The sunlight pressed against his eyelids until they twitched open. For a moment Ryu lay still, tangled in the heap of blankets like a fish caught in its own net. The warmth of the rays made his skin itch, and he grumbled, rolling over. A sock that had somehow migrated into the bed scratched his cheek.
With a groan, he sat up. His hair stuck up in chaotic black tufts, as though his dreams had been a battlefield. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his palm and blinked blearily at the battlefield outside his mind—his room.
It was a mess, not the charming kind, but the kind that carried the stench of slow decay. Shirts half-washed and abandoned on the floor. Mismatched shoes like forgotten relics beneath the desk. A tower of dishes leaned precariously in one corner, threatening to collapse under the weight of congealed sauce. Metal scraps and crystal fragments littered the workspace: the husks of experiments no one cared about, not even their creator.
A faint smell of burnt solder hung in the air, mixed with stale coffee and the faint musk of unwashed fabric.
Ryu rubbed his face again, then swung his legs over the side of the bed. His foot landed on something sharp. He hissed and yanked it up. A jagged shard of crystal clung to the sole of his foot, glimmering like it was mocking him. He tossed it aside and forced himself to stand.
Navigating the minefield of his room had become its own skill set. Step over the pile of clothes. Avoid the dented toolbox. Mind the loose cable that could snare his ankle. He shuffled through it with the weariness of a man twice his age, though he was barely past his twenties.
In the bathroom mirror, he barely recognized himself. The face staring back had shadows carved beneath the eyes, stubble roughening the jaw, and a dullness where once there had been fire. He splashed water on his face, the cold sting a small shock to his nerves, and brushed his teeth with mechanical efficiency.
His reflection refused to improve.
He leaned on the sink for a long moment, water dripping from his chin. And, as often happened in that hollow pause, his mind began to drift.
To that day.
The Job Selection.
The memory came with brutal clarity, as though the System itself had branded it into his soul.
He had been late to school that morning, as usual. The reason didn't matter—sometimes he overslept, sometimes the buses betrayed him, sometimes his brain just refused to cooperate. That day it had been all three.
The punishment was swift: detention.
He'd been dumped into the back of a math classroom, a pile of unfinished homework sprawled before him like a personal enemy. The teacher hadn't even bothered to supervise; Ryu was too forgettable, too quiet to need more than a single order to "finish it."
He had been doodling in the margins, numbers and equations bleeding into little sketches of machines, when the world changed.
A pulse of blue light burst in front of his eyes.
He flinched, nearly knocking the pencil out of his hand. The classroom around him wavered, the cheap plastic desks and peeling posters fading into nothing but a sea of glowing azure. His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
Then, with the calm inevitability of sunrise, words appeared. Golden script, carved into the very air, forming a window that pulsed with quiet authority.
[Job Selection Initiated]
His breath caught. Everyone had talked about this moment, theorized about what their options would be, but nothing prepared him for the reality. The letters were alive, radiating power older than civilization itself.
Three lines formed.
COSMIC SCIENTIST – LegendaryFarmer – CommonChaos Mage – Rare
His pulse roared in his throat.
A Legendary job.
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, but the words did not vanish. His breath came in shallow bursts, his brain scrambling to make sense of it. Legendary jobs weren't real. They were fairy tales, things you heard whispered in late-night dorm rooms.
And yet here it was. Cosmic Scientist.
He didn't even need to think. His hand moved on instinct, reaching out to the floating panel, brushing against the glowing words.
The choice locked in with a chime that echoed in his bones.
And just like that, his life had changed.
The years that followed had been golden.
Ideas poured out of him like a floodgate had been opened. The title of Cosmic Scientist had given him skills, insights, a way of seeing the universe that no one else could match. Equations danced like music, machinery unfolded in his head as if the blueprints had been waiting for his eyes alone.
Patents came one after another. Devices that bent space to compress storage. Engines that ran on fractional energy states. Theorems that linked celestial mechanics with quantum loops. Each success raised him higher, until the boy who had once sat ignored in detention was suddenly the man everyone wanted to know.
Fame followed. Wealth too. For the first time, he wasn't invisible. People laughed at his jokes, quoted his words, courted his approval. He was admired, envied, loved.
And then—like a switch flipping—everything began to rot.
It started with rumors, quiet at first. Whispers in the back corners of conferences. "His experiments aren't stable." "He cuts corners." "Did you hear what really happened in his lab?"
The whispers spread. They always did.
Soon articles appeared, sleek headlines designed to feed doubt. Is Ryu's Genius Too Dangerous?Whistleblowers Claim Fraud Behind Patents. No evidence, only smoke, but the public never needed fire to panic.
And then the lawsuit came. A woman he had never seen, never spoken to, claimed sabotage, fraud, damages. It was absurd. He had proof. He had witnesses. He had truth.
But lies traveled faster.
The eleven months that followed hollowed him out. Days in courtrooms where his words meant nothing. Nights buried under legal documents, begging lawyers to believe him. His savings drained into fees, his health into exhaustion.
When at last the case was dismissed, when the judge declared there was no fault, it was too late. The crowd outside the courtroom had already decided his guilt. The name "Ryu" no longer meant genius—it meant fraud.
And waiting in the wings was Vexar.
Ryu clenched his fists, the memory bitter even now. Vexar, with his oily smile and immaculate suits, who had always been second-rate. Who had hovered just behind him, watching, studying, waiting.
One by one, Ryu's papers appeared under Vexar's name. His inventions were displayed at conferences where he himself was unwelcome. Journalists praised Vexar as the real pioneer, the mind that would carry science into the future.
And Ryu—Ryu was left screaming into the void, powerless.
Now he fixed gadgets for spoiled children.
Ryu hunched over the workbench, the hum of tools filling the silence of his tiny apartment. Before him sat the latest insult to his legacy: a device meant for a science fair, ordered by the kind of rich family that believed throwing money at problems counted as achievement.
He ran a hand through his tangled hair and sighed. The project itself was straightforward—prove that ordinary energy and magical energy had no relationship. Just a neat display for a brat to stand beside and pretend they'd built.
Still, his hands worked with practiced grace, assembling the chamber, wiring the readers, calibrating the temperature gradients. The machine gleamed under the lamplight, every edge precise, every connection neat. Even at his lowest, he couldn't bring himself to do sloppy work.
He activated his skill.
Brainstorm.
At once his perception fractured. His mind split into streams, each one racing along a different path. One monitored the power flow, another calculated the tolerance of the pressure seals, another replayed the equations of magical field interaction. Dozens of parallel thoughts, all woven back into a single tapestry.
It was dizzying. It was exhilarating. It was the last piece of Cosmic Scientist he could still claim.
He leaned back, sipping his coffee, eyes flicking between the screens as data scrolled. For a moment, he almost felt alive again.
The machine purred like a content cat, steady and reliable. Lines of data scrolled across the viewing screens: temperature gradient stable, pressure within expected range, energy readings flat and uneventful.
Exactly what the project demanded.
Ryu's mind, fractured into countless streams by Brainstorm, danced across it all. One stream monitored the temperature controls, another calculated the efficiency of the containment seals, another replayed magical energy equations to confirm what he already knew—that ordinary energy and magical energy ran in parallel, never touching, never mixing.
It was dull work. Comfortably dull.
Then something rippled.
A flicker of light, so faint he thought at first it was a trick of his tired eyes. He leaned closer, the coffee mug still warm in his hand. The flicker came again, pulsing inside the transparent chamber.
Purple.
Not the pale lilac of mana residue or the sharp neon of unstable plasma. This was deeper, richer, a shade that felt alive.
The light spread, curling through the chamber like veins of lightning, forming lines that crossed and re-crossed, weaving together in intricate patterns. Segments snapped into place as though following instructions written somewhere beyond his comprehension.
Ryu's breath hitched. His Brainstorm fractured further, each stream scrambling to interpret what he was seeing—energy readings spiking where they shouldn't, magical sensors registering interference that had no source, containment seals holding against… what? There was nothing in his equations to explain it.
The mug slipped from his fingers. Coffee splashed across the floor, searing his ankle as porcelain shattered into shards.
But he didn't move. His eyes were locked on the impossible.
A web of violet lines pulsed within the chamber, growing denser, more intricate by the second. It looked almost deliberate, as though the light itself were building something—constructing geometry from nothing.
The hum of the machine deepened. The air in the room vibrated, a faint pressure settling into his ears.
Ryu's throat went dry. His heart thundered. His streams of thought screamed across different theories, but none of them fit.
This wasn't energy. It wasn't magic. It wasn't anything he had ever seen.
And yet it was happening right in front of him.