"It's the most beautiful thing I know."
He sat alone atop a mountain of corpses.
The sky, red like an open wound, bathed the ruins of a dead world.
His black hair hung down to his neck, his crimson eyes flickered like dying flames.
Before him, driven into the earth, stood a sword made of blood. He stared at it in silence.
In his gaze, there was solitude... and a strange sense of nostalgia.
"I saw the end."
The ground was flooded with blood.
Buildings had crumbled into dust.
The air reeked so heavily of death that even the insects had abandoned it.
Cracks split the earth as if the world itself wanted to tear apart.
"The end I saw… it wasn't a video game.
It wasn't a movie.
It wasn't the Biblical Apocalypse."
He slowly raised his eyes to the shattered sky.
"What I saw... even our worst nightmares would seem like sweet dreams in comparison.
The Apocalypse, as mankind feared it... would've been a gift.
What I saw was worse than hell."
Seventeen years ago, in the year XX, humanity stood at the peak of technology.
That's when a message appeared in the sky. Global. Unavoidable.
"The world has completed its protection phase.
Freedom has been granted."
Simple. Cold. Clear.
At first, everyone thought it was a joke. A hacker's prank. Mass hallucination.
Until one thing appeared in the sky: an egg. Immense. Visible from every corner of the Earth.
And etched across its shell, three red letters: ???
That was the beginning of the irrational.
Everywhere, strange phenomena began to manifest.
Mutants — on land, in the oceans.
Humans were hunted, attacked.
But humanity has one exceptional trait: adaptation.
Fast and ruthless.
And in the absence of cosmic protection, even the laws of physics began to unravel.
Gravity, time, matter — all became unstable.
The mutants ceased to be a threat the moment the first "Adapted" ones appeared.
But the mutants were just an appetizer.
The true horrors came later: dimensional monsters, abyssal entities rising from the deep.
95% of ocean life, previously unknown, surfaced.
Entire continents vanished.
Four years later, the egg cracked.
A strange energy swept through the atmosphere.
People's shadows began to disappear.
For some, the sun became invisible.
That's when the first human mutants were born: Vampires.
But that wasn't our worst nightmare.
No… the real nightmare was this:
killing a human would give you an "Awakening Stone."
And with that stone: access to the System.
An interface of power. Abilities. Stats.
As if someone — or something — was pushing us toward self-destruction.
Betrayal. Genocide. Parricide. Serial killing.
And then there was me.
A teenager. Orphaned.
My family slaughtered over a stone.
I saw them die.
When my sister took her last breath, an Awakening Stone appeared.
They forced me to eat it.
The result?
A cursed ability: blood manipulation.
And you know what?
In this rotten world, it was the purest thing that existed.
It could kill you if you pushed too far — but it would never betray you.
I killed. Again. And again. For three years.
My thirst for blood never faded.
I grew to hate this power… until the day the egg finally hatched.
And one of the Nine Great Calamities appeared.
"..."
"...."
He sat in thought as the air around him shifted.
Something had just fractured.
He slowly turned his head, eyes narrowing with caution.
Above, in the cracked sky, a tear had formed.
A dimensional rift — wide, screaming, a wound in the fabric of reality.
A silhouette emerged.
A man floated in the void, dressed like a butler.
He calmly adjusted his black gloves as if preparing to serve tea.
Then, he looked up.
Their eyes met.
"Well now... a survivor," he said, amused.
The man on the ground moved toward his sword.
His hand gripped the hilt.
His eyes darkened.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice cold.
The new figure chuckled.
"Oh? He speaks! I would've thought all this would've driven the last human mad. Or mute."
His smile grew… feral.
"But I'm not here for conversation.
You see... the tutorial is over."
He widened his eyes in mock excitement.
"It's time for the main story."
The man clenched his sword, face twisted with fury, his eyes burning red.
The butler placed a gloved hand over his face, struggling not to laugh.
"All this… was just the beginning.
The tutorial. The lower world.
Now it's time for the real feast."
End of Chapter 1.