A scrawny boy sat hunched over the desk in his tiny dorm room, textbooks piled like barricades around him. His eyes were bloodshot from too many late nights, and his cheap glasses slid down the bridge of his nose for the hundredth time that day.
On the table lay a worn paperback, its edges frayed and its cover bent nearly in half. The title read The Power of Heaven. He traced the letters with a finger, hesitated for a moment, then flipped the book open once again.
It was supposed to be just another web novel he had stumbled across in his endless scrolling. A boy loses his family in a dungeon break, survives against all odds, and rises step by step until he becomes the strongest hunter in the world. An SS-rank. A legend. The story had the usual flare—guilds rising and falling, monsters flooding out of gates, glory won with blood. In time, the boy even founded his own guild, the Lion Guild, and the world sang his name.
But as the scholarship student turned each page, a thought gnawed at him.
If the main character had climbed so high, if he had wielded such monstrous power… why had he never once tried to end the dungeons themselves? Why had he never asked where they came from?
The novel carried on regardless, blind to his questions. It ended not with revelation, but with the protagonist's marriage. A happily-ever-after that felt more like a curtain hastily pulled across an unfinished stage.
He clicked his tongue, frustration simmering. Then, in a fit of boldness, he tracked down the author's contact information. One long night of typing produced a carefully worded email, filled with questions no one else seemed to ask.
Days later, a reply arrived. Short. Almost mocking.
If you want answers, why not solve the mystery yourself?
The boy stared at the screen for a long time, then shut the laptop with a snap. Irritated and a little embarrassed, he tossed himself onto the bed and let exhaustion take him.
When he opened his eyes again, the world had changed.
No cramped dorm. No piles of textbooks. No blinking laptop light. Instead, he stood on a dirt road lined with unfamiliar buildings, the air heavy with the scent of smoke and iron. It took him several stunned moments to realize—
He was inside The Power of Heaven.
Not as the tragic protagonist. Not as one of the glittering hunters that stood at the top of the world. No… he was just a nobody. A face in the crowd. A background character without a single line in the novel.
At least, that was what he thought.
Until a mechanical voice rang inside his head.
System: Mission unsuccessful. Host must be punished.
His heart jumped. "What… what was that?"
System: Initiate level 8 punishment. Fight until death.
The boy blinked, panic welling in his chest. "What?"
But no answer came. Only the silence of a world that was suddenly all too real.