"I survived!"
A lone figure, walking in deliberate steps, came out of a shimmering blue portal, enough for its shadow to loom behind. In the left hand, this figure held a long, silver whip affixed to a golden handle dripping in blood.
The figure, finally out of the portal, which closed behind, was that of a young boy. He was tall and lean, but his exuberance possessed a different aura.
"The weakest survived!"
He came to a halt immediately after the rift finished disappearing, his gaze still fixed on the ground.
Then, as if to be certain, he jerked his head upwards and reluctantly tilted it to his back to see that the rift was gone.
So, he smiled.
"I scrambled for survival."
"No. I had nothing that could help me to survive. I had nothing!"
The boy returned his gaze to the front and flipped his whip around to wrap his body, locking itself with a click to its handle.
When he looked up, his gaze revealed two amethyst purple pupils, enough to pierce through a person's heart if it were a dagger. His wind-swept silver-white hair looked in order, as if nothing had happened to him.
However, his light-brown skin betrayed that assumption. Yokes of blood lay on his skin, abandoned to dry. It showed he had been in a fierce fight.
Pulling down the mask that covered his nose to his lower jaw, he released a visible, yet suspicious, smile. Then, he looked up to the sky.
"My name is Melvin, and I was damned."
The sky tore open.
A flash of bright light spread across the atmosphere, bringing a flashback of events into view.
One moment, it had just been a day of bustling activities. The restless traffic along the road, the smell of roasted yams, pepper sauce, and chicken drifting from the shops of street vendors, the roars of wheelbarrow pushers shouting for a space to pass through, and the humble screams of hawkers filled the air.
In a dimly lit one-room apartment, a young boy was sitting before his laptop screen, hands moving along the keyboard with precision and speed, tapping relentlessly.
"Life was not difficult because I had nothing to live for or live with. I was cast aside. I was isolated. I was an outcast because I only remained 'the weakest'."
From the boy's laptop screen, he noticed its light becoming more illuminating than it should have been on a bright day. He looked up and saw that the bright day was suddenly becoming dark. Rushing to the curtain that draped down his windows, he slid it open and gasped.
Thick, crimson fluids were diffusing to spread faster than anyone could imagine across the sky. At measured intervals, these fluids will release droplets onto the ground below.
Screams soon replaced the hustle of the day; cries overcame the joy of successful trades and cheerful chatters; legs wobbled and drifted their feet along the asphalt road before ending up on the floor, shouting for 'HELP.'
"From whom exactly?"
Then, as if the gods were not to be blamed, the droplets of the crimson fluids, which had completely covered the atmospheric region, began to expand, mutate, and transform into whirling gates of different colors.
These gates would be later on called Spatial Tears.
Seeing this new change, the boy who seemed to be safe in his room ran out, and in an attempt to climb down the stairs hastily, tripped and tumbled over.
Rising to his feet, he ignored the searing pain that betrayed the enduring strength of his leg bones and staggered forward consistently.
Now outside, he discerned a clearer view of the situation: holographic screens surfaced in front of men and women, even young children alike. A woman clinging to her baby by the side even let it fall to the ground, lifeless.
It wasn't her fault. Her body was changing, an uncontrollable one at that.
Everybody was changing forms, although still maintaining their natural physiques and gender. Their muscles became more enhanced, their actions became deliberate, and they were able to harm even a fly.
Their jump was extraordinary.
Everything changed in their bodies. They were awakening.
"Things turned harder. Yes, it did!"
In the midst of the commotion, some Awakened who crossed the boy's path grunted at him and never passed by without kicking his ass.
"Go and die, boy," they said. "This world is no longer for the weak!"
After getting kicked by one of them, he looked forward and saw that different mythical creatures had torn out from the spatial tears, a result of the fluid droplets earlier, attacking any disadvantageous being in their path.
"The awakened human easily fends them off, killing those it was necessary to. But the unlucky ones, but me, all died."
One of the awakened humans caught the boy by the shoulder and flung him easily out of the way. Thanks to this human, the boy was now facing a boar.
"Die, boy. You don't belong here anymore," the tiny voice of the awakened female suggested, sounding more distant than normal.
The boar lunged at him, missing the first attack by a slight margin as the boy jumped to the side. Looking around him for any weapon, he found none. And, before he could turn to face the boar again, it hit him to fly off far away.
As the boy landed hard on the ground, his eyes flickered to see that the boar had already caught up to him. Hovering above him. Claws raised, before landing with incised speed.
"Please, spare my life. I'm only 16 years old. I don't want to die yet." The boy pleaded, his pitiful tone ringing out to the boar in front of him.
But it can't hear him, of course. It doesn't even care. Its attack landed.
"And I thought I had died."
The boy's eyes flickered open, and he found himself lying on a sick bed in the hospital. A medical hose tied around his wrist told him that he had been admitted.
Loosening the hose, he rolled to his left and saw a girl of not more than his age also lying on an adjacent bed to his.
After a few seconds of staring, he scrambled up from the bed and made to leave, but a warm hand rested on his thigh, causing him to cease his movement.
"You are awake," the middle-aged voice spoke. "Finally, you made it to life after six months."
Melvin couldn't mutter words as he heard about the period he had spent in this hospital, unconscious. He only moped at the man, wearing a white coat with a stethoscope across his neck, flowing down through his chest.
"Poor girl. She only awakened and couldn't even wait for the association to be formed so she could hone her powers afterward. Now, see what using it rashly has caused. Using her untamed power to save a pathetic life," the doctor stated, turning his gaze pitifully to the girl.
"So, even doctors call a patient's life pathetic?"
Instead of answering the boy's question, the doctor ignored it as expected, and his voice rang out again.
"The only way to save her is by getting a Heart-Repair Potion. The government is still generous enough to cover her accommodation in this hospital. But even before this life-saving potion is found, you need to deposit a monthly payment for the 'Life Potion,' which will be administered to prolong her life until you get the supposed potion."
"Save your girlfriend," the doctor added and left.
"She is not my girlfriend," Melvin argued, "but if she showed me concern in a no-concern world. If she cared for me. If she could risk her life to save me, then I must do the same."
Months passed by, and Melvin was finally able to get himself registered with one of the Collection Teams of the Guild Association in charge of clearing Spatial Tears and preventing outbreaks of monsters into their world.
That way, he could generate some income, which he used to sustain the girl's stay at the hospital. Until that day, when the Association acted inconsiderately.
"Though I was weak, they assigned me to a team that was going to raid a high-level dungeon. Not as a collector, but as a hunter!"
"No help came to me there. Except for a bit of combat skill, I had grasped it with my effort."
"But that still wasn't enough. These monsters are deadly."
Then, the sky, which tore open to reveal the flashback of events, closed, its bright flash of light dimmed, leaving the lone figure in the bathing light of a crimson moon.
"…but how did I even get here? This stronger!" Melvin muttered, clenching his fist with a raised elbow.
"From what I can remember, I was dead at the blink of an eye when I consumed a purple crystal, which I collected from a monster that I managed to defeat."
A frail, weakened body staggered along the cobalt floor, venturing towards the exit of a portal.
Moments turned into minutes, then hours, until this slowly dying body miraculously found himself in his one-room apartment.
Collapsing onto the chair before his desk, on which his laptop was, he moved his hands tentatively, pushing the laptop to the floor unknowingly.
Once it landed on the floor of his room, it hit an empty container lying carelessly and caused it to begin bouncing with the loudest noise one could imagine.
Surprisingly, this noise affected his mental faculty, causing pain to sear into his head as he clutched onto his skull, sprawling some minutes later onto the floor in pain.
"And that very incident became the beginning of my story."
"I couldn't die because I awakened a system."
A screen hovered in front of the boy, who was struggling to prevent his eyes from closing. Then, a female voice began to speak the contents on the screen.
[Congratulations. You have been chosen as the host.]
[Become the Grand Master!]
[Do you accept?]
"Yes! I was not ready to die, so I had accepted without knowing what it was all about."
"As far as I could still live, I needed it."
[Very Good.]
[Awakening Affinity...]