He gave himself a light pinch.
Uh! It hurt. He was not dreaming at all. This whole game interface thing was real.
"System, right? Can you tell me about yourself? If you don't mind, please."
[I am the Creation System. You can create any kind of technique and skill through me, and you can cultivate passively any kind of technique or skill in the slot. The creation of a skill or technique would require points according to the technique, but passive cultivation is free.
As for getting points, you can achieve them by killing a living organism.]
Yes! It was 100% real. All his doubts were washed away by this answer.
So his blood essence was taken away by the system, and that's why he didn't awaken anything — or rather, it was on the premise that he had something to begin with.
He didn't awaken anything, so he didn't want to go home now.
So he called his father.
"Father, I'll be home late. Please don't wait for me. Eat dinner without me." He cut the line and switched off the phone.
On the other side, Samuel just sighed. He had also gone through this phase once after failing to awaken.
He didn't call back. Erina saw her husband's face and understood who had called him. A tear fell from her eyes.
Aren got on the bus since he couldn't go anywhere in the main city other than the Awakening Hall, and he would have to leave before 8 p.m.
The bus started at 8 p.m. To everyone's surprise, someone from the slum had awakened an elemental affinity a while ago. Aren had already come out from the hall, so he didn't see him.
But he was envious of the luck of the boy who could awaken. Then he remembered that he had a system. Though he didn't properly understand its function, he could tell it was something extraordinary, and he should research it properly.
The bus left the main city and arrived at the slum bus stand at 9 p.m. Aren didn't go home; instead, he went to find a living organism to kill.
Yes, he was going to kill some bugs or mosquitoes to test the system.
The slum was very unhygienic, so there was garbage scattered everywhere.
Even at night, there were streetlights everywhere because the slum was located near the main gate. If someday the city was breached by monsters, they would die first.
Aren didn't want to complain about injustice or anything. He just wanted to find a bug.
He slowly approached a pile of garbage. It was spreading a horrible smell. He blocked his nose with one hand and started searching with the other.
The smell was coming from organic waste materials, so there was a high chance of finding bugs here.
And bingo! He found a crawling bug after removing a few pieces of garbage.
He took a metal piece from there and crushed the bug.
[Ding! You have got 0.01 point.]
Hell yeah! It was totally doable. But finding bugs would be a hassle. He should search the internet to learn if there was an easier way to do it.
Now that he had a little point, he thought about what the system told him. He could create any kind of skill or technique and even successfully cultivate it.
But he didn't have a bloodline or elemental affinity. What would he do after cultivating a skill? Wouldn't his body burst into blood mist?
His school had taught him that many unawakened people tried to cultivate skills, but their bodies couldn't handle the pressure, and they died on the spot.
"The system said anything, right? Let's try out its 'anything' part."
"System, create a skill that would help me achieve a Legendary Bloodline after fully cultivating it."
But there was no response from the system.
"Figures. That would be destiny defiance." But then he thought he didn't specifically tell it what type of bloodline he wanted.
"A Dragon Bloodline, hahaha." He also tried saying it specifically. He didn't believe it would react this time either.
But to his astonishment, he heard a notification sound.
[Ding! 100000 points needed. Confirm?]
Holy shit! It really worked. He could really create something that would give him a Legendary Bloodline after fully cultivating it, and he could cultivate it with the help of the system. He didn't need to do anything else.
But 100000 was a huge number. There was no way he could gain that many points inside the slum.
"Then what about awakening a low-level bloodline, becoming a little powerful, and then I will go outside of the city to hunt monsters to gather enough points to change my bloodline. If it can create a bloodline, surely it will be able to change the bloodline too."
So he tried to think of a low-tier bloodline, such as the Black Panther Bloodline.
[Ding! 1000 points needed. Confirm?]
This time the amount decreased a lot, but it was still a huge number for him. He should try to kill some ants. They always stayed together, and finding ants was easy.
Just put a sweet on the ground, and they would come naturally.
So he went to a shop nearby and bought 10 sweets with the remaining money he had left in his bank.
After that, he found a relatively dark place to sit and put one sweet on the ground.
Now he could only wait.
After 30 minutes of waiting, he finally saw ants coming from the ground, surrounding the sweet.
Aren became instantly happy. He was waiting with a little metal rod he had found nearby.
With that, he crushed some of the ants.
Instantly, he heard 30 notifications at once.
"System, can you not send a notification for every kill? Send the notification after 5 minutes of the last kill I make."
He would go crazy if he had to hear that ding ding sound all the time.
The notifications stopped as soon as he asked them to.
He put the other 9 sweets on the ground at a distance and started killing the ones that had already come out.
It was deep into the night. He had killed thousands of ants already and didn't know exactly how many.
He felt bored now, so he stopped killing them and started waiting for the 5-minute timer to end.
[Ding! You have got 50 points.]
He had killed 5000 ants. So it wouldn't take long before he could gather 1100 points — 1000 for creating the skill and 100 for activating the slot.
After that, he started walking toward his house. They lived on the 6th floor of a high-rise building.
The slum had many buildings because there were so many people living there. If they were to live in individual houses, there wouldn't be enough space.
So the main city created buildings for them, but they had to pay rent.
Aren stood in front of the door and knocked.
The door opened almost instantly.
"Son, are you alright?"
His mother opened the door. It almost felt like she had been standing there waiting.
Erina hugged Aren tightly. They had been trying to contact him, but his phone was switched off.
It made them worry that maybe their son wouldn't be able to take the shock and might do something wrong.
"Thank God you're alright. Please sit at the table. I'll bring food for you."
Aren felt guilty. He had forgotten to turn on the phone after switching it off earlier.
"I'm sorry, Mom."
"Don't worry. You're alright, that's all I need to know."
Samuel was standing there and patted his shoulder, as if saying,
"Don't worry. I'm still alive and will back you up."
Aren just smiled at them and sat at the table. Erina had cooked his favorite foods, but since he hadn't come back, they hadn't eaten either. Only Luna had eaten, and she was now sleeping.
"Father, Mother, don't worry. I will definitely bring you to the main city. You won't have to work anymore after that. I just need some time."
Aren would go bug hunting tomorrow morning.
Chickens and other meat animals were not available in the slum. They only got processed meat once a month, so bugs were his only option.