The air in Kunlun University stadium reeked of ozone and broken dreams.
Li Chen clenched his fists inside the pockets of his cheap jacket, feeling the worn fabric rub against his knuckles.
His eyes remained fixed on the center of the stage, ignoring the cold sweat that trickled down his neck.
There it was: the Origin Crystal.
It was a sphere of strange geometry, so black that it seemed to absorb the light of the stadium, deciding in a second who would be born to be the hammer and who to be the nail.
"Zhao Feng! Rank A! Solar Flame Warrior System!" roared the dean.
The roar of the crowd was deafening, an ovation that shook the foundations of the building.
On the podium, a broad-shouldered young man raised his arms as an aura of golden fire danced around him, giving off a heat that reached the front rows.
Zhao Feng, the heir to the Helios Guild, was the picture of success.
Upon stepping down from the platform, Zhao deliberately deviated from his path.
He rammed his shoulder into Li Chen's with the force of a truck, making the young man take a step back.
"I hope the Crystal has a 'Boot Cleaner' System for you, Li," Zhao whispered, loud enough to make the others laugh.
"Someone will have to polish my armor when I'm at S Rank. Don't worry, I'll pay you well for the scraps."
Li Chen did not respond.
Not because he was speechless, but because his throat was closed with pure fury.
He hated Zhao, but he hated even more his own thin arms and the way the world simply expected him to accept his place in the mud.
—Li Chen, student 4092. Please come up to the podium.
The dean's voice was a wake-up call.
Li walked, feeling as if her legs weighed a ton. She climbed the steps, ignoring the giggles from the VIP section.
He stopped in front of the glass. His reflection showed a pale young man with a determination that bordered on madness.
He didn't want money. He just wanted to stop being the one who bowed his head.
He reached out and touched the icy surface.
¡CRACK!
The sound did not come from the glass, but from his own soul.
A burst of neon light blinded Li Chen, followed by a pain that made him fall to his knees.
[COMPATIBLE HOST DETECTED!]
[Initiating a connection... An Iron Will born of Humiliation has been detected.]
[ALERT! Multiple divine signals have detected the "Origin Fault" in the host.]
Suddenly, his mind ceased to belong to him.
[Thunder God System (SSS) requesting access...]
[Plague Sovereign (PS) system requesting access...]
[Void Architect System (SSS) requesting access...]
"What...?" Li stammered, putting his hands to his head.
It wasn't a voice. It was an invasion.
One hundred foreign wills collided in his consciousness.
Li Chen felt his neurons sparking. The smell of ozone turned metallic, almost like blood.
System screens rained down before his eyes, overlapping to create a deafening wall of static.
[CRITICAL ERROR! Data overload imminent. The host will crash in 3... 2...]
Then, a heavy, ancient voice emerged from the abyss of his mind, silencing the chaos with an echo of centuries.
—Shut up, parasites. Your pride will destroy the vessel before we can use it. For now, we just need to let it assimilate as many systems as its body can handle.
[Sealing Range D to SSS Systems.]
[Compress the souls. NOW!]
Li Chen's world turned black.
The last thing he felt was the impact of his face against the cold ground and the echo of a hundred laughs that were not human.
The smell of disinfectant was the first thing that returned.
Li Chen opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling that seemed to be slowly rotating.
He tried to sit up, but an electric prick in his temple forced him to groan and fall back onto the stretcher.
"Don't move," said a soft but firm voice beside him.
—You almost fried your brain out there, Li.
He turned his head slowly.
Lin Xiaoyue was sitting in a folding chair, with a medical tablet on her lap.
Her hair was disheveled and her eyes were red, a sign that she hadn't moved for hours.
"Xiaoyue...?" Li's voice sounded like he had swallowed dry sand.
-How long...?
—Three hours.
—The doctor said you had an "Incompatible Mana Shock."
"Basically, your body tried to absorb energy and spat it back out," she sighed, avoiding his gaze.
—The Crystal... didn't react, Li. There was no color, no rank, no system. The dean registered you as a Null.
Li Chen felt a void in his stomach, but before he could process the news, his vision was filled with interference.
Text boxes of a rusty bronze color, worn at the edges, began to float above Xiaoyue's head.
[Dramatic Narrator System (Rank F)]: The loser awakens in the silence of the infirmary, unaware that the world will soon tremble before his weakness transformed into a weapon...
Li shook his head, rubbing his eyes hard.
"Are you okay? You've gone pale," Xiaoyue asked, approaching and placing a hand on his forehead.
"I'm... I'm seeing things, Xiaoyue," Li murmured, his breathing becoming erratic.
—There are letters. Pictures. Above you. It says you're a "Nearby Target."
Xiaoyue stepped back a little, her expression turning into a mixture of pity and fear.
—Li, the doctor said you might be having hallucinations because of the brain shock. It's normal. Just rest.
—Tomorrow... tomorrow we can go to my father's Guild. He can give you a position in the archives.
—You won't have to fight, you'll be safe.
Li Chen stared at her. It wasn't a hallucination.
I could feel the weight of those text boxes. They were tangible, as if they were etched into the very air.
She looked again at the notification that was blinking insistently above her friend's ankle.
[Fisher Eye System (F-Rank)]: [Notice: Anomaly detected in target Lin Xiaoyue.]
[Residual energy fissure in the left lateral tendon. Degree of obstruction: 45%.]
"It's not a hallucination," Li said, his voice turning cold and precise.
—Xiaoyue, your ankle. Two years ago, during the entrance exam... you didn't fall by accident.
—Zhao Feng hit you, didn't he? The mana is still there, blocking your circulation.
—That's why your rank dropped from B to C in the last month.
Xiaoyue was petrified.
The glass of water she was holding slipped from her fingers, crashing onto the tiled floor.
The water spread, but she didn't even notice.
"How... how can you know that?" she whispered, her voice trembling.
"Even the hospital's most expensive scanners didn't detect it. They said it was stress... Li, what happened to you?"
Li Chen did not respond.
She blinked hard, but the rusty bronze-colored letters were still there, hovering over her friend's ankle with irritating persistence.
—Xiaoyue… —Li's voice sounded hoarse, laden with a strange urgency—.
—Your system… what does it look like?
The girl stopped as she handed him a glass of water, frowning with concern.
"My system? It's the standard Healer Class system, Li. A very clean, light blue interface. Why do you ask?"
—The doctor said that rejecting manna can cause visual migraines. You shouldn't strain your eyes.
Li Chen ignored the warning.
He stretched out a trembling hand into the air, trying to touch the text box that only he could see, but his fingers just pierced the void.
"Does your interface ever look old? Like it's made of rusty metal?" Li asked.
—Does he tell you things about people that you shouldn't know? Their name, for example?
Xiaoyue took a step back. Her face, once compassionate, now showed a trace of fear.
—Li, you're scaring me. C-Rank systems like mine are accurate, but they're not… mind readers.
—What you describe sounds like a mental processing error. The "Mana Rejection" sometimes fragments perception.
—Please, stop staring into space like that.
Li looked her in the eyes.
Above her head, the Narrator System began writing again, with that dirty, sloppy handwriting.
[Dramatic Narrator System (Rank F)]: The young man seeks answers from someone who cannot provide them. She sees a system of light; he sees the rusted gears of a reality that is beginning to crumble…
"It's not a mistake," Li murmured to himself, feeling a chill.
"If this were a hallucination, I wouldn't know about your ankle, Xiaoyue."
"That's enough!" she interrupted, her voice trembling.
—I'm going to find Professor Han. You're not well, Li. Stay here.
Xiaoyue hurriedly left the infirmary, the echo of her footsteps resonating in the hallway.
Li Chen was left alone.
Surrounded by the hum of machines and those three damned bronze windows that flickered like an old television with no signal.
She put her hands to her face, squeezing her eyelids shut until she saw stars.
There was no glory. There was no fanfare.
Just constant static in his brain and the feeling that something rotten had just awakened inside him.
"If this is a system," he whispered, looking at the Narrator's window that mocked his loneliness, "then in the end, did I wake up?"