Ducking quickly into the seats and slamming the doors behind them, Tom and James locked their doors as fast as they could. Out of habit both of them also put their seatbelts on.

  "Are those....goblins?" Tom asked.

  "They sure fucking look like it," James added. "Short, carrying primitive weapons, looks like someone took the wicked witch of the west and tossed her into a blender then put her back together using only half the parts. I'd say they're goblins."

  "What do we do?" Tom asked.

  "I don't know...Try to get to work and see if anyone is there. Safety in numbers?" James offered.

  "Aren't there numbers of us out here?" Tom replied.

  Sitting there arguing, a new scream sounded, louder than the rest. Tom and James looked up to see a woman getting stabbed in the back by three of the goblins with spears. Blood spewed from the wound as they twisted the spears and stabbed her over and over again. She was reaching out to the others running away, true panic in her eyes. The goblins seemed to be in a bloodlust-driven fervor as they continued to chase down the others.

  A man tripped, and the goblins pounced on him with knives and short swords tearing him to pieces, the scream he let out dying as his throat was cut. People rushed by the car causing sheer pandemonium to erupt. Shoving each other out of the way, the crowd surged past the vehicle until the goblins were practically on top of them.

  Putting the car in drive, Tom put his foot on the gas and turned to the left slightly to get toward the shoulder.

  "What the hell are you doing?" James asked.

  "I have no idea, just trying to get out of here," Tom replied.

  A primitive-looking arrow bounced off of the windshield causing both men to shriek. The front end of the car bumped into another vehicle that was blocking the way and shoved it aside. Soon, Tom was driving on the shoulder. A group of goblins jumped out in front of his vehicle and Tom hit the gas even harder.

  The car hit the pack of goblins and smashed them across the pavement with the sound of bones crunching coming through the metal of the vehicle as it jostled side to side rolling over each body like a speedbumb. Black blood sprayed out to either side of the wheels as Tom didn't slow down.

  "Holy fucking shit dude! That was like running over a group of situationally unaware pre-schoolers!" James said.

  "You got a better idea?" Tom shouted back.

  "No. I'm just saying...I don't really know what I'm saying, mow those green fuckers down like we just sharpened the blades for spring!"

  And that's what they did. Tom continued forward as goblins both jumped in front of them to try to stop them and threw weapons at the side of the car to try to kill them. After they had run down about thirty or so of the goblins, they seemed to wisen up enough to not jump in front of the car. One had jumped on the windshield from the hood of another vehicle as they passed. It growled ferociously at them and used its dagger to try to stab the windshield. When it didn't break it looked at the tip of its weapon in confusion and tried again.

  Once Tom and James stopped screaming in surprise, Tom turned on the windshield wipers. They slapped the goblin in the face a few times stunning it and causing it to lose whatever purchase it had on the glass as it slid off the side of the vehicle and tumbled on the ground.

  The shoulder seemed to be clear most of the way down the freeway. There were a few times a vehicle had pulled into the shoulder to avoid an accident, but Tom was able to drive around those cars for the most part. A few times he had to use his car to push another car out of the way though. Each of those times he would gently nudge the back end of the car and then push it out of the way causing as little damage as possible to his own vehicle.

  There were only a few other times they saw goblins on the road on their journey, and each time they tried to either throw themselves in front of the vehicle or throw their weapons or rocks at it. The glass and sides of his car had dings and holes in it now from the barrages of objects, but it continued to run despite its new paint job of black goblin blood and green skin fragments.

  Finally making it to their office, Tom and James scrambled into the door after scanning their security badges and pulling the door shut behind them. Rushing up to their cubicles, the pair sat down in relief.

  "Holy cow man. That was the shittiest drive to work ever." Tom said, his head leaning back over his chair.

  "Right? What the hell? We work our ass off to make a living and then this has to happen?" James replied.

  Tom noticed a blinking icon on the right side of his vision as he sat there staring at the ceiling. Focusing on it a prompt appeared telling him he hadn't finished the tutorial yet.

  "Really? You want me to do that now?" Tom said aloud.

  "What?" James asked.

  "It's telling me I need to finish the tutorial," Tom replied.

  "I mean, I guess this is our new normal. We may as well get it out of the way so we can find out what's going on." James said, opening his notification as well.

  Looking at the top of his vision, Tom noticed that there were in fact three colored bars there now. These lined up with most video games so that made sense to him. He selected yes to continue and a new window appeared.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  It was at this moment that Derek came running over to their cubicles.

  "Have you guys seen what's going on out there? Why are you just sitting at your desk like it's a normal workday?" Derek asked.

  Derek was another work friend. They had played video games online together and even formed a D&D group with him and a few other people who met monthly to play tabletop games.

  "We're trying to finish the tutorial. If we are going to live in this world we figure we should know what's going on, and it's the only thing offering any information." Tom replied, not looking up from reading his prompts.

  "Oh. That actually makes sense." Derek said.

  "Pull up a chair, shut the fuck up, and let's figure this shit out," James said, pointing at an unoccupied office chair.

  Derek pulled over another chair and sat down to go through the tutorial as well. Tom selected Yes after the continue option.

  "Seriously? Vending machines are how we get items?" Tom asked.

  "Appears so," James replied, now nearly fully reclined with his feet up on his desk.

  "What? What are you guys talking about?" Derek asked.

  "Just keep reading, you'll get there eventually cupcake," James replied.

  Tom noticed that even though he had the tutorial up he still had a prompt flashing for his attention on the right side of his vision. He mentally focused on this prompt.

  "Holy shit," Tom said quietly.

  "What? Is it about the dungeons, because that was a real kick in the balls." James said.

  "No, I'm level five now," Tom said.

  "What? No way. How the hell did you manage that?" James asked.

  "I'm not sure," Tom said.

  "Did you check your experience?" Derek asked.

  "What? How do I do that?" Tom asked.

  "It's in the combat log. You can configure that in the settings. Are you still on the vending machines page of the tutorial? Come on bro, the world is ending and we need to get this info." Derek chided.

  Going back to the tutorial, Tom selected yes to continue.

  Thinking "Combat Log", a log showed in the bottom right of Tom's vision. Reading through the information there he realized what had happened.

  On and on the log went with kill notice after kill notice. Tom began to feel a bit sick to his stomach thinking about how he had killed the creatures. It looked like there were a little over twenty of the goblins that had died from his death plow. Tom had never killed anybody. He'd just reacted in the moment to try to save his life.

  "You feeling OK Tom?" Derek asked.

  "Looks like I got credit for all the goblins we ran over on the way here," Tom said, feeling even more queasy as he remembered the sounds their bodies had made as they were run over by the tires of the car.

  "What?! But I was there to help too," James said. "I'm a contributing member of the team as well you know."

  "Apparently because it's my car and I was driving only I get XP," Tom replied.

  "I think if you were to have formed a party then you would have shared the XP," Derek added.

  "How do I do that?" James asked.

  "Just keep reading, you'll get there eventually cupcake," Derek replied sardonically.