"Raaargh!"

The Goblin Scout snarled, shaking off the impact of the stapler. Its milky eyes locked entirely onto Arthur now. A red nameplate flickered above its head, signifying a locked aggro state. In the Original Timeline, the sheer horror of a monster practically manifesting out of thin air had paralyzed most of humanity on day one. Greg, currently hyperventilating against the shattered cubicle wall, was proof enough of that.

Arthur remained unsettlingly composed. He tossed the letter opener between his fingers, testing its weight. It was pathetic—a three-ounce slab of cheap corporate steel. In a true LitRPG setting, it wouldn't even register as a `[Poor Dagger]`. But this was reality, and the System, despite its godlike facade, was just an incredibly complex engine governing physics and hitboxes.

The Goblin lunged. It didn't possess complex martial arts; it relied entirely on the System's pre-programmed attack animation: a crude, overhead swing with the rusted cleaver, designed to deal heavy sweeping damage to a Level 1 novice. It covered the ten-foot distance in a fraction of a second, the acidic stench of its breath washing over Arthur's face.

Most people would raise their arms to block or try to turn and run. Both actions would trigger an automatic critical hit to an unarmored back or a severed limb.

Arthur did neither. Instead, an infinitesimal fraction of a second before the cleaver descended, he dropped straight down to the carpeted floor.

He literally collapsed, tucking his chin to his chest.

*Whoosh.* The rusted blade cleaved through the empty space where his neck had been, tearing through the fabric of the cubicle wall behind him. The force of the swing, coupled with the programmed momentum of the Goblin’s leap, threw the creature slightly off-balance.

In that millisecond window, the System's Engine engaged its recovery frames. The monster was locked in an animation loop as it forcibly corrected its posture. It couldn’t strike again for exactly 1.2 seconds. It was a basic flaw in the Tutorial's introductory monster AI, meant to give frightened players a chance to run or hit back.

Arthur didn't run. He surged upward from his crouch, driving the dull, cheap letter opener not at the Goblin's chest or throat, but straight into the gap between its collarbone and the base of its neck. It was a precise, anatomical strike aimed at the brachial plexus.

*Schlick.*

The steel barely penetrated two inches, but it didn't matter. The Goblin shrieked, dropping the cleaver as its right arm went entirely limp. Nerves were nerves, even in a monster governed by digital logic. Without the ability to hold its weapon, the creature’s threat level drastically plummeted.

"Gah! Gurrk!" The Goblin scrambled backward, clutching its neck, its AI momentarily confused by the localized paralysis.

"Greg!" Arthur barked, not taking his eyes off the creature. "The fire extinguisher by the copy machine! Throw it to me!"

"W-What?!" Greg continued to whimper, staring wide-eyed at the blood dripping onto Arthur's pristine white dress shirt.

"Do it, or we both die here!" Arthur yelled, his voice laced with the commanding, authoritative tone of a man who had led armies in a past life.

Greg scrambled up onto his wobbly legs, practically sprinting down the short hallway to the copy room. He yanked the heavy red cylinder off its wall mount and hurled it back toward Arthur. It bounced violently on the cheap carpet, rolling to a stop right near Arthur's foot.

The Goblin, its arm dangling uselessly, let out a guttural roar and lunged again, this time leading with its jagged, needle-like teeth in a desperate bite attack.

Arthur didn’t dodge. He kicked the nozzle of the fire extinguisher squarely into the Goblin's path.

The creature tripped over the heavy cylinder, face-planting into the carpet. In an instant, Arthur brought his foot down heavily on the back of the Goblin’s neck, pinning it. With a swift, practiced motion, he kicked the fire extinguisher's activation pin, breaking the plastic seal, and slammed his heel down onto the lever.

*PSSSHHHHHH!*

A blinding cloud of freezing, pressurized chemical foam erupted directly into the Goblin's face. The creature shrieked, a horrific sound of agony as the sub-zero foam blinded its milky eyes and filled its lungs. It thrashed violently under Arthur's boot, clawing blindly at the air.

Without hesitation, Arthur grabbed the rusted cleaver the Goblin had dropped. It felt heavy, poorly balanced, and humming with a faint, dirty magical aura. He raised it high and brought it down like a guillotine on the back of the creature's exposed neck.

*Thwack.*

The thrashing stopped instantly. The Goblin’s body went loose, a pool of blackish blood seeping rapidly into the office carpet.

A standard Player would have seen a golden light flash over their body. A blue screen would pop up congratulating them on the kill, awarding them 50 Experience Points, perhaps an achievement like `[First Blood]`, and dropping a few copper coins.

Arthur stepped back, his chest heaving slightly. He waited.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

Nothing.

He glanced down at the gray screen lingering in his peripheral vision.

`[ERROR 404: ENTITY LEVEL 0. XP YIELD CANCELED.]`

Arthur exhaled sharply, wiping a streak of monster blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. It was exactly as he'd feared. He truly was severed from the System's progression mechanics. Killing monsters was technically pointless for him. He couldn’t grind his way to power. He was stuck at Level 0, eternally fragile, eternally stat-less. If a Level 5 monster hit him, it would be an instant obliteration.

He looked around the office. The sounds of chaos had amplified. Distant explosions shook the floor-to-ceiling windows. Through the glass, columns of black smoke were already rising from the downtown Seattle grid. Winged horrors that looked like gargoyles were swooping down between the skyscrapers, snatching people right off the streets.

The Tutorial wasn't just in his office building. It was everywhere. Earth was now designated Level 1 Zone.

"Is... is it dead?" Greg peeked around the corner of a cubicle, his face pale as a sheet. The blue title above his head still read `[Greg Peterson - Level 1 Novice]`.

"It's just the scout," Arthur said quietly, picking up his suit jacket from the back of his chair and throwing it over his bloodstained shirt. He gripped the rusted cleaver tightly. "There's never just one. If the System spawned a scout here, the stairwell is going to be infested with a raiding party within ten minutes."

"The... the System? A raiding party?" Greg stammered, pulling at his hair. "I was just doing quarterly projections! What is happening?! Why are there goblins? Am I hallucinating?"

"Check your status screen, Greg. Just think the word 'Status'." Arthur instructed calmly.

Greg blinked confusedly, but a moment later, his eyes widened slightly as if reading an invisible text. "Oh my god. St-Strength: 8? Agility: 7? Class: Undecided? It says... it says I need 100 XP to reach Level 2..."

"Welcome to the Apocalypse," Arthur said dryly. In a normal run, he would have gathered the office survivors, taken charge, formed a raiding group, and systematically cleared the floor for early XP advantage. But he was a Glitch now. He had zero stats. Leading a dozen panicked accountants into a pitched battle against monsters was suicide. He needed to avoid combat as much as humanly possible, relying solely on his exploits until he could find a way to patch his own existence.

"We need to get to the stairwell," Arthur said, heading toward the emergency exit. The elevators were death traps. If the power failed—and it would—they'd be trapped in a metal box while monsters swarmed the shafts.

"Wait, Arthur! Are we just going to leave the others?" Greg pointed toward the far end of the office where the sounds of screams and breaking glass were getting louder. Several other Goblins had spawned near the breakroom. "Sharon is over there! And Dave!"

Arthur paused. He hated the cold logic of survival, but the math in his head painted a grim picture. With his current physical condition, battling three or four Goblins simultaneously had a 98% mortality rate. He couldn't risk it.

"We can't save them. The best thing we can do for them is clear the path downstairs so they have an escape route," Arthur lied smoothly. It was the only way to get Greg moving without a moral breakdown.

Greg hesitated, tears welling in his eyes, but a particularly loud shriek from the breakroom propelled him forward. He followed Arthur to the heavy fire door leading to the emergency stairwell.

Arthur grabbed the handle, his senses sharp. He placed his ear against the metal. He could hear the scuttling of claws on concrete. Multiple hostiles.

"There are at least five of them halfway down the first flight," Arthur whispered, turning the handle slowly.

"Five?! You barely killed one!" Greg hissed in panic.

"We're not going to fight them," Arthur said, a strange, calculating glint in his eye. "We are going to walk right past them."

Greg stared at him as if he had lost his mind. "They're monsters! They eat people!"

"Only the ones the System tells them are people," Arthur murmured.

He pulled open the heavy fire door. In the dim, red emergency lighting of the stairwell, five emaciated, snarling Goblin Scouts were crouched around a mangled corpse, tearing into it with ravenous hunger. At the sound of the door creaking, all five heads snapped upward, their jaws snapping, milky eyes zeroing in on the newcomers.

Red aggro lines instantly materialized, shooting across the space. But they didn't connect to Arthur. The red lines snaked straight past him, latching entirely onto the terrified accountant cowering behind him.

`[AGGRO SECURED: TARGET AQUIRED - LEVEL 1 NOVICE]`

The Goblins shrieked and began scrambling up the concrete steps.

"They're looking at me!" Greg screamed.

"I know," Arthur said, stepping aside calmly and gesturing toward the descending nightmare sequence. "Run."