The first thing Eren Blake noticed was the silence.
No roaring engines. No distant chatter. No announcements echoing from speakers mounted around California City. There was only the sound of wind passing through dry grass, and the occasional creak of a branch on one of the dead trees scattered across the barren land.
He stood motionless for several seconds, staring at the unfamiliar world in front of him.
The sky was a dull gray, without a single cloud. The sun hung high, throwing its pale light across an endless stretch of ash-colored earth. Enormous rocks jutted out of the ground here and there, and far away, the hills rolled toward the horizon like the backs of sleeping beasts.
It was a desolate place.
And somehow, he was expected to build a settlement here.
Eren lowered his gaze to the device strapped around his wrist. The screen had gone dark after showing the message that marked the end of his journey through the Portal Unit. He tapped it twice, and it lit up.
[WELCOME TO DOMINION EXPANSE.]
The message faded, replaced by the standard interface given to every graduate entering Dominion Expanse for the first time.
Eren stared at it. Then he looked around again.
"...Seriously?"
Three years at the Preparatory Academy. He had studied the geography, the dangers beyond established territories, the importance of resource management, the procedures every new Settler was expected to follow. He had memorized the survival guidelines. He had passed the examinations. He had even sat through countless lectures on the sacrifices required to establish a settlement.
Yet standing in the middle of nowhere, he couldn’t help wondering whether the instructors had deliberately skipped the part where the government dropped people in a wasteland.
He shook his head. If the academy had taught him one thing, it was that panicking before understanding a situation never helped.
First, information.
He opened the territory registration.
[TERRITORY STATUS]:
Owner: Eren Blake.
Territory Name: Unnamed.
Territorial Rank: Unranked.
Location: The Ashen Frontier.
Development: 0%.
Survivability: Critical.
[Notice: Your territory has been registered.]
[Notice: Your territory has not met the requirements for ranking.]
Eren read it twice.
Unranked. That was expected. Every new territory started without a rank until it met the minimum requirements to be assessed. Development at zero percent made sense too. He had only just arrived, and there wasn’t a single structure in sight.
But the survivability bothered him.
Critical.
He wasn’t sure whether the system meant the territory or him personally, and he suspected neither answer would be comforting.
He dismissed the interface and examined the land more carefully. It was mostly flat, though the terrain grew uneven to the north. A few bare trees stood beside a cluster of dark rocks, their twisted branches clawing at the sky. The ground under his boots was dry, covered in a thin layer of gray dust.
No houses. No roads. No fences. Not even a path leading away from where he stood.
He checked the map. A single marker blinked at his position, surrounded by a huge stretch of unexplored terrain. Then he noticed a line of text beneath it.
[Nearest Registered Settlement: 343 KM]
Eren blinked as he read it again.
Three hundred and forty-three kilometers.
For several seconds, he just stared at the number, waiting for his brain to process it.
"...What?"
He zoomed in, hoping he had misread it. Maybe the figure referred to a major city. Maybe there was a smaller outpost nearby that hadn’t loaded yet. He searched every tab.
Nothing. The nearest registered settlement really was 343 kilometers away.
He lowered the device and looked up at the empty land around him.
"...You’re kidding me."
He had known the Ashen Frontier was remote. Every student who chose the Settler Path knew new settlements were often founded far from civilization. But this was a different kind of far. Even if he found a road, which he hadn’t, walking that distance would take days. And that was before any monsters got involved.
For a moment, he thought about going back.
Then he remembered what every graduate was told before departure. Once the transfer was complete, the settlement registration became active. Returning to Earth required an authorized portal, and the government did not promise to bring back anyone who regretted their Path until the day of the General Portal Opening.
It was only then that they would choose to return or not.
He had known all of that when he made his choice.
But knowing something in a classroom and living it were two very different things.
"Fine," he muttered, opening the inventory. "Let’s see what the government was generous enough to give me."
[STARTER RESOURCES]:
- Bread × 5 loaves
- Drinking Water × 2 liters
- Basic Clothing × 1 set
- Personal Survival Kit × 1
Eren stared at the list. Then he opened the survival kit.
A small utility knife.
A flint striker.
A metal cup.
A thin emergency blanket.
A few meters of rope.
That was everything.
He checked the inventory again. Then a third time. Maybe the device hadn’t loaded properly. Maybe the rest of his supplies were sitting in some storage tab he hadn’t found. He searched every menu.
Nothing changed.
No weapon. No tent. No construction tools. No extra food. No medical supplies beyond whatever fit in the kit.
His expression slowly changed. At first, he had been confused. Then suspicious.
Now he was starting to feel genuinely offended.
"Five loaves of bread?"
He looked at the empty wilderness.
"Two liters of water?"
He turned toward the distant hills.
"Not even a damn tent?"
His voice grew louder with every question.
"What exactly am I supposed to do with this? Build a kingdom with a loaf of bread in each hand?"
The wind swept across the barren ground. It offered no answer.
Eren laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh.
He had imagined this moment many times. Himself standing on a hill, looking over the land that would become the foundation of his settlement. The first buildings. The first fields. The moment the system acknowledged his progress. He had even thought of the name he would give his territory.
He had never imagined starting with five loaves of bread and two liters of water.
At this rate, he’d be lucky to survive long enough to name the place.
He rubbed his forehead. "Calm down, Eren. Just calm down."
There had to be an explanation. During their final weeks at the academy, the instructors had spent entire lessons on the transfer procedure. New Settlers weren’t supposed to arrive with enough to build a city, but they were supposed to receive enough to survive their first days: a basic weapon, sufficient food and water, a tent or the materials to assemble one, and a few simple tools.
Not luxuries. The bare minimum. The academy had made that very clear.
A utility knife was not a weapon. A few meters of rope were not building materials. A blanket was not a tent. And five loaves of bread would not keep anyone alive while they built a settlement hundreds of kilometers from civilization.
He could ration the bread. He could look for edible plants, hunt small animals, search for water. But all of that burned time and energy, and he had no idea what lived out here. For all he knew, the first creature he met could tear him apart before he finished turning around.
He had studied monster classifications. Some creatures in Dominion Expanse could outrun vehicles. Some had natural weapons that cut through metal. Some could even twist their surroundings, turning a harmless stretch of land into a deadly trap.
He didn’t know which ones lived in the Ashen Frontier. That uncertainty was almost worse than knowing for sure.
His jaw tightened. He had expected hardship. He had prepared for it. But there was a difference between choosing a hard road and being handed almost nothing to walk it with.
And the worst part was that he couldn’t even complain to anyone.
His thoughts drifted back to the ceremony. Daniel had looked at him as though he had announced he was about to throw himself off a building. Kai had been speechless. Bradley had tried to joke, but even he couldn’t hide the worry.
The four of them had spent three years assuming they would walk the same path. Explorers. They would join expeditions, gain experience, and figure out the rest along the way. It had seemed like the natural choice, and a good one.
Explorers had freedom. They could hunt monsters, chase ruins, travel between settlements, and build careers as they pleased. A Settler was different. A Settler was bound to their land, and leaving it without authorization could cost them their territorial rights.
Explorers could seek opportunities.
Settlers had to create them.
Eren understood the appeal of the Explorer Path. He just had never wanted what everyone else wanted. He wanted a place that belonged to him. Something that would still be standing long after he was gone. And maybe, somewhere deep down, he wanted to prove that the Settler Path wasn’t the miserable choice everyone believed it was.
Unfortunately, the wasteland around him seemed determined to make him regret it.
He closed his eyes. "Daniel, if you could see me right now, you’d laugh until you passed out."
He could almost hear his best friend’s reply.
’I told you so, idiot.’
A brief smile tugged at his lips. Then he remembered the bread, and it vanished.
"No. You’d tell me to come back before I starved to death."
He sighed and looked at the horizon. There was no point regretting it now. He had chosen this road, and he intended to walk it to the end.
But first, he had to survive.
He began sorting through his items. The knife could cut branches and prepare food. The rope might help hold materials together. The flint striker could start a fire, if he found anything worth burning. The blanket would give him some protection from the cold at night. None of it solved his real problems, but it was better than nothing.
The sun was still high. He had a few hours before dark, and in that time, he needed water, a place to sleep, and somewhere he wouldn’t become an easy meal for whatever roamed the Ashen Frontier.
He glanced at the map one last time.
Three hundred and forty-three kilometers.
The number almost seemed funny now. He wasn’t walking anywhere, not with these supplies and not blind. If he wanted to live, he would have to make this place work.
Everything the academy had taught him, he would have to do now. Only this time, there was no instructor at the front of a classroom to tell him what came next. No classmates to share the burden. And if he made a mistake, there might not be a second chance.
Eren clenched his fists.
"All right. Let’s see what we’ve got."
Then another thought crept in, and it was not a pleasant one.
The Ashen Frontier’s name had come up in his textbooks. Usually in lessons about abandoned territories and failed settlements, regions left untouched since the Great War. He couldn’t remember all the details, but one fact stuck. Some parts of the frontier had gone centuries without meaningful rain.
He looked at the dry ground. The dead trees and the distant hills.
"...Of course."
He let out a bitter laugh. "Why wouldn’t it be a place where it doesn’t rain?"
He didn’t know where he’d find enough water for himself, let alone a growing settlement. He didn’t know whether the soil could grow anything. He didn’t know whether the monsters would even allow him to try. All he knew was that he had been given a piece of land, a few loaves of bread, and the freedom to fail.
And the government apparently thought that was enough.
For the first time since choosing the Settler Path, genuine anger rose in his chest. He had accepted the risks. He had accepted the restrictions. He had even accepted the possibility that his settlement might fail despite his best efforts.
But this? Sending a new Settler into an undeveloped region hundreds of kilometers from civilization, without even the basic supplies he’d been promised?
That was ridiculous.
He clenched his jaw. "Fine. If this is how you want to play it, then I’ll..."
He never finished the sentence.
Because something, in front of his eyes and only his, lit up.
[Condition confirmed: Settler registered in Dominion Expanse.]
[Ultimate Summoning System has been fully activated!]
[Congratulations, Eren Blake!]
[You have received the Class: Spirit Summoner!]
[Class Description: You have acquired the ability to summon any dead entity from anywhere in the universe, as far as they once lived.]
Eren froze.
His anger vanished all at once, but his heartbeat did not.
The screen kept going.
[Due to your unshaken resolve in the face of adversity, you have received a special starting privilege.]
[Three SSS-Rank Summoning Allowances have been granted!]
[SSS Summoning Allowance × 3.]
[Allowance Rank: SSS.]
[Allowance Rank: SSS.]
[Allowance Rank: SSS.]
He stared at the glowing lines.
Once. Twice.
He didn’t know what a Summoning Allowance was. He had no idea what it could do. All he knew was that nothing in three years at the Preparatory Academy had ever mentioned a rank higher than S.
And the system had just given him three of them.
"...Three?" His voice came out in a whisper. "All SSS?"
"Tell me... am I fucking dreaming???"