Fifty minutes. That was how long they had been there. It felt like a week in a blender.

  [Name: David Carter

  Level 2

  Demonic Realm: Floor 1/???

  Difficulty: Impossible

  Time left until forced ejection: 4y 364d 23h 10m 32s.

  Primary Class: Locked

  Sub-class: Locked

  Strength: 9

  Dexterity: 7

  Constitution: 10

  Mana: 7

  Demonic Energy: 2

  Skills: Battle Sense Lvl 3, Calm Mind Lvl 1, Energy Affinity Lvl 2,

  Free points: 5]

  The new stat blinked on his panel in red: Demonic Energy +2. For a full three seconds, David stared, waiting for it to go away, as if the interface might apologize and fix itself. It didn’t. He felt a cold drop in his stomach. Demonic energy. That didn’t sound healthy, or even legally compatible with being human. He scrolled back and forth, half-expecting a warning, a side effect, maybe a “congratulations, you’re cursed” pop-up. Nothing. Only that single number sitting there, smug and glowing. His brain spun through every unpleasant possibility it implied—corruption, possession, spontaneous horn growth. None sounded great. Was this what the imp had been running on, and if so, did that make him part of the same ecosystem now? He checked his hands, his reflection, his veins—still normal. “Alright,” he muttered, shutting the panel. “That’s tomorrow’s existential crisis.” Then he stood, stretched, and pretended that a stat labeled demonic didn’t currently belong to him.

  He noticed something else.

  Huh? Three mana stat points? Five free points? That was ten total. For a level two imp? Either the system liked his face or the world was so hostile that bias had stopped being a luxury and the points were scaled to match. Maybe this dimension really was built by lunatics. He took it. More power for him. His level changed. And his stats went up by ten points for no reason at all.

  David recalled the Imps claws, its sword-like tail, how it’d almost torn his back open, and most of all, the impossible classification of the world and dumped the rest into constitution, mostly out of fear—he really liked being alive.

  Then he looked at his stats.

  Constitution sounded like a catch-all for not dying—endurance, recovery, maybe organ durability if the system felt generous. The question was how it worked in a world where pain and blood loss didn’t kindly fade into a health bar. If the system was real, then Constitution had to alter something physical—maybe it boosted cell repair or tricked the body into running past exhaustion. He hoped it meant less time lying around bleeding

  Then he focused on mana.

  Why did his mana grow so much with the level up? David frowned, rubbing the back of his neck. His mind went back to the mist—the same pale stuff he’d seen on himself, on others, and most memorably, the bit he stole from that imp. The moment he did, his strength had surged. No one else had reacted. No one had even noticed.

  David wanted more stats. Both stats and skills, it seemed, were the key to surviving this hell.

  He looked at the other passengers and felt no attachment.

  David’s list of people he’d miss was so short, he could have written it on a single breath mint. He mentally airlocked everyone on Earth. Sentiment was a luxury for after his potential, system-sponsored deportation. A surprise party beat a wake.

  The other passengers were a box of spare parts. He decided to be approachable, blend in, the way a tax auditor was approachable. His main priority and current life goal was ‘don’t die’. Everything else was a distraction.

  The idea of power-leveling through murder was a fun little daydream. He was level two. The math said he’d need to wipe out most of the level-zero humans, and their XP value was a big question mark. The system clearly started everyone at zero to discourage such initiative. And he’d already decided to use them. The idea was scrapped.

  Harris, the businessman with the eternal spreadsheet-face, had said he’d seen nothing. Just David, apparently hallucinating magic fog while everyone else tried to stay alive. If not for the obvious boost in power, he would’ve agreed with Harris. But he had felt it. It wasn’t in his head.

  There was an obvious connection he was avoiding. That perhaps, the faint mist-like substance was energy. Mana. And the Imp’s mist was demonic energy.

  “So why only me?” he muttered. “Why can only I see it? Am I special? I mean, obviously I’m special, but am I magically special?”

  The idea lodged itself in his mind. Maybe it was tied to Energy Affinity. If so, did that mean he could steal energy—mana—from enemies? Not just demonic energy. What else could he take? What else was there? “If that’s true, that’s huge.” He grinned faintly at the possibility. Good news, finally.

  He already used energy to boost his strength—or at least, he thought he did. It wasn’t just the Battle Sense skill. The movements he pulled off while fighting the imp were well beyond what he’d been capable of back on Earth. Even during the fall, when panic ruled everything, he hadn’t moved that cleanly before.

  “It could still be just Battle Sense,” he said to himself, pacing, “or maybe Battle Sense combined with Energy Affinity and whatever that angry roof-burst thing was.” He paused. “Or maybe all of it juiced by Calm Mind. Sure, why not throw that in too.”

  Battle Sense could turn him into some kind of close-quarters security specialist, which sounded impressive until he realized the skill didn’t care if his body could keep up. His muscles still filed complaints through pain.

  But if he could figure out how to isolate each effect, control them, he could push his survival odds way up. The cost would be exposure, more fights, more close calls, probably more pain. But still—a short, brutal route to permanent improvement sounded efficient enough.

  He sighed, pulled off his shirt, and used Theo’s phone camera to check his back. Helpful guy. The wound looked smaller. Less red, less angry.

  “I don’t know if it’s just me,” he murmured, tilting the phone, “but that looks better already.”

  Somewhere behind his eyes, a tiny spark of satisfaction stirred.

  At least now he had a goal. He stood, feeling a solid sense of direction for the first time since landing here, and walked back to the group gathered in the planes safer sections. They were mid-argument over the system, the status, and whatever passed for logic in their situation. A few noticed him, offered quick nods, then went back to shouting theories. He stayed silent, listening, oddly fine with the noise.

  A figure shifted beside him. Mara, the woman who saw the plane dissapear.

  She was slim, athletic, and had a dusting of freckles across her nose that stood out against the tan. Her eyes, though—a disconcertingly deep green—were what really held your attention. They had a way of making her seem both utterly present and a thousand miles away.

  She didn’t bother with small talk. “You seem pretty good at this—fighting monsters” she stated, her voice a flat line with only the faintest tremor betraying her. “I helped Harris climb out of the muck when those freak imp things came through. He’d have been paste otherwise.”

  David’s internal monologue kicked in. Harris. Right. The one who screamed like he’d sat on a hornet’s nest.

  ”I do my best,” David said simply.

  “Well it’s better than most. We need to do the same. You have stats, right? From killing those things. How do they feel? I need more stats. I—I can’t die here,” she continued, the strange logic sounding entirely too normal coming from her. “I have to get stronger. Fast. That first of imp was bad, but the second… level 2… I think it would have been a lot uglier if you hadn’t been here. I need to level. We all do. I don’t usually fight, but… well, look around.” She gestured vaguely at the oppressive, crimson-tinted gloom. “You’re not a liability. You’re the opposite. I don’t want to be a liability.”

  Flattery will get you nowhere, but I appreciate the sentiment, David thought. Then he considered her words. Level she says, he replayed the thought, amused. Did they have a committee meeting on the walk over? Pass around a memo? ‘Welcome to Hell, remember to allocate your skill points.’ It was bizarre how quickly everyone had adapted to the terminology. Then again, when a six-foot-tall marshal named Corbin—a man with hair the color of old ash and the demeanor of a disappointed funeral director—had casually uprooted a small, petrified tree to test his new-found strength right in front of them, the concept of ‘leveling up’ became rather tangible. Three points made a surprising difference; it was the difference between ‘struggling’ and ‘performing casual acts of arboreal destruction.’

  To David’s genuine surprise, it was Corbin who leaned in close and answered her with a murmur. “I wouldn’t lose sleep over it, it won’t change a thing” the older marshal said, his voice a low rumble. “Weak creatures avoid stronger creatures territories. Those things we shot were already on their last legs. Our rounds hit something vital. And they were alone. Either they’re solitary, mating pairs, or their own kin cast them out. That usually only happens to a defeated alpha. So, that was probably as bad as they get at that level. But the issue that partially negates that is the ‘levels’. If that’s level 1, what does level 100 look like?”

  David thought that was good logic. He really did. It was a wonderfully horrific, almost simple assessment.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “I agree. I think we should probably assume the absolute worst-case scenario,” David muttered, low, as both pair of eyes swung toward him. He offered a bland, non-committal gesture toward the general, all-encompassing nightmare surrounding them and left it at that. Some things didn’t require elaboration. Corbin was right. They were both below level 2. That was all the logic he needed to know they were this place’s equivalent of social media managers.

  David leaned in toward Corbin, eyeing the place where he knew from experience the marshal’s sidearm would be.

  “You planning to share those bullets, or keeping them for when the voices start talking back?” David asked. He was keenly aware of the hypocrisy—no one else knew about his schizophrenia—but the familiar spark of dislike was stronger than reason.

  Mara stifled a chuckle. Corbin gave a short smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Enough for my team.”

  “Good. I was worried you’d waste them on me.”

  Silence. They studied each other in the half-light. Corbin had the calm weight of a man who’d killed before. David had the grin of a man who’d thought about it too much.

  “You leveled up?” David asked.

  Corbin’s tone shifted. “Yes. Used my points. One of the students figured it out first.”

  David glanced at the group of twenty-something-slash-teenagers huddled by the them. “Child prodigies. Always stealing the fun.”

  Corbin’s eyes stayed on him. “We need to explore. Find food—water. You should consider coming.”

  David smiled thinly. “Why not. If something kills you, I’ll take the gun.”

  Corbin didn’t laugh. “You’re strange, David.”

  “Correct.”

  Silence followed, only broken by the debating passengers.

  The three of them shifted, silent, and observed the discussion.

  Theo sat among the group, kicking his legs up on a chair in a relaxed position, frowning. There was something about his calmness that David found intriguing, it was like he had already embraced their reality without questioning it, like it was any other Saturday morning. “Look, I get that everyone’s freaking out,” Theo said, running his hands through his hair, “but we can’t just sit around asking why we’re here. The thing, man—this system, whatever it is—already proved it’s running the show. We should figure out how to live with it before it kills us.”

  Huh. David’s estimation of Theo bumped up, upgrading him from ‘mouth-breather’ to ‘pending.’ The kid showed potential.

  Someone near the rear snapped back, “You’re saying we just accept this? Five years stranded here? You think anyone’s even looking for us?”

  Someone in the group muttered, “Five years? People back home will think we’re dead. You saw the sky. This isn’t Earth.”

  Theo shrugged, half a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, probably. Unless others went missing too. Whole flights, whole cities—who knows?”

  A few people started to argue, voices overlapping. Harris, the businessman David had spoken to earlier, raised a hand. “This isn’t going to help us.”

  “Then what do we do?” someone asked.

  “Stay alive,” Harris responded, removing his tie as he spoke with reason. “Speculation won’t get us home. It doesn’t feed you, doesn’t build shelter, doesn’t get to the five year mark. Survival does. Every hour wasted talking about Earth is an hour not spent making sure we see tomorrow.”

  “My name’s on it,” a woman near the wreck said, her voice tight. “Not the one on my ticket. My real one.”

  A man crouched by the shade of the wing frowned. “You mean the full name? Same here. First and last. Spelled right, too.”

  Someone else muttered, “Then it’s not random. It knows who we are.”

  Another voice cut in. “How? There’s no signal, no ID tags, nothing electronic left working. So how does it pull that?”

  David agreed with them. The system clearly knew too much, and pretending otherwise would only make dying more surprising. Fine. Let it know everything—his name, his history, his search results, whatever. Aside from the madness, he figured he wasn’t too bad—If it wanted to watch, it could enjoy the show. He decided he’d treat awareness like weather: not worth panicking over. What bothered him more was how leveling up actually worked. If it handed out stat points as rewards for killing, that was one kind of horror. If the life force of what he killed got siphoned into him, that was another, more efficient kind. It also meant he could level up without killing. Maybe mid fight. He preferred that one. It sounded transactional and broken. Scientific even. Blood for numbers. An energy black hole. Clean enough reasoning for survival.

  The group’s panic was a dull roar.

  "Forced return," Harris repeated, his voice a forced calm that contrasted with the white-knuckled grip he had on a headrest. "It's not a threat, I’m sure of it. It means there's a mechanism. A way to get home before the five-year deadline."

  "That's a good thing, right?" Mara asked, her voice thin with hope. "That's a light at the end of the tunnel."

  A man in a torn business shirt wasn't listening. He kept pointing at the words 'Demonic Realm' floating in his vision. "Hell. We're in hell. It says it right there. Are we dead? Is this the afterlife?"

  "The Bible is surprisingly light on details about imps, levels, mana, and system prompts," David noted. "Calling it a 'realm' makes it sound more geographical. A place you can, theoretically, leave."

  A woman near the torn opening screamed, “We’re in the Demonic Realm! This is hell! Is the devil here?”

  David watched her and thought he’d hit rock bottom in social circles. Thirty people, and not a single one worth swapping apocalypse tips with.

  "It’s a dimension," a young man with a faded pop band t-shirt said, his eyes wide. "Like in the movies with wizards. Where people summon things. Warlocks. Demons."

  Theo, who had been quietly checking the slide on his service weapon, looked up. “So are there demon kings?” he asked. “Greater demons?”

  A man in his thirties, his face pale, muttered, "Or succubi." His wife next to him elbowed him hard in the ribs. "What?" he hissed defensively. "It's a valid question! What are we dealing with?"

  The talk shifted to the ‘Dimensional Floor’.

  “The question marks are the problem,” Harris said. “It means there are more. How many more? A hundred? A thousand?”

  "It's a game structure," Theo said, a spark of grim recognition in his eyes. "We're on the first floor. We have to complete an objective to ascend. Or maybe it's timed. We get moved after a set period."

  "Five years on this floor?" a woman whispered, her voice cracking. "With those things?"

  Then the word everyone feared was spoken aloud, draining the color from every face. "Impossible." The Dimensions grade.

  A deep silence fell, broken only by someone's ragged breathing.

  David’s eyes flashed to the two biggest threats present. Two air marshals. That detail stood out. Usually there was one. Two meant headquarters had expected trouble. David filed that away, curious but unwilling to assign meaning yet.

  The younger air marshal stood near the broken aisle, early thirties, African American, short beard, sharp posture that made him look ready to shoot a thought if it moved wrong. His expression carried a steady suspicion that made everyone feel pre-screened for crimes they hadn’t committed.

  The older one, late forties, gray hair cut short, built solid, moved with practiced focus. He scanned people with the precision of someone who had spent years catching lies before they formed. When he spoke, it came out measured, shaped by habit, as if the judgement of law had worn grooves into his tone and his gun had crowned him leader.

  David watched them, uneasy. Their calm set his nerves off. Two marshals, both too measured. He half-suspected their training had come with bonus experience points.Their eyes kept sweeping the cabin, missing nothing, watching him. He felt exposed.

  A wave of calm washed through him, sharpening his mind. He relaxed, though he trusted neither them nor their trigger fingers. Their confidence reeked of system bonuses.

  One of the air marshals, the one with a close-cropped beard, finally broke the silence. "In any operational context, an 'impossible' designation means the projected casualty rate is... total." His partner, an older man with a stern gaze, gave a single, grim nod of agreement.

  David finally spoke, his voice dry. “Explains the imp. Folklore says they’re little. A pest. That one was the size of a wardrobe. It practically did a mana-powered push-up after its heart should have stopped. A real go-getter.”

  The other marshal, the one who had spoken, didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. "That’s worrying. And these classes. What does folklore say about them?" When a passenger mumbled something about game roles, and choosing one, the older marshal shook his head. "I don't have that option. Does anyone?" A round of hesitant head-shakes passed through the group.

  "Would they be standard?" Mara asked. "Like a warrior? Or a mage?"

  "Or are they all... demonic?" a voice quavered from the back. "What if taking one... changes us?"

  A heavy silence fell.

  "Unlikely," David said. "The status shows no corruption metrics. But it's a fantastic thought. Really brightens the day."

  Internally, he knew his status did, but it looked like theirs didn’t, according to the earlier conversation. He considered the class problem. Getting one was probably key. But going home looking non-human was a one-way ticket to a dissection table. He needed more intel. Survival first. Everything else was a secondary objective.

  The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. The idea of transformation, of becoming something other than human, was a deeper terror than the monsters outside.

  "I'm not turning into some... thing," a woman whispered, her voice trembling with a fresh wave of horror.

  The marshals exchanged a look. The one with the beard spoke again, his tone all business, a deliberate anchor in the rising panic. "Speculation isn't a survival tool. We need facts. We have limited ammunition, no secure perimeter, and a confirmed hostile threat." He looked at Harris. "You mentioned an 'early exit'. That's a strategic objective. How do we find the parameters for this 'forced return'?"

  Harris ran a hand over his face. "I don't know. The system doesn’t have a manual. It's all unexplained."

  "The imp," the older marshal stated. "It's our only reference. It was strong and resilient. 'Impossible' suggests everything here will be scaled accordingly. We avoid engagement whenever possible."

  Harris, the businessman, finally spoke up, his concerned demeanor replaced by a sharp focus. "So we're not fighting. We're hiding. We're running. We need to find water, shelter that isn't this metal coffin, and we need to do it before we run out of energy or whatever's native to this floor finds us again. The quicker we move, the better."

  Harris was right. David knew that when you were stranded without food or water, the quicker you moved to secure it, the better. Without either, eventually you wouldn’t be able to move at all.

  David observed the passengers shift. The initial shock was crystallizing into a desperate, focused fear. The group was moving from 'what is happening' to 'what do we do'. His own calculus updated. Cooperation, for now, had a higher survival value than solitude. These people, scared as they were, were the only resources he had.

  "Running sounds great," David said. "Walking is also acceptable. The part where we stay here and wait for the local wildlife to come back for a second course is the one I'm voting against."

  The marshals nodded and stepped forward, both taking charge. "Alright. We need volunteers. If you’re willing, on your feet. We're leaving. We move fast, we move quiet. Your only job is to keep up and not make a sound." The one with the beard gestured toward the ragged opening at the rear of the cabin, a gaping wound that led out into the bruised and alien sky. "Let's go."

  A man with a deep cut on his forehead scrambled back from the opening, pressing himself against a mangled seat. “No! No way! Did you not see that thing? It’s waiting out there! This… this fuselage is the only solid thing here. We stay. We barricade the opening.”

  Murmurs of agreement, desperate and scared, rippled through the group. The plane’s carcass felt like the last fragile piece of their world.

  David watched the huddle of terrified people. He understood the instinct. The metal felt like safety, even if it was a lie. It was a tomb with a view. He was not waiting to die of starvation, murder, or starvation and murder with the rest of those idiots.

  Naturally, David volunteered. He was a little surprised to see Theo and Mara step up too. Theo looked like he was trying to be useful, and Mara looked like she was about to be sick. As he walked over, David decided the orientation lecture was over. It was time to see if anyone in this mess was worth keeping around.

  They hadn’t found water yet.

  Instead, two suits of broken armor lay partially buried on the forest floor at the foot of the only dead redwood they had seen, its massive bark cracked and black like a fractured dead mountain. Heat from the earth had turned them a dull molten red. The ground trembled as the pieces shifted and rose, locking together until both stood upright. Through the gaps there was nothing, or something unseen. The earth split again, and from it burst their weapons—one wielding two swords, the other a shield.

  David stopped as the sound hit, surprised. He hadn’t caught the haze of magic until the last second, but now he could see it clearly. The grey-haired marshal and the bearded one moved in, steady but tense. Theo and Mara stepped back in shock. The eight younger men accompanying them tightened their grips on torn metal and broken parts of the plane, shields and weapons hammered together from wreckage. Four of them ran. The rest fought to stay alive as the forest shook around them.

  “Are you insane?!” David yelled. “We drop out of the sky and the ground spawns bosses?!”

  The marshals fired. One bullet landed with a wet, sizzling thud, bursting a red hole. The other round hit with a dull, final clink and stuck fast. "Spread out!" one yelled. "Find things to throw! Keep your distance!"

  The rest fanned out. David immediately ran to the right of the shielded one away from the swords and away from the line of fire. Why, because he wanted that shield, and he had strong feelings about remaining in one piece.

  The pair of heated, molten armors stepped forward in unison.