The Summoning. That’s the name given to those chosen by Erebus to compete for ascension. Millennia ago, all the ascended vanished in what became known as the Dark Age, an erased stretch of history, and ever since, those who seek the glory of the competition are summoned from time to time.
Erebus tends toward balance, and the ascended are the ones who keep it. Even I don’t know what runs this system: it existed long before any memory. The truth is that every time the current world is used up, everything moves to another plane in search of new competitors. First the system takes the best of the new plane to test its potential. Once the potential is confirmed, Erebus terraforms itself there.
Now it was Earth’s turn.
Mythic? I blinked twice to make sure I’d read it right.
Classes and items are divided into rarity grades: common, uncommon, rare, epic, unique, legendary, mythic and divine. Thief sits at the bottom of the list, among the commons. A divine class is a legend, no one has ever seen one, and what comes after that not even the Erebians say out loud. In practice, the most anyone gets is mythic.
Twenty years earlier, I had started with the class nobody chooses. Now the screen was treating me like a rare prize.
But Umbra Initiate? I had never heard of it. And I had heard of a lot of things.
[All of your wounds have been healed]
[Your stamina has been restored]
[Please choose a weapon compatible with your class]
[Sword]
[Dagger]
[Spear]
[Scimitar]
[Halberd]
No staff, no bow, no grimoire. It was a physical-damage, close-combat class. The system didn’t say its name, but the list of weapons gave it away.
My ribs had stopped hurting. I sat up on the sidewalk and decided to enjoy the moment. It had been twenty years since I’d opened a new screen.
“Oh! A Unique class? Knight of the Blood Order?” Baekyung cheered beside me. “I don’t know what that is, but it suits me!”
“Hey, Baekyung, what are you talking about?”
The Blood Order. It really did suit that bastard, and that was the problem. I knew what came with the class, and I knew it came fast.
A sword and a shield appeared in Baekyung’s hands. Along with the weapons, a different smile appeared on his face, wider than before and emptier.
People like him are always the same. None of them resists the special trait of the Blood Order.
Okay. Time’s up for admiring screens.
“Where did those weapons come from? Do you know what’s going on? Where are the buildings?! Answer me, you lun—“
Before the older man could finish the sentence, Baekyung swung the sword and buried it in the middle of his head.
There it was. The bloodlust.
I didn’t waste any time and chose the spear, the weapon I knew best among the ones offered.
[Simple Spear]
[Assegai Spear]
[Hsu Quandao]
Options? That’s new. I touched the last one.
[Hsu Quandao selected]
[Basic Hsu Quandao]
[Rarity: Common (Novice)]
[Attributes: +2 Strength, +1 Dexterity]
A beginner’s weapon, and an excellent one. The broad blade at the end of a long shaft weighed just right in the right hands. In mine, which in that body could barely take a punch, it just weighed.
[Passive Skill acquired: Polearm Novice]
[Polearm Novice - Level 1]
[Attack speed with polearms increased by 10%]
[Passive Class Skill acquired: Soul Count]
[Passive Class Skill acquired: Shadow Walk]
[Active Class Skill acquired: Shadow Emergence]
Three skills right off the bat. As a Thief, I had gotten one passive and one active, and both were worse than any of these. I felt something I didn’t even remember existed: the silly joy of a kid opening a present.
[Soul Count]
[You can absorb the souls of living beings that have recently died]
[Count: 0]
[Shadow Walk - Level 1]
[Stealth doubled in shadows]
While I read, Baekyung went after the second man, still frozen by the death of the first. The bloodlust was a huge problem early on for people who got Blood Order classes. The urge to kill arrived all at once, and the human mind needed time to absorb it and calm down.
Time was what those two men didn’t have. I didn’t have much either.
I got up with the spear in my hand.
“Ah, I feel so much better now,” said Baekyung, wiping the sword on his pants.
No remorse. That was probably why the system picked that class for him. The system is a lot of things, but it isn’t stupid.
“Hm? Oh! You’re still alive? Hahaha, I see you got summoned too. That weapon’s pretty intimidating,” he said. “Hey, Sehun, how about we join forces? You heard, right? I got a Unique class! I’ll let you serve me, if you want!”
What a generous offer. Career plan, benefits, death at the end of the shift.
And if I hadn’t known what I knew, maybe I would have accepted, just out of fear of being next.
[Class Quest: Collect 1 Soul]
One soul. The description didn’t require it to be human. Any living being would do. Any.
Baekyung held out his left arm, the shield arm, toward me.
“So? Deal?”
The standard quest for anyone who joins an order like the Blood Order is to kill three living beings. Baekyung already had two.
He needs one more. I need one. At least the math got simple.
I raised my free hand to shake his. The redhead couldn’t hide his satisfaction. When I got close, he tried to grab my wrist and slide the sword in his right hand toward my neck.
Predictable. Baekyung fought the way he did in school, always with the same opening.
“Shadow Emergence.”
I said it quietly, almost to myself. The gloom pulled me in all at once.
“Where is he?!” Baekyung bellowed as the sword cut through air.
The cut came from behind, clean. I didn’t think about it. My arms made the whole movement, the twist of the hips, the weight of the shaft, the angle of the blade, all of it already repeated a thousand times in another life. His head hit the ground before his body did.
[Shadow Emergence - Level 1]
[Move through shadows up to two meters away]
[Recharge time: 30 seconds]
The Calamity of Oblivion has killed a lot of people. But it’s Kai Sehun’s first time. My palm was covered in specks of blood. I have to get used to this. Fast.
Only then did I notice my hand was shaking, and fear had nothing to do with it. My body had moved before I decided, as if it had been waiting for this forever. School, the cigarettes, the laughter: reason enough to hate him. But there was something older in that anger, something the book hadn’t given back to me yet.
There was also the voice from the sidewalk, with that patient coldness. It had decided the blow. I had only signed off on it.
Great. First hour of the apocalypse and I’m already sharing my body with a roommate.
When the headless body fell, a flaming purple sphere came out of its chest.
Purple? I looked behind me. The souls of the other two men glowed light blue. I reached out and touched the nearest one.
[Level 0 Soul collected]
[Class Quest complete]
[Congratulations on becoming an Umbra Initiate]
[Status Screen unlocked]
[Collected soul does not have a high enough level to increase attributes]
“Increase attributes? Must be something small. A big increase would basically be cheating. But not a high enough level?”
I took the second blue soul: the same message. I turned to the purple sphere and touched it.
[Level 1 Soul collected]
[Random physical attribute increased: Strength +2]
Two more for one soul. It seemed like little. A thousand souls from now, it would be absurd.
I knew that feeling from another life: finding a crooked rule of the world before everyone else.
[Soul with Unique potential collected]
[Attribute bonus granted: Umbra +1]
“Umbra? I’ve never seen that attribute. Open Status screen.”
[Name: Kai Sehun]
[Level: 1]
[Class: ???]
[Tier 1: Umbra Initiate]
[Strength: 11 (+2)]
[Dexterity: 10 (+1)]
[Intelligence: 15]
[Vitality: 8]
[Tenacity: 6]
[Luck: 8]
[Umbra: 1]
Apart from the question-mark class and the attribute called Umbra, nothing was different from how it had been in Erebus.
“It’s actually weird to see numbers this low,” I said. “At least I got strength right away. My physical attributes were always a joke.”
Luck 8. On that, the system had been honest.
My heart beat faster with every line. In Erebus, my only weakness had been a lack of strength. My talents were elsewhere: running territory, controlling a faction, reading the map before everyone else. That’s why I didn’t get that far. I didn’t know this class the way I knew Thief, but I felt I could go further with it. Added to what I knew, it was the best combination I’d ever had in my hands.
This time I can do it. This time I’ll get there.
While I thought, the buildings in sight vanished little by little. Earth’s technology wasn’t good for anything anymore. The terraforming would take everything, and only books and brilliant minds would remain. Magic is far cheaper and stronger than any weapon. A mage above S-level has more power than a hydrogen bomb.
A lot of people were going to die, especially in the first hours. If castles were popping up nearby, I had to be landing in a city. But Erebus is gigantic, and many would land in danger zones, be devoured by monsters, enslaved by other races, or worse.
In the middle of old Seoul, an even stronger earthquake shook the capital. A gigantic tower began to sprout from the ground and rise toward the sky.
The Tower of Despair.
I had gone through hell inside that hell. But it was necessary: anyone who wanted power had to go in there. In a few hours, the inhabitants of Erebus would be teleported here, and the line at the entrance would turn into a war. Whoever got there first would get to choose.
I looked one last time at the three bodies on the sidewalk. I waited to feel something, and what I felt was little, and that little bothered me more than the blood.
Then I started running toward the Tower, whose top had already passed the clouds.