A massive loot pack bulged on Kael's back… twice the size of his own body, stuffed with ore, monster cores, and whatever else they'd ripped out of a Rift that was already on the verge of collapse.
He staggered behind a group of four Hunters in gleaming armor, their helmets stamped with the badge of C-Rank.
A year had passed since the Anomaly.
And in this new world, Kael was still just a bag carrier.
A porter.
Disposable trash.
Kael's gaze locked onto the broad shoulders of the man at the front… Valdus, the team leader. Valdus strode with easy confidence, a sword strapped to his back. His face was slick with sweat, but his eyes shone with satisfaction.
The Rift boss was dead.
Their third run today… and Kael would get one mana stone. One.
That coin would either buy medicine for his little sister… or cover the debt their parents had left behind.
He didn't know which one he'd choose today.
"The exit portal's up ahead," Valdus called, almost singing it to his team. "Good work. The haul is insane…"
The Rift sky trembled.
Not a minor quake.
Reality cracked.
Thin lines of white light split the dimensional ceiling above them. The crystals embedded in the cavern walls began to glow at unstable frequencies. The exit portal flickered, bright, dark, bright, dark… like it was glitching.
"The Rift's collapsing!" one Hunter shouted. "The boss is down, the system's already counting it as a timeout!"
"Move!" Valdus broke into a sprint toward the portal.
Kael tried to speed up, but the pack on his back turned every step into punishment. His exhausted foot slipped on slick crystal. He nearly went down, barely managing to keep his balance.
"Boss Valdus, wait…!"
Valdus turned.
The look in his eyes made Kael's blood run cold.
A predator, spotting the perfect piece of prey to erase.
"Payment?" Valdus stepped toward him, not toward the portal.
The other three Hunters halted as well, watching.
"You're just a bag mule," Valdus said, voice flat. "We're the ones risking our lives in here."
"Boss, we had an agreement…"
Valdus kicked him.
Not a normal kick.
A Hunter's kick, reinforced by awakening, that supernatural strength that turned flesh and bone into something closer to stone.
Kael flew backward. The loot pack whipped off his shoulders and slammed into the ground. Pain exploded down his side, white-hot and immediate.
Something in his ribs cracked.
He tried to push himself up, but Valdus was already turning away, sprinting for the portal.
Two of the Hunters grabbed the valuable bags… rare ore, shining cores and hauled them toward the exit.
They left behind a single, beat-up sack filled with "heavy trash" low-grade materials, fractured crystals, junk that wouldn't sell for anything decent.
"That's your cut!" Valdus shouted, laughing in a way that made Kael's skin crawl. "Free! Because we're generous!"
The portal was shrinking.
Kael clawed toward the abandoned sack, but his legs… no, his hip and knee felt wrong. Broken. Every movement was agony, sharp and alive.
He watched Valdus and the others slip through the narrowing portal.
It snapped shut with the sound of shattering glass.
Kael was alone inside a dying Rift.
. . .
The Rift sky turned white.
Not the natural white of clouds.
This was empty white, void white, like a canvas being erased from existence. Jagged lines of black pixels crawled along the edges, devouring the world from the outside in.
The cavern crystals didn't collapse.
They disintegrated, breaking into particles of light that simply vanished.
Kael forced himself upright… or tried to. His legs moved wrong, as if the joints no longer remembered how they were supposed to work.
He stared at the world dissolving around him, rage boiling up so violently it drowned out fear.
"If this is a game, then it's a broken one!" Kael roared at the emptiness. "If God exists, then He's a sick bug! The strong devour the weak, and I'm always the one getting crushed!"
The void surged faster. It was close enough now that Kael could feel it—an unnatural cold spilling from the advancing white edges, colder than anything physical, colder than absolute zero.
When it touched his skin, it didn't burn.
He was… deleted.
But something went wrong.
He should've vanished completely, wiped out without a trace.
Instead, Kael felt himself suspended between dimensions, existing and not existing at the same time. His eyes were open. He could still see…
…but there was nothing to see.
Only a neutral gray.
Then words appeared.
[ERROR: Entity detected in deletion zone.]
[Attempting forced ejection... FAILED.]
[Attempting reassignment to buffer space... FAILED.]
[Scanning for survival solution...]
Red light shimmered before him.
This wasn't a hallucination.
It was the universal system at work, an interface humans were never meant to witness.
[Achievement Unlocked: The One Who Cheated Death]
[Scanning hidden systems in the glitch zone...]
[Found: Absolute Clone System - Abandoned in void by previous user]
[Compatibility Check: 100% - This is YOUR system.]
Purple-black light, glitch colors, error colors, speared into Kael's chest with such force his consciousness almost split.
[INSTALLING: Absolute Clone System]
[Status: SUCCESS]
Kael vomited.
***
Hot asphalt burned against his cheek.
He woke up in the middle of a wide parking lot, right where the Rift gate had stood.
Now there was only a scorched mark on the ground.
The afternoon sun hammered down, making his skull throb.
Kael dragged in short, ragged breaths. His ribs were still damaged. His knees and hips, especially along the side, ached in a way he'd never felt before.
A biting pain.
A living pain.
In the distance, he could hear Valdus and his team cheering from a bar across the street.
Celebrating their win.
As if Kael had never existed.
Kael lifted his head and saw something new, hovering in his vision.
Bright-blue translucent text, visible only to him.
[Absolute Clone System]
Host: Kael
Current Clones: 0/1
[Stat Panel Loading...]
[NOTICE: Cloning will trigger a neural feedback loop. Pain from clones will be transmitted to the host body at 50% intensity. Do you accept this risk?]
Kael stared at the panel.
A cold breeze slid across his face.
And inside his chest, he felt a strange pulse, not a normal heartbeat, but something more complex. Like something else had started living inside him.
Kael smiled.
A cold smile.
The smile of a man who had died… and returned.
"You left me to die," Kael whispered, eyes fixed on the bar where Valdus was drinking. "But all you really did… was hand me the key to conquer this world."
He pressed a hand to his chest, right where the purple-black light had struck him.
"Let's begin."