In "The Strongest Survivor," your starting point decided everything.
When mana descended upon Earth, every living being that survived the bath of primordial energy was classified by the Genesis System. It didn't matter if you were human, animal, or insect. If the mana didn't kill you, it catalogued you.
The classification was by color. Gray, Green, Blue, Purple, Gold, Crimson, and White. Gray was rock bottom, the starting point of every newly awakened creature. White was the peak, the territory of beings who could reshape reality with a thought.
Most humans started and died in Gray.
To rise in classification, you needed two things. First, reach the maximum stats your current classification could support. Second, pass through something the Genesis System deemed worthy. A trial. A feat. Something that proved you deserved to exist on the next level.
But here was the detail that separated geniuses from commoners: the starting point.
The maximum that the Gray classification supported was 100 points in each stat. That applied to everyone. But the points you awakened with didn't disappear when you ranked up. They were extras.
If you awakened with 30 mana points, when you hit the Gray ceiling and climbed to Green, you wouldn't have 100 mana. You'd have 130. Thirty points of permanent advantage that only grew with each classification.
That was why the starting point decided everything. That was why the strong got stronger and the weak never caught up.
The manhwa's protagonist, Kael, was blessed in numerous ways that made his existence absurdly unfair. He had an archdemon sealed inside his own head, a millennia-old entity that guided him from the very first second of the apocalypse, when nobody else understood what the Genesis System was. Because of that guidance, and his supernatural compatibility with demonic mana, Kael had awakened with at least 30 points in every stat.
Thirty. In all of them. While the rest of humanity struggled to understand what a "status" was, he was already 180 points ahead.
And his sister? Stella was a mana genius on a completely different scale. Her physical stats were normal, mediocre even. But her mana had awakened at 100 points. One hundred. The Gray classification maximum. Before even killing a single monster, she had already hit the mana ceiling of her classification.
She was an aberration. An anomaly that made other awakened look like ants.
I knew all of this. I knew Kael's numbers, Stella's numbers, the villains' and the side characters' numbers. I had memorized status tables in discussion forums like a maniac.
But I wasn't any of those characters.
I was Nathan Salt. An extra. A background NPC so irrelevant the author didn't even bother naming him.
I just hoped I was average. Didn't need to be a genius, didn't need 30 points in everything. Just needed to not be below normal.
Because if I was below...
I swallowed hard and looked at the screen floating in front of me.
"Status."
[Nathan Salt]
[Race: Human (Gray)]
[Title: None]
[Strength: 11 (10) | Agility: 11 (10) | Health: 11 (10) | Stamina: 16 (10) | Mana: 19 (15) | Control: 15]
[Skills: Mana Manipulation]
My eyes ran through the numbers one by one. Strength, Agility, Health, all at 10 base. Average. Normal. The zombie bonuses were right there beside them, added but separated from the awakening. Mana at 15 base. Not bad, but compared to Stella's 100 or Kael's 30, it was a joke.
I was average. Exactly where I expected an extra to be. Neither above nor below. Invisible.
But then my eyes dropped to the last line before the skills and I stopped.
Control: 15.
'Control?'
I frowned, confused. I had read the entire manhwa and a good chunk of the novel, but I'd never seen this stat before.
Every awakened human has the five basic stats plus one unique stat, based on something the Genesis System judges for each individual. It's never really explained in the work, but generally it's a stat that makes people even more unique.
Kael had Demonic Power, Elyn had Perception, Thalen had Presence. Each one seemed to complement its character type.
But Control? I'd never seen this stat on any character.
'What the hell is this?'
I didn't have time to sit around racking my brain. I closed the status and shelved the question for later. Whatever it was, 15 points weren't going to save me right now. What would save me was my knowledge of upcoming events.
I sighed without thinking too deeply about it and stood up, gripping the chair leg tight in my hands.
"This isn't going to be very useful against what's coming next," I swung it a few times, "but it'll do."
"H-hey... you..."
A trembling voice came from behind a toppled desk. I turned and saw a girl crouched down, hugging her own knees. She looked at me with red, swollen eyes. "You know how to fight... Please, help me!"
Before I could answer, a guy stood up from the other side of the room. Tall, broad shoulders, uniform dirty with dust but no blood. He hadn't fought, but he hadn't panicked either. He'd been watching.
He looked at the girl, then at me, then at the rest of the students still hiding.
"You all saw what he did, right?" He pointed at me like I was an exhibit on display. "Five of those things. Alone. With a chair."
He turned to the others and spread his arms. "I don't know what's happening out there, but I know we all froze. Everyone froze. Except him." He pointed again. "So instead of sitting here crying, the best thing we can do is stick with him. Right?"
Some students started coming out of the corners. One nodded. Another got up slowly. The girl behind the desk stood up too, wiping her face with her sleeve.
The guy turned to me with an expression that tried to be confident but couldn't hide the fear behind it. "You'll take us with you, right?"
Fourteen people were now looking at me.
I looked at the guy who'd made the speech. He was smart. Instead of begging, he'd organized the others and put me in a position where refusing would be harder. In another situation, I would've liked him.
"No."
His forced smile died. The room went silent again.
"I'm not staying here. And you can't follow me."
"But..." The girl who'd asked for help first took a step forward. "We'll die if we stay here alone!"
"That's not my problem." I spun the metal leg in my hand and pointed at the door. "Out there, there's more of those things. A lot more. And I'm not going to stop to protect anyone."
The tall guy clenched his fists but said nothing. He knew I was right. I could see it in his eyes.
"If you don't want to die, fight." I looked at the tall guy. "You seem like you can keep your cool. If you fight, you'll be able to kill a few."
I started walking toward the door.
"Wait."
Another voice rang out, feminine, as if forcing itself out.
A girl stepped in front of me. Hair tied back, dark eyes. Her expression didn't match someone who'd just watched five people die. She got close and placed her hand on my chest.
"Take me with you." Her voice came out low. "I can be useful. I'll do anything you want."
I grabbed her wrist and removed her hand from my chest.
"Anything won't keep you alive out there."
Her mask cracked for half a second. Her eyes hardened. Then it came back. "But I..."
I'd already turned my back and had my hand on the handle. I unlocked the latch and walked out.
Some might call me cruel, but I couldn't care less. As far as I knew, I'd die if I didn't seize every opportunity. I couldn't afford the luxury of saving anyone.
Every second wasted playing hero put more distance between me and my only real objective right now: the Queen Bee.
The first Green Grade monster in the entire story. Kael found her by chance on his way to the gymnasium, weakened, depositing eggs in a mana tree in the parking lot.
Kael killed her and earned a record in the Genesis, like an achievement. The first human to kill a Green Grade creature.
He gained a title and a magical item, but Kael already had plenty of advantages. That item had to be mine.
'Zombies aren't as fast as mutant animals, or as unpredictable as insects. They're slow and their movements are clumsy. But a single wound and you become one of them.'
The door closed behind me. I heard the click of the lock from the other side.
The corridor was long. Fluorescent lights flickered on the ceiling, some already dead, leaving entire stretches in shadow. The smell of blood was stronger here.
About twenty meters ahead, a group of students was cornered against the wall. Five, maybe six. Two of them held chairs in front of their bodies like improvised shields. A girl stood behind them, holding the arm of a boy bleeding from the shoulder.
Three zombies advanced toward them, as if they knew the prey had nowhere to go.
"STAY BACK! STAY BACK!"
The student at the front, a guy with his cap turned backward, shoved the chair against the closest zombie. The metal legs hit the creature's chest, which stumbled one step and resumed advancing as if nothing had happened.
"IT'S NOT WORKING!"
"HIT THE HEAD, DAMN IT! THE HEAD!"
The second student tried. He swung the chair and struck the side of one zombie's skull. The impact knocked the creature sideways, but the boy hadn't hit hard enough. The zombie was already getting back up.
"IT GOT BACK UP! WHAT THE HELL, IT GOT BACK UP!"
The third zombie slipped past the two at the front. Neither of them noticed. It went straight for the girl holding the injured boy. She screamed and let go of her classmate, stumbling back. The injured boy, without support, slid down the wall and collapsed to the floor.
The zombie fell on top of him.
"JOON! JOON, NO!"
The girl tried to pull the zombie off by its back, but the teeth had already sunk into the boy's neck. Blood sprayed onto the wall and her blouse. She let go and backed away screaming.
The guy with the cap turned his head at the scream, and in that one second of distraction, the zombie in front of him lunged and grabbed the arm holding the chair. He tried to pull free, but the jaw clamped down on his forearm.
"AAAARGH! LET GO! LET GO!"
He dropped the chair and punched the zombie's head with his free hand. One, two, three times. On the fourth, the zombie tore off a chunk of flesh and he fell backward clutching his arm.
In less than fifteen seconds, two had been bitten.
The boy with the neck wound had already stopped moving. His eyes opened, white.
Three became four, four became five when the guy with the cap stopped screaming and rose with his jaw hanging loose and his gaze empty.
The girl who'd tried to save her classmate had her back against the wall, no way out. The second student with the chair dropped everything and ran in the opposite direction, passing me without even seeing me.
The last student in the group, a short guy who'd done nothing but stand frozen in the corner, slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. He didn't run, just closed his eyes.
Five zombies now. Surrounding a girl and a guy who'd already given up.
I watched it all unfold in under thirty seconds.
'This. This is exactly how it works.'
In the manhwa, the first day was this. It wasn't the zombies that killed the majority, it was the panic. People trying to fight like humans against things that were no longer human.
I stared at the zombies, remembering the scene and the words from the original work. Following Stella's manual, I activated Mana Manipulation.
"Let's go... I'm no genius like her, but I can do this."
In chapter twenty-two, when the work detailed Stella's training, she explained that mana wasn't merely a physical force. It was a perceptive energy. If you refined it into a web and circulated it directly through the optic nerves, the Genesis System responded.
She called it Mind Eyes. A subtle variation of Mana Manipulation that the System didn't consider a separate skill, but that allowed you to read the world through the lenses of Genesis itself.
I took a deep breath. Closed my eyes and pulled that frigid current that dwelled at the bottom of my stomach. I guided the flow upward, through my spine and into my neck.
The sensation was horrible, like shoving frozen needles behind your own eyeballs.
I clenched my teeth to hold back a groan, felt the pressure build in my forehead until it reached its limit, and then I opened my eyes.
The world was subtly different. A translucent film seemed to cover the corridor, and a low hum resonated in my eardrums.
I looked at the zombies crowding over the injured student's body. Above each of their heads, the Genesis System revealed itself in bright white letters.
[Newly Converted Mana Zombie (Gray)]
[Level: 1]
[Strength: 14 | Agility: 8 | Health: 20]
I blinked, the mana still burning my pupils. I looked at the girl cornered against the wall, just a few meters from the creatures.
[Name: Elara Vance]
[Race: Human (Non-Awakened)]
[Strength: 6 | Agility: 7 | Health: 8]
[Stamina: 6 | Mana: 0]
[Skills: None]
The physical gap was a mathematical abyss. A panicking human with 6 Strength would never stand a chance against a corpse that felt no pain and had 14 base Strength.
The zombies finished tearing apart the boy on the floor. The wet sound of ripping flesh and cracking bones ceased. Slowly, the five bloodied necks turned, one by one. They didn't look at the girl crying in the corner.
All ten milky eyes locked on me.
I took a step forward, the metallic taste of blood mixing with the cold air of the corridor.
"Status read," I muttered, adjusting my grip on the chair leg. "Let's see how these 15 Control points work in practice."