Chapter 4

I wake up in a large, abandoned warehouse, with another menu floating in front of me.

[Welcome to your first run, would you like a quick run tutorial?]

Ah, so that's why the tutorial never talked about the trial itself. (lol no the author just hadn't decided what to do for the trial section yet.)

Obviously I chose yes. 

[Very well, welcome to the run part of the trial, the "run" is separated into 3 parts, the "hideout" an area you can teleport to whenever you stay in one place for 45 min without being attacked, that also allows you to teleport anywhere you have already been on that run, do be aware locations do not transfer between runs, you can upgrade your hideout to improve medical, crafting, farming, and storage equipment, and can store any equipment gained through missions or expeditions.

Missions are short term contracts you must complete in a small area before escaping, they offer better monetary, and experience value than expeditions. (These two parts, missions and the hideout are Tarkov inspired.)

The final part of a run is expeditions, expeditions are simply you traveling the world like normal, exploring, finding human colonies, essentially the same as missions but not time limited, nor limited to a set area, most of the time they offer a lower difficulty although certain areas such as military bases. Or monster nests may offer higher difficulties than missions. (stalker inspired)

Your goal is to reach a max upgraded hideout, and reach a personal level of 500, you can increase your level through killing monsters and other survivors, and each level takes exponentially more experience to complete, levels do not offer any instant benefits, however they improve the rate at which your body improves, lower nutrient requirements, and increase healing rate, any strength gains must be worked for yourself. remember each run will be deleted after you die, there are no retries, Good luck.]

Well that sucks, depending on how high the initial experience requirement is, how much it increases each time, how much xp I get per kill, and how much i can upgrade the Hideout, this could potentially take me decades on the final run alone.

The tutorial had left me with a single menu screen, showing a map of the planet, with a single message, [select starting point], I simply decided to chose a small town in new england that I had visited once, it had a relatively small population so it will have less competition and danger than a big city, after all desperate humans are more dangerous than any monster.

And like most american towns, It had a gun store filled with enough ammunition to kill its entire population many times over, so It would be good if I could manage to bring all that ammunition with me, the ability to enter and exit my hideout so long as I can spend 45 min without being attacked means that I don't have to worry nearly as much about storage as the average survivor, so I can take all the guns and ammo I want so long as it's safe.

Again my location suddenly changes, and now I find myself in a bedroom, in remarkably good condition, and hear screams and gunshots in the distance.

It seems the apocalypse just started, and along with it, my millennia of torture.

(an, really short chapter today, I literally wrote this chapter in math class since I finished my test with 45 min to go, (we were given an hour) and wasn't allowed to leave, I still have 30 min of class to go, but I'm noticing its pretty hard to write creatively while hearing people complain in the background so ima just read.)