CHAPTER 1: THE DISPOSABLE
The smell of ozone and rotting meat was the only thing Neo-Tokyo offered these days.
Kai Vance wiped the visor of his cracked gas mask, his breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. Behind him, the Celestial Pillar—a spire of obsidian stone that defied physics by piercing the clouds—groaned like a dying god.
"Hurry up, Scavenger 404," a voice crackled over his earpiece. It was cold, bored. "The 'Seven Seats' have already cleared the 80th floor. The dungeon stability is dropping to 4%. If you aren't out in five minutes, you're just part of the rubble."
Kai didn't answer. He couldn't. His fingers were raw, bleeding into the dirt as he frantically pried a glowing shard of Aether-glass from the ribcage of a dead Chimera. This shard was worth six months of rations. It was the difference between his sister getting her medicine or coughing herself to death in the slums of Sector 9.
Suddenly, the ground screamed.
A shockwave of pure golden energy rippled downward from the upper floors. Kai looked up just in time to see them: The Seven Seats.
They didn't walk; they drifted. Surrounded by a shimmering aura of divine power, the world's "Heroes" were descending from the peak of the Pillar. At their head was Caspian, The Solar Monarch, his golden armor radiating a light so bright it felt like a physical weight.
"The core is harvested," Caspian's voice boomed, echoing through the hollow spire. "This Pillar is spent. Seal the exits. We move to the New York Spire by sunset."
"Wait!" Kai screamed, finding his voice. He stood up, waving his blood-stained hands. "There are still thirty scavengers on this level! You haven't triggered the extraction gate!"
Caspian didn't even turn his head. To a God, the buzzing of a fly is beneath notice.
"Seal it," Caspian commanded.
The massive, runic stone doors at the base of the Pillar began to grind shut. The other scavengers bolted for the gap, screaming, trampling each other. Kai ran, his lungs burning, his boots skidding on slick monster gore.
He was ten feet away. Five feet.
CRACK.
A secondary tremor sent a jagged shard of the ceiling slamming down. It didn't hit Kai, but it pinned his lower half instantly. He fell, his face hitting the cold stone as the massive doors clicked shut with a final, soul-crushing thud.
[STATUS: SEALED]
[DUNGEON STABILITY: 0.9%]
[IMMINENT COLLAPSE IN: 60 SECONDS]
Darkness swallowed the Pillar. Kai clawed at the floor, his legs numb, his vision blurring. He was twenty years old, and he was dying in the dark so a "Hero" could make it to a dinner party in New York.
"Is this it?" he hissed, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "Just... trash to be thrown away?"
He reached out, his hand brushing against something cold. Something that wasn't stone.
In the chaos, the Seven Seats had been sloppy. A fragment of the Primal Core—the heart of the dungeon they were supposed to have harvested—had broken off and rolled into the shadows of the debris. It pulsed with a violent, jagged violet light.
It wasn't supposed to be touched by human hands. It was pure, unfiltered reality-warping energy.
Kai didn't care. If he was going to die, he was going to die with his teeth sunk into the neck of the world that hated him.
He grabbed the fragment.
The violet light surged into his veins like liquid fire. His screams were drowned out by the sound of the Pillar beginning to implode.
Then, the world froze.
A screen of obsidian glass ignited in his retinas.
[CRITICAL EVENT DETECTED]
[SOUL DETECTED: COMPATIBILITY 99.9% (Class: Spite-Driven)]
[THE SEVEN SEATS HAVE CLAIMED THE LIGHT.]
[WILL YOU CLAIM THE VOID?]
[ACCEPT "GOD-KILLER PROTOCOL"? Y/N]
Kai's vision turned red. He saw the golden light of Caspian fading into the distance. He felt the weight of every Scavenger who had ever been left behind.
"Yes," Kai rasped. "I'll take it all."
[PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
[AWAKENING UNIQUE CLASS: VOID REAPER (Rank F)]
[FIRST SKILL ACQUIRED: EXTRACTION (LVL 1)]
[THE HUNGER BEGINS.]
The Pillar collapsed. But Kai Vance didn't die.
In the ruins of Neo-Tokyo, something much worse than a monster had just been born.