### Chapter 1: The Trash Apprentice
A searing pain, sharp and visceral, ripped Su Yuan from the black abyss of unconsciousness. It felt like a thousand white-hot needles were stabbing into every fiber of his being, a corrosive fire coursing through channels that were never meant to hold it. He gasped, a ragged, desperate sound tearing from his throat, his body convulsing on the cold stone floor.
This was the pain of failure. The pain of rejection.
Slowly, the agonizing sensation subsided, leaving a dull, throbbing ache in its wake. It was a familiar ghost, a constant reminder of his own inadequacy. Su Yuan pushed himself up, his limbs trembling with exhaustion. His coarse, grey apprentice robe was damp with sweat, clinging unpleasantly to his gaunt frame.
He took in his surroundings, his gaze sweeping over the spartan, cramped room. A thin, lumpy mattress lay on a rickety wooden frame in one corner. A small, wobbly desk and a stool stood against the opposite wall. A single, grimy window high above offered a sliver of the crimson-streaked twilight sky. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't a nightmare. This was his reality.
For a month now, he had woken up in this world, in this body. A world he knew better than his own, yet one he had never expected to inhabit.
Arcane Destiny Online.
In his previous life on Earth, Su Yuan had been a legend in the game. He was 'Void,' a top-ranked Archmage, a guild leader who had conquered dungeons and slain server-wide bosses. He knew every spell, every secret quest, every hidden mechanic. The game had been his life, his escape, his domain.
Now, it was his prison.
He wasn't a player anymore. He was an NPC, a background character so insignificant he might as well have been a cobblestone. The memories of this body's original owner had fused with his own, painting a bleak and pitiful picture. This Su Yuan was a fourteen-year-old orphan, a charity case taken in by the Azure Flame Magic Academy—one of the most unremarkable, third-rate magic institutions in the entire kingdom.
And even in this third-rate academy, he was at the absolute bottom.
The original Su Yuan had clung to the dream of becoming a powerful mage, a desperate hope to escape his miserable life. He had studied harder than anyone, memorized every basic theory, and practiced the foundational Mana Gathering Meditation until he collapsed.
It was all for nothing.
His talent, his innate magical potential, was graded as 'Inferior-Tier 1.' In a world where talent was everything, it was a death sentence. It meant his mana affinity was abysmal. His soul was like a sieve, incapable of retaining the ambient energy of the world. Trying to gather mana was like trying to scoop water with a net. The brief, agonizing moment the energy entered his body before violently escaping was the source of the pain that had just woken him.
He was ridiculed by his peers, pitied by his instructors, and largely ignored by everyone else. His nickname, whispered behind his back and sometimes spat to his face, was 'The Empty Vessel.'
A bitter laugh escaped Su Yuan's lips, a hollow, grating sound in the quiet room. The irony was suffocating. Void, the master of cataclysmic spells, was now an empty vessel who couldn't even hold a single wisp of mana.
*Creak.*
The sound of the poorly-oiled door hinge shattered the silence. Su Yuan's head snapped up. Three figures filled the doorway, their shadows stretching long and distorted in the dying light. The one in the lead was Kael, a boy with a sneer permanently etched onto his face. He was flanked by his two usual sycophants, their expressions a mixture of arrogance and contempt.
Kael's eyes, filled with mockery, landed on Su Yuan's disheveled state. "Well, well. Look what we have here. Did the Empty Vessel try to fill himself up again?"
His cronies snickered.
"I saw him in the meditation hall earlier," one of them chimed in. "He was shaking like a leaf in a storm, face all red. I thought his head was going to pop!"
Su Yuan remained silent, pushing himself to his feet and leaning against the cold wall for support. His heart hammered in his chest, a pathetic rhythm of fear and humiliation that belonged to this body. On Earth, behind a screen, he would have incinerated players like this without a second thought. Here, he was as helpless as a cornered rat.
Kael stepped into the room, his polished leather boots making a sharp sound on the stone. He was from a minor merchant family, but his 'Mid-Tier 3' potential made him a star pupil among the first-year apprentices. In this small pond, he was the aspiring shark.
"Still not giving up, Su Yuan?" Kael said, circling him like a predator. "You should know your place. You're trash. An orphan who got lucky enough to be let in here to sweep floors. Don't delude yourself into thinking you can become a mage."
He stopped in front of Su Yuan, his face inches away. Su Yuan could smell the faint, sweet scent of a Mana-Replenishing Candy on his breath—a luxury he himself could never afford.
"Let me show you what real potential looks like," Kael whispered, his voice dripping with malice.
A faint, orange glow coalesced in Kael's palm. It was a simple, first-circle spell: [Glow]. It was the most basic cantrip, meant only to produce light. But for Su Yuan, who couldn't even gather the mana to attempt it, it was a display of unattainable power. The warm light illuminated the contempt on Kael's face, making him look monstrous.
"See this?" Kael taunted, the light flickering near Su Yuan's eyes. "This is mana. Something you will never, ever be able to control."
With a flick of his wrist, he didn't dispel the light. He pushed it forward. The small ball of magical energy, harmless as it was, slammed into Su Yuan's chest. It wasn't the impact that hurt; it was the symbolic violence. Su Yuan stumbled back, his shoulder hitting the wall hard.
The light dissipated. Laughter filled the room, loud and cruel.
"Pathetic," Kael scoffed, turning to leave. "Don't bother showing up for tomorrow's affinity assessment. You'll just embarrass yourself and the academy. Again."
The door slammed shut, plunging the room back into gloom. The echoes of their laughter seemed to cling to the damp air.
Su Yuan slid down the wall, his legs giving out. He hugged his knees to his chest, his body still trembling, not from the pain, but from the bone-deep helplessness. The memories and emotions of the original owner were a raging storm within him. The desperation, the sliver of hope that had kept him going, the crushing weight of reality—it all crashed down on him.
This wasn't a game.
In Arcane Destiny Online, he could die a thousand times and respawn in the nearest city. Here, death was final. The pain was real. The hunger gnawing at his stomach from a missed dinner was real. The cold that seeped into his bones from the threadbare blanket was real.
He had tried everything. He had used his superior knowledge from the game to analyze the Mana Gathering Meditation technique, attempting to optimize it, to find a loophole. But it was useless. Knowledge meant nothing without the hardware to execute it. His body, his soul, was fundamentally broken.
His future was a dark, narrow path leading nowhere. He would fail the upcoming assessment, be expelled from the academy, and thrown back onto the streets of a medieval city where a talentless orphan had no chance of survival. He would likely starve to death in some forgotten alley.
It was a completely hopeless situation.
He clenched his fists, his knuckles white. His nails dug into his palms. A single, hot tear traced a path through the grime on his cheek. He wasn't crying for the boy who used to own this body. He was crying for himself, for the cruel joke the universe had played on him. To be given a second life, only to have it be one of utter despair.
He closed his eyes, surrendering to the encroaching darkness of his thoughts. Maybe Kael was right. Maybe it was time to just give up.
It was in that moment of absolute surrender, when the last embers of hope were about to be extinguished, that something changed.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a light. It was a sensation, utterly alien. A cool, detached presence bloomed in the center of his mind, as serene and impartial as a glacier. It was the complete antithesis of the chaotic, burning pain of his failed magic.
A transparent blue screen, shimmering with a light that seemed to originate from nowhere, materialized in his field of vision. Crisp, white text began to scroll across it.
[System Initializing... 10%... 50%... 100%]
[Host soul signature confirmed. Binding process initiated.]
[Host: Su Yuan.]
[Unique Talent Detected: Error in World Logic. Recalibrating... Recalibration failed.]
[Activating contingency protocol: The Infinite Gacha System is now online.]
Su Yuan's breath hitched. His eyes widened, the tears forgotten. A System? He had read about them in countless webnovels back on Earth. They were the ultimate cheat, the golden ticket for protagonists. In the game, certain legendary classes had unique systems, but this felt different. More fundamental. More… personal.
The words 'Error in World Logic' sent a shiver down his spine. Was his transmigration the error? Was he a bug in the fabric of this reality?
Before he could process the implications, more text appeared on the screen.
[System functions unlocked: [Daily Gacha].]
[Description: Every day at midnight, the Host will receive an unlimited supply of a single, randomly determined item for 24 hours.]
[The item can be anything in existence, from a common pebble to the divine blood of a slumbering god.]
[Probability is absolute. Luck is irrelevant.]
Su Yuan stared, his mind reeling. Unlimited copies? Of a *random* item? He could get infinite rusty spoons one day and infinite legendary swords the next. The sheer absurdity, the sheer *potential* of such an ability, was staggering. It was a power defined by pure, unadulterated chaos.
Just as his heart began to pound with a desperate, wild hope, a new notification flashed.
[New Host detected. Granting Newbie Welcome Package.]
[Opening Package...]
[Congratulations, Host. For your first day, the System has granted you a special reward.]
Su Yuan held his breath. His entire future hinged on this moment. Please, he prayed to whatever entity governed this insane reality, don't let it be a rusty spoon. Not today.
[You have received your daily item.]
The screen glowed with a soft, ethereal light. Two lines of text appeared, simple, yet they struck him with the force of a thunderbolt.
[Item: Mana.]
[Quantity: ∞]
For a split second, there was nothing. Su Yuan blinked, reading the words again to ensure he hadn't misunderstood. Mana. Not a potion, not a scroll, not an artifact. The very essence of magic itself. The one thing he was fundamentally, tragically, lacking.
And then, he felt it.
The empty, aching void within him—the sieve-like soul that could hold nothing—was suddenly filled.
No, not filled. *Obliterated*.
It was not a gentle stream or a rising tide. It was the cataclysmic collapse of a dam holding back an infinite ocean. A boundless, cosmic river of pure, pristine energy crashed into his being. It was an unstoppable deluge, a torrent of raw power that should have torn his frail body and pathetic soul to shreds.
But it didn't.
There was no pain. The searing memory of his earlier failure was washed away, replaced by a feeling of absolute, utter fullness. The empty vessel was no more. The sieve was now a gateway to an endless sea. His mana channels, once barren and withered, were now colossal rivers overflowing with power. His very cells hummed, saturated with an energy so dense it felt more real than the stone floor beneath him.
He could feel it swirling within him, an obedient, limitless ocean waiting for a single command. He could feel it extending beyond him, connecting him to the ambient mana of the entire world, not as a beggar trying to scoop a drop, but as a king reclaiming his rightful domain.
Su Yuan slowly lifted a trembling hand. He didn't need to meditate, didn't need to chant, didn't need to focus. He simply… willed it.
A sphere of brilliant orange light, the [Glow] spell, bloomed in his palm. It was not the faint, flickering ember Kael had produced. This was a miniature sun. It was blindingly bright, perfectly stable, and pulsed with an undercurrent of terrifying power. It banished every shadow from the room, casting his wide-eyed, incredulous face in a divine, golden radiance.
He closed his hand, and the sun vanished. He opened it again, and it returned, just as brilliant, just as potent. He could do this forever. He could summon a million of them, and it wouldn't cost him a thing. He wouldn't feel the slightest bit of drain.
The laughter of the bullies, the pitying looks of the instructors, the crushing weight of despair—it all seemed like a distant dream.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Su Yuan's face. It was a smile that didn't belong on the face of a timid, fourteen-year-old apprentice. It was the smile of 'Void,' the Archmage who had bent the rules of a game to his will.
They had called him the Empty Vessel.
Now, he was the Infinite.