The streets were empty.
Stone buildings loomed on both sides of the narrow road, their windows dark, torches long extinguished as the medieval city slept. Only hurried footsteps echoed through the night.
"P-Please—!"
A man stumbled forward, breath ragged, blood already soaking through his sleeve. His voice cracked as he ran, glancing back again and again in blind panic.
Behind him, a figure sprinted.
The dagger plunged into his back.
Not clean or precise, but it get the job done regardless.
The blade struck crookedly, tearing through flesh with a wet sound. The man screamed once, a sharp and broken sound, before collapsing face-first onto the stone road.
A cold silence followed.
The killer stood frozen, chest heaving.
He was a pale boy with messy black hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, dark eyes wide and trembling. His clothes were torn, dirt-stained, and far too thin for the cold night air.
"Tch... damn it..."
His hands shook as he wiped the blade against his sleeve, smearing blood across the fabric.
Then, steadying his breath, he whispered internally:
'Expedition Status.'
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[Divine Expedition Progress]
Objective: Disband the Traitor Association
Targets Eliminated: 2 / 17
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The window vanished.
He swallowed hard and knelt beside the corpse, quickly searching pockets, scanning the surrounding alley for witnesses.
"How the hell did I end up like this...?"
The memory came rushing back.
Not all at once. More like a slow, suffocating wave.
---
My life before this was painfully ordinary.
I wasn't a hero.
Wasn't rich or special either.
Just a dropout living in a space so small it barely deserved to be called an apartment. One cracked window. A mattress on the floor. A sink that leaked more than it worked.
High school had ended pretty early for me.
An incident i'd rather not think about.
Instead, I worked.
Twelve hours a day at a greasy restaurant downtown, hands constantly soaked in dirty water and food scraps, washing dishes until my fingers wrinkled and bled. The manager paid me under the table since I was still seventeen. A year too young for anything better.
Wake up.
Work.
Go home.
Sleep.
That was my world.
And two days ago, that mundane world broke.
---
I remember walking home after another late shift.
My legs felt like stone. My eyelids burned. The streetlights blurred together as I passed beneath them.
I had never felt that tired before.
Like my body wanted to shut down right there on the sidewalk.
When I reached my apartment, I didn't even bother changing clothes. I collapsed onto the mattress and closed my eyes.
And that was when everything changed.
---
I woke up freezing.
Stone pressed against my palms. Cold air cut through my skin.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't in my apartment.
I was lying in the middle of a dirt road beneath a gray sky.
Old stone buildings surrounded me, twisted and unfamiliar, like something ripped straight out of a medieval painting. Torches burned faintly along the walls. Somewhere in the distance, something howled.
I looked down.
The clothes on my body were torn. Old. Stained with dirt.
For a few seconds, I just stared.
My first thought was simple.
'This is a dream.'
'It has to be.'
'...Or maybe I'd finally worked myself to death.'
I stood up, heart pounding, and laughed weakly.
"This feels way too real…"
That was when the air in front of me shimmered.
Light gathered.
And a window appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Congratulations.]
[You have awakened.]
[Divine Blessing confirmed.]
[Granted by: ████████]
[System initialization in progress.]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
My breath caught in my throat.
I had heard of things like this before.
Everyone basically had.
Ever since the first Awakeneds appeared, since the news filled with stories of Divine Expeditions and people returning with inhuman strength.
The System.
The proof of being chosen.
'A Divine Blessing...'
My hands trembled.
Part of me felt like my chest would explode.
I had been picked. Out of billions of people, I was one of the few.
A chosen one.
Someone who could level up. Grow stronger. Become more than human.
But that excitement twisted almost instantly into confusion.
Because there was something wrong.
The god's name. It was redacted.
Blurred out completely, like reality itself refused to show it.
'That isn't normal.'
Every Awakened knew the deity who blessed them. It was always announced. Always clear.
'So why not mine?'
'Why is the god who chose me hidden?'
A chill crawled down my spine.
Excitement battled with unease as the glowing window hovered silently in front of me.
The light in front of me pulsed softly.
It didn't take long for the system to finish whatever process it was running.
The words blurred, rearranged, then vanished altogether.
For a brief moment, there was nothing.
Then two new windows formed in the air.
The first was filled with dense text, calmly explaining what a Divine Expedition was. That I had been transported to another world called Veyrion. That I would be given objectives chosen by the gods. That completion was the only way to return to Earth. Failure meant death.
It spoke about evil monsters, hostile forces and glorious rewards.
At the time, I didn't notice how carefully the words were chosen.
I was too focused on the second window.
The one labeled Status.
It unfolded cleanly before my eyes.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[SYSTEM STATUS]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Ronan
Level: 1
HP: 1,000
MP: 1,000
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Attributes
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Endurance: 1
Vitality: 1
Intelligence: 1
Willpower: 1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Skills & Authorities
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Gluttony (C)
Devours the opponent's corpse to steal Status Points from their most prominent attribute and their most prominent skill.
Also devours half of the awakened's gained status points after a level up, converting them into experience for the Gluttony skill.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Absorption Efficiency: 2%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I stared at it for a long time.
'Seriously? One in everything? Do all Awakeneds start with such awful stats?'
I stared at the description of the Gluttony skill, reading it over and over again.
'A skill that eats up half of the rewards of my own Levels? What kind of useless god blessed me to receive this thing?'
Even so, this skill sounded pretty powerful. Stealing an opponents Status Points and even their skill would certainly come in handy.
...Unfortunately, it also came with an efficiency so low it almost felt like a joke.
'Two percent.'
'If I killed something strong, I'd barely scrape anything from it.'
Still.
'The Skills rank is C. So I suppose it could have been worse.'
Before I could process more, the windows dissolved into glowing dust and the medieval street around me returned in full clarity.
That was the beginning.
---
That memory snapped away like a broken thread.
Cold air filled my lungs once more.
Blood soaked the stones beneath the corpse at my feet.
Two days had passed since I arrived in Veyrion.
Two days of running, hiding and spying.
And after all that?
I had only found two of them.
I glanced back at the alley's mouth, listening for footsteps.
Nothing.
Slowly, I exhaled.
'Seventeen targets.'
'And after two days, only two were dead.'