[DNA extraction unsuccessful]
[Unable to analyze target's DNA]
[User's potential remains critically low]
[Endevour to level up]
I sighed, looking away from the interface toward Mira's face. Her expression was complicated, her mind clearly caught in some distant thought. At this point, everything felt bleak. With each passing second, my chances of survival in this world diminished. I didn't even think I could make it to next year at this rate.
Even with the system, my efforts yielded worthless results. Take the Genetic Points system, for instance. All I had to do was acquire a target's DNA, which the system would process to grant me either a bloodline ability or an affinity—depending on my luck. There was even a chance of acquiring an exceptionally strong ability, even one the target didn't possess, something dormant in their genes.
When the system first explained this to me, I was thrilled.
It was probably the only way I could grow stronger quickly and survive in this damned world. I'd even harbored hopes of attending the League. But after my first attempt at acquiring DNA? I realized I was still fucked anyway. It wasn't some broken cheat as I'd hoped—just a scam.
All I got from my first target was this:
[DNA extraction unsuccessful]
[Unable to analyze target's DNA]
[User's potential remains critically low]
[Endevour to level up]
Not an ability. Not an affinity. Not even an EP.
Three months of acquiring that target, and it was gone. Just like that. In that single moment, all my hopes died.
I realized I was doomed to die regardless of my efforts. Whoever brought me to this damned world had no intention of helping me. I didn't even know why they'd recreated my novel and thrown me into it. What did they hope to accomplish? Even the system offered no answers, leaving me in the dark. There weren't even any missions like when the system first made itself known. I was left to my own devices, desperately hoping to farm some bloodline through sheer luck.
I aimed for several more targets. I employed all kinds of tactics, from mundane to downright despicable. It always ended the same way:
[DNA extraction unsuccessful]
[Unable to analyze target's DNA]
[User's potential remains critically low]
[Endevour to level up]
THEN GIVE ME A CHANCE TO LEVEL UP!
It made absolutely no sense. What was I supposed to do?
The character I was stuck in had no mana core. I couldn't grow stronger the natural way. Any possibility of using my knowledge of this world was doomed from the start. With no mana, I was just an ordinary guy in a superhuman world—a guy stuck with a plot I might never escape.
I even aimed for weaker targets, hoping to gain something. But nothing. I got nothing at all.
Eventually, opportunity presented itself. Mira had tried to kill me, and through luck, I'd turned the situation to my advantage. If I could just get something from her, anything...
[DNA extraction unsuccessful]
[Unable to analyze target's DNA]
[User's potential remains critically low]
[Endevour to level up]
An entire month with her, and still nothing?
I fucking give up.
The truth is, I can't reach the League no matter what. I'm too weak, too powerless. I'd die there. I can't see any way around it.
I have to escape.
"Look at me, Nero," I heard, and I did. "Don't lose hope yet. There has to be a way."
She spoke earnestly, but I only chuckled bitterly. "If it were anyone else, maybe. But not me. I'm cursed."
Slap.
I blinked.
"Why do you always have to say that? You're not cursed. You just have a mana issue. That's not a curse, you dummy." She'd actually slapped me.
"You just slapped me," I said.
She tilted her head. "And I'll do it again if it means knocking some sense into that head of yours."
I decided to ignore her. She wouldn't understand. It wasn't about the mana or about Nero.
It was about my first life.
Back when I was Aaron.
From what I'd gathered over time, I must have committed one of the greatest sins a mortal could ever commit—a sin that incurred such karmic debt that I was cast into the nether realm to suffer for eternity.
I violated a virgin goddess.
I have no idea how I did it. How any of it happened. My memory ends at the bar with friends, drinking until I lost my mind. The next thing I remember was her—the enraged goddess.
It still baffles me how my life went so catastrophically wrong in a single day. One moment, a rising author with a bright future. The next, a fugitive in the supernatural world with gods hunting me in desperation. For whatever reason.
I guess they want something from me.
I spent countless nights wondering: When did I meet her? How? Why? And why did she let it happen? She was a goddess, for God's sake. Couldn't she have just killed me?
"You don't understand," I responded wearily. "No one would."
Look what I'd become. A monster. The things I'd done to survive—even I felt disgusted by myself. Once, thinking back on everything would fill me with an urge to cry, a pain in my chest that wouldn't fade. I'd become the very definition of what I despised, the person I hated most.
But that was in the past. These days, I simply lived.
It was like murder. The first time, you'd feel guilt. Over time, it stops mattering.
At this point, it no longer mattered.
"No, you're the one who doesn't understand," Mira said, glaring at me. She still had me pinned on the bed, and we were both still bare—though I didn't think she'd realized that yet. "Once you evade the LOG induction exams, you'll instantly become a fugitive. Yes, you can hide. You can run as far as you want. But you know—you know—it's only a matter of time before they find you. And when they do, you'll be imprisoned for life or killed on the spot."
She was right. There was nowhere to hide in Atlantis. Nowhere at all.
"So what would you have me do?" I asked.
She fell silent. The induction exams were an individual race everyone had to run alone. No one could help me. No one.
After a while, tears rolled down her cheeks. She suddenly pulled me into a tight embrace. "I'm sorry. I can't help you. I'm so sorry," she cried.
I said nothing, stroking her head. It seemed she finally understood the severity of my situation.
The more I thought about it, the more despicable I felt. I'd created Nero. I'd made him this way—a character meant to suffer, filled with so much grudge, who only wanted happiness but suffered until his dying breath.
Now I was him.
Was this what the person who brought me here wanted me to feel?
I looked down to find Mira's nape gazing back up at me. Suddenly, I felt that cursed urge again.
Well, I couldn't keep running from it. This might be my last chance.
'System,' I thought.
[What is it, User?]
'I accept. Integrate the second form of DNA extraction into me.'
[Are you sure?]
'You gave me no other choice. Do it.'
I feared losing my humanity upon accepting, but now that I thought about it, I'd lost my humanity long ago. The day I fell into the nether realm.
"Ack—"
My eyes widened. My incisors began to lengthen. I could feel them growing, sharpening, extending further than any human teeth should.
Then I locked onto her nape.
Darkness consumed everything.