A dark sky hung over District 9—a place even the government refused to acknowledge as part of their territory.
The night wind cut through the bones, carrying the smell of rusted metal, rot, and old blood that never truly dried. Luciel Caelis stepped through puddles of sewage, down a shadowy, dingy alley.
The boy's Adam's apple bobbed slowly. His breath was cold. His eyes were empty.
No one was waiting at home. No home.
It was normal.
"Even if I die tomorrow, who cares?"
His hands tightly clutched a plastic bag filled with scrap metal. His feet bled from stepping on broken bottles. But he kept walking.
Until the voice came.
> "Help! Brother! Help!"
Reflexively.
Luciel turned quickly. A small child had fallen at the end of the hallway. Behind him, a Feral Hound—a small, D-class monster—jumped, fangs bared.
"...Tch."
His fists tightened. His muscles tensed. Without thinking, he ran.
His body slammed into the monster, slamming him into the wall. Claws and fangs immediately sliced into his shoulder and side.
Warm blood spurted.
"Damn it. This hurts. This fucking hurts—"
But he remained standing in front of the child.
His right hand felt for the stone floor, and silently, he began pounding the monster's head. Once. Twice. Three times. Six times. Eight. Until his screams turned to silence.
His body shook. His hands trembled. His vision blurred.
But the child was alive.
And he… almost died.
"Funny. This world really is funny."
"All this time I've been asking for one thing—JUST ONE thing—why does everyone else get the system, but I don't?"
"Am I too poor to be saved?"
"Or maybe... God just hates me."
Luciel smiled lopsidedly, bitterly. His face was bloody, his body unsteady.
> "...System activated. Synchronization initiated..."
The voice... wasn't real. But too clear to ignore.
> "Unique code detected."
"Synchronization owner: Rael Caelis."
"Rare System 'Codebreaker v0.01' activated in emergency mode."
Rael's eyes widened.
"What…?"
A blue holographic panel opened before him, swaying like hot air. Foreign words appeared—scrambled, broken, cracked—like a system that shouldn't have existed.
📘 [⛔ System Activated – Luciel Caelis]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
LEVEL: 1
SYSTEM: [Codebreaker v0.01 – LOCKED]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
HP: 60/100
MP: 20 / 30
STR: 5 | AGI: 6 | INT: 4 | VIT: 5
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
REGISTERED SKILLS: —
SYNCHRONIZATION: 3%
MODE: EMERGENCY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
> System not recognized by Union.
> Main components locked.
> The "Skill Hijack" ability is disabled.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Finally. FINALLY. But why now?!"
"Why not when I was nearly beaten to death three months ago?"
"Why not when I saw my foster mother cut in half by an orc?!"
"Is this system waiting for me to be completely devoid of anyone first?"
Rael let out a small, bitter laugh.
Not happiness.
More like... the explosion of everything he'd been holding back.
"Welcome, Luciel Caelis."
"Welcome... to the world you'll break yourself."
His silver eyes glinted.
And for the first time, this world gave him something.
Not love. Not pity.
But a tool to avenge everything.
"If this is a game... so be it."
"I'll play crazier than anyone."
"And one by one, I'll slaughter all those who have ever looked down on me."