The world had long since accepted that death came in the form of shimmering blue portals. No one knew where they came from. No one knew when they'd open. But when they did, they spat out monsters, death, and despair and at the same time wealth and honer for those who succeeded. These dungeons rips in space like glowing scars could appear in forests, cities, or even the middle of your living room. They were hell stuffed into magic. And someone had to clean up the mess. But not him. Not yet.
Kairen stood at the edge of a recently sealed dungeon gate, steam rising from his blood-stained black robe. His white hair was matted to his forehead, his glowing blue eyes narrowed in irritation, not pain. He had only come to scavenge—to take the loot, maybe a core, something useful.
But He wasn't even ranked.
Inside was chaos. The dungeon wasn't stable—it kept reshaping itself. Walls pulsed like living veins. Gravity shifted every few minutes. Worst of all, the monsters weren't normal dungeon mobs. They were rejects. Broken things. Glitching goblins that bled static. Wolves that split into pixels when struck and reformed seconds later.
He ran and hides. He lost count of how many times he could've died.
But he survive to the last breath and found the boss room.
There was no door. Just a spiral pit descending into nothing.
He fell in.
At the bottom was a corpse—not a monster, but a human. No face. Just charred armor and a shattered blade. In its hand was a cracked mana core, glowing unstable blue. It pulsed like a dying heartbeat.
Kairen didn't hesitate. He crawled toward it and pried it from the dead man's grip.
Now, dragging a sack of monster crystals behind him, Kairen limped through Dregtown's shattered alleys. His robe was charred at the edges, and a faint electric-blue aura pulsed around him—erratic, unstable. A street rat by birth, an orphan by fate, and a madman by necessity, he wasn't supposed to survive this long. Yet here he was, walking with a smug, bloody grin on his face.
A low cough rattled in his throat. He leaned against a crumbling wall, slid down to the ground, and let out a wheezing chuckle. "I really should've died in there... but nope. Still breathing." His voice was tired but amused, like someone who found life's pain to be the punchline of a joke only he understood.
Three months ago, he had no aura, no power, no future. Just a brother Ren. The only person who ever believed in him. Ren died in a dungeon raid that wiped out a whole E-rank team. The city called it a "containment failure." Kairen called it betrayal. No compensation. No name on a plaque. No apology. Just silence. The kind of silence that begged to be filled with screams.
Kairen hadn't cried. He'd broken. He'd laughed. Then he walked straight into the world's pain and made it his own. Suicide dungeons. Monster-infested ruins. Black-market runs. Anything that promised even a whisper of strength, he'd take. He didn't care what it cost others or himself.
suddenly, pain exploded through his body.
The mana surged, then splintered. The core cracked further, leaking energy. It wasn't giving him power. It was flooding him with raw, incompatible magic.
His veins burned. His vision blurred. He collapsed, twitching, mouth foaming.
Then, a sudden freezing pulse ran through his spine.
[System Installing… 94%... 100%]
He blinked. The air around him shifted. A blue screen flashed in front of his eyes, hovering just beyond the grime-covered alley wall.
[ERROR: Host does not match selected profile.]
[ERROR IGNORED. INSTALLATION FORCED.]
[System Bound. Welcome, User.]
His fingers twitched. "...A system?" he muttered, his heartbeat spiking. "You gotta be kidding me…"
[No. I'm not kidding. Believe me, I wish I was.]
Kairen stared, eyes wide as the voice echoed inside his skull. Sarcastic. Synthetic. Vaguely bored.
[Name: Kairen (Orphan Trash, probably unstable)]
[Level: 0.001]
[Title: Accidental Host]
[Skill Tree: Chaos-Initiate (Locked)]
[Void Pulse Lv. 1] – Now manually activated and causes shockwaves that ignore physical armor.
[Welcome to the grind, Trash.]
Kairen's mouth twitched. Then his shoulders started to shake. Not from fear—but laughter. Deep, wheezing, borderline hysterical laughter.
"You serious?" he gasped. "I wasn't even supposed to get this? You were meant for someone else?" His hand slapped the dirt as he leaned back. "HAHA! Oh, that's rich. They get picked by fate, and I get picked by a bug!"
[Correction: You broke into a sealed dungeon not meant for you, survived a boss fight with negative stat affinity, and absorbed unstable mana. You're a walking glitch. Congrats.]
"Beautiful," Kairen whispered. "Freaking beautiful. Fate didn't choose me. I mugged it in an alley." He forced himself to his feet, bones screaming, blood drying on his chin. His grin widened. "So what now, System? You going to help me become a hero?"
[Absolutely not. I'm going to help you survive long enough to become someone else's problem.]
His blue aura flared suddenly, then stabilized. For the first time, Kairen felt the system settle into his body like a second skin. Not comforting. Not warm. But real. Powerful. Dangerous.
He held up his hand, and a list of new options slid in front of his eyes stat boosts, temporary perks, mana slot overrides. All locked. All tantalizing.
Immideately an exit portal appeared at the side of Kairen. After conforming there was nothing left in the dungeon he step into the portal.
The world around him shifted and he found himself in front of the breaking dungeon.
Kairen after looking the surrounding say "finally back"
If the core of the dungeon is taken the dungeon will break and disappear on its own.
Then suddenly a crack of thunder split the sky above as another dungeon gate formed over the slums. People screamed in the distance. Another dungeon.
Kairen turned toward it with slow steps. "High risk. High reward. Let's see how mad this world can get."
[Reminder: You are injured, unranked, and functionally suicidal.]
"I know," he muttered, smiling as his robe fluttered in the wind. "But now I have a system. Let's go break another dungeon."