The neon glow of the United Republics rarely reached the lower levels of the slums, but when it did, it usually illuminated something vile. Wayne stared at the flickering holographic notice projected against his apartment's rusted steel door. The harsh red text hovered in the damp air, a glaring reminder of his impending doom.
EVICTION NOTICE: FINAL WARNING. BALANCE DUE: 1,200 REPUBLIC CREDITS. TIME REMAINING: 14 HOURS.
Wayne sighed, running a hand through his unkempt dark hair. Eighteen years old, living in a shoebox that smelled perpetually of ozone and rotting cabbage, and flat broke. He leaned back on the creaking mattress, the springs digging into his spine. It had been nearly two years since he had transmigrated from Earth to Grands Domain. He had expected a fantasy world filled with magic, elves, and boundless adventure. Instead, he woke up in a hyper-capitalist dystopia where the rich lived in floating utopias and the poor scrounged for synthetic nutrient paste in the dark.
"Fourteen hours," Wayne muttered to himself, his voice raspy from the dry, filtered air of the complex. "I could sell a kidney. Do they even take un-augmented kidneys anymore? Probably not. They'd just laugh and charge me a biological disposal fee."
He stood up and paced the three short steps it took to cross his entire living space. The landlord, a cybernetically enhanced brute named Garm, had already broken the fingers of the guy two doors down for missing rent. Wayne didn't have the credits, he didn't have a job, and he certainly didn't have the physical prowess to fight off a cyborg enforcer.
Just as he was contemplating the logistics of living in the toxic storm drains, a sharp, piercing frequency echoed through his skull. It wasn't a sound from the outside world. It was a vibration that seemed to originate from the center of his brain, radiating outward until it rattled his teeth.
Wayne staggered, clutching his head. The neon eviction notice on his door flickered and died. The hum of the city outside—the distant sirens, the whir of hover-cars, the constant drizzle of acid rain against the metal siding—all of it vanished. Absolute, suffocating silence descended.
Before his eyes, the physical world began to fracture like shattered glass. Dark fissures tore through his meager belongings, revealing an endless, starry void beneath the fabric of reality.
[Warning. Apex Survival Sequence Initiated.]
The text materialized directly in his field of vision, burning with a cold, blue luminescence. Wayne's breath caught in his throat. He knew what this was. Everyone in Grands Domain knew what this was, even if the government desperately tried to censor it on the public networks.
Apex Survival. A ruthless, multidimensional phenomenon that randomly abducted citizens, throwing them into brutal survival trials. You survive, you return with power, wealth, and artifacts that defied modern science. You fail, and you become just another "missing person" statistic. The mortality rate for the beginner's trial was rumored to be staggeringly high.
"No, no, no, not now," Wayne gritted his teeth, feeling the gravity in the room invert. "I haven't even had breakfast."
[Target Acquired: Wayne. Age: 18. Status: Unawakened.]
[Commencing Forced Teleportation to Beginner's Trial.]
The floor dropped out from under him. Wayne plummeted into the starry void, his stomach lurching violently. The sensation of falling lasted for what felt like hours, though his rational mind knew it was likely only seconds.
As he tumbled through the abyss, a secondary sequence of prompts began to cascade across his vision, much faster than the first. These were not the cold blue of the Apex system. They were a brilliant, blinding gold.
[Transmigration Soul Detected.]
[Scanning inherent traits... Scan complete.]
[Anomaly found. Calculating suitable Talent...]
[Ding! Unique, Rule-Breaking Talent Awakened: Divine Gear Fusion.]
Wayne stopped falling. He was suspended in the void, surrounded by the golden text. His heart hammered wildly against his ribs. A Talent? The rumors said only one in a hundred survivors awakened a talent during their first trial, and it was usually something mundane like enhanced stamina or minor night vision.
"Divine Gear Fusion?" Wayne echoed, his voice carrying in the silent expanse. "What does that mean?"
As if responding to his voice, a stream of knowledge violently injected itself into his consciousness. Wayne gasped, his eyes rolling back momentarily as the sheer volume of information settled into his brain. It was a blueprint. A fundamental understanding of a mechanic that belonged to him and him alone.
The system was elegant in its simplicity, yet terrifying in its implications. He could merge identical or conceptually similar items to exponentially upgrade their tier and affix properties.
He didn't need to forge. He didn't need materials, anvils, or magical fires. He just needed volume.
The tier progression burned into his mind: Gray (Trash/Common Material) -> White (Common) -> Green (Uncommon) -> Blue (Rare) -> Purple (Epic) -> Orange (Legendary) -> Red (Mythic) -> Gold (Divine).
The conversion rate was a static multiplier of four. Four Gray items fused into one Common item. Four Commons fused into one Uncommon. Four Uncommons fused into one Rare.
Wayne's mind raced, his previous panic entirely eclipsed by the raw, calculating nature of a true hoarder. To get a Rare item—something that veteran survivors killed each other over—he only needed sixty-four pieces of identical Gray trash. Sixty-four. That was nothing.
[Integration Complete.]
[Prepare for descent. Objective: Survive the wasteland for 3 minutes.]
The golden light shattered, and the cold blue of the Apex system returned. The void beneath him opened up, revealing a sprawling, desolate landscape of cracked earth and crimson skies. The stench of rotting flesh and dried blood rushed up to greet him, hitting his senses like a physical blow.
"Three minutes," Wayne whispered, his eyes narrowing as the ground rushed up to meet him. "I don't just need to survive. I need to scavenge."
He hit the ground hard, rolling to distribute the kinetic force. The dirt was coarse and tasted of iron. Wayne pushed himself up, spitting out a mouthful of dust, his gaze sweeping the barren wasteland. The trial had officially begun. The eviction notice back home was the least of his worries now. He was in the domain of Apex Survival, and he had a world to exploit.