desolation wherever they went. The same was true for fish, for humans, and any animal that survived decently long. The desolation would continue to spread until there was no place left untouched.

  I sat down in the dead grass. My mind blank. I stared out across the river. What had been burning the night before was now ash. I could see fire in the far distance. It had moved on. Maybe it was time for me to do the same.

  Still, I didn’t move until the sun was high in the sky. Too much had happened so quickly. I was… overwhelmed. I was also feeling a lot of guilt. No matter how much I knew the world around me was just a potential future that would never be, it still affected me. I wanted to not care. I wanted to be cold and unfeeling. But I couldn’t. Maybe that was why I had been chosen in the first place? I sent a curse to the god that had put me in this position as I stood up. There was nothing I could do but dwell on my actions—and I’d had enough of that for one day.

  The experience notifications showed no signs of slowing down. I had no idea how long it would be until the harvest was complete. It could be a few weeks or a few years. The only thing I could do was keep moving. Find food and lodging where I could, but always keep moving.

  As I moved, I began to contemplate what I wanted to do with the system in order to complete it. At the forefront of my mind was preventing anyone from doing what I’d done. It wasn’t just the poison skills, but anything that could spread endlessly. Skill needed to be targeted in their application. No mass destruction. I wasn’t saying no to area of effect skills, but more to the perpetual spread of fire, poison, and the like.

  What had brought me down the road originally was the lack of ability to combine skills. If I gave people the ability to do more with skills, they would be less likely to look under the hood and figure out how it all really worked. Combining skills was a good idea, though. That an skill evolution. Those two were at the top of the list, for sure.

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  Then I thought about quests. Experience was good, but it wasn’t what people needed at the start of the apocalypse. They would need skills, weapons, and consumables. Skills I could manage through the tutorial, but the others would have to come from elsewhere—like quests. I would have to work out the details later, but it was a good idea.

  The rest… well, I had a rough outline. There was the power source—mana or chi—the stats in general, and the tutorial. I had ideas about slanting the difficulty of monsters so people would be less likely to die early on. Like putting the tougher monsters into dungeons or spreading out the monster strength… like having low-leveled monsters and higher leveled monsters so that it wasn’t all just a single level of strength.

  Those were all decisions I would make later. Planning ahead—even just generally—was good for my peace of mind. For now, I just needed to survive the consequences of my action. The pace of the experience gain was still increasing quickly, so I knew I still had quite a long time to wait.

  Two weeks passed. Day after day, I searched for a new place to stay for the night. I preferred to stay nearby the river—just in case there were more fires. And there were more. Two more happened in that time. Electricity, water, and other utilities were no longer working—the people dead and the infrastructure gone.

  The scorched land held far fewer houses that were livable. Only the concrete structures still stood—their insides full of ash. Food was much more difficult to find now, as well. But I managed. The dead animals—those that survived the fire but died to the desolation—were my sustenance. For some reason I couldn’t understand, those that died of the desolation were preserved. I was grateful for that—even if my diet was now rather poor.

  As I had done every day over the last few weeks, I flew south towards where I knew there were more places to sleep in. I’d hit the coast—near where the oil tanker incident had occurred—before continuing along the coast.

  Near the midpoint in the day—when I had to stop to rest for a few hours—I saw dark clouds on the horizon. These clouds were expansive. They looked strange, too. Unlike normal clouds, these were a mix of black and brown that had the look like there was rain falling from them. The problem was that they were too low in the sky to be rain clouds!

  I stood up from where I had prepared my resting place and began to look for shelter. The burnt landscape showed nothing, so I flew up to get a better view. Not two miles away was a charred concrete structure. I went as quickly as I could—blood dripping from my nose the whole way.

  The cloud was almost upon me when I got to the stairwell of an apartment building. I rushed inside and up half a flight to a place that had no openings before laying down to rest. The cloud arrived at about the same time. Instantly, the stairwell was filled with a choking mix of ash and dust. The winds howled around the stairwell.

  I did what I could to cover my face. Still, the dust and ash got everywhere. My mouth, my eyes, my lungs… all were filled with the vile mixture! I began to cough—which only made it worse. The cloud of dust and ash was relentless, too. It kept going for nearly three hours!

  When it finally left, I was a mess. I felt like I’d been sucked dry of moisture. I flew towards the nearest stream or river—the three hours being enough to get there without bleeding everywhere. The stream was choked by dust and ash. That didn’t matter to me. I used one arm to hold the floating debris back while the other helped to clean me off and fill my stomach with water. I was wary of parasites, but there was no fuel to heat the water with. All of it had been burned by the repeated fires!

  I stopped in a slightly more comfortable location that evening. I checked the experience coming in and saw that it had slowed somewhat. The notifications were still coming in thick and fast—much too quickly for me to read any of them before my vision was completely overwhelmed. And still, it was slower than yesterday had been.

  Another two weeks passed. The rate of experience gained picked up again before going absolutely crazy. It was nearly triple what it had been before! That was about it for the positives. I was running out of food—or should I say, I’d run out of food a few days ago. The charred landscape and the dusty storms left little to eat. The occasional fish washed up on the beach was about all I could find. For thousands of miles, the world was sterile and dead. And the parts that hadn’t died yet were well on their way.

  Two months later and hunger was a constant companion. I still got something to eat—now and then—but it was a rarity. I needed to Heal myself every few hours to stay alive. The lack of nutrients was harming me. The only think keeping me going was the last dregs of the harvest. The amount of experience I was getting had dropped to a trickle now. I knew it was almost over. All I had to do was hang on just a little longer.

  I had stopped moving from house to house when I found a fairly comfortable one near the ocean and near a clean water source. Even if I was struggling for food, I at least had water. But it was more than just a nice place to stay. I was tired. I was done.

  The gravity of the situation had long since caught up to me. I spent many a night crying myself to sleep. And the nightmares… they were ever-present. I felt empty and at the same time so full of pain—though that might have been the starvation.

  I lay on the beach and listened to the waves crashing. There were no bugs to bite me. No birds to sing. No one left. I had never felt so lonely in all my lives. I had done what I had set out to do. I hoped it was worth it. Because if not, all I had done was torture myself for nothing!

  Three more weeks passed. Experience was coming in still, but so very slowly. I was wasting away. I still found the occasional meal—a fish washed up on shore—but even that seemed like too much effort. I didn’t search for things to eat anymore. If they came to me, I took them. Otherwise, I lay on the sand, soaking in the sun. Not that there was much sun to see anymore. The dust and ash had been lifted into the sky, causing a permanent haze.

  I decided to give it one more day before I reset. I cried myself to sleep again that night and suffered through another nightmare—my deeds haunting me one last time. As the sun crested the horizon, I prepared myself. This was going to hurt. A lot.