The aftermath of the tutorial was a strange, surreal dream. The students of Northwood High stumbled out of the battered school and into a world that was both the same and irrevocably different. The sky was the same familiar, hazy blue. The birds were singing. But the faint, shimmering blue of their own status windows was a constant, undeniable reminder that the rules had changed.
News reports were a chaotic mess of confusion and disbelief. The "Northwood Event," as they were calling it, was not isolated. It had happened in thousands of schools, office buildings, and shopping malls across the globe. Small, localized apocalypses. Tutorial dungeons.
The world was trying to make sense of it. Governments were issuing statements. Scientists were offering theories. But the players, the ones who had survived, they knew the truth.
A new game had begun.
In the parking lot of the high school, Nox's group was a quiet island of calm in a sea of tearful reunions and panicked phone calls.
