Night fell over District 9 like a suffocating shroud.
As always, the sky was dark, choked with the smoke of old factories that never truly stopped burning. Faint, flickering neon lights cast sickly colors on broken concrete, breathing life into a city that should've died long ago. The air reeked of rust, blood, and rotting meat—the scent of decay, of failure, of corpses no one bothered to clean up.
Luciel Caelis walked between the ruins of collapsed buildings. His body still wrapped in rough bandages from the wounds of his last fight. From the outside, he looked fragile—injured, maybe even dying. But something had awakened inside him. His eyes burned cold and sharp, like blades forged in hatred.
His footsteps were silent, precise, purposeful.
Tonight, he was going to kill for the first time.
Not for survival. Not because he had no choice.
But because he wanted to.
---
> 📢 [System Synchronization: 15%]
["Hijack" function ready for use]
[EXP Source detected within 200 meters]
A blue panel slid silently into his peripheral vision. Luciel didn't need to touch it. A mere thought and the interface responded. He was getting used to it—this strange, illegal system—and with every passing minute, it felt more natural. More like a part of him.
Codebreaker.
Unregistered. Unmonitored. Unlinked from any official Union system.
Luciel smirked. "Figures. I'm not official either."
This system was like him—an outcast.
---
A few minutes later, Luciel crouched behind a rusted cargo container. In the distance, inside a half-collapsed warehouse, a group of low-tier bandits sat playing cards. There were four of them. But Luciel only cared about one—the easiest target. The fat one. The loudest. The one with his back turned.
Augustus Bronn, aka "Iron-Hand Gus", a small-time thug infamous for beating beggars to death. Known skill: Quickstep Lv.2, a short-range burst movement.
Luciel didn't have any skills.
Not yet.
But tonight, he would steal one.
---
He waited. His breath slow. His heartbeat forced calm.
The system provided data.
> [Target: Augustus Bronn – Low-tier Bandit]
[Detected Active Skill: Quickstep Lv.2]
[Status: Low Alert – Alcohol Effect: -5 AGI]
No hesitation. Luciel burst out of the shadows, gripping a rusted iron pipe in both hands, and smashed it straight into Gus's left knee.
Crack!
A scream tore through the night. The man's leg folded inward, bone snapping clean. The other bandits scrambled in shock, rising from their crates. But Luciel ignored them. He focused on the man crawling away, crying like a child.
"P-Please—I was just hungry—!"
Luciel kneed Gus in the face. Once. Twice. Blood and teeth spilled from his mouth.
> [Target in Critical Condition. Use Hijack?]
[Y / N]
He selected "Y".
Time slowed. A purple glow enveloped Gus's body as threads of light were pulled from him—into Luciel.
> [Skill Acquired: Quickstep Lv.1]
[System Synchronization Increased: 17%]
[EXP +70]
Luciel grinned.
"It really does feel like stealing their soul."
Gus whimpered, still breathing.
Luciel knelt beside him. Their eyes met.
"I used to be like you, you know?"
The man sobbed in confusion.
"Weak. Begging. Hoping someone would save me."
Luciel placed the tip of the pipe against Gus's throat.
"But I learned something important."
He pushed.
CRASSHH!
> [Target Eliminated. First Blood recorded.]
[EXP +50]
[Status Increased: +1 STR, +1 VIT]
---
Two remaining bandits rushed from the left.
Luciel activated Quickstep Lv.1.
His body vanished for a split-second—then reappeared behind one of them. He drove his elbow into the man's neck and twisted, sending him crashing to the floor.
The last bandit froze. "W-What system is that?!"
Luciel didn't answer. He simply stared.
"One you'll never have."
He launched forward, using the pipe to vault into the air and kicked the man square in the skull, slamming him into the warehouse wall.
Three seconds. Two down.
---
> 📘 [STATUS – Luciel Caelis – Post-First Combat]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
LEVEL : 2
SYSTEM : [Codebreaker v0.01 – Unrecognized]
HP : 65 / 110
MP : 30 / 35
STR : 7 (+1)
AGI : 8
INT : 5
VIT : 7 (+1)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🎯 ACTIVE SKILLS:
• Quickstep Lv.1 – [Hijacked]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📢 NOTIFICATIONS:
> EXP x3 active – Codebreaker Passive
> System Synchronization: 17%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
---
Luciel sat in the corner of the warehouse, breathing hard.
His hands were shaking. But not from fear. Not from trauma.
He stared at the blood on his clothes. His face. The floor.
"…this isn't fear."
His eyes narrowed.
"…this is satisfaction."
---
> [Codebreaker responds to user emotion.]
[New Function Unlocked: Fragment Fusion]
[You may now fuse skill fragments from different targets.]
Luciel stared at the screen.
The world of systems, stats, and numbers—this wasn't just a tool.
It was a path. A weapon. A way to crush them all.
Everyone who had spat on him. Beaten him. Abandoned him.
"This world needs to burn."