In the year 402 After Exodus, Earth was no longer the blue-green planet remembered in history books.
Instead, it had become a fractured world of floating districts, decayed continents, and skybound fortresses that drifted between stabilized zones.
After the First Rift emerged in what used to be Seoul, civilization collapsed in less than a decade.
Governments vanished, the old militaries failed, and humanity only survived because of the arrival of something called the System.
No one knew whether it came from the rifts or if it was a gift—or curse—dropped in from some alien intelligence.
What mattered was that it worked. It wrapped itself around humanity's DNA and forcibly categorized people into Ranks, syncing them with a personal interface that enabled survival inside the dungeons.
The stronger your synchronization, the more power you could draw from the rift.
This new society did not run on money or law. It ran on Rank.
Ash Valeender was an F-Rank.
He had been one for four years.
He lived in the lower levels of Arcadia, one of the few vertical city-fortresses left on Earth's eastern hemisphere.
His room was smaller than a capsule bed, and the food he could afford came in compressed nutrient bricks that tasted like stale paper.
Every day, he entered dungeons to complete basic clear missions and scrape together enough credits to feed himself and his younger sister.
His brother, once a B-Rank crawler, had disappeared in a black-class dungeon incident three years ago.
Ash had no abilities.
His stats were low. His sync rate was stuck at eleven percent and had never improved. No guild wanted him.
Most teams rejected him. In every simulation, in every ranking chart, and even in public crawler forums, he was considered a waste of resources.
But his System screen said something else.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE]
USER: Ash Valeender
RANK: F
CLASS: Trash Collector
LEVEL: 4
STATS:
- Strength: 9
- Agility: 8
- Endurance: 10
- Intelligence: 13
- Willpower: 13
- Luck: ???
SKILLS: None
DAILY MISSION: Complete one dungeon clearance
REWARD: +1 Stat Point | Chance to unlock [Fragment Slot Alpha]
The System was installed into every crawler the moment they entered their first rift.
It monitored physical condition, managed skill unlocks, and issued daily missions that, if completed, slowly improved the user's power.
However, in Ash's case, his growth had been halted due to a synchronization anomaly during his first dive.
His stats could not naturally improve, and even combat experience did not result in increased skill proficiency.
Most assumed he would never rise beyond his current state.
He even he had to admit that being given the "Trash Collector" class by the System felt more like a bad joke than a cruel twist of fate.
It wasn't even a combat class.
It didn't grant skills, didn't increase stats, and its only passive ability was the ability to mark junk inside dungeons that most crawlers would overlook.
For the past year, that was all he did.
He picked up broken weapons, cracked armor plates, and discarded loot crystals with zero market value. He sold them by weight to junk traders, earning just enough credits to survive.
While other crawlers talked about evolution paths and skill trees, Ash carried a reinforced sack across his back like a beggar hoping to find bread crusts.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE]
USER: Ash Valeender
CLASS: [Trash Collector]
CLASS EFFECTS:
- Passive: Garbage Sense (Highlights low-value discarded items)
- Passive: Durability Scavenger (Increases chance of recovering functional parts from broken equipment)
ABILITIES: None
---
It was a Tuesday. A normal one.
Ash stood outside a low-security dungeon gate registered as Rift Code 77-F: "Shattered Archives", located in the ruins of an old government building.
He was not alone this time.
Two other crawlers had signed up for the same dive, both F-Rank and both more aggressive than him.
The first was Kara Lin, a spear-user with reinforced leather gear and a combat visor.
The second was Maris Cale, who wore a light exosuit with twin daggers strapped across her thighs.
Before the dive began, they had to register party sync with the System. Kara took one look at Ash's class field and raised an eyebrow.
"Seriously?" she asked, her voice dry. "They're letting janitors into rifts now?"
Ash didn't respond. He was used to it.
Maris laughed as she flicked open her own interface and glanced at his stats. "His level is only four percent. No wonder. And look at that—Trash Collector? Is that even a real class?"
Ash simply adjusted the strap on his bag and walked past them toward the dungeon gate.
"You coming or are you just going to stand there and try to measure who's better?" he asked.
Kara scoffed and followed him. "You're not better. You're dead weight. Just stay in the back and don't get in the way. We're here to finish the clear fast."
"Yeah," Maris added. "If you slow us down, we're not splitting the reward."
Ash gave them both a tired look. "Don't worry. I'm not here for your loot."
He stepped into the gate.
He didn't come here to prove anything to them.
He came because this dungeon had been flagged by his interface.
SYSTEM INTERFACE – [CLASS ALERT]
[TRASH COLLECTOR CLASS – HIDDEN EVOLUTION PATH CONDITION DETECTED]
Requirement: Locate [Unclassified Item] inside Rift Code 77-F
Status: 0/1
Ash didn't know what this meant yet.
---
Ash walked in silence, three steps behind the girls as they made their way through the corridor of the rift-corrupted building. They were used to this kind of terrain, or at least they pretended to be.
They talked as they walked, voices casual but sharp, like they needed to remind each other they were better than whatever might come next—and definitely better than Ash.
"I'm telling you, it's a pattern," Maris said, stepping lightly over a collapsed beam as they entered the stairwell. "Every rift this month's had boss activity. Even the low ones. Either the spawn rate's broken or the System's lying about difficulty again."
"It wouldn't surprise me. Sector management just rubber stamps these zones without proper scans."
"Yeah," Maris agreed. "As long as the F-rank tag holds, I don't care what it is. We just kill it, grab whatever drops, and go."
Ash adjusted the strap of the vacuum tool on his back.
He didn't care about bosses. He didn't care about loot drops. He just needed to find whatever his System had pinged inside this place. That was the whole reason he came.
He unhooked the Rift Vacuum Mk. I from his back and held it in both hands. It was heavy, and the grip had worn smooth from overuse, but it was familiar.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE – ITEM DETAIL]
[ ITEM: Rift Vacuum Mk. I
CLASS: F
TYPE: Collection Tool
FUNCTION: Extracts rift debris, low-grade relics, and broken tech
PASSIVE: Can highlight dungeon scrap within 4 meters
COMBAT VALUE: None ]
As they climbed the first half of the stairwell, Ash's System blinked again.
He looked up.
The lights on the second floor's ceiling flickered once, then exploded in a flash of sparks. And then, without warning, something dropped.
It landed hard—slamming into the stairs just ahead of the girls.
It had a thick body covered in stitched-together flesh and bone armor, one arm dragging unnaturally long, the other ending in a pincer made of fused rebar.
Its face was just a single glowing slit, no eyes, no mouth.
"What the hell?" Kara said, stumbling back a step. "That's not a floor crawler. That's—what even is that?!"
"It's a boss!" Maris shouted. "F-rank my ass!"
The monster charged.
Its arm snapped forward with brutal speed, the pincer slamming toward Kara. She dodged, barely, rolling backward down a few steps.
Ash watched it all happen.
He saw how fast the thing was, how heavy. That thing wasn't just outside F-rank classification. It looked like something from a C-tier site.
Maris was already charging it.
"Go around it!" she shouted. "Kara, distract it—Ash, don't just stand there!"
Ash aimed the Rift Vacuum.
He knew it wouldn't do damage, but he triggered the pulse anyway.
The tool shook in his hands.
The nozzle lit up with dull red lines and let out a low-frequency pulse that washed over the monster.
It didn't stagger, but the bone armor along its chest flickered, showing cracks.
Maris darted in with a spinning slash, aiming for the monster's chest. Her blades hit.
One scraped off, the other sunk halfway in.
Then the monster's pincer came down.
THUMP!
There was a sound like wet metal being crushed.
Ash didn't see exactly what happened—just a blur of motion and then Maris hit the stairs with a broken noise.
Her body twitched once. Then didn't move.
Kara screamed.
"Maris!"
The monster didn't stop. It stepped over the body like it was nothing and kept moving.
Ash didn't speak.
He just stared at what was left of the girl who, just minutes ago, had mocked him. He didn't feel angry. He didn't feel sad.
He only felt the same thing he always did—pressure, like something inside his chest was building up but didn't know how to get out.
This wasn't the first person he had seen die in a dungeon.
But this time, he had watched it happen while holding a tool no one believed could do anything.
Or maybe he just wasn't using it right yet.
Then, the monster lunged at him.
"Am I about to die?" Ash said.
But, the monster froze, towering over him with its pincer raised, jaw unhinged and twitching. It didn't strike.
"What is happening?"
Kara stood between them, her back turned to him.
She was too calm. Her arm was pulled tight against her coat, hiding something that pulsed red through the fabric. She shifted slightly, keeping herself angled just enough to block his view.
"Don't be scared," she said softly, almost gently.
The monster wasn't a normal floor crawler like anything he had ever seen. It definitely didn't have the mins to act like it did right now.
The monster looked at him. It looked like the eyes of a puppet in one of those stage plays.
Someone was definitely manipulating the monster. It couldn't have been him, and it couldn't have been Maris either.
Which means it's—
"Kara. You're controlling the monster."
"I had to," she said.
"The system won't evolve on its own. It needed a trigger. You were supposed to run and Maris was supposed to watch. Everything was ready—until she ruined it."
Ash gripped the vacuum tighter. "What are you even planning to do!"
"I won't tell you," Kara said.
The creature twitched again, responding to her heartbeat, not its own.
"You used me as bait."
"Be my pet, Ash," Kara whispered.
Ash didn't answer.
Then she turned halfway, her smile stretched too wide, her eyes too bright.
Her personality shifted.
"Let's go, Ash... Let's finally defeat this thing!"
Ash took a slow breath.
Calm down. If you panic now, you're dead. She's controlling it, but not hiding it anymore. That means she thinks she's won.
His heart thudded once, then settled.
His eyes locked on hers without fear.
He exhaled, steady now.
"Shut up, bitch..."