The NIL quarter had become a slaughterhouse. The Grade D Beast moved with a speed my brain struggled to map: a mass of hypertrophic muscles and bone blades that peeled open iron shacks like tin cans. People ran, screamed, accepting death with the usual resignation of the defeated.
I was in the shadows. My brain was already calculating trajectories and force vectors. I needed that thing's core to begin my transformation, but with my current stats—0 Strength, 0 Agility—facing it head-on was statistical suicide.
I saw a woman, a NIL I knew by sight. She was clutching a child. They were slow. They were the "noise" in the equation. They were heading toward a concrete pillar supporting an old cargo crane, a structure my calculations indicated was near structural collapse.
Without hesitation, without stress tainting my calculation, I stepped out of the shadows. I tripped her just as she passed the pillar.
They fell into the mud. The Beast veered, its biological sensors drawn to the easy movement and the child's cries. As its jaws closed on the woman's shoulder, the pillar lost its final balance. I was already there. With a kick calibrated to the point of least resistance, I brought the support beam down onto the Beast's head.
The sound of concrete crushing bone and flesh was drowned out by the woman's muffled screams. Crushed together. A single heap of debris and blood.
The Hero's Irony
An instant later, silence. Then, the lights of the Enforcers (Percentiles 50-89) illuminated the rubble.
«Look!» one of them shouted, pointing at me. «This kid... he used the rubble to trap the monster! He tried to save that mother!»
The crowd of "Standards" and "Dregs" gathered. They began to applaud. Someone clapped me on the shoulder. «A true hero of the Abyss», they whispered. They called me a hero while I, with the coldness of a predator, secretly slipped the copper bracelet I'd taken from the woman's still-warm wrist into my pocket. Alongside it, the Beast's Core pulsed against my hip.
At that moment, before my eyes, the golden notification appeared.
[CALCULATING REWARD...] > Detected Act: Elimination of Grade D Threat.
Contribution: 98%.
Collateral Victims: NIL #12.043 / NIL #12.044 (Statistical Value: Irrelevant).
[ASSIGNMENT ERROR] > Cause: The identity ZERO cannot hold Merit Titles or Hero Points.
Reward: NULL.
Experience Bonus: 0.00012% (Reduced for rank discrepancy).
System Note: You cannot be a hero if you do not officially exist.
The Collapse
As the Enforcers shook my hand and the NILs looked at me with hope, my "defective" mind began to crack. I saw the child under the beam. He hadn't died instantly. He was staring at me with a glassy eye, a silent question for which no logical answer existed.
I burst out laughing. A hoarse, sick laugh that those present mistook for post-traumatic shock. I wasn't laughing at death. I was laughing because I had killed two human beings and downed a Boss for a 0.00012% and an error notification.
The System called me Zero. And I would honor that name until my last breath. The Abyss inside me wasn't just watching; it was cheering like a stadium crowd.