Global Survival: The Bottom 10% Will Be Erased

(If you enjoy wilderness survival and competing systems, read the first 71 chapters. If you prefer gods and dungeons, you can start from chapter 72. An epic feel, and everyone is smart.) Seven billion people are thrown into a world of mist. Every seven days, a purge erases the bottom 10% of the rankings for good. Lu Chen, a forest ranger in the Qinling Mountains, starts out ranked three billion two hundred million. While others break down in the dense fog, he crouches by a stream, collecting ore. Using his lungs to blow through a reed pipe, he smelts the world's first piece of iron. His ranking jumps from 3.2 billion to 2.8 billion. The System displays a notification: "Independent invention confirmed: Yes. Title awarded: Pioneer." But this is only the beginning. With a group of equally specialized "career cards", a carpenter, a programmer, an architect, a nurse, he builds stone walls, furnaces, and underground channels deep in the fog. They invent a flow diverter, decipher the System's purge command, and all survive the purge day. He thinks this is all there is to the apocalypse, until the Tower of Awakening opens, divine marks are carved into the backs of their hands, and the first dungeon throws him into the ruins of the Kingdom of Glimmerstone. It turns out the purge was only a beginner's tutorial. The real battlefield lies in the dungeons: the gods are divided, fragments of the Godslayer Sword are scattered everywhere, and desolation quietly stirs wherever the seals weaken. In the God of Knowledge's channel, a group of tech enthusiasts huddle around his post, discussing it frantically. From rank 3.2 billion to second place server-wide, from drilling wood to make fire to cracking the System's underlying protocols, while others fight to survive, he forges iron, builds walls, writes poetry, and simmers soup. Others worship the gods; he understands them. By the time the gods descend, he is already second across the server.