Oh damn it.
Ethan was dead, again.
This was beyond bad. He'd been trapped in this endless, suffocating darkness once before, forced to linger in nothingness for who knew how long… only to be resurrected, and then killed again mere minutes later.
And now, here he was. Back. In the exact same state.
Alone. Suspended in this pitch-black void with no sense of time, no direction, no anything.
Was this what death really was? Not judgment, not a tunnel of light or some divine voice waiting to guide him somewhere else?
Then, like a cruel echo of déjà vu, familiar glowing text flickered into the dark before him.
[Delivering Starter Pack to registered host...]
[ERROR: Host status - Deceased]
Oh. That again.
He remembered this part. The system would detect he was dead and fail to deliver anything.
[Soul integrity: Stabbed | Mind: Inactive | Body: Compromised]
[Attempting emergency rebind…]
[Retrying: 3%...]
Yep. Exactly like before.
But… wait. That meant there was still a chance, didn't it?
If the system was trying to bring him back, then maybe, he wasn't finished yet.
And this time, something was different. The percentage was moving faster.
[Retrying: 13%...]
But first. While waiting for this freaking system to finish whatever it was doing, Ethan figured he might as well piece everything together.
Because, yeah… he was still very much traumatized by everything that had just happened.
The image of himself, his reflection in that dagger, was still burned into his mind with terrifying clarity. A skeleton. He was a skeleton.
And it was bad. Unthinkably bad.
Never in a thousand lifetimes could he have imagined things would turn out like this.
He'd clearly died during that initial event, when the system, or whatever it was, descended upon Earth. Something called planetary evolution.
Yet… for some reason, the system had still tried to deliver a starter pack to him, despite him being dead.
Was that normal?
If the world had truly transformed into something like a giant game, then maybe, yeah, it made sense. In games, people died. And then they respawned. Simple as that.
But those two, Leon and Lina, they were clearly awakened too. Chosen by the system. And they hadn't understood what Ethan was.
Maybe they hadn't died yet.
Maybe they didn't know that respawning was even a thing.
And again… from what he heard, they'd mentioned that five years had passed since the system appeared.
Five years. That would explain a lot.
His body, now reduced to bones. The state of the office, collapsed, filthy, unrecognizable.
Yeah. Five years would do that.
A corpse left alone, buried under rubble… It made sense he'd become nothing more than a skeleton by now.
Ethan fell silent for a while, staring at the system's glowing progress bar as it hovered in the void before him.
He still couldn't feel his body. Still couldn't move. Only this floating presence… and the creeping awareness that the world he once knew was long gone.
If it had really been five whole years since he'd first died… Shouldn't 'respawning' be something everyone knew about by now?
Or was this some rare glitch? Something that only happened to him?
But again… He did come back to life. Only… Not as a human.
God damn it.
What was even the point of coming back if he had to exist as a walking pile of bones? Right?
Then again… life was still life, wasn't it?
But how was he supposed to live any kind of "normal" life with this body?
A skeleton couldn't taste. Couldn't smell. Couldn't feel. And he hadn't even gotten to try all the foods he'd dreamed about, stuff he'd put off because he was too broke, too busy surviving.
Now? Forget dreams of gourmet ramen or hot dumplings. No tongue, no taste buds.
But… wait.
He could still see. Back when he woke up, he saw the room, saw the people, saw the dagger, saw his own reflection.
How could a skeleton without eyes… see?
That made absolutely no sense.
Then again, clinging to the idea of things needing to "make sense" in a situation this absurd felt almost laughably naïve.
He stayed quiet for a moment, his gaze locked on the floating system messages still pulsing faintly before him.
Did he have to wait another five years just to be revived again?
Well… five years wasn't that bad. He'd done it once already, hadn't he?
Still… One thing was very clear: If he came back again, this time, he had to survive. Or at least… survive enough. Half-alive, fully-dead, whatever. He wasn't about to be killed within five minutes again.
What he knew for certain: The world had changed. It wasn't the world he used to know.
Monsters roamed the Earth now, though he still had no clue what kind or how bad they really were.
Humans had awakened powers, they leveled up… and who knew what kind of society existed out there now?
People might be flying, blasting energy beams, or teleporting across cities by now. Typical stuff in the kind of fantasy novels he used to read, before he died.
If he had any chance at survival, he had to learn, adapt, and prepare.
One thing was for sure, being a skeleton wasn't going to win him any sympathy. He'd been murdered the moment he woke up, no questions asked.
So… he'd need to hide himself. Disguise what he was. Maybe with clothes, armor, a helmet, anything to cover the bones. At least until he figured things out.
Maybe he could fight monsters too? If he could earn experience, he could probably level up as well.
That was the usual system, right?
Speaking of which…Shouldn't there be a way to access that system?
Like… a status screen? Something that could show him his level, stats, maybe even the skills he just received?
But… how? How did people usually trigger those things?
"Uhm…" Ethan muttered to the void, "…Status screen, show up?"
[Name: Ethan]
[Race: Lesser Skeleton]
[Level: 1]
[Strength: 7 | Agility: 5 | Magic: 0 | Constitution: 3 | Animus: 12]
[Luck: 1]
[Bone Leech Lv. 1]
Alright… haha…
For some strange reason, Ethan actually felt happy as he looked at the screen hovering in front of him.
There it was. His name, Ethan, bold and unmistakable. And his race… He fell silent for a moment. Yep. He was officially a Skeleton.
Hopefully, he could evolve someday. Maybe become something cooler. Like a Lich King. Or a Skeleton Overlord.
Yeah… wishful thinking. As cool as it sounded in theory, the idea of being a skeleton forever was definitely losing its charm fast.
Was there no way to get flesh back? Skin? Organs? Anything?
He shook off the thought. No use dreaming about muscles he didn't have.
Survival. That was priority number one now.
His level was, naturally, Level 1.
Then the stats came in: Strength: 7. Alright, fair enough. Pretty standard for a low-tier undead.
Agility, Magic. Wait… Magic?
So the world really ran on magic now? Could he just dump stat points into Magic and start tossing fireballs?
Then came the Constitution... That should logically govern his defense and regeneration. The sturdiness of his body, maybe even how fast he could recover from damage.
And then there was Animus... What even was Animus supposed to be?
Lastly, Luck. The wildcard stat.
Hold on. Why was Luck displayed separately from the core stat block?
He frowned, remembering something.
Didn't he receive a +1 Strength and +1 Luck boost earlier, when he reawakened as a skeleton? Yeah, along with that passive skill: Bone Leech.
And… it was still listed there. So, that all carried over.
Interesting.
Wait.
Why did he feel so optimistic all of a sudden?
Was it possible… That he'd get another starter pack when he came back again?
He chuckled softly in the dark.
"Heh… now I'm kinda curious what comes next."
And then. Just like before, the familiar glow of a system message lit up the void in front of him.
[Starter Pack Granted]
No way…
He almost laughed out loud. He was really going to get a starter pack every single time he got brought back?
That meant… Every death, every return… came with free loot.
Was this system rewarding him for dying?
"Oh, this is messed up," he muttered to himself. "But I'll take it."
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