The taste of ash was the last thing I remembered. Ash, and the screeching of twisted metal as the Leviathan Class beast tore through the hull of the Colony Ship Hope.
There was no pain. Just a sudden, violent silence.
I didn't expect heaven. I certainly didn't expect the smell of stale coffee and ozone.
"Hey, Arthur? You zoning out on me?"
My eyes snapped open. The blurred world sharpened instantly, assaulting my senses with aggressive mediocrity. I wasn't floating in the void of space, surrounded by the corpses of humanity's last defenders.
I was in a cubicle.
My hands, which should have been scarred and calloused from ten years of wielding a jagged mana-blade, were smooth. Pale. Weak. I gripped the edge of the cheap laminate desk, the plastic digging into my palms.
"Arthur?" The voice came again. Annoying. Nasal.
I looked up. Greg from Accounting was standing over me, holding a stack of papers. Greg, who had been eaten by a Tier-1 Rat Demon in the first twenty minutes of the Integration.
"The reports," Greg sighed, dropping the stack on my desk. "Boss wants them by five. Don't tell me you were sleeping with your eyes open again."
I stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I looked at the digital clock in the corner of my computer screen.
11:42 AM
September 23, 2025
The date burned into my retinas.
September 23rd. The day the sky cracked. The day the System descended.
"How much time?" I croaked. My voice was raspy, unused to speaking without screaming orders.
Greg frowned. "Uh, until five? You have like five hours, dude. Relax."
"No," I stood up, my chair clattering back against the divider. The office fell silent. Heads popped up from cubicles like prairie dogs. "How much time until 12:00 PM?"
Greg checked his watch, looking disturbed. "Eighteen minutes. You okay?"
Eighteen minutes.
I had died ten years in the future. I had been a Gold-Rank Vanguard, one of the top hundred fighters left in the solar system, and I had been ripped apart like wet tissue paper. And now, I was back. Back to the zero point.
I didn't answer Greg. I didn't grab the reports. I grabbed the pair of scissors sitting in my pen cup.
"Whoa, easy there," Greg backed up, hands raised.
I ignored him. I ignored the whispers rippling through the office. I tested the weight of the scissors. Cheap steel. Loose hinge. Garbage. But it was sharp enough for a Tier-0 mob.
I had eighteen minutes to get to the server room.
"Arthur, sit down or I'm calling HR!" The manager, Mr. Henderson, shouted from his glass office.
"You should call your wife," I said, my voice eerily calm as I walked past Greg. "Tell her you love her. Seriously."
I walked toward the fire exit. The server room was in the basement. It was the most fortified room in the building, temperature-controlled, and essentially a soundproof bunker. When the mana wave hit at noon, the windows on the upper floors would shatter. The glass alone would kill half the people here.
I needed to be underground. And I needed to be the first one to kill something.
In the previous timeline, the "Tutorial" gave a bonus to the first human in each region to slay a monster. The bonus was a generic [Novice Blade]. It was trash. It helped you survive the first week, but it scaled poorly.
But I knew something the others didn't. I knew something even the top rankers of my past life hadn't figured out until it was too late.
The System rewards intent.
I burst through the stairwell doors and took the steps two at a time. My body was sluggish, heavy with the lack of muscle, but my mind was processing tactical data at light speed.
Fourth floor. Third floor. Second floor.
At the ground floor landing, I stopped. A vending machine stood in the hallway.
I checked the time. 11:55 AM. Five minutes.
I smashed the glass of the vending machine with my elbow. Pain shot up my arm—weak, pathetic civilian bone density—but the glass shattered. I ignored the snacks. I reached into the mechanism and ripped out the heavy metal coil that held the sodas. It took three hard yanks, adrenaline compensating for my lack of strength.
With the coil in one hand and the scissors in the other, I descended into the basement.
The server room hummed with the sound of a thousand cooling fans. It was cold. Good. The heat of the mana wave would cook anyone caught outdoors.
I found the janitor, old man Miller, mopping the floor near the server racks. He looked up, startled.
"Son? You ain't supposed to be down here."
"Leave," I commanded, pointing to the door I just came through. "Go to the supply closet. Lock the door. Do not open it until the screaming stops."
"Now look here—"
11:59 AM.
The air pressure dropped. My ears popped. The hum of the servers changed pitch, rising to a screech.
"Go!" I roared, shoving the old man toward the exit. He stumbled, saw the look in my eyes, and ran.
I was alone.
I took a deep breath, centering myself. I knew exactly where the first rift would open in this building. It wasn't random. The System targeted high-energy sources to fuel the initial summoning.
I turned to the main power junction box on the far wall.
11:59:50.
The lights flickered. The shadows in the corner of the room began to stretch, twisting into impossible shapes. The smell of ozone spiked, choking and metallic.
11:59:58.
"Come on," I whispered.
12:00:00.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION]
The blue text seared itself across my vision, transparent but undeniable.
[PLANET: EARTH. STATUS: INTEGRATING.]
[TUTORIAL PHASE: BEGINNING.]
The power junction box exploded.
But it wasn't sparks that flew out. It was a claw.
A Gremlin. A scout-type demon, small, vicious, with skin like green leather and claws that could shred tires. It pulled itself out of the rift in the wall, screeching, confused by the sudden transition.
In my last life, I had cowered under a desk for three hours while these things hunted.
This time, I was moving before its feet touched the floor.
I didn't attack the head. Gremlins have thick skulls. I drove the scissor blade into the soft hollow of its throat, putting my entire body weight behind the thrust.
The creature gurgled, black blood spraying over my white dress shirt. It thrashed, claws raking my arm, but I didn't let go. I jammed the metal coil into its eye socket, twisting it violently.
The screeching stopped. The body went limp.
I stood up, panting, blood dripping from my chin. I looked at the clock.
12:00:15.
I had killed the first monster in the region in fifteen seconds.
I waited for the notification. I waited for the [Novice Blade] reward.
But the blue screen that appeared wasn't what I expected. It wasn't the standard blue.
It was crimson. Red like a warning. Red like a critical error.
[ERROR: USER ANOMALY DETECTED.]
[SOUL WAVELENGTH DOES NOT MATCH TIMELINE.]
[CALCULATING COMPENSATION...]
I froze. This... this hadn't happened in the stories. This hadn't happened to the other regressors I'd heard rumors about.
[COMPENSATION COMPLETE.]
[CONGRATULATIONS, SURVIVOR. YOU HAVE ACHIEVED THE "FIRST BLOOD" ACHIEVEMENT IN RECORD TIME.]
[REWARD MODIFIED DUE TO ANOMALY.]
[YOU HAVE RECEIVED: THE DEVELOPER'S TOOLKIT (ACCESS LEVEL 1).]
I stared at the floating red text.
Developer's Toolkit?
I lifted my hand. I didn't summon a sword. I didn't cast a fireball. Instead, a small, unassuming window popped up next to the Gremlin's corpse.
[OBJECT: GREMLIN CORPSE]
[VALUE: 5 XP]
[EDIT?]
My breath hitched. I reached out and tapped [EDIT].
The value flickered.
[VALUE: 5000 XP]
I grinned. The smile felt foreign on my face, sharp and terrifying.
"Accept," I whispered.
A golden light, brighter than the sun, exploded in the dark server room.
[LEVEL UP.]
[LEVEL UP.]
[LEVEL UP.]
The Apocalypse had just started, and I had already broken the game.