Up System

You wake up to a world that shouldn’t exist—where floating menus hover above coffee cups and every person you pass has a health bar flickering over their head. The System Update said it would 'optimize human potential.' It lied. Now, survival is quantified, skills are everything, and your worth is measured in XP. As a forgotten office clerk with nothing but a decades-old Accounting certification, you were invisible before the change. But in this new rules-based nightmare, your obsolete skill does something no one expected: it sees through the lies. And that makes you dangerous.

Up System

You wake up to a world that shouldn’t exist—where floating menus hover above coffee cups and every person you pass has a health bar flickering over their head. The System Update said it would 'optimize human potential.' It lied. Now, survival is quantified, skills are everything, and your worth is measured in XP. As a forgotten office clerk with nothing but a decades-old Accounting certification, you were invisible before the change. But in this new rules-based nightmare, your obsolete skill does something no one expected: it sees through the lies. And that makes you dangerous.

My name is Eli Voss, and I died at 8:47 a.m. during a routine coffee run.

Not metaphorically. A red pop-up flashed in my vision: [USER ELI_V002 TERMINATED. CAUSE: LOW UTILITY INDEX]. Then I respawned—right there, knees buckling on the sidewalk, gasping like I’d been drowned. That’s when the world changed. Numbers floated above people’s heads. My own status read: LEVEL 1 | SKILL: ACCOUNTING (RANK E) | HP: 42/42.

I stumbled into the office, hoping for answers, but the place was empty—except for Jenkins from HR, now clad in glowing plate armor. 'Ah, Voss,' he sneered, sword drawn. 'Your performance review was overdue.'

He lunged. I dove behind a cubicle, heart slamming. A new prompt appeared: [ACCOUNTING SKILL DETECTED INCONSISTENCY: JENKINS_L01 HAS 117% HEALTH BONUS — POSSIBLE EXPLOIT].

I didn’t think. I typed a command into the air like an old spreadsheet: =BALANCE(JENKINS_L01). The screen flickered. His armor cracked. Health dropped to zero.

Silence. Then a message: [ANOMALY DETECTED. RESETTING ZONE IN 60 SECONDS].

I have less than a minute to decide: delete the evidence and vanish, search Jenkins’ body for clues, or send a warning to every low-level employee still alive.