The Beginning of the End

In a fifth-floor apartment room of a building located in Phoenix, AZ, a 22 year old Grant Holmes was sitting in his room watching TV.

It was Saturday, so being the young bachelor that he was, he had decided that he wanted to take it easy and spend some leisure time catching up on the new anime's and novel chapters that he hadn't gotten a chance to read during the week due to school and work.

Grant had always been the athletic jock in high school and college, but only his close friends knew that he was actually an avid anime watcher and web novel reader. His favorite stories had always been ones where a young man would rise from relative obscurity to dominate the world.

He was a relatively tall young man standing at 6'2", he wasn't handsome or attractive by most standards but he also hadn't been beaten with the fugly stick, so he had always taken solace in that. He made sure that he always took care of himself so he was in fairly good shape. He had dark brown hair, eyes that were a mix of green and blue, set into a round face. The only thing Grant hated about himself, and the thing that kept him from being considered a fairly handsome young man, was his huge nose.

While Grant was busy watching TV, a sudden sensation of dizziness washed over him. Which resulted in him immediately freaking out, while bracing himself for the impending heart attack or other illness, he sat stiff as a board in his chair. However, a short moment after it began the dizziness started to fade away.

Before he could let out a sigh of relief and hope that it had merely been a muscle spasm in his neck or something similar, he was again assaulted by a sudden sensation, however, this time it felt like he was being struck by lightning and he almost passed out.

When he finally recovered from the shock of what he had just felt and his vision started to re-focus, a message appeared within his field of view.

[Welcome to, The Path. The evolution of Earth has reached it's primary stage and has now been deemed ready to embark on The Path to evolution. You must now fight for your right to survive. Good luck and may you find your Path before it's too late.]

His immediate response of course was, "What the f*ck is this?! ... where's my phone? I'm losing my goddamn mind... maybe I am too stressed due to both school and work.."

While trying to figure out what the hell was going on, Grant heard a scream from outside. It was one of those screams you hear in a horror movie when someone is about to be chopped in half by some guy named Jason. A scream of fear and desperation for ones life.

Tentatively, Grant walked to the balcony of his apartment so he could look down into the street and try to figure out who was screaming and what was going on. That was a decision Grant would regret for hours following what he saw.

Down on the street, it was pure and absolute chaos.

The first thing that Grant saw was a woman being bitten by what looked like a rabid dog of sorts. The worst part was that the dog had clearly already bitten the lady a few times because around her a pool of blood was starting to form, and yet, no one seemed interested in helping her.

Grant had to close his eyes and turn away from the lady because he couldn't stomach the idea of watching someone be mauled to death.

After the screaming died down he managed to force himself to look back to where the lady was, only to realize that she hadn't stopped screaming because the dog had stopped attacking her, it was because she had either finally passed out from the pain or the dog had managed to kill her. Because the dog was still gnawing at her body, ripping chunks of flesh off.

Grant immediately turned to the corner of his balcony, and threw up every last bit of fluids, food, and bile that occupied his stomach.

After finally managing to collect himself, he went back to the edge of the balcony to try and get a better overall picture of the situation and understand why no one had seemed interested in helping the lady.

While looking around the parking lot of the shopping center across the street from his house, Grant realized that no matter where he looked people were either running around screaming, or being killed by different animals. In one instance, a young man was even running away from some old granny that was growling and gnashing her teeth at him like she wanted to eat him.

After taking in the situation, Grant immediately went back inside to sit down and try to re-collect himself.

[Alright, so apparently the world is fucked? If what is happening outside isn't an isolated event, and that message that appeared in my eyesight was real, then what the fuck am I supposed to do next? If it is like one of those stories I like to read then I just need to think something like, "status" and..]

{Status

Name: Grant Holmes

Level: 0

Race: Human

Path: N/A

Title: N/A

Tier: 0

Strength: 10 (5) | Agility: 7 (5) | Health: 10 (5) | Stamina: 9 (5) | Mana: 0 (0)

Note: For those new to The Path, you are defined by the choices you make and the Path you choose to walk. Stats for your race are based on the averages of all members of the dominant species of your planet. For Humans, the starting stats are on average 5.}

[It appeared! I don't know if I should be happy or depressed that I now have a "system" inside my brain...

Whatever, lets not think on it too much. Lets focus on the information first.

So no mana... we humans either have to learn how to use mana or were never destined for it from the start? Ah whatever, I'll have to look into that in the future.

My strength, health and stamina seem to be pretty good. Probably due to the fact that I work out and take care of myself. Not surprising that my agility is only slightly above average... I've always been somewhat of a bumbling fool when I run at top speed...]

While Grant was collecting himself, he started to hear growling coming from right outside his front door. It sounded like the type of growling a dog would make when his mortal enemy, the postman, appeared at his front door. Startled at first since he still didn't know what was going on, Grant gathered himself a moment later and started looking around for something to protect himself with.

While Grant was trying to find something to use as a weapon, a dog, if it could still be called that with its sheer size, came crashing through the front windows of his apartment. As the dog landed, Grant couldn't help but pause to look at the animal. It had blood red eyes, teeth that were seemingly twice as long as they should be, and had muscles showing that could give Chris Evans of Cpt America a run for his money.

After what seemed like an eternity of staring at each other, at least from Grant's perspective, the dog finally made his move. It lunged directly at Grant trying to take a bite out of him. Before the dog could land on top of him however, Grant dove into the kitchen area of his apartment that was to his right and ducked behind the counter.

As the dog slid by, it took a swipe at Grant's legs and managed to put a deep scratch in his leg.

After wincing from the pain, Grant immediately jumped back to his feet and reached into the closest drawer trying to find a long knife or something that he could use to kill our wound the animal.

Grant never took his eyes off the dog, so he was rummaging through the drawer without looking at what it was he was trying to grasp. After grabbing the first thing that he got his hands on and while the dog was still scrambling to its feet, Grant brought his new weapon to bare. Only to realize he was holding a... whisk.

[OH GOD IN HEAVEN WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?! Couldn't let me at least grab hold of something with an edge or a blunt object so that I could defend myself?!]

While Grant was damning a God that, at this point in time, had clearly abandoned all life on Earth, the dog attacked again.

Knowing that he wouldn't be able to escape now that he was surrounded on all sides by cabinets or walls, with the dog in the way of the only exit, Grant swiped at the dog with the least deadly weapon in the history of the world.

Grant managed to hit the dog on the head with the whisk, and the dog seemed to retract on instinct thinking that whatever he was about to be hit with, would probably cause damage, and redirected his charge to avoid the impending damage. After realizing that the hit amounted to literally no damage though, the dog seemed to sneer at Grant and immediately attacked again.

This time Grant thrust the whisk at the dog in an attempt to block the bite that was coming for his throat. This time however, the dog didn't hesitate and immediately closed its jaw and bit right through the whisk, biting off a majority of the loose end.

When Grant retracted his arm, he realized that since the dog had bitten off the flimsy end of the whisk, what was left was just a handle with a few short barbs of metal sticking out of it. He quickly devised a plan and the moment that the dog attacked for a third time, Grant thrust the handle directly at the left eye of the dog.

Not having been damaged on the first two occasions by this "weapon" the dog seemed not to be wary of it at all, which it quickly regretted because the sharpened barbs of the handle embedded themselves directly into its eye only to be mercilessly ripped out by Grant a second later.

While the dog howled in pain, Grant immediately jumped into action again and stabbed at the dogs other eye, managing to puncture and wound it as well. The dog tried swiping in front of itself with complete and reckless abandon trying to take chunks out of Grant.

Before the dogs attacks could reach him though, Grant jumped up onto the countertops and started to open other drawers as quickly as possible looking for something that he could actually kill the dog with. He was panicking so much that he forgot where he stored his knives.

After a few tense moments, Grant finally found the drawer he was looking for though and took out the longest knife that he had in his kitchen set. He slowly crouch walked across the countertops until he was directly above the now blind dog who was still swiping all around itself.

With the knife pointing downward in front of him, Grant jumped on top of the dog and stabbed it in the base of the skull, managing to sever its spine and kill it almost instantly.

[Congratulations on killing Rabid Killer Dog Level 3.

You have reached level 1.

Gained two status points to be distributed freely.

You have absorbed +1 Agility, +1 Stamina and +1 Strength.

You have gained +50 Credits and 1 Random Roll for successfully leveling up.]

After the message popped up, Grant sank directly onto his ass, right behind the now dead dog and let out a deep sigh.

He had been terrified that this would be the end for him but he had somehow managed to make it through the debacle with only one minor injury.