Unknown Location
A boy stirred among the piles of gold.
Not a man, not quite, though his lanky build leaned that way; more an adult in denial, with disheveled hair plastered to his forehead and a furrow etched deep between his brows.
He groaned as if waking from a hangover, his voice bouncing hollow against walls he could not yet see.
"…Ugh. Did I… fall asleep in a vault?"
The sound of his own words startled him.
They seemed swallowed almost instantly by the chamber, devoured by the vastness around him.
He sat up sharply, coins sliding away from his shoulders and spilling in little avalanches.
The glint caught his eyes then—mountains of treasure stacked higher than any ceiling he could imagine, rolling into one another like dunes of molten sunlight. Gemstones winked like eyes in the dark, sapphires and rubies catching stray beams of some unseen glow.
Arlo blinked hard, rubbed his eyes, then blinked again.
No change.
The gold was still there.
Endless. Obscene. Impossible.
His heart kicked into his ribs. "Okay… either I finally snapped, or someone buried me alive in a fantasy cliché."
He pressed his palms into the coins beneath him, and the tactile shock nearly broke him.
They were cold, biting his skin with their weight, shifting with that distinctive chime that no movie sound effect ever got quite right. The sensation crawled up his arms, too real, too precise to be the haze of sleep.
Arlo froze.
He looked at his hands. They were steady, though dusted with flecks of gold. His breathing hitched.
"This… isn't a dream, is it?" he whispered to no one.
A hollow laugh escaped him, sharp and shaky. "Great. Just great. I insult a couple novels, and now my subconscious drags me into one."
That last thought stuck like a thorn.
That was the last memory he had before this: him sprawled across his dorm bed back on Earth, ranting aloud about how stupid web novels were—how protagonists always got systems after dying some ridiculous death, how authors never bothered to make their MCs suffer realistically, how cliché was king and originality was extinct. He had mocked every title he scrolled past, his tongue sharp and unrelenting.
And then… blank.
No, not blank.
A flash.
A sudden weight pressing on his skull, like an unseen hand had simply snuffed him out mid-sentence.
And now—this.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He hugged his arms around himself, listening. The chamber was too quiet. No wind. No hum of ventilation. No birds. Just the faint metallic whisper whenever he shifted.
"Alright, brain," he muttered, forcing a smirk, "you've officially jumped genres. Congratulations. Can we roll credits now?"
But as though mocking him, something stirred in the stillness.
From the air itself, light bled.
Not gold this time, but a pale, silvery radiance that pulsed faintly before him.
He scrambled backward, coins clattering noisily, as the light coalesced.
Shapes formed—lines and letters, crisp and floating, as if carved into existence by invisible hands.
A book.
It wasn't falling, nor resting.
It floated, its cover plain and bound in silver threads that shimmered faintly like starlight.
The tome hovered before his face, unbothered by gravity, its pages fluttering though there was no wind.
Arlo's mouth went dry.
His eyes widened, and his first instinct wasn't awe—it was denial.
"No. No, nope. Not happening." He waved his hands like he could shoo it away, but the book remained, inching closer with a kind of patient inevitability. "Oh, come on! I know what this is supposed to be! I read enough of those trashy knockoffs to see where this is going."
He stumbled over a mound of coins, landing flat on his back.
The treasure gave way with a sigh, raining down around him, but when he looked up—the book hovered directly above, staring down at him without eyes.
His voice cracked. "I… I don't even like systems!"
The book opened with a rustle that felt far too loud in the silence.
Pages turned themselves, flipping faster and faster, until they stilled on a blank spread.
Then words etched themselves across the surface in radiant script:
[Innovator System initializing…]
The glow brightened, washing over his face.
"No—no, no, no, no—don't you dare," Arlo stammered, shielding his eyes with his forearm. "I'm not your chosen hero, alright? I'm not some orphaned sword prodigy or reincarnated emperor. Wrong guy! Send the book back! I want to go back!"
But the pages only pulsed with light.
[Host identified: Arlo, human male. Status: Critic of fiction, irreverent thinker, habitual complainer. Suitability rating: …acceptable.]
Arlo gawked. "Habitual complainer?! Excuse you!"
[Integration commencing.]
And then pain.
It wasn't sharp or stabbing but flooding.
Like molten fire pouring into his skull, searing along every nerve, rewriting him line by line.
He screamed and clutched his head, rolling in the coins, their cold edges cutting against his skin as though to anchor him in a body that suddenly didn't feel like his own.
Lights burst behind his eyes, streams of information threading themselves through thought, weaving, stitching, branding.
When the agony ebbed, it left him gasping, drenched in cold sweat.
The book was gone, or rather, it wasn't there anymore because it had sunk into him. The glow lingered faintly behind his eyes, an afterimage burned into his brain.
His chest heaved.
His lips quivered into a breathless laugh. "Oh my God. No. No way. This—this is real. This is actually happening. I'm a… I'm a webnovel protagonist?"
A window shimmered into being before him, translucent and faintly blue.
[Welcome, Host. Innovator System fully integrated.]
Arlo stared, lips parting.
His reflection warped across the holographic text, eyes wide, hair messy, disbelief etched in every line of his face.
He swallowed hard. "If this is real… then… then that means…"
He trailed off, his breath catching. Because another sound broke the silence.
A shift.
A tremor.
At first, he thought it was more coins sliding beneath his weight, but the vibration deepened, rolling through the floor beneath him, rattling the mountains of treasure.
Gems toppled, gold cascaded in avalanches, the entire trove trembling as though something vast and ancient stirred beneath.
Arlo froze.
The system screen flickered uselessly as dust and glittering coins rained around him. He turned his head slowly, dread crawling inch by inch up his spine.
And then—he saw it.
Between two mounds of treasure, where the gold shuddered like ripples over water, something opened.
Something impossibly massive.
A slit of shadow widened into a pupil, slit and glowing with molten fire, ringed in scales that gleamed faintly beneath the treasure's weight.
An eye.
An eye so large it dwarfed him, so piercing it seemed to reach into the marrow of his bones, peeling back every defense he had.
Arlo's breath snapped in his throat.
His limbs locked.
Cold sweat traced his neck as realization crashed over him like a tidal wave.
This wasn't a vault.
And this definitely wasn't a dream.
It was a freaking a den.
The eye blinked, slowly, deliberately. And in that single motion, the weight of an ancient predator fell upon him.
Arlo's thoughts scattered to one frantic point, echoing inside his skull.
"Oh… oh, I'm so screwed."