The kobold never heard the first knife coming. It moved through the underground forest, guided only by the faint violet glow of crystals scattered between the twisted trees. The silence in that place was heavy, damp, almost alive. Then something sliced through the air. Pain burst through its leg. The creature looked down and found a knife buried deep in its flesh.
“HISSS!”
The hiss came out sharp and furious. The kobold snapped its head up just as more blades tore through the darkness. It ducked on instinct, barely avoiding them, but now it knew where they had come from. With a snarl, it charged the bushes where the knives had been thrown.
Nothing.
The brush only shifted from the force of its own body slamming into it. For one second, the kobold stood still, sniffing the air. Then it sensed something above. It looked up too late. A shadow dropped from a branch. Luke.
He crashed into the kobold, and they rolled across dark soil and exposed roots. The kobold reacted fast, faster than Luke expected, and shoved him away with brutal force. His back slammed into a tree, knocking the air from his lungs and blurring his vision for a moment.
The kobold didn’t waste a second. It charged, snarling, the knife still buried in its leg. Luke drew a blade from the holster with the sharp, practiced motion of a gunslinger and threw it. Then another. And another. The knives struck the creature one after the other, hitting shoulder, chest, and neck. Even then, it kept coming, as if steel buried in its body was nothing but a minor inconvenience. It only stopped when the final blade punched through its chest and found its heart.
The kobold fell.
[You have slain Cave Kobold – Lvl 3]
[Your class [Assassin] has reached Level 3!] (+2 Agility, +1 Strength, +1 Vitality, +1 Perception, +1 Free Point.)
[You have acquired a Class Skill]
Luke dropped to his knees, breathing hard, the system’s message burning in the corner of his vision. Every fight in this place took something out of him. His heart still pounded like a war drum, and he had to force his eyes to sweep the forest around him, making sure no other threats were closing in.
Every death came with a rush of adrenaline, and when it faded, his legs shook. The only way to keep his head straight was to tell himself they were just beasts. Wild, violent creatures, ready to attack the second he got close. There was no talking, no bargaining, no clean choice. Still, his body seemed to understand what was happening better than he did.
He was getting stronger. Faster. Even his raw physical strength had improved. His movements, clumsy and desperate at first, now flowed a little more naturally with every level.
Luke approached the kobold’s corpse, pulled the knives out one by one, and slid them back into the holster. Reusing them was essential. He had learned the hard way that mana blades vanished after a few hours, and down here, nothing could be wasted. In his previous fight, he had run out of mana and only survived because he managed to recover a knife he had already thrown.
Then he opened the system screen.
[Twin Blade (Common)]: A skilled assassin never wastes an attack. When throwing a knife, it splits mid-air, creating a duplicate that follows the same path, doubling your chance to hit.
Luke raised his eyebrows. A knife that splits in the air...?
He took out a blade and thought about testing the skill, but hesitated.
“Mana’s too low... better not.”
Mana regenerated slowly, and his body was still exhausted. But the question kept digging at him, like a pebble in his boot.
“Better to test it now than figure it out while something’s trying to kill me.”
Luke drew a deep breath and focused on a nearby tree. Far enough to work as a target. Clear enough that the dark wouldn’t screw with his aim. His mind seemed to already know what to do. How to pull the mana. How to channel it at the moment of release. How to activate the skill.
He threw the knife.
The blade split mid-flight, and a second knife snapped into existence beside it, flickering with an unstable glow. Both struck the tree. The original sank into the trunk. The copy hit a little lower and began fading almost immediately.
Luke jogged over to check. “Got it. The copy’s just there to boost my odds.”
He pulled the original blade from the trunk, slid it back into the holster, and opened the system interface.
Name: Luke
Level: 1
Race: Human
Rank: F
Class: Assassin (Lvl 3)
Profession: –
Titles: –
Health Points (HP): 132/140
Mana Points (MP): 12/80
Stamina: 48/70
Stats:
Strength: 12
Agility: 17
Endurance: 7
Vitality: 14
Perception: 12
Intelligence: 8
Free Points: 5
Inventory: [Throwing Knife Holster], [Smoke Bomb (x2)]
Class Skills: [Basic Blade Handling (Common)], [Knife Throwing (Common)], [Twin Blade (Common)]
Race Skills: [Identify (Common)]
Luke stared at his mana reserve. Each knife costs 5 mana to create.
The new skill, [Twin Blade], doubled the throw, but it drained more, too. The duplicate cost 3 mana. As far as he could tell, [Basic Blade Handling], [Knife Throwing], and [Identify] didn’t burn mana. Not directly.
[Twin Blade] did, which made it useful, dangerous, and expensive as hell.
Luke still had five free points. He had held onto them until his class reached level 3 before making any decisions. Now, there was no reason to wait. No dump stat. No gamble. Just survival. Without hesitation, he placed every point exactly where he needed it.
Updated Stats:
Strength: 12
Agility: 17 -> 18
Endurance: 7 -> 8
Vitality: 14 -> 15
Perception: 12 -> 13
Intelligence: 8 -> 9
Free Points: 5 -> 0
The effect came immediately. A gentle heat spread through his body, as if the system were pouring invisible energy into his muscles, bones, and nerves. Every point had a job. Agility made him faster. Endurance kept him standing longer. Vitality pushed his HP higher. Perception sharpened his senses and reactions. And Intelligence, now more important than ever, expanded his mana pool.
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[Health Points (HP): 133/140 -> 143/150]
[Mana Points (MP): 12/80 -> 22/90]
[Stamina: 48/70 -> 58/80]
The interface pulsed as the new values settled into place. Luke let out a slow breath. His body felt steadier. More focused. The progress was real. Small as hell, but real. For one stupid second, Luke almost felt hopeful.
Then his stomach growled. Loudly. Luke looked at the kobold’s body lying nearby, the marks of his knives still visible in its thick skin.
Silence.
“Yeah... knew this was coming.”
In front of the gazebo, Luke built a makeshift fire. The flames danced against the stone, casting trembling shadows across the columns and floor. Heat rolled off the flames in waves, and the smell of roasting meat did nothing to convince his brain this counted as food.
He knew the basics of survival. Everyone did. In theory. Ever since the System arrived on Earth in the previous century, survival classes had become mandatory almost everywhere. Not because governments cared about camping, but because sooner or later, someone in every classroom might accept the call.
Luke still remembered those classes, mostly because they were hard to forget. The teachers had explained how, decades ago, 20% of the world’s population had simply vanished. Five months later, those people came back different. They were the first. The pioneers.
They had been taken to the Tutorial. There, they found out the multiverse was real, met the System, and became part of it. When they returned, they brought back new laws. New truths. New gods. Real gods.
That part had messed with Luke’s head as a kid.
Luke remembered the official explanation because every kid had. It was simple enough to terrify anyone: the universe was not alone. There was a vast multiverse full of different races, civilizations, and ways of life. The gods who came to Earth were called Divinities, beings responsible for helping newly awakened worlds survive integration.
Helping. That was the word everyone used. Luke had never been sure how much he believed it.
With the Divinities’ guidance, Earth changed. It grew past every natural limit and became the largest planet in the solar system. New continents rose. Oceans deepened. Mountains touched the sky. Floating islands appeared from nowhere.
The planet itself was reshaped to fit the logic of the System. Wars ended. Borders collapsed. Then came the chaos. Creatures appeared, some monstrous, others merely territorial. Even ordinary animals began mutating under the System’s influence. But humanity survived. Adapted.
Guilds appeared. Integration-focused corporations gained power. Governments created internal forces made up of individuals “bound to the System.” All of that sounded huge in a classroom. Down here, starving in front of roasted monster meat, it sounded almost stupid.
Luke was born decades later. In the world he grew up in, almost 45% of the population had already integrated, and every year, more people accepted the call. He had been one of them. Now, staring at the meat over the fire, all he could mutter was:
“What the hell did I get myself into?”
Luke bit off a piece. It was awful. Bitter, stringy, and hard to swallow. But it went down. It had to. As he forced the meat down, his thoughts caught up with him. Earth. His family.
Family had always been a strange word. Mostly because Luke had spent thirteen years waiting for one person to come back. Luke had a father, a mother, a younger sister, and an older brother who was almost thirty. But none of them were his biological family. He was adopted, and no matter how hard he tried, he had never been able to fully accept that.
His mind went back to a past he usually kept buried. He had been poor. Very poor. It was just him and his mother. She had grown up in an orphanage and become a mother far too young. The two of them lived in a small, old house that looked like it was one bad storm away from collapsing under its own weight.
She did what she could. She worked as a maid for the Baumanns: Martin, Clara, and their son, Noah. They were rich. Martin was a well-known lawyer, Clara a homemaker. They had met Luke’s mother during a difficult time and offered her work, a generous attempt to help her get back on her feet.
Luke grew up around that family from the time he was three. But there was one memory that followed him every night: the day he turned five, the day she had that conversation with him.
His mother sat beside him, took his small hands in hers, and told him, voice trembling, that she wanted to give him something better. A future. She said it hurt that she couldn’t buy him toys, that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to pay for a good school, that she didn’t know how much longer she could keep supporting him. Then she told him she had made a decision. She called it a step forward. For him.
The next day, she was gone. All she left behind was a letter. Luke had been small, but he remembered reading that letter over and over as he grew up. In it, his mother explained that she had chosen to join the System. She believed that if she got a good class, she could find better work. Maybe as a healer, a profession that, in the new world, could surpass even trained doctors.
She believed she would come back stronger. That she would finally be able to give her son everything he deserved. But she never came back. Thirteen years passed. Luke waited every single day.
After she left, Martin and Clara took him in. They were good people. Kind. They legally adopted him, raised him as their son, gave him an education, comfort, and encouraged him to study law so he could follow in Noah’s footsteps, their eldest son. And Luke was grateful. But gratitude didn’t fill the hole she left behind. He never felt completely part of that place. Something was always missing. Something had been torn out of him before he was old enough to name it.
The only time he truly felt like part of the Baumann family was when Lillian was born. The youngest. The baby of the family. He watched her grow, watched her turn six. She called him brother without hesitation, hugged his legs, showed him crooked drawings, and curled up in his lap to hear stories. For a while, Luke almost believed he had found a home.
Then came the guilt. He realized he could no longer remember his mother’s face. Or her voice. The thought hollowed him out from the inside. His mother had never liked taking pictures. There were no records, except for a single official document Martin kept locked in his office.
That night, Luke went in to look for it. He needed to see her again. He needed to remember. When he opened the folder, he stayed silent for a long time. The face in the photo belonged to a stranger. He didn’t recognize her. Even the voice in his head didn’t feel real. That was the night he made his decision. He accepted the System’s invitation not for glory, and not for power. For answers.
If he survived the Tutorial, he could climb step by step through the System, reaching empires, divine orders, multiversal governments. There were ways. Archives. Databases. Oracles. Methods to find out what had happened in previous editions of the Tutorial. He only wanted to know one thing: whether his mother was still alive, or whether he had spent thirteen years waiting for a ghost.
The crackle of the fire broke the silence. Luke chewed another piece of lizard meat, trying not to think too hard about the taste. He stared into the flames while the embers blinked like they were mocking him.
He had been trapped on this floor for three days, and he had reached one conclusion.
“I’m dead in less than a month.”
Luke stood slowly, walked to the gazebo, and drove a knife into the table, right on top of the message left by the last occupant.
No way out.
He started pacing. Maybe moving would help keep the panic away. Maybe not. Over the past few days, he had tried to keep himself under control, pretending he still had time, but now reality was kicking the door in.
“The monsters here... they’re too weak to be the final floor’s challenge.”
He stopped and looked toward the waterfall tunnel.
“Either this dungeon is completely insane, or all these monsters fell down here by accident.”
That was the most logical theory. They came from the first floor. Weaker creatures that, maybe during a fight or some stupid mistake, fell into the river and were dragged by the current all the way to the waterfall, dropping into this forgotten chamber.
“System routing errors happen at least once a year. Lucky me.”
Which meant the owner of the bag, the one who had written the note, had probably used those same monsters to get stronger. Tried to move on. And failed. Now, the monsters Luke had been killing were only leftovers. A new accidental generation. And that meant one simple thing: they would run out.
“I’m going to starve.”
Water wasn’t the problem. The waterfall fed the underground lake. Food was. No fruit. No edible plants. No roots. Nothing. The trees didn’t shed leaves. The soil didn’t seem natural. The forest felt like set dressing. Artificial. Put there to look alive without actually working as an ecosystem. His only source of food was the monsters.
“Shit. I’m so screwed.”
Even if one or two monsters fell from the upper floor, there were still the others out there. The prisoners. They would clear the area around the waterfall to keep themselves safe. Luke would be alone. No new monsters. No food. He turned toward the distant stone doors. Somewhere beyond them was the only thing that mattered now.
Then he exhaled. “I don’t have a choice.”
The words came out low. Tired. But firm.
“I get that damn boss key... or I die down here.”