The slums of Eldoria stank of rust, sweat, and despair.
Kairos Voss knew every alley, every cracked cobblestone, every flickering mana-lamp that barely kept the darkness at bay. At nineteen, he had spent more years scavenging the edges of the Rift zones than most nobles spent in their marble academies. His hands were calloused from prying card fragments out of monster corpses, his cloak patched a dozen times over, and his stomach perpetually half-empty.
But today was different.
Today, the sky above the lower districts had turned the color of bruised violet, and the air hummed with the low, ominous thrum that every citizen of Eldoria dreaded: a Rift outbreak.
Not a minor one, either. The warning sirens from the central spires had been blaring for twenty minutes straight, and the purple fracture in the sky was widening by the second. From the rooftops of the slums, Kairos could see it clearly—a jagged tear in reality itself, spilling violet lightning and the distant roars of things that should not exist.
"High-level Rift… at least Tier 4," he muttered to himself, crouching behind a crumbling wall. His silver-gray eyes narrowed as he watched panicked residents fleeing toward the inner gates. The city guards were already forming barricades farther up the slope, but they wouldn't reach the slums in time. They never did.
Kairos tightened the strap of his worn deck holder—a cheap leather pouch that held exactly seven cards. Seven useless cards.
He pulled one out just to remind himself how pathetic his life was.
[Card Name: Limp Slime]
[Rarity: Common (Defective)]
[Type: Summon – Beast]
[Level: 1]
[Attack: 2 | Defense: 5 | Mana Cost: 1]
[Effect: This slime cannot move more than 1 meter from the summoner. Deals no damage on contact.]
He had pulled it three years ago during a public gacha ceremony meant for orphans. The proctor had actually laughed out loud when the card materialized. The other kids got wolves, elementals, even a single lucky girl who drew a Rare wind spirit. Kairos got a slime that couldn't even crawl.
The rest of his deck wasn't much better: a spell that fizzled eighty percent of the time, a rusted dagger that broke after three uses, a shield with a permanent crack down the middle. Trash. All of it.
Yet he kept them. Polished them. Studied them. Because giving up meant dying in this city.
A scream snapped him out of his thoughts.
Down the alley, a group of five teenagers—clearly noble academy students by their pristine blue uniforms—were backing away from a pack of Riftspawn that had already breached through a smaller side fracture. The monsters were low-tier Shadow Hounds, but there were eight of them, and the students looked like they had never seen real combat in their lives.
One of the girls raised a trembling hand. A card glowed in her palm—Uncommon tier, judging by the silver border—and a gust of wind blasted two hounds back. But the others circled, snarling, their eyes glowing crimson.
"Form up! Protect Lady Elara!" shouted the tallest boy, probably the team leader. He summoned a glowing knight construct, but it flickered weakly. They were running out of mana fast.
Kairos cursed under his breath. He should run. He should leave them to their fate. Nobles never helped slum rats like him. Why risk his life for them?
But he was already moving.
He dashed down the alley, pulling out his two least-useless cards as he ran.
"Summon!" he shouted, channeling what little mana he had.
The Limp Slime plopped onto the ground in front of him, quivering uselessly. Kairos kicked it forward like a sad, jelly soccer ball. It rolled slowly—painfully slowly—toward the nearest Shadow Hound.
The hound snarled and pounced, biting the slime in half. Green goo splattered everywhere.
Perfect distraction.
Kairos slid to a stop behind the students, holding up his cracked shield card.
"Barrier!"
A translucent dome flickered into existence around the group—just in time. Three Shadow Hounds slammed into it, claws scraping harmlessly against the surface. The barrier groaned under the impact. It wouldn't hold long.
The noble students stared at him in shock.
"Who—?" the leader began.
"Shut up and fight!" Kairos snapped. "You've got better cards than me. Use them!"
Lady Elara—the girl with the wind spirit—nodded quickly. Her card flared again, and a razor-sharp gust sliced across two hounds, sending black blood spraying.
The leader summoned his knight fully this time, and it charged forward, spear piercing a third hound through the chest.
But there were still five left, and the barrier shattered with a sound like breaking glass.
Kairos rolled to the side as claws raked the air where he'd been standing. He drew his last combat card—the rusted dagger—and summoned it into his hand. The blade materialized with a dull clang, already chipped.
He wasn't a fighter. He was barely a summoner. But he knew the slums. He knew how monsters moved.
He darted low, slashing at a hound's tendon. The dagger held—just barely—and the beast yelped, stumbling.
"Push them back toward the wall!" he shouted.
The students, to their credit, listened. Together, they herded the remaining hounds into a narrow dead-end alley. Kairos's Limp Slime (or what was left of it) regenerated slowly and blocked the exit like a pathetic living cork.
One by one, the noble students finished the monsters off. The last Shadow Hound dissolved into black mist, leaving behind a single Common card fragment that floated gently to the ground.
Silence fell, broken only by heavy breathing.
The leader—a tall boy with neatly combed blond hair—turned to Kairos.
"You… saved us. A slum dweller with… that deck?"
Kairos snorted, wiping monster blood off his cloak. "Don't sound so surprised. Even trash can be useful sometimes."
Lady Elara stepped forward. She was beautiful in that untouchable noble way—long silver hair, emerald eyes, uniform spotless despite the fight. She bowed slightly.
"Thank you. Truly. I am Elara von Astoria. This is my escort from the Celestial Academy."
The others introduced themselves quickly: the leader was Cedric Brightblade, heir to one of the mid-tier houses. The rest were lesser nobles training for the upcoming Celestial Arena qualifiers.
Kairos gave them a curt nod. "Kairos Voss. Just a scavenger. You should head uphill. The main Rift is getting worse."
As if to prove his point, the ground trembled violently. A deafening crack echoed across the slums, and the violet fracture in the sky split wider. Something massive was trying to come through.
Cedric's face paled. "That's… that's not Tier 4. That's Tier 6 at least. The city lords should be responding!"
"They will," Kairos said bitterly. "After the slums are gone."
Elara looked at him with something like pity. "You should come with us. The guards will let you through if you're with us."
Kairos almost laughed. A slum rat walking beside nobles through the inner gates? He'd be arrested on sight.
"I'll manage," he said. "Go."
They hesitated, but another earthquake-like tremor sent them running uphill. Elara glanced back once, as if wanting to say more, but Cedric pulled her along.
Kairos watched them go. Then he turned toward the epicenter of the outbreak.
He didn't know why he did it. Maybe stupidity. Maybe curiosity. Maybe some buried part of him hoped that in the chaos, a stray high-rarity card might drop—one that could change everything.
The streets were deserted now. Abandoned carts, shattered windows, the occasional body of someone too slow to flee. The air grew thick with mana, making his skin prickle.
He reached the old plaza at the heart of the slums—an ancient, forgotten place where the cobblestones were carved with faded runes. No one came here anymore. Legend said it was a relic from the First Age, when the Gacha System itself was born.
And in the center of the plaza, the ground had split open.
Not from the Rift. This was different.
A perfect circular fissure, glowing with golden light. Ancient. Pristine. Nothing like the violent purple tears of the Riftspawn.
Kairos's heart pounded.
He knew what this was.
He had read about them in forbidden texts scavenged from burned libraries.
A Legendary Gacha Altar.
Sealed since the Cataclysm five hundred years ago.
Thought to be myth.
But here it was, revealed by the tremors of the Rift outbreak. The ground had shifted just enough to uncover it.
Kairos approached slowly, as if it might vanish. The altar was a simple stone pedestal, but runes of pure gold crawled across its surface like living things. At its center floated a single, glowing orb—the Gacha core.
One pull.
Only one.
That was how Legendary Altars worked, according to the legends. One chance. No mana cost. No restrictions.
But the cards they granted were beyond rarity. Beyond mythic.
Some said they granted gods.
Others said they granted curses.
Kairos's hand trembled as he reached out.
He thought of every mockery. Every failed pull. Every noble who looked down on him. Every night he went to bed hungry because his deck couldn't even clear a Tier 1 Rift.
He thought of the system that decided a person's worth by blind luck.
And he touched the orb.
Light exploded.
Not violet. Not red or blue.
Pure, blinding white.
The runes flared. The ground shook. A voice—not sound, but thought—echoed in his mind.
[User Detected: Kairos Voss]
[Soul Compatibility: 0.0001%]
[Warning: Probability of Annihilation – 99.9999%]
[Proceeding Anyway.]
Kairos gritted his teeth. "Do it."
The orb shattered into a thousand fragments of light, swirling around him like a storm.
Then, a single card began to form.
Slowly.
Each line of the card border burned itself into existence, gold and black and something deeper—something that hurt to look at directly.
The border solidified.
Not Common green.
Not Uncommon silver.
Not Rare gold.
Not even Mythic purple.
This was something else.
A border that shifted between all colors and none. A border that seemed to contain stars.
[Card Name: Sovereign of Eternity]
[Rarity: ████████ (Transcendent)]
[Type: Summon – Primordial Entity]
[Level: ???]
[Attack: ∞ | Defense: ∞ | Mana Cost: Variable]
[Effect: The one who existed before the Gacha. The one who wove fate into cards. The one who can rewrite the rules themselves.]
[Unique Ability: Decree of the King – Once per battle, declare a new law of reality. All cards must obey.]
[Unique Ability: Eternal Evolution – This card evolves with every battle won. No upper limit.]
[Bond: This card has chosen you. You may not discard it. It may not be stolen. It may not be sealed.]
The card floated down into Kairos's trembling hands.
It was warm.
And in that moment, the Rift above the city screamed.
Something massive had fully emerged—a colossal draconic beast wreathed in violet flames, wings blotting out the sky. A Tier 7 Rift Lord. The kind that could level entire districts.
City alarms reached a new pitch. In the distance, Kairos could see the golden barriers of the noble districts rising.
They would sacrifice the slums to contain it.
Kairos looked down at the card in his hand.
Then he looked up at the monster descending toward his home.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face.
"First battle, huh?" he whispered.
He raised the card.
"Let's test you out."
The Sovereign of Eternity answered.
Light erupted from the card—not blinding this time, but calm. Infinite.
A figure began to manifest above the plaza.
Not a beast.
Not a spirit.
A king.
Cloaked in shifting starlight, crowned with a circlet of black holes and galaxies. Eyes like the birth and death of universes.
It looked down at the approaching Rift Lord.
And spoke a single word.
"Kneel."
The draconic beast froze mid-descent.
Its wings locked.
Its flames guttered out.
And it crashed to the earth like a falling mountain, shaking the entire city.
Alive.
But bowing.
The Sovereign turned its gaze to Kairos.
Its voice was the sound of creation itself.
[First Decree recorded: All enemies shall kneel before the King.]
[Evolution triggered.]
[New Ability Unlocked: Dominion.]
Kairos stared, breathless.
In the distance, he could hear the shouts of arriving city lords. Powerful summoners. Mythic card holders.
They would come for him.
They would want the card.
But for the first time in his life, Kairos Voss was not afraid.
He clutched the Sovereign of Eternity to his chest.
And laughed.
A low, shaking laugh that grew into something fierce.