A kobold wandered through the underground forest, lit only by the dim glow of purple crystals.

  Suddenly, a sound sliced the air.

  Thunk.

  Pain exploded in its leg.

  It looked down... a knife embedded deep.

  "HISSS!"

  It hissed in fury.

  More knives came next. The kobold ducked just in time to avoid them, but now it knew where they came from.

  It lunged, diving into the bushes from which the blades had flown.

  Nothing.

  Then... it felt something above.

  It looked up and saw a shadow dropping from a branch.

  Luke.

  They rolled across the ground, but the kobold reacted fast, shoving Luke hard. He crashed into a tree, the impact stunning him for a second.

  The kobold charged, snarling.

  Luke drew a knife from his holster like a gunslinger.

  Threw it.

  Threw again.

  Another.

  Each blade slammed into the kobold’s body, shoulder, chest, neck, but it didn’t stop. It kept coming, kept running even with steel lodged in its flesh, until the final knife pierced straight through its heart.

  The kobold fell.

  [You have slain Cave Kobold – Lvl 3]

  **Your class [Assassin] has reached Level 3! (Class Bonus Points Acquired)**

  [You have learned a Class Skill]

  Luke dropped to his knees, breathing hard.

  Every fight in this place wore him down mentally. His heart still raced in his chest, hammering like a war drum. He scanned the area, confirming no other threats were nearby.

  Every time he killed one of them, the adrenaline surged. And every time, his legs trembled afterward.

  The only way to calm himself was to remind his brain: they’re just beasts, vicious, wild creatures. Even if he did nothing, they'd attack him the moment he got close.

  Still, he could feel it. He was getting stronger, faster. Even his strength had increased. His body moved more fluidly with every level.

  Luke retrieved the blades lodged in the kobold’s corpse and slid them back into the holster.

  Reusing them was essential.

  He’d learned recently that the mana blades disappeared after a few hours.

  Nothing could go to waste.

  In the last fight, he’d run out of mana and survived only because he recovered a knife he had already thrown.

  He opened his system screen.

  [Twin Blade (Common)]: A skilled assassin never wastes an attack. When throwing a knife, it splits mid-air, creating a duplicate that follows the same path, doubling your chance to hit.

  Luke raised his eyebrows.

  A knife that splits in midair...?

  Luke picked one up.

  He thought about testing it, then hesitated.

  "My mana’s low... better not risk it."

  Mana regenerated slowly, and his body was still exhausted, but...

  "Better now than in a life-or-death situation."

  He took a deep breath.

  Focused on a nearby tree. Distant. Clear.

  His mind already knew what to do, how to channel mana and activate the skill mid-throw.

  He threw.

  Mid-flight, the knife... split.

  Like a cell dividing, a second blade shimmered into existence beside the first.

  Both struck the tree.

  The first lodged in the trunk.

  The second...slightly lower.

  Luke ran up to check.

  The second knife... was already fading.

  "I see. The duplicate only exists to improve hit chance."

  He pulled out the original and slid it back into the holster.

  Then opened his system interface.

  Name: Luke

  Level: 1

  Rank: F

  Class: Assassin (Lvl 3)

  Race: Human

  Profession: —

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Titles: —

  Health Points (HP): 132/140

  Mana Points (MP): 12/80

  Stamina: 48/70

  Stats:

  Strength: 12

  Agility: 17

  Endurance: 7

  Vitality: 14

  Perception: 12

  Intelligence: 8

  Free Points: 5

  Inventory: [Throwing Knife Holster], [Smoke Bomb (x2)]

  Class Skills: [Basic Blade Handling (Common)], [Knife Throwing (Common)], [Twin Blade (Common)]

  Race Skills: [Identify (Common)]

  Luke stared at his mana pool.

  Each knife costs 5 mana to create...

  The new skill, Twin Blade, doubled his throw and drained even more mana. The duplicate costs 3 mana. As far as he could tell, the other skills, Blade Handling, Knife Throwing, and Identify, didn’t consume mana directly, at least not in a way the system showed.

  From the start, only knife creation had clearly consumed mana, which made this his first true active combat skill with a direct cost. He had five unspent points, having saved them and waited until Class Level 3 before making any decisions.

  Now was the time.

  No hesitation.

  He placed each point exactly where he needed it.

  Updated Stats:

  Strength: 12

  Agility: 17 -> 18

  Endurance: 7 -> 8

  Vitality: 14 -> 15

  Perception: 12 -> 13

  Intelligence: 8 -> 9

  Free Points: 0

  The effect was immediate.

  A soft warmth flowed through his body, like his system was absorbing invisible energy. Every point had purpose: agility boosted reflexes and movement speed, endurance extended stamina allowing longer battles and fewer crashes, vitality increased HP, perception fine-tuned his senses, reaction time, and spatial awareness, and intelligence, essential now, made room for his mana pool to grow.

  [Health Points (HP): 133/140 -> 143/150]

  [Mana Points (MP): 12/80 -> 22/90]

  [Stamina: 48/70 -> 58/80]

  The interface pulsed as new values locked in. Luke exhaled slowly, his body feeling steadier, more focused. The progress was real.

  I'm starting to understand this system...

  Then, his stomach growled.

  Loud.

  He looked down at the kobold’s body nearby, knives still sticking out of its thick hide.

  Silence.

  "Yeah… I figured this moment would come."

  ***

  In front of the gazebo, Luke built a makeshift fire. The flames danced against the stone, casting flickering shadows pulsing with heat. He knew the basics of survival; it was part of school now. Ever since the System arrived on Earth in the last century, survival training had become standard in global education, a way to prepare anyone who might someday accept the System’s call.

  He remembered those classes, the day they explained how, decades ago, 20% of the world’s population had simply vanished and returned five months later changed. They were the first, the pioneers.

  Taken into the Tutorial, they learned about the multiverse. They were introduced to the System and then integrated. When they came back, they brought new laws, new truths, and new gods, real gods. The truth was simple: there was a vast multiverse filled with other races and ways of life, and the gods who came to Earth were Divinities, beings that helped newly awakened worlds undergo integration.

  With their help, Earth changed. It grew and expanded beyond any natural limit. The planet became the largest in the solar system. New continents formed. Oceans deepened. Mountains reached the sky. Floating islands appeared from nowhere.

  The Earth itself had been reshaped and rebuilt to fit the System’s logic. Wars ended, borders dissolved. At first, it was chaos, creatures appeared, some monstrous, others territorial. Even ordinary animals began mutating under the System’s influence. But humanity survived and adapted. Guilds emerged, corporations dedicated to integration, and governments formed internal forces made up of “System-bound” individuals.

  Luke was born decades later.

  In the world he grew up in, nearly 45% of the population was already integrated, and each year, more people accepted the call. He had been one of them.

  Now, staring at the meat roasting over the fire, he could only murmur:

  “What the hell did I get myself into?”

  He took a bite. It was awful, bitter, stringy, but it went down.

  As he chewed, thoughts caught up with him: Earth, his family.

  That word always felt distant.

  Luke had a father, a mother, a younger sister, and an older brother nearly thirty, but none of them were his biological family.

  He was adopted, and no matter how hard he tried, he had never fully accepted it. His mind drifted further back to a time he rarely allowed himself to revisit. He had been poor. Very poor. It was just him and his mother. She grew up in an orphanage and became a mother far too young. They lived in a small house, almost collapsing under its own weight.

  She did what she could, working as a maid for the Baumanns: Martin, Clara, and their son, Noah.

  They were rich; Martin was a well-known lawyer, Clara a housewife.

  They met Luke’s mother during a difficult time and offered her a job, a generous attempt to help her get back on her feet.

  Luke had lived around that family every day since he was three, but one memory stayed with him every night: the day he turned five. That was the day of the conversation.

  His mother sat beside him, held his small hands, and with a trembling voice told him that she wanted to give him something better, a future.

  She said it hurt her not to be able to buy him toys, that she was afraid she couldn’t afford a good school, and that she didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to support him.

  Then she revealed she had made a decision, a step for him. The next day, she was gone. She left only a letter behind.

  Luke was small, but he remembered reading that letter over and over as he grew older.

  In it, she explained that she had chosen to join the System, believing that with a good class she could find better work, maybe as a healer, a profession that, in the new world, even surpassed trained doctors.

  She believed she’d come back stronger and finally be able to give her son everything he deserved. But she never came back.

  Thirteen years passed, and Luke waited every day. It was Martin and Clara who took him in after she left, good people, kind. They legally adopted him, raised him as their own, gave him education and comfort, and encouraged him to study law to follow in the footsteps of their oldest son, Noah. And as grateful as he was, Luke never truly felt like he belonged; there was always a void.

  The only time he ever felt truly part of the Baumann family was when Lillian was born, the youngest, the little one.

  He watched her grow up, saw her turn six. She called him brother without hesitation, hugged him, shared her drawings, and curled into his lap to hear stories.

  For a moment, he almost believed he had found a home, but then came the guilt. He realized he no longer remembered his mother’s face or her voice. The thought hollowed him from the inside.

  His mother had never liked taking photos; there were no records except for a single government document Martin kept locked in his office.

  That night, Luke went in to find it. He had to see her again. Had to remember. When he opened the file, he stood in silence for a long time.

  The face in the picture was that of a stranger. He didn’t recognize her. Even the voice in his head no longer sounded real.

  That was the night he made his decision. He accepted the System’s invitation, not for glory, not for power, but for answers.

  If he survived the Tutorial, he could climb step by step deeper into the System, reaching empires, divine orders, multiversal governments. There were ways, archives, databases, oracles, to learn what had happened in previous Tutorial editions. And all he wanted to know was whether his mother was still alive or if she had died.

  The crackle of the fire broke the silence as Luke chewed the lizard meat, trying not to think too hard about the taste.

  He stared into the flames; the embers flickered like they were mocking his mental state.

  He’d been stuck on this floor for three days and had come to a single conclusion:

  “I’ll be dead in less than a month.” He stood up slowly, walked to the gazebo, and drove a knife into the table, right through the message left by the last occupant: No way out.

  Luke started pacing in circles, as if movement might keep the panic away. He’d tried to stay in control these past days, pretending he had time, but now reality was kicking down the door.

  “The monsters here… they’re too weak to be the final floor’s challenge.”

  He stopped.

  Looked toward the waterfall tunnel.

  “Either this dungeon is completely insane or all of these monsters fell down here by accident.”

  That was the most logical theory: they came from the first floor, weaker creatures that, maybe during battle or by mistake, slipped into the river and were carried down the falls into this forgotten chamber.

  “System routing errors happen at least once a year,” which meant the owner of the pouch, the one who wrote the note, probably used those same monsters to get stronger, tried to move on, and failed.

  Now, the monsters Luke had killed were the leftovers, the accidental new generation, which meant they’d run out.

  “I’m going to starve to death.”

  He still had water; the waterfall fed into the subterranean lake.

  But food?

  He hadn’t found a single fruit, no edible plants, no roots, nothing.

  The trees didn’t shed leaves, the soil wasn’t natural, and the forest felt decorative, artificial.

  The place didn’t function like a real ecosystem. His only source of food was the monsters, and at this rate, within a week they’d be gone.

  “Shit, I’m in trouble.”

  Even if one or two monsters dropped in from the upper floor, there were still others out there, the prisoners.

  They’d clear the area around the waterfall to stay safe.

  Luke would be alone.

  No fresh monsters.

  No food.

  He turned toward the distant stone doors and felt the weight of the decision crush his shoulders.

  He exhaled.

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  The words came out low, tired but steady.

  “I have to get the damn boss key or die trying.”

  Day 1 of Publication!

  2-chapter daily schedule... forever... hehe. Hope you stick around for the journey!