Shane’s status screen opened on its own.
[Name: Shane Ashwell]
New! Rank: F
Title: Predator of the Seraphim
New! Class: Jack of All Trades
[Skills]
New! Curse Immunity: C-
Blink: ??
Skill Copy: ??
Absorb Wound: ??
[Quirks]
????????
????????
????????
????????
The email wasn’t a dream. Neither was logging back into this old game.
And, shit. This was the worst build he’d ever seen in his life.
An F-rank?
In this game, the rank you awakened with was the rank you died with. No amount of training could raise your stats.
So, naturally, this meant Shane was stuck at the bottom.
Sure, he was still stronger than the non-Awakened population. Even an F-rank was better than a world-class athlete. But Shane was going to play as a hunter, and by hunter standards, he was rock bottom.
Then there were his skills.
[Absorb Wound], a skill he’d never heard of, sounded like a fancy name for “meat shield,” and [Blink] cost too much mana for his garbage stats. Basically, two of his precious skill slots were wasted.
Still, if he tried to look at the bright side, the [Jack of All Trades] class didn’t sound so bad.
[Class: Jack of All Trades]
A vessel without boundaries. The Jack of All Trades is not bound by class restrictions when learning new skills.
He’d never heard of it, but in a game where classes usually locked you into a specific playstyle, having “no boundaries” couldn’t be bad.
Plus, he had a plan to fill that empty combat skill slot thanks to the class.
From the name, [Skill Copy] seemed to allow Shane to copy a skill off of monsters or perhaps even NPCs. It was a gamble, but it was the only card he had to play.
Shane decided to find an easy dungeon to test his theories out.
Although a portal would’ve been faster, he took the Metro-North Hudson Line train, wanting to see if the game still looked the way he remembered. And this way, he could save some of his starter money.
He watched the train roll in while thinking about the message his friend had supposedly hidden for him. Well, if beating the game was all it took to get it… how hard could it be?
Shane boarded the train, skipping the first few packed cars. He was lucky enough to find an empty car near the back and settled down onto one of the seats as the train set off.
He pulled up the menu screen and scrolled through it, noticing something he’d missed before.
The story was technically made for a single player, but it was possible to play co-op with up to three friends throughout the main story. Finishing the storyline unlocked online tournaments with world rankings.
Yet, Shane noticed that the [Invite Friend] feature was missing from his menu. Even his status screen no longer showed his player ID.
That was weird.
But maybe that was part of the changes his friend’s keyword had activated? It didn’t really change anything for him. He had always preferred to play solo.
“This is Cold Spring. Cold Spring station. As you leave the train, please watch the gap between the train and the platform.” The train’s automated voice sent fresh throbs through his head.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Shane slipped off the train, nursing his pounding skull, and veered into the first convenience store he passed on his way out of the station.
“Fifteen bucks,” the clerk said, barely glancing up from his newspaper as Shane bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter with his starter money.
The lighter clicked. He caught the cigarette between his teeth, watching the smoke braid with his white breath before vanishing into the cold.
He wasn’t really a smoker. But he needed to avoid alcohol if he wanted to make it to the end of the game, especially on [Honor Mode] with this build. So, smoking was his only option.
The quaint town near Breakneck Ridge was almost the same as he remembered, but something was off.
More lively, he guessed.
NPC chatter drifted past, conversations about school, work, and crushes. He even caught some hunter gossip.
“No way! Troy Winter is easily the fastest rookie. He can end a fight before it even starts.”
“For short distances. But Daniels has way better endurance.”
“Endurance doesn’t matter if you can’t land a hit in the first place! Speed beats stamina, any day.”
This game was based on Shane’s world, but set several decades in the past.
It was an alternate universe where dungeons existed and normal weapons were useless against monsters.
Only skills granted by the System or items found in dungeons could harm them. Society revolved around “hunters,” the Awakened who had access to the System and killed the monsters.
So why were all his quirks blurred out?
Was this a glitch?
“Status,” Shane whispered. He didn’t need NPCs flocking over, thinking he was a new hunter.
Only the passive skill [Curse Immunity] showed a rank. The rest were blank. They were active skills, so maybe their ranks wouldn’t show until he used them.
He knew the perfect place to practice.
Shane arrived at the edge of the town, where a waist-high culvert hid beneath vines. He pressed a hand to the concrete opening, and the name tag appeared.
[F-rank Dungeon: Gloomwood]
A maze of black trees. This forest is a grave, forgotten by the world above, and home to things that thrive in the dark. Few who enter are ever seen again.
This was a tutorial dungeon that wasn’t regulated by the government NPCs.
As he crossed the threshold into the dungeon, the world went dark. Black sky loomed over him with a full moon peering down. The breeze tugged at his coat as he looked around his surroundings.
He was standing at the edge of a forest, and toward the trees, a puddle of slime traced a path.
His first kill lay ahead.
He sauntered down the earthy trail. Only a curl of smoke hung where he’d been as he disappeared into the trees.
Like its name, the forest was gloomy.
Moonlight dappled the streak of slime for Shane to follow. As he walked in deeper, the air grew warmer, the scent of burnt sugar brushing against his nose. Then, he heard something slithering across the muddy ground.
He spotted his target behind the trees.
[Gloom Crawler]
Rank: F
A wretched inhabitant of the Gloomwood. It is forever cursed to carry a smoldering flame on its tail. The burning scent is a funeral pyre for the prey it lures, and perhaps for the crawler itself. It spits a feeble flame that is a dim echo of a greater fire long since forgotten.
A Gloom Crawler was a snail the size of a truck tire, with the tip of its tail burning like a torch to attract prey.
Though, this time, it had attracted someone it’d regret.
Shane strode toward it.
Its eyestalks swiveled in his direction. With a soft poof, it launched the fire on its tail at him. Shane watched as the candle-sized flame flew before sizzling out against the bark of a tree next to him.
A “funeral pyre”? For ants, maybe.
He closed the distance as he sidestepped the rest of the [Fireballs]. The giant snail recoiled, trying to retract into its shell. Shane stomped down hard on its back, and the shell broke through like cheap china.
Another [Fireball] zipped past his head, its heat licking his face.
He kicked the snail on its fleshy side. The creature went flying before hitting a tree. The fire on its tail extinguished with an audible sigh.
Shane checked his status.
Sure enough, [Skill Copy] had been activated. It was ranked F, barely a step above the absolute bottom, F-minus. It let him copy an enemy’s skill after killing it, though it only had one skill slot open right now.
He’d have to figure out what the System counted as a “kill,” and if he could copy higher-ranked skills as he grinded more dungeons.
He chose the F-rank [Fireball] skill and summoned a flame himself. Barely bigger than a candle flame, he wasn’t sure if this was a joke or not.
What was he supposed to do with an F-rank [Skill Copy]?
The sole of his shoe crunched on what remained of the giant snail’s shell. A System prompt he’d never seen before flashed open.
[Achievement Unlocked – First Skill Use]
Every journey starts with a cast.
Reward: Skill Point +1
Achievements? Another window opened, as if answering his confusion.
[Achievements In Progress]
Use a skill 10 times – 1/10
Use a skill 100 times – 1/100
Use a skill 1,000 times – 1/1,000
Kill 10 enemies – 1/10
Kill 100 enemies – 1/100
??????????―??????
Finish a raid under the time limit – 0/1
Finish 10 raids under the time limit – 0/10
??????????―??????
…….
The game he remembered did have achievements, but they never gave any rewards usable in-game. They functioned more like trophies. Either the developers had updated it, or his friend had modded the new feature in.
It looked like a sweet deal, but the numbers jumped tenfold, so anything past early game was going to be brutal.
[Available Skill Points: 1]
“Use one point on [Skill Copy].”
[Skills]
New! Skill Copy: F → F+
?Fireball: F → F+
His eyes widened.
He tested [Fireball] on a new snail and cooked it in seconds. The skill was about one and a half times more mana-efficient now. With his F-rank mana pool, the change was dramatic.
This wasn’t how the game used to work.
Stat ranks and skill ranks couldn’t level up before; instead, you created an S-rank avatar, then tried to unlock high-tier skills by doing tedious quests or finding certain items.
His gaze turned to the achievements list again. At F-rank, base stats like mana and constitution were at rock bottom, so a high-tier skill was usually wasted on a low rank like him. An F-rank rarely had enough mana to fire one off.
But an F-rank who could upgrade his skills? That was a different story.
The blurred-out quirks did still bother him, but knowing the skill points from achievements could improve his skills, an F-rank body wasn’t a dead end.
He crossed his arms. If he could also get a decent weapon, he might actually beat—
[Quest Alert!]
Prevent the First Cataclysm and save the world!
Time Remaining: 200 days
Rewards: ??????
Failure: Death
