I died... and then what?
"Cigarettes... then more cigarettes... so many of them. Why are there so many cigarette butts?"
Mark Howe stood there. His face was ghostly pale, the skeletal structure of his skull tracing sharp lines beneath his skin, framed by deep, sunken dark circles under his eyes. His clothes were disheveled and didn't even fit his frame. Around him was a sea of filth: instant noodle cups, crumpled tissues... and, of course, countless cigarette butts.
Mark looked at his hands, which were overflowing with the trash he had just scooped from the floor—and yet, the room remained cluttered. Looking at the scene before him and feeling his own fragile body, he saw only one solution.
He began hurling the trash out of the window with both hands. It rained down into the back alley, where a few vagrants found themselves showered with cigarette butts for no apparent reason.
It wasn't easy. Not at all. Even the simple act of throwing out trash was an ordeal. Every movement was accompanied by a strange creaking and a sudden, sharp pang in his back—a symphony of sounds that bred nothing but a heavy sense of gloom.
"Haa... haa... Finally, I'm done."
Mark lay sprawled on the floor of the cramped room where he had found himself awake, gasping with exhaustion. It was a simple cleaning task, yet he felt as though he had been wrestling a bear.
Summoning every ounce of strength, he struggled to his feet and fought his way to the faucet. A thin, pathetic stream of water trickled out. As Mark held his hand under it, the memories of the last few hours flooded back.
In his previous life, Mark had been an utterly ordinary man. Not just because he was "talentless" and so on, but because he had chosen to be that way.
Why?
There were many reasons... but the first was simply that he was an utter coward. No special reason—just a worthless, fearful man.
It was the kind of realization that makes you despise yourself, but he understood that he lived in a world full of foxes and wolves. If he ever tried to threaten their status, he would get hurt—or worse, he would die.
He could not die. He didn't know what would happen to him; would he turn into a soul floating forever in the void?
So, he told himself that survival was enough. He told himself that even if he carved a path toward the greatness that all humans crave, who was to say they would ever let him enjoy it?
As the saying goes: "It is enough to die while still dreaming of what you haven't achieved."
Right?
On the day Mark died in his previous life—and oh, the irony of fate, for he had ended up dead once again—it had been a day like any other. When he finally drifted off to sleep, succumbing to sheer exhaustion...
He awoke abruptly to the thundering gallop of his own heart, gasping for air in a dark, suffocatingly narrow room.
Panic seized him. He thought he had been kidnapped.
Bolting upright in terror amidst the darkness, his hand instinctively fumbled for the light switch on the ceiling. But the darkness was the least of his problems; he wasn't even given a moment to process his shock.
Without a single warning, he was assaulted by memories—foreign memories belonging to someone else, a complete stranger. They were overwhelming and saturated with agony.
Rejections from dozens of jobs, even the most menial ones... a mountain of back-breaking debt...
Among those memories were things that made Mark gasp violently as the realization hit him: he had been reincarnated after death.
In this world, alien races were besieging Earth with the intent to colonize it. These were monstrous entities, some nearly the size of entire continents, possessing destructive power that far eclipsed any human weaponry. You didn't need a lecture to understand that even a thousand nuclear warheads were mere toys to them. Humanity's extinction would have been swift and unceremonious.
This was common knowledge across the globe because the terrifying shapes in the sky and the gates opening everywhere were impossible to ignore.
But then, the unexpected happened: the appearance of a blue interface panel visible only to a chosen few.
It read:
{ The Wisdom Lord always grants mercy to the weak. }
It was a system that functioned like a game. The more you killed, the stronger you became. You undertook quests; you gathered gear. Because of this, those who "Awakened" were known as Players.
A world like this terrified Mark twice over. How could he protect himself if one of those gates decided to open right next to him without any protection?
But he wasn't hallucinating. Unfortunately.
The memories were disturbingly vivid—even the painful memory of the "other" Mark's suicide, the final image of a water glass slipping from his hand as he faded away. What this person had endured made Mark tremble for a long time as he tried to convince himself that everything would be alright.
He wanted to know more about his predecessor, who—by some twist of fate—was also named Mark Howe.
He glanced at the phone in his hand, which bore a strange, unfamiliar brand logo. Upon opening it, news about Awakeners flooded his screen shamelessly, as if there were nothing more important in this world to watch.
[EXCLUSIVE! Watch an interview with the Awakener 'Arshvinin' from the Golden King Guild after clearing an S-Rank Dungeon!] "Our only goal is to protect humanity. That is our motto," he declared.
"Protecting humanity," Mark muttered. More like protecting mana stones and monster hides worth hundreds of millions. Some protection.
[Player Myung-ji's take on Player Hae-min's challenge: "He's just a clumsy kid." Click the link for Hae-min's response!]
[The Awakener Riona, with her 'Compatibility Vision' skill, reveals the female player with the highest match for the handsome Michael Murvion is S*... Click to reveal!]**
The sheer volume of news was dizzying. Mark couldn't distinguish between vital information and celebrity gossip. However, through the memories lodged in his brain and the headlines on the screen, he managed to piece together a general overview of this reality.
It was a world ruled by Awakeners—superpowered beings who claimed to be the shield of humanity, and used that claim to lead the world.
His memories indicated that the percentage of Awakeners was miniscule. There was no evidence as to what kind of person the System chose to awaken; the general ratio was roughly one in every hundred people. Only one out of a hundred stood a chance at becoming an Awakener.
This percentage might seem small, but because of it, being a Player meant living in a literal heaven on earth... from receiving absolute veneration to having people practically kneel before you.
It commanded blind trust—and the irritating part was that it wasn't for nothing. For those who reached the threshold of Rank A...
...The gates to the "real" world were flung wide open. It was as if they had been born again, as if they had opened their third eye.
Mark recalled the articles showcasing these feats, and a violent shiver ran through his entire body.
He knew that with such status came a power that could annihilate someone like him in the blink of an eye.
Witnessing these things, coupled with the countless videos of Players' battles he had seen, pushed Mark to make an irreversible decision.
"The Legend of the F**kin Cockroach," he muttered.
"The plan... is survival. No matter what it takes.
The term "Cockroach" was fitting, especially since this body had already awakened. He held a card from the Players' Association, yet...
In the Profession slot: Slime Warrior
Even his Profession was trash. Slimes were the cockroaches of the monster world.. it was so fitting he didn't even need to say it out loud. It was as if everything in this new life was a cruel confirmation of his own pathetic reality.
In the Class slot: Unranked
His only hope was to live exactly like a cockroach.
At that moment, Mark wiped his hands after washing them dozens of times, drying them with obsessive seriousness.
He had stripped completely naked to wash his clothes thoroughly, eventually finding a few clean bedsheets to wrap around himself while his clothes dried on the line.
"Dammit... why did I have to strip down completely like this?"
He had been impulsive, acting without thinking, and now he looked like a giant, overgrown newborn.
With no other choice, he sat huddled next to the electric heater, which flickered and sputtered intermittently.
He glanced at the time on his strange phone.
When he opened the app...
He navigated to a live-streaming platform. Immediately, he was greeted by a live feed from a camera broadcasting the invasion of a C-Rank Dungeon.
This piqued his interest. Until now, all he had seen were edited videos on YouTube—the polished, sanitized side of things. He wanted to see the events live, raw, and unedited.
As the stream loaded, details about the dungeon, the players involved, and their abilities flashed across the screen. After scrolling down, he found a button with a faint checkmark and a disclaimer: "View at your own risk."
The moment Mark clicked it, he entered the broadcast room.
But without warning...
"AAAAAAAGH!"
There, right before Mark's eyes within the frame of his phone, a severed human hand spun through the air, trailing a spray of crimson before thudding onto the ground. The background was a chaotic blur of sharp, agonizing screams from the players.
Mark froze. He slammed his phone face down, his heart racing from the sight of the flying limb, the monstrous shadows, and the player writhing in sheer agony.
"What the hell am I watching? This world is too dangerous... Being a Player isn't a career; it's a suicide pact."
If there had been even a shred of a thought in Mark's mind about joining the ranks of the Players, it was now officially dead and buried.
"No matter what happens, there is absolutely no way I'm going into those cursed dungeons..."
Just as he was trying to clear his head...
[The Wisdom Lord System apologizes for the delay in classification...]
A glowing blue window materialized before him.
{ Successor of the Sin of Gluttony identified. } { Authority of Predation unlocked. }
Before Mark's stunned eyes, an icon appeared within the interface showing a maw filled with razor-sharp teeth. Beneath it, the text read:
{ Authority of Predation – Level 1 }
As if the shocks wouldn't stop coming...
[Converting (Unranked) to (SSS-Class)...]
[An Awakened with immeasurable potential has been detected.]
{ Executing Global Announcement... }
"Wha—Whaaaaaat?!"
"Wait, hold on! I don't understand anything!"
Suddenly, another window popped up right next to Mark's face. There, in bold, sweeping letters, it read:
{ GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT }
{ Children of the human race on Planet Earth... you have been blessed by the Lord of Luck. Today marks the unveiling of Earth's first SSS-Class human talent. }
"NOOOOOOOO!"
All across the globe, every superpower and world leader stared at the notification, gasping in collective shock.
It was as if a match had been struck under the entire world, setting it ablaze in an instant.