The rain in Sector 4 didn't wash things clean; it just made the grime slicker. It was a heavy, oily downpour that smelled of ozone and burnt copper—the stench of a Dungeon Break that hadn't quite sealed shut.
Elian Vance wiped the mixture of water and grease from his goggles, crouching behind the rusted hulk of an overturned bus. His breathing was shallow, controlled. In the distance, the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a Steel-Hide Behemoth faded into the gray fog.
"Path clear," he whispered to himself, though there was no one listening.
Elian was a Vulture. In the grand hierarchy of the System that had enslaved Earth a decade ago, Vultures were lower than the grime on a goblin's boot. Hunters fought monsters; Crafters built weapons; Vultures waited for the Hunters to die, then stripped them of anything that could be sold for credits.
He adjusted the strap of his pack, feeling the comforting weight of his pry-bar. Today was supposed to be a suicide run. The 'Azure Abyss' guild had led a forty-man raid into this zone to clear a Tier-3 Rift.
According to the rumors Elian had bought from a drunk informant, they had failed. Spectacularly.
He moved out from the cover of the bus, stepping lightly over the cracked asphalt. The street was a graveyard of high-end gear. Shattered breastplates, snapped staves, and the mangled remains of what used to be the city's elite.
Elian didn't look at their faces. That was rule number one. You don't look at the faces, and you don't check for a pulse. If they were here, they were dead. If they weren't dead, they would kill you for seeing them weak.
He knelt beside a mage whose robes were torn to shreds.
[System Alert: High-Grade Silk Robe (Damaged)]
[Durability: 4/100]
[Value: Low]
"Trash," Elian muttered, but he stripped the rings off the mage's fingers anyway. Mana-conductive silver. That would buy him a week's worth of rations.
He worked his way up the street, moving with the practiced efficiency of a cockroach in a kitchen. He looted pouches, checked for hidden pockets, and pried mana crystals out of weapon sockets. It was a good haul. Maybe his best ever.
But as he crested the hill toward the center of the crater, he froze.
The center of the Rift wasn't just a battlefield; it was a crater of glass. The heat of the final battle had fused the concrete into obsidian. And lying in the center of it, impaled upon a jagged spire of black crystal, was him.
Kaelen Lightbringer.
The Sword Saint. The hope of humanity. The guy whose face was plastered on every recruitment poster in the Safe Zones.
Elian's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. "No way," he breathed. "No absolute way."
Kaelen was Level 80. He was supposed to be unkillable.
Elian looked around wildly. The silence was absolute. The boss monster that did this must have moved on, or perhaps Kaelen and the beast had killed each other.
Greed, cold and sharp, pierced through Elian's fear. Kaelen carried the Sun-Eater, a Mythic-grade sword. Even a fragment of that blade would set Elian up for life. He could buy a Class Awakening. He could leave the slums.
He scrambled down the glass slope, his boots sliding on the slick surface. He reached the body.
Up close, the hero looked less like a legend and more like a piece of meat. His golden armor was rent asunder, revealing grievous wounds that didn't bleed red, but hissed with residual magical energy.
Elian reached for the sword hilt—but it wasn't there. The scabbard was empty.
"Damn it," Elian hissed, kicking the ground. "Of course. The weapon despawns or gets flung away."
He looked at the body again. The armor was Soul-Bound; he couldn't loot that. The accessories were likely locked too.
But then, Elian saw it.
Clutched in Kaelen's stiffening hand was a small, glowing orb. It wasn't a weapon. It wasn't armor. It pulsated with a chaotic, violet light that made Elian's eyes water just looking at it.
[Item Identification Failed]
[Grade: Unknown]
[Error: Item does not exist in current timeline database.]
Elian frowned. He had an Identify skill—a cheap, Common-grade skill he'd bought years ago—but he'd never seen an error message like that.
He reached out. His fingers brushed the hero's cold gauntlet.
Suddenly, Kaelen's hand clamped around Elian's wrist.
Elian yelped, jerking back, but the grip was iron. The hero's eyes flew open. They weren't the blue eyes from the posters. They were entirely black, filled with a swirling, terrifying galaxy of starlight.
"You..." Kaelen rasped, blood bubbling past his lips. "You... are late."
"I'm not your backup!" Elian panicked, trying to pry the fingers off. "Let go, man! I'm just... I'm just passing through!"
" The timeline..." Kaelen's voice was fading, losing coherence. "It changed. The Abyssal Monarch... he knew my moves. He shouldn't have known."
The hero pulled Elian closer, ignoring the scavenger's terrified struggles.
"Take it," Kaelen wheezed, shoving the violet orb into Elian's hand. "The regression... it's failing. My soul is leaking out. I can't... I can't go back a third time. My mind will shatter."
"I don't want it!" Elian screamed. "I want your wallet! Let me go!"
"Listen to me!" Kaelen roared, a final burst of strength that flared with blinding golden mana. "The third gate opens in New York in three days. The passcode is 'Ouroboros'. The traitor is the Vice-Guild Master of Fenrir. Don't trust the System... find the backdoor..."
Kaelen's eyes rolled back. The iron grip slackened. The galaxy in his eyes went dark.
[Subject: Kaelen Lightbringer has died.]
Elian scrambled back, hyperventilating, scrambling on his hands and knees away from the corpse. He looked at his hand. The violet orb was sticky, warm, and pulsating.
"What the hell was that?" Elian gasped. "Regression? Third gate?"
He looked at the orb.
[Memory Core (Unstable)]
[Type: Consumable (?)]
[Description: The crystallized consciousness of a trans-temporal entity. Contains data fragments from a defunct future.]
Elian stared. A memory core? Those went for millions on the black market, usually extracted from high-intelligence monsters. But one from a human? From a Hero?
He should sell it. He should run back to the Safe Zone, sell this to the highest bidder, and retire to a bunker with a lifetime supply of synthetic whiskey.
But the orb was melting.
It was dissolving into his skin, sinking into his pores like water into a sponge.
[Warning: Foreign Data intrusion detected.]
[Soul Capacity: Low.]
[Attempting synchronization...]
"No, no, no!" Elian shook his hand, trying to flick the goo off, but it was already inside his veins, traveling up his arm like burning mercury.
Pain.
It wasn't physical pain. It was the pain of trying to pour an ocean into a teacup.
Elian screamed, clutching his head as the world around him dissolved.
He was standing on a burning battlement. The sky was torn open, revealing a massive purple eye staring down at the world. He felt the weight of a sword he had never held. He felt the grief of losing a woman he had never met.
"I will save you this time," he heard his own voice say—but it wasn't his voice. It was Kaelen's.
Flash.
He was in a dungeon. A puzzle involving six levers. He knew the combination. Left, Right, Left, Center, Hold. The door opened.
Flash.
He was sitting at a table with the leaders of the world's top Guilds. They were laughing, drinking wine. He looked at the man at the head of the table—Commander Vane. He saw a dagger hidden in Vane's boot. He knew Vane would betray humanity in Year 4.
Flash.
He was dying. Again. And Again. The sensation of a spear piercing his lung. The cold of the void. The reset button. The timeline rewinding.
Information flooded Elian's brain. Not just images, but muscle memory, instincts, terror, and strategies. He learned how to parry a Wyvern's tail swipe. He learned the spawn location of the Hidden Merchant in Sector 7. He learned the recipe for the Elixir of Titans.
He saw the end of the world. He saw it happen twice.
"GAAAH!"
Elian woke up screaming, thrashing against the wet asphalt. He curled into a fetal position, vomiting bile onto the road.
His head felt like it had been split open with an axe and stitched back together with hot wire. He lay there for a long time, the rain washing the sweat from his face.
Slowly, the spinning stopped.
Elian sat up. The world looked... different.
Before, the ruins were just obstacles. Now, looking at the crumbled wall of the bank across the street, he didn't just see rubble. He instinctively knew that the structural integrity was 12%, and if he hit the third brick from the left, the whole wall would collapse—a perfect trap for a pursuing enemy.
He looked at his hands. They were still the callous, scarred hands of a scavenger. But he felt the phantom weight of a Greatsword.
A blue window popped up in his vision. It was brighter, sharper than the usual System interface.
[Synchronization Complete.]
[Unique Trait Acquired: False Regressor.]
[You have inherited the memory fragments of
[Trait: False Regressor]
[Effect: You possess knowledge of future events, hidden mechanics, and enemy patterns up to Timeline Cycle #2. Note: Physical stats have NOT been inherited. Your body is currently unable to perform 99% of the techniques in your memory.]
Elian stared at the text. He started to laugh. It was a dry, hysterical sound.
"I have the strategy guide," he whispered. "I have the cheat codes."
He looked over at Kaelen's body. The hero looked smaller now, less imposing. Elian felt a pang of sadness that wasn't his own—a lingering echo of Kaelen's despair at failing yet again.
"Sorry, hero," Elian muttered, pushing himself to his feet. His legs wobbled. "You wanted someone to carry the torch? You got a rat instead."
[Alert: High-Threat Hostile detected.]
The text flashed red.
Elian spun around. Emerging from the fog, drawn by the smell of the hero's blood, was a creature. It was a Corpse-Stalker—a rank D beast. A grotesque amalgamation of rotting limbs and hyena-like features.
Yesterday, Elian would have frozen. He would have prayed it didn't see him, or he would have run and died tired.
But as the beast snarled, dripping caustic saliva, a window opened in Elian's mind. Not a system window, but a memory.
Target: Corpse-Stalker. Weakness: The third vertebrae behind the neck is unarmored. It is blind in the left eye. Attack pattern: Lunge, bite, tail whip. Parry the lunge, pivot right, strike the neck.
Elian's hand went to the rusted pry-bar at his belt. It was a piece of junk. A tool for opening crates, not killing monsters.
It's enough, the memory whispered.
The Stalker lunged.
Elian didn't think. He didn't try to react with his own reflexes, which were too slow. He simply let the ghost in his head take the wheel. He stepped to the right—a precise, minimal movement that let the beast's claws whistle past his ear by an inch.
The smell of rot filled his nose.
He swung the pry-bar. He didn't swing it wildly. He drove the hooked end down, putting his body weight behind it, aiming for the exact spot the memory had highlighted.
Crunch.
The metal hook sank into the soft cartilage behind the beast's neck. The Stalker shrieked, its legs giving out instantly as its spinal cord was severed. It crashed to the ground, twitching.
Elian stood over it, breathing hard. His hands were shaking violently. He had just killed a D-Rank monster. Solo. With a crowbar.
[Experience Gained.]
[Level Up!]
[You are now Level 2.]
He looked at the dead monster, then back at the dead hero.
The rain poured harder, washing the blood into the gutters. The apocalypse was coming. The 'Third Gate' was opening in three days. The System was rigged. The Guilds were compromised.
And the only person who knew how to stop it was a cowardly scavenger with a stolen memory and a rusted crowbar.
Elian reached down and looted the Corpse-Stalker's teeth. Old habits died hard.
"Well," he muttered, pocketing the teeth. "If I'm going to save the world, I'm going to need better gear. And I know exactly where Kaelen hid his stash."
He turned his back on the crater and began to walk. He didn't walk like a Vulture anymore. He walked with the stride of a man who knew exactly where he was going.