The Birth of Ash
Rain fell upon Sector 7, but it wasn't water. It was a vile, crimson sludge—a mixture of shattered atmospheric filters and the vaporized blood of three hundred thousand human beings.
The air tasted of ozone, burning flesh, and raw, unrestrained mana. The sky, usually a dull, metallic gray from the smog of the Zenith-class floating cities above, was torn open. A rift, jagged and bleeding purple light, dominated the heavens. From it, the Abyssal Swarm poured out like a plague of locusts born from nightmares.
Erik lay in the mud, staring at the apocalyptic sky.
His vision was blurring, the edges darkening into an encroaching void. He couldn't feel his legs anymore. In fact, he couldn't feel anything below his sternum. A Scythe-Demon of the Swarm—a mere Ironblood Rank III beast—had cleaved him in half with a casual swipe of its obsidian appendage before moving on to slaughter a family of refugees hiding in a nearby alley.
"Cough..." Blood, thick and black, bubbled past Erik's lips. He turned his head, the movement sending a jolt of agonizing pain through his remaining nervous system.
Around him was a graveyard of the living. Sector 7, the outer slum of the great City of Bastion, had been quarantined. The massive adamantium gates that led to the inner city—the haven for the Awakened, the Nobles, and the powerful—were sealed shut. The Elite Guards of the Celestial Hegemony stood atop the high walls, their shimmering energy shields activated.
They weren't fighting the Swarm. They were simply watching. Sector 7 was the bait. A calculated sacrifice to buy time for the elites to gather their forces.
'Trash,' Erik thought, his mind surprisingly lucid in the face of death. 'To them, we are just trash. Fodder to feed the meat grinder.'
Ten meters away, a young man from the Noble House of Vane was laughing maniacally. The noble, dressed in pristine enchanted armor that deflected the Swarm's attacks, was using a spatial artifact to teleport back to the inner city. He had come here for a "hunting game," but things had gotten out of hand. Before teleporting, the noble had used Erik and a dozen other scavengers as human shields against a Swarm barrage.
"Rot well, slum-rats!" the noble spat, disappearing in a flash of azure light.
Erik's fingers dug into the blood-soaked mud. A profound, suffocating hatred erupted within his chest, eclipsing the physical pain. It wasn't just hatred for the noble, or the Swarm, or the mega-factions that ruled the Aethelgard Nexus. It was a blinding, absolute hatred for the laws of this universe.
A universe where a person's worth was determined by how many magical affinities they possessed. A universe where the strong played gods and the weak were fertilizer.
"I refuse..." Erik wheezed, his voice a broken rasp. "I refuse to die as... stepping stones for these parasites."
His vision faded to black. His heart stopped.
[ Vital signs terminated. ]
[ Host is deceased. ]
Silence claimed him. It was a cold, absolute dark. But in that darkness, a spark ignited. It wasn't the warm, vibrant light of a typical Awakening. It was a spark of anti-light. A terrifying, consuming void that began to devour the darkness itself.
Suddenly, a voice echoed in the deepest recesses of his fading soul. It wasn't the angelic, chiming voice of the standard World System that governed the Awakened. This voice was mechanical, guttural, and vibrated with the weight of dying stars.
[ ERROR. ANOMALY DETECTED. ]
[ Unfathomable malice and willpower registered. Soul density exceeds mortal parameters by 9,999%. ]
[ Scanning... Scanning... Target possesses ZERO magical affinities. Target possesses ZERO aura capacity. ]
Just let me die, Erik's consciousness pushed back. Or give me the power to kill them all.
[ Affirmative. Searching deepest conceptual archives... ]
[ Match found. ]
[ Standard World System bypassed. World System authorities overwritten. ]
[ Initiating forbidden protocol: THE SINGULARITY. ]
In the physical world, Erik's mutilated corpse suddenly twitched.
The rain of blood stopped hitting his skin. In fact, the droplets evaporated into nothingness before they could even touch him. A suffocating, terrifying pressure descended upon the ruined street.
The Scythe-Demons that were busy gorging on corpses nearby froze. Their primal instincts, honed over countless millennia of slaughter, screamed at them. The predators suddenly realized they were in the presence of an Apex.
[ System Rebooting... ]
[ Host: Erik. ]
[ Rank: Mortal (Unranked) ]
[ Power Assimilated: Entropy (The Concept of End) - Grade: Unmeasurable. ]
[ Passive Skill Unlocked: Abyssal Devourer (Level 1) - Can consume the life force, mana, and conceptual laws of any slain entity to permanently increase Host's stats and System evolution. ]
Black ash began to materialize from the air itself. It swirled around Erik's severed torso. Where the ash touched his open wounds, the flesh didn't heal—it rewrote itself. Nerves, bones, and muscles were violently reconstructed from dark matter. Within seconds, his lower half was completely regenerated, clad in a material that looked like solidified midnight.
Erik opened his eyes. The pupils were gone, replaced by swirling vortexes of gray and black.
He slowly stood up. He didn't feel the cold. He didn't feel the pain. He only felt a hollow, endless hunger in his chest, and an infinite well of destructive power at his fingertips.
"What... is this?" Erik muttered, looking at his hands. As he flexed his fingers, the ambient mana in the air around him literally died, turning into gray dust.
[ You have been chosen by the Singularity Protocol. You possess only one ability, Host. But it is the ultimate absolute. Everything that has a beginning must have an end. You are that End. ]
[ Current Objective: Survive. Devour. Ascend. ]
A massive Scythe-Demon, overcoming its fear, shrieked and lunged at Erik. Its scythe-arm, capable of cutting through reinforced titanium, swung at his neck.
Erik didn't dodge. He didn't cast a multi-layered elemental shield like a high-tier Awakened would. He simply raised his right hand and caught the blade barehanded.
CRACK.
The demon's eyes widened in disbelief. The momentum of a multi-ton beast moving at supersonic speeds was halted instantly.
"You're loud," Erik whispered, his voice devoid of any human warmth.
He squeezed his fingers. He didn't use physical strength. He simply activated his power. Entropy.
A pulse of silent, gray energy rippled from Erik's palm. The indestructible scythe-arm crumbled into black ash. The ash rapidly spread up the demon's arm, consuming its exoskeleton, its muscles, its organs, and its very life force.
The beast didn't even have time to scream. In less than two seconds, a five-meter-tall monster was reduced to a pile of dark dust on the ground.
From the pile of ash, a wisp of pure, refined energy floated up and entered Erik's chest.
[ Ironblood Rank III entity devoured. ]
[ Strength +5, Agility +3, Endurance +5. ]
[ System Energy +0.01% ]
Erik took a deep breath. The rush of power was intoxicating. It was pure. It was violent. It was perfect.
He looked up at the giant rift in the sky, where millions of monsters were still pouring out. Then, he looked toward the towering, pristine walls of the inner city, where the nobles hid behind their shields, drinking wine and watching the slaughter.
A dark, chilling smile crept across Erik's face.
"Twelve Ranks," Erik said to the empty street, the swirling black ash gathering around him like a royal cloak. "A multiverse full of gods, demons, and arrogant monarchs."
He took a step forward, the ground beneath his feet decaying into dust.
"I'm going to eat them all."
[ Proceed, Ashen Sovereign. Let the solo burning commence. ]
The Final War, the one that would shatter the Aethelgard Nexus and reshape the cosmos, didn't begin with a grand declaration. It began here, in the mud and blood of Sector 7, with a single, unkillable monster rising from the dead.
The Singularity had awakened.