CH.1 The Apocalypse Seven Years Later and the Forger System

Jane woke up on a transparent platform, surrounded by a starry void that looked like it was ripped from a sci-fi movie. Twinkling lights swirled around her, like the universe was putting on a private light show. Below her feet? Nothing but endless darkness.

“Where the heck am I?” she mumbled, her voice bouncing in the eerie silence. Jane wasn’t exactly religious—family dragged her to church camp as a kid, but she mostly zoned out. Now, though? She was ready to believe. “Uh, God? You got some wisdom to drop or what?”

The universe stayed quiet, leaving her hanging. Jane stood there, feeling like she’d been ghosted by the cosmos. “Hello? Anyone? Did aliens snag me or something?” she called, her voice tinged with nerves.

Then a beam of light shot down, swallowing her whole. Her vision went white, like someone cranked the brightness to max, and suddenly, she was somewhere else.

It was awful. Her mind got yanked into a sealed-off dimension where monsters howled in a bloody, chaotic mess. There were gnarly demons, twisted beasts, and things so gross they looked like they crawled out of a horror flick’s reject pile. Their screeches made her skin crawl. Then came the worst part: a truth hit her like a punch. In seven years, this nightmare world would link up with Earth, and those monsters would wreck everything.

“This is… so gross,” Jane whispered, shaking from fear and nausea. Just as she was about to lose it, something else popped up. A system.

Jane had read enough LitRPG novels to get the gist: chosen one, game-like powers, big destiny. But this system was weird. “A Forger System? I can give other people powers, and the more they use them, the stronger it gets? But I have to ‘upload features’ myself? And they can’t go past the system’s level? Oh, and ‘uploadable avatars’? What is this, some cosmic app store glitch?”

Staring at the system’s rules with zero helpful footnotes, Jane felt a headache coming on worse than cramming for a scholarship-worthy GPA. She tried asking questions, but the universe? Total radio silence. No cryptic voiceover, no tutorial pop-up, nada.

Just as she was about to complain some more, a wave of dizziness hit like a bad carnival ride. Her vision spun, the world twirling like a cheap special effect. Next thing she knew— bam! —she was back in reality.

“What the heck?” Jane blinked, looking around. She was standing in her $600-a-month basement apartment, the kind of place that screamed “broke college kid.” On the kitchen table sat her homemade hot dog sauces—butter-cheese and garlic-beef, lined up like little soldiers. She was back to yesterday, pre-cop drama. “Well, at least I’m not in a jail cell or a hospital bed,” she muttered.

“So… I’m supposed to save the world now? And this system is…” The second she said “system,” a translucent gray panel flickered to life in front of her, glowing faintly like a budget sci-fi prop.

**Forger System: Initial Influence Points: 200. Current System Rank: F-**
System requires more influence to level up. Next upgrade: 1000 Influence Points.
Current Abilities: Ghost Vision, Ability Upload, Ability Granting

Jane stared at the panel, eyebrows raised. “So, I gotta find people to hand out powers to, like some cosmic talent agent, to level up this janky system? And what’s with this ‘upload’ nonsense?”

As she puzzled over it, a message pinged in her brain: [System functions can be uploaded via the internet or the system owner’s detailed understanding. Uploadable avatars can create independent entities with granted abilities, controlled in real-time by the system owner’s thoughts, but they lack free will.]

“Whoa, that’s next-level,” Jane said, squinting. She chewed on the info, trying to untangle it. Sure, she got the gist, but actually doing it? That was a whole other vibe.

“Okay, step one… what do I even do?” she mumbled, staring at her sauces like they held the answers.

A wild idea popped into Jane’s head: call up the government, spill the beans about the world ending in seven years, and save humanity like a Marvel team-up. Yeah, right. She squashed that thought faster than a bad TikTok trend. Jane, a card-carrying binge-watcher of American TV shows, had zero trust in the feds. She was pretty sure they’d spend more time bickering with other countries or trying to slap a leash on her than actually stopping the apocalypse.

Besides, this was a humanity problem. Jane never signed up to be a superhero, but the system picked her, so she had to do something, right? “Okay, first things first,” she muttered. “Maybe upload some abilities to this weird system.” She headed for her laptop, but her stomach growled like it was auditioning for a zombie flick.

“Man, what a shame,” Jane sighed, chomping on a hot dog slathered with her homemade garlic-beef sauce. She cracked open a Dr. Pepper, the fizz tickling her nose, and fired up her laptop to hunt for “uploadable” abilities. “Only I get to enjoy Jane’s gourmet sauce.”

“Level too high, upload failed? Ugh, why’s this so complicated?” Jane grumbled. She tried uploading all sorts of stuff. Superhero comics? Nope. Superman, Green Lantern, X-Men—total bust. Even Spider-Man and Batman, who she thought were pretty low-power, got rejected. “What about Harry Potter?” she tried, crossing her fingers. Denied.

Jane kept at it, one failure after another, until—ding!—a notification lit up. [Upload Successful: Ability Loaded—Illusion and Minor Mental Influence. Cost: 10 Influence Points.]

“Wait, The Shining worked?” Jane said, pinching her chin. “Ten points down, and the ability’s kinda… lame.” Still, it gave her an idea. She spent the next two hours uploading horror movies—It, The Sixth Sense, The Haunting of Hill House. Most flopped, but she figured out the deal: F-rank only allowed weak stuff, like mind tricks or moving objects like a cheap magician. “Great, I’m ready for the circus,” she snorted.

“Now what?” Jane tested her new powers, making her Dr. Pepper can float in midair. It wobbled like a drunk UFO. “Cool, I guess. Time to find some ‘lucky’ guinea pig to test this ability-granting thing and level up the system.”

She glanced at the clock—almost 10 p.m. Supermarkets were closed, and the streets were dead. “Who’s even out this late?” she muttered, scrolling through her phone to kill time. Then she stumbled on a random livestream channel with barely any viewers: [Urban Ruins Exploration, Starts at Midnight.]

“These guys have way too much free time,” Jane said, then paused. “Wait… the location’s right by my place.” A grin spread across her face. She had a _really_ good idea.