What an unreasonable world.

  I was already in a different place, back on a cold, buzzing floor, eyes pointed at a black void. It was just space–vast, dark, starless space.

  I quickly sat up. Dozens of narrow lanes stretched forward into the void, like tightly-packed bridges made of stone and bone. Each one was just wide enough for two people to run side by side. I realized there must have been 30—one for each participant—since I was the only one in my lane.

  The bridges floated, jittering slightly like planks not fully nailed down, and they all curved slightly, meeting further ahead.

  Somewhere past the merge point, floating blocks hung in the air—like chunks of broken architecture, scattered by a storm. Some hovered gently. Others spun lazily, flickering at the edges like they were barely there.

  A hushed voice drifted from the lane to my right. “Lad, you’ve only got a few seconds to get on your feet.”

  I turned. The Mummy was already standing a step away from a translucent barrier on his own path, unwrapping one of the long bandages from his arm and tying it back with calm, deliberate motions.

  “Pardon me?”

  “This one’s easy, lad. Just run and don’t bother looking back.”

  The moment he said that, I felt pressure at my back–like some sort of sixth sense was blooming.

  My eardrums itched, and the back of my skull buzzed like someone was whispering directly into my bones.

  The Mummy crouched low, stretching his legs. “Good luck, lad.”

  Suddenly, an invisible wall turned visible and shattered with the toll of a bell.

  It was on.

  The Mummy ran. The sounds of feet stomping echoed–everyone was running now.

  My head turned to the left. There, running ahead on his own track was the 25th person from the line-up.

  I quickly summoned my God Arm–that trusty thunderbolt rifle.

  “Lad!” the Mummy yelled. “Start running!”

  “Nah,” I muttered, taking aim. “I’m not here to win.”

  Taking into account the small delay right after summoning, I pulled the trigger and held on until the click. The bolt flew through the air with a sharp crack. The runner looked back a moment before he was struck and received a face-full of lightning that sent him flying off his path and into the void.

  “I’m here for vengeance,” I said, standing up. I stole a glance at what was behind me, chuckled, and started running. “I like simple challenges.”

  A roiling wall of black static, filled with shifting shapes—hands, limbs, mouths maybe—rushed toward the paths like it was hungry. It didn’t make noise exactly, but something buzzed in my ears, like I was feeling a scream I’d never heard and I would probably never hear.

  It felt nostalgic—running away from a wall of impending doom. It was just like playing a video game… Relating this back to a video game… I wonder what that said about my mind right now?

  “I’m trying to distract myself,” I muttered, answering my own question.

  Ahead, the track stretched into the dark, floating over nothing, mounds and chunks like broken teeth rising from the surface with an alien rhythm, daring me to trip, to say nothing of the gaps in the track.

  I hopped the first gap, an easy one. I landed with a grunt and kept going. Then came the first mound. A fat slab of stone–maybe waist high. Pure muscle check. I flickered, rolled over the top, and surged forward without looking back.

  I’m pretty great at obstacle courses now.

  A block jutted out ahead—a high step. Easy. I launched off it.

  Then the one after that wobbled. I didn’t even see it until my foot landed and the whole thing tilted forward like a flipped coin.

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  My stomach dropped. My balance evaporated.

  I didn’t even think. I Flicker Stepped and landed hard on the wide, joined stone-block path where all thirty tracks converged.

  “Not so bad,” I told myself.

  From the looks of it, the majority of participants had no trouble getting past the single path. That made sense. I hadn’t noted it, but my HP and SP were restored upon the second round’s commencement. It was probably the same for the others.

  We all had our Levels, and everything had been replenished. Every single one of us would be able to get a boost in speed when we needed it.

  A cry rang out. My head jerked to the side. That man—Muscles—had hoisted someone up over his head–what an unreasonable guy. He leaped, turned midair, and tossed the one he carried right into the oncoming wall of shadowy death.

  All I heard was the sound of the path behind us crumbling with the roar of shifting earth.

  A voice came from my right. “Try to not get too close to other competitors!” the Mummy called.

  “Thanks,” I said, pointing my God Arm at him.

  He got the picture and ran ahead, letting me fire and hit the guy who was coming too close. That participant took the hit and tumbled onto his side, falling behind as we ran ahead.

  “Thank you!” the Mummy called, leaping over a risen block.

  I leaped over my own block. “You earned it!”

  “Ahh! And it looks like I’ve gotten lucky!” he said.

  I looked ahead—there was a glowing blue square on the path. The moment he stepped on it, he went flying forward, gaining a significant amount of air and speed.

  “Whoa! So, there are one-time boost panels?!” I hungrily looked ahead, but all the glowing blue spots were too far away.

  The path beneath me cracked.

  One of the blocks shot upward like a piston, nearly clipping my shoulder. Another dipped, a full-body drop, just barely missing my trailing foot. The whole arena was bumping now, looking more like wild rising cliffs undulating in violent jerks, like someone had set the world to a broken rhythm.

  "Alright," I muttered, eyes scanning every twitching surface, "we're doing this now."

  Yells erupted. Some people sounded like they were expecting this; others sounded like they were caught off guard.

  Pillars like displaced earth shot upward and obscured my path. Others collapsed with no warning, the edges giving way like snapped teeth. A participant I caught sight of didn’t make the adjustment in time—he tripped on a rising slab, was flung upward, hit a twisting aerial block, and bounced hard, spiraling through the void with a strangled cry.

  Every second welcomed a sudden pivot toward a newly revealed stable path, the rising blocks becoming so claustrophobia-inducing that even though you could hear the competitors, you were totally unsure of where they were. The mess of rising stone was so bad that even the impending wall of death was obscured.

  Up ahead, someone screamed—full-blown panic. Another went down. It was a storm of flying bodies and flailing arms as more runners got tossed from the path.

  And then I saw a blue glow. I leaped, using the sudden pulse of a rising pillar for extra ‘oomph.’ I hopped across floating blocks, my eyes locked on the jump pad situated on the floating block three hops away.

  I lined it up and executed. The moment my foot landed, I was launched forward, clearing the sudden badlands that grew from this blasted track.

  I landed in a crouch and roll, with another landing beside me—Pretty Boy. He nodded. I nodded back. But when he took his next step, the path beneath his feet gave way, and he dropped, hands flailing—

  “I gotcha!” I said, gripping his hand with New Arm, body flat on the path.

  His mouth dropped slightly. “Thank you!”

  “Yeah!” With a grunt, I pulled him up and launched him a few feet ahead. “Thanks for not making my life miserable!”

  “Thank you!” he repeated, but my eyes had already snapped to another scene behind me—to Noah and Nico.

  “Noah! Don’t let go!”

  “Calm down and just grab onto the edge, Nico!”

  “No! It’ll fall!”

  Noah was in a similar situation as I had been a mere moment ago, holding onto someone who had fallen. They had just barely cleared the bumping cliffs–I could go back to help them and not suffer.

  Just as I thought that, a massive shadow hopped across the floating blocks overhead–Muscles.

  He grabbed a block that I noticed looked different from all the others. Jumping into a front flip, he threw that block directly at Noah.

  The block struck him in the back and blew up. A whole section of the path lit up in response and crumbled as Noah and Nico yelled.

  Just like that, they had fallen into the void. And Muscles? He was winding up to throw another block at me.

  I activated my Levels and summoned my God Arm. I pushed off and fired right before he threw his block. The lightning lanced forward as his block flew. Muscles quickly pivoted on his floating block and jumped to another.

  I, meanwhile, got away from the explosion his block caused.

  “Fuck this guy.” I leaped ahead with my Levels boosting me, and took aim again.

  I fired at this guy, but he was more agile than he had any right being, leaping across the mess of floating blocks like they were as reliable as a solid stretch of road. And then–the bastard—he landed on a jump pad that catapulted him ahead.

  I turned on my heels and followed. “Why is everyone else getting these damn pads?!”

  And then I smiled. When did that guy get ahead of me? I called out to him, almost instinctively.

  “Number 30,” I called.

  He looked over his shoulder and went pale.

  I gave him a reassuring nod. “The inevitable approaches.”