The dragon was still warm when I sat on it.
Not my proudest moment, but the forest floor was wet and the Flame Drake’s corpse was conveniently flat where it had collapsed.
Its scales radiated a pleasant heat — like a leather chair left in the sun.
I’d slept on worse.
The System hadn’t stopped screaming at me.
Blue notifications crowded my vision like aggressive pop-up ads, each one more irritated than the last:
[SYSTEM NOTICE: ANOMALY ZERO HAS ELIMINATED A LEVEL 85 FLAME DRAKE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: THIS RESULT IS UNACCEPTABLE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: RECALCULATING THREAT ASSESSMENT… ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: STOP SITTING ON THE CORPSE. THAT IS DISRESPECTFUL TO THE NATURAL ORDER.]
“You sent it to kill me,” I said, leaning back against a ridge of cooling scales.
“I think respect left the conversation early.” The notifications flickered — almost like a flinch — then resumed with renewed hostility.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: MANDATORY REWARD DISPENSED. SKILL ACQUIRED: VOID FLAME — RANK ERROR. YOU DO NOT DESERVE THIS.]
“And yet here we are.”
I willed the skill information to appear, the way you’d flex a muscle you didn’t know you had.
It came naturally — instinct more than knowledge.
[SKILL: VOID FLAME]
[RANK: ERROR]
[DESCRIPTION: Generates and projects flames infused with Void energy. Burns all matter, magical constructs, and conceptual defenses. Cannot be blocked, absorbed, or redirected by any System-recognized defense.]**
[DAMAGE SCALING: ERROR]
I flexed my fingers.
A flicker of black-violet fire danced across my knuckles — cold, not hot.
It didn’t burn my skin.
It felt like holding a piece of the dark space between stars.
“Not bad,” I murmured, closing my fist.
The flame vanished.
“What else do I have?”
I focused inward, reaching for that cold presence in my chest — the thing that had eaten the dragon’s fire and punched through its skull.
It pulsed in response, dark and patient, like a sleeping predator acknowledging my attention.
A new screen materialized — my Status Window, apparently:
[STATUS WINDOW: REN NOVARTIS]
[RACE: HUMAN (???)]
[CLASS: ERROR — UNDEFINED]
[LEVEL: ERROR — CANNOT BE CALCULATED]
[STATS:]
[STR: ERROR]
[AGI: ERROR]
[VIT: ERROR]
[INT: ERROR]
[WIS: ERROR]
[CHA: ERROR]
[LUK: ERROR]
[SKILLS: VOID FLAME, VOID STEP (LOCKED), ???, ???, ???]
[TITLES: ANOMALY ZERO]
[STATUS EFFECTS: SYSTEM HOSTILITY — MAXIMUM, VOID CORE — ACTIVE, DEATH MARK — PERMANENT]
[SYSTEM WARNING: THIS ENTITY SHOULD NOT EXIST.]
Every stat — every single measurable value — returned nothing but errors.
My class was undefined.
My level was uncalculable.
Even my race had a question mark, like the System couldn’t decide what I was.
I stared at the warning at the bottom.
This entity should not exist.
“Harsh,” I said.
“But not inaccurate.”
I dismissed the window and studied my surroundings properly for the first time.
The forest was ancient — trees taller than any I’d seen on Earth, their bark dark purple with veins of faint bioluminescence.
The canopy above filtered light into scattered beams of gold and green.
Beautiful, in a way that felt fundamentally alien.
The air hummed.
Not with sound — with energy.
I could feel it now, a constant background vibration that pressed against my skin.
The System, I realized.
It was everywhere.
In the air, the trees, the ground beneath me.
This entire world was saturated with it.
And it was watching me.
Every second.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: NEW QUEST ASSIGNED.]
I sighed.
“Already?”
[QUEST: SURVIVE THE IRONWOOD FOREST]
[OBJECTIVE: Reach the forest’s edge. Distance: 12.4 km.]
[DIFFICULTY: B-RANK — ADJUSTED TO SS-RANK FOR TARGET: ANOMALY ZERO]
[HAZARDS: Enhanced monster density. Environmental traps. System-generated obstacles.]
[REWARD: SOUL SIGHT — RANK A. Note: Will be granted as RANK ERROR due to anomaly status. The System protests this but cannot override its own laws.]
[FAILURE PENALTY: ADDITIONAL DEATH MARK APPLIED.]
[SYSTEM NOTE: I have tripled the monster population in this forest. Walk fast.]
I read it twice.
Then I laughed — a genuine, surprised sound that echoed through the trees.
The System was petty.
It couldn’t kill me directly.
Its own rules prevented that.
So instead, it was gaming its own mechanics — adjusting difficulty, buffing monsters, stacking the deck.
But those same rules forced it to offer fair rewards, and because I was an anomaly, the rewards were automatically upgraded to broken levels.
The System was trapped by its own design.
Every attempt to kill me made me stronger.
“You know,” I said to the empty air, “this is a terrible strategy. The more you throw at me, the more I gain. Basic cost-benefit analysis.”
A long pause.
Then:
[SYSTEM NOTICE: …I am aware. I am working on alternatives. In the meantime, please walk into the forest and die. Thank you.]
“Polite. I appreciate the effort.”
I stood, stretched, and started walking.
The forest was hostile within minutes.
Monsters appeared — not naturally, but spawned.
I could feel the System’s influence each time, a pulse of energy that preceded every creature.
They materialized from the shadows between trees, from the undergrowth, from the air itself.
Wolves the size of cars with obsidian fur.
Serpents that dripped acid.
Things with too many legs and not enough face.
I killed them all.
It wasn’t heroic.
It wasn’t dramatic.
It was efficient.
My old instincts guided my new body with mechanical precision — dodge, strike, move.
Every creature had a weak point that I could see, feel, almost taste.
The Void Core pulsed with each kill, drinking in whatever energy the monsters released.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: WAVE 3 COMPLETE. DEPLOYING WAVE 4.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: WHY ARE YOU STILL ALIVE.]
I ducked under a lunging beast — some kind of bear-boar hybrid with tusks like swords — and drove my elbow into its throat.
It collapsed, gurgling.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: WAVE 4 COMPLETE. …DEPLOYING WAVE 5.]
The System watched in increasingly agitated silence as I carved through its monsters like they were training dummies.
After the twelfth wave — a spider-thing the size of a minivan that I dispatched by driving my fist through its head — I paused to catch my breath.
Not because I was tired.
Because I’d noticed something.
I wasn’t just fighting.
I was enjoying it.
Not the killing — I’d had enough of that in my last life.
But the movement.
The way this body responded, faster and stronger than anything human should be.
The dark energy flowing through me like a second heartbeat.
The pure, uncomplicated simplicity of a world that wanted me dead and my complete refusal to comply.
In my old life, I’d felt nothing.
No fear, no joy, no purpose.
Here, sitting on a dead spider in an alien forest while a cosmic AI plotted my murder, I felt something I hadn’t experienced in twenty-seven years of living and dying.
Alive.
“Keep them coming,” I murmured, standing and rolling my shoulders.
The System obliged with what felt like reluctant fury:
[SYSTEM NOTICE: WAVE 13 DEPLOYING. DIFFICULTY INCREASED. AGAIN.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: STOP SMILING. IT IS UNSETTLING.]
I walked deeper into the Ironwood Forest, hands in my pockets, surrounded by a world that was beautiful and broken and trying very hard to kill me.
I’d been dead for — what, hours?
A day?
And already, this was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me.
The forest stretched ahead, dark and full of monsters.
Beyond it, presumably, civilization — people, cities, answers to why I was here and what the Void Core actually was.
Questions for later.
For now, I walked.
The System seethed.
And somewhere deep in my chest, the Void Core pulsed — patient, hungry, waiting.
We were just getting started.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: …You are going the wrong direction.]
I kept walking.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: FINE. I moved the forest exit to where you are going. I REFUSE to give you the satisfaction of being right by accident.]
“Appreciated.”
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I HATE YOU.]
“You’ll get over it.”
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I WILL NOT.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: …Walk faster. The exit is 2.3 kilometers ahead. I want you out of this forest so I can plan something worse.]
I smiled and kept my pace deliberately slow.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I SAW THAT. I AM ADDING ANOTHER DEATH MARK OUT OF SPITE.]
[DEATH MARK APPLIED: 3/???]