It all started as some urban legend. A Chinese investigator who got silenced after he had gone public with his findings, or so the story said. Young adult, barely days after their eighteenth birthday, were disappearing en masse on the same day, once every trimester.

  All in all, about 1600 teenagers had disappeared worldwide over the last year, but for most of them, only three months ago. And they all had the same profile: obviously the same age, wealthy influential families, somewhat sportive with good grades, popular. Silver spooned kids with the ideal package to get their life on the right track and no reason to go AWOL, gone, without a trace.

  Merely a footnote in the dreadful statistics of people who went missing every year.

  Yet, it was starting to get traction in the media.

  Of course, Sophia's parents had been concerned about their coming-of-age baby girl and she had brushed it off.

  Unlike her peers, her family was struggling to make ends meet and could not afford to pay an extra year of tuition because of some hearsay. Besides, she might be hardworking but she was merely compensating for her lack of talent, background, and connection. She was nothing like those missing kids.

  Or so she thought.

  Three days after her birthday, she could not feel her body as she woke up. She could not move. She could not see. She could not scream. She could not hear anything. Only utter excruciating darkness and silence surrounded her.

  Until she was suddenly blinded by blue light, only to realize she was still unable to blink or look away.

  Yet, her eyes adjusted faster than she thought it could.

  Sophia read the message many times over as a multitude of emotions overwhelmed her. It was informative, beyond crazy, maddening, impossible, dreadful, nerve-wracking, insane, flattering, preposterous, overbearing, yet somewhat considerate? Her feelings were all over the place and it took minutes before she could formulate coherent thoughts once again.

  'Okay. It sounds like scientists did miscalculated the human impact on the environment. They underestimated it by a long shot. Who would have thought? And Alien AI is a thing. Does that count as first contact? Nevermind. Kidnapping does not count anyway. Earth is dying and everyone with it. And I got inducted in a do-or-die game to determine the future of humankind? Well.. no pressure. On the plus side, humanity is already doomed so I cannot possibly make it any worse, right?'

  She desperately needed to breathe. But still couldn't feel her body. If she ever had one. This place... was an affront to existence itself, making her doubt it was even real. She was not dreaming. Of that much she was certain. Both her dreams and nightmares were less sophisticated and more visceral than this. It offer no distraction which she guessed was the entirety of its purpose. It was brutally effective.

  'Okay, System. Tell me what's next?'

  It was both too much information and not enough.

  Having a god looming over her shoulder gave her the creep. She did not want to ponder the moral implications of a living, sentient weapon. Nor was she interested in bioengineering herself. Or let herself get mind rape with someone else memories. All in all, the Fighter Archetype felt both like the lesser evil and utterly inadequate.

  She was no fighter and could not picture herself going up close and personal with anything to save her life.

  'Could you at least show me what others chose and how they fare doing so?' She asked, putting any moral or emotional considerations aside for the cold calculating mindset of survival.

  The spreadsheet was clinical, yet redundant. Somewhat puzzling yet perfectly responding to her needs.

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  As she expected, Rogue was the least popular Archetype. Yet delivered on its promises with the highest survival rate. Conversely, Fighter was an all-time popular and was second best in terms of survivability. While Cleric and Wizard had the worst odds.

  Though, it did not take a genius to understand why people would choose Rogue over the two. Twice as much survival was damn appealing, no matter how reluctant she was about it.

  'Can I know how many people have been included in this wave?'

  'Only 6144, huh? So number of participants is supposed to go up unless a wave is a total failure. Don't know the maths behind it and I would not even hazard a guess...'

  From what she could see, it sounded like some sort of equilibrium between the Archetypes was required, lest it would lead to a catastrophic failure. She supposed it was the meaning of 384 x 4 within parentheses.

  They were meant to be teams of 6, yet they were only 4 archetypes. So she guessed one each and two extra was the optimal combination. She also suspected that the six survivors of the third wave were no accident.

  'Can I know what other 'representatives' from this wave chose?'

  'Of course you can't.' She thought sarcastically before reasoning:

  'With so many participants, complete imbalance should not be an issue. Did not get to make the pragmatic choice but at least it keep things personal. So, time to pick my poison.'

  Cleric was a hard no. If gods existed, they could not be benevolent, as her life on earth and current predicament should be proof enough. Either Gods were responsible for nothing and were therefore irrelevant or nonexistent. Or Gods were responsible for everything and were a bunch of irredeemable arseholes. You can't have it both ways. And the system stated they existed, therefore they must be evil. Besides, her devotion to unknown gods was none existent and she liked it to stay that way.

  She gave the idea of a ranged Fighter some consideration. But it would probably upset the balance of any group if the Archetype meant for close combat chose its only ranged option instead. She did not mind being selfish. But she still had to account for the fact she would be part of a group that might question her choices.

  Rogue also had ranged options and, according to its listed starting equipment, offered some versatility and quite a bit of utility outside of combat. Too bad there weren't straight out of combat options, like crafter or gatherer. Yet, she really did not like the boon attached to that archetype.

  Finally, magic was any teenager wet dream, so she could not deny the appeal of the wizard Archetype. But its atrocious survivability gave her pause. She remembered it to be true in any media picturing wizards and witches. They were the embodiment of glass cannon, powerful but fragile.

  'Can I have tools to list pros and cons?'

  Whatever Sophia had expected, this wasn't on her list. She could not see the end of those terms of services but the first few articles pretty much summed up the 'spirit' of it that was fleshed out in greater detail thereafter.

  Using those tools she would have to lay bare her every thought for anyone to see and even trying to self-censor would get her banned. Conversely, the system had every right to censor and deny her whatever content it wanted. Also, she could not tell a soul about what she learned or she would also get banned.

  But according to statistics, she was more likely to be dead than alive three months from now so, who cared about privacy?

  'Correction: if I agree to those terms, can I have access to the thoughts of any previous human users about their Primary Archetype?'

  'Fine. I will bite. I agree with your very abusive terms of services'

  'Yes, please?'

  The only thing Sophia could say after reading it was that she wasn't disappointed and that all three of them had colorful personalities and were quite opinionated. And so she started writing her own notes.

  Then, she immediately proceeded to make another note.

  'Hey, can you tell me if my intuition is correct?'

  'System, is my current credential limited to tutorial-related content?'

  'Actually, do my credentials allow me to access tutorial-related content from other species?'

  'Okay. Show me the most popular content written by a primary rogue survivor.'