The orc's eyes snapped open in the darkness, old and aware.
Its armor, worn and battle-scarred, clinked softly as it rose from its seated position. The chamber around it was lit by dim light and air inside felt so thick you would think you could touch it.
"Finally," it rumbled. "The host awakens."
Other shapes stirred in the shadows, chittering and growling. The orc raised a gauntleted hand for silence.
"Two years we've waited. Two years watching the fracture stabilize inside him." It turned toward a pool of dark water that reflected not the ceiling above, but a hospital room. A thin figure sat up in bed, confusion written across his face. "The integration is complete. He'll come to us soon enough."
"And if he doesn't?" something hissed from the dark.
The orc's lips pulled back, revealing tusks. "Then we go to him. The system chose its host for a reason. He either claims his power, or we claim it from his corpse."
It reached for the massive blade resting against the wall, the metal singing as it was drawn.
"Prepare yourselves. The game begins."
---
Rin walked down the sidewalk towards his new house, hands shoved deep in his hoodie pockets. The address Leo had texted him was in some rich neighborhood he'd never been to. Every house looked like it belonged in a magazine, manicured lawns and luxury cars in every driveway.
His old apartment was gone, Leo had told him during the visit. Not damaged, not destroyed, just gone. The whole building had been swallowed by what they called a "fracture collapse" three months after the initial incident. Like reality just decided that space didn't need to exist anymore.
"Should be 1247," he muttered, checking his phone again.
He stopped at the gate.
No, that couldn't be right.
The house, no, the fucking mansion sat on what had to be at least two acres. Three stories of modern architecture with floor-to-ceiling windows, a circular driveway with a fountain in the middle, and what looked like a separate guest house off to the side.
"What the hell," he said out loud. "This is a mansion!"
His phone buzzed.
Leo: You there yet? Gate code is 4729
Rin: bro wtf is this place
Leo: Your house
Rin: MY house???
Leo: Yeah well technically I bought it but it's yours. Consider it back pay for all the times you bought me ramen in college
Rin: that was like $200 total
Leo: Inflation's a bitch
Rin: this isn't inflation this is insanity
Leo: Just go inside. Master bedroom has the best shower, trust me. Oh and there's a computer setup in the office, second floor
Rin punched in the code and the gate swung open silently. He walked up the driveway feeling like he was trespassing. The front door unlocked with his thumbprint, which meant Leo had already programmed it.
The interior was even more ridiculous. Open floor plan, marble everything, a kitchen that looked like it belonged in a cooking show. There was art on the walls that probably cost more than his entire previous life.
"This is too much," he said to the empty house.
But that shower though.
---
Forty minutes later, Rin sat in what Leo had called "the office" but was really more like a command center. Three monitors, a PC that looked like it could launch satellites, and a chair that probably cost more than most people's cars.
He found clothes in the master bedroom closet, all his size, all brands he'd never even looked at before. Even the underwear was designer. Leo had apparently gone shopping for him, or more likely had someone else do it.
The center monitor displayed a Hunter information site. He'd been reading for an hour and the whole thing still felt fake.
"Mana," he read out loud. "An energy source that entered our dimension through the fracture event. Invisible to most people but those who've awakened can sense and manipulate it."
There were scientific papers trying to explain it, theories about parallel dimensions and quantum mechanics, but most of it went over his head. The practical stuff was simpler. Mana let people do impossible things. Control elements, enhance their bodies, heal wounds that should be fatal.
Most awakened had one ability. The lucky ones got two. The absolute freaks of nature, less than 0.1% of all awakened, had three.
"And they're ranked from F to SS," Rin scrolled down. "Seriously, they couldn't think of something better?"
The ranking system was exactly like every manhwa he'd ever read. F-rank meant you could maybe throw a fireball the size of a tennis ball. SS-rank meant you could level a city or higher without breaking a sweat.
Leo was B-rank, which put him in the top 5% of all Hunters globally. The article about him said his lightning was strong enough to glass sand and his reflexes were enhanced to the point where he could dodge bullets.
"Two years," Rin muttered. "Two fucking years and my best friend became Zeus."
Another article caught his eye: "First Dungeon Break in Tokyo Contained After 72 Hours"
Dungeon breaks happened when a dungeon wasn't cleared in time. The monsters inside would pour out into the real world. The Tokyo incident had killed three thousand people before S-rank Hunters arrived.
There was video footage. Rin clicked play and immediately regretted it.
The things coming out of the portal weren't goblins or orcs. They were twisted, things that moved in ways that hurt to watch. One creature looked like someone had tried to make a spider out of human parts. Another was just mouths, hundreds of them, on a body that kept reshaping itself.
He closed the video.
"Nope."
He got up from the desk and walked to the bathroom. The mirror showed someone he barely recognized, thin but not skeletal, muscle definition completely gone. His hair was neat, trimmed even. His nails too, kept short and clean.
'They really took care of me while I was out.'
He flexed his arm and watched the pathetic bump that used to be his bicep. Two years of gains, gone. Not that he'd been jacked before, but at least he'd had something.
'Do I even have what it takes to awaken?'
The thought came with this sinking feeling. Everyone who was gonna awaken probably already had. The window for that had to be closed by now, right? All the stories he'd read talked about it happening in the first year after the fracture event.
His reflection seemed to shimmer.
Wait, what?
Text appeared in his vision, floating like a heads-up display.
[system initialization complete]
[host compatibility: 100%]
[beginning integration sequence]
"What the fuck?"
More text scrolled past, too fast to read properly. His head felt weird, not painful but like something was moving inside his skull, rearranging things.
[analyzing host parameters]
[physical condition: suboptimal]
[mental acuity: acceptable]
[mana channels: dormant]
[unique trait detected: ERROR - classification pending]
The text glitched, characters scrambling before reforming.
[Recalibrating...]
[System type: undefined]
[Attempting manual override...]
[Override accepted]
[welcome, host Rin]
[you have been selected as the bearer of the fractured system]