The night sky stretched endlessly above.
A sea of black, quiet and cloudless, with the moon hanging like a lantern in the void.
Its light poured gently through the trees, red and soft, like the touch of a forgotten memory.
Souta lay flat on the forest floor his breath was steady but shallow a thin cut burned across his shoulder, the sting faint compared to the ache inside his chest, he just kept staring at the moon.
Still beautiful even in another world, he whispered, his voice no louder than the sighing wind.
Silence swallowed the forest again but in Souta's mind, silence was never quiet his thoughts spun, his memories stirred. One by one, they crept back into him like ghosts he could never shake.
…
He was four the last time he saw his father.
It was a bright morning, cool air, sunlight spilling over the rooftops of their small home. The city gates were busy with hunters preparing to enter a dungeon. Souta remembered clinging to his father's armored leg, his tiny hands gripping hard as though that could stop him from leaving.
Kaede Sato B-rank Hunter, strong enough to split boulders, yet gentle enough to smile like the world was never cruel. He carried his helmet under one arm, sword strapped firm across his back.
"I'll bring you something cool, alright, little lion?" his father said, bending low to ruffle his hair.
Souta had laughed then, believing it without doubt.
But his father never came back.
They called it a collapse, a dungeon distortion, the gate sealed shut without warning, trapping everyone inside no survivors, no bodies not even scraps of broken gear, Just silence where life had been.
"All five hunters presumed dead," the guildmaster said.
Souta didn't understand the words at the time. He only understood his mother's silence that night, the way she sat beside him with trembling hands but no tears. She never cried in front of him. She only held him tighter, whispering over and over, We will be fine, Souta, We will be fine.
…
His mother worked herself hollow after that.
By day, she sold potions in the market square, smiling politely at customers who barely looked at her, by night, she swept the guildhall floors while adventurers drank and laughed, her hands raw from scrubbing.
Souta grew up on reheated leftovers, cold bread, and soup packets. He never complained. How could he? He saw the bruises on her hands, the exhaustion in her steps.
By ten, he started working too. Carrying crates, polishing weapons for low-level hunters, cleaning armor, Sometimes he'd linger near dungeon gates, waiting for stronger hunters to discard broken gear anything he could grab and sell for a few coins.
Other kids his age awakened early, by twelve, most had Classes, uniforms, and mentors, by sixteen, many had already cleared their first dungeons.
Souta?
By seventeen, he was still nothing, no class, no magic, just a weak body and a stubborn will.
But his mother never looked at him like he was useless.
She smiled at him the same way she had when he was four like he was everything.
That smile was the only thing that kept him moving.
But smiles don't stop sickness.
It started as a fever, a simple cough then it grew worse, too fast. Souta had awakened to an E-rank by then, barely scraping through his first dungeon he thought he could save her, he thought having power would be enough.
It wasn't.
Hospitals turned them away because they didn't have enough money.
He sold everything they had including his own weapons. He took jobs far too dangerous for his rank, crawling out of dungeons with broken bones just to buy potions.
But it wasn't enough.
She died one rainy night, rain tapping endlessly against their roof. Her hand gripped his weakly as her voice cracked, barely more than a whisper:
"Don't become someone you're not, Souta. Promise me…"
And then she was gone.
He didn't scream, he didn't cry.
He drifted.
Through dungeons, through slums, through gangs.
He became part of the underworld, taking the jobs no one else wanted. Fighting monsters stronger than him with broken weapons, fighting men more dangerous than beasts in the shadows of the city.
But he didn't break.
He kept moving slowly, painfully and relentlessly.
E to D, D to C, and finally C to B.
No shortcuts Just grit, scars, and blood.
He studied monsters until he knew every weakness. He pushed his body until it had no choice but to adapt. He bled in ruins, he starved in alleys, he fought in darkness.
By twenty-one, people finally noticed him.
"The Ghost," they called him. A B-rank soloist who cleared C-rank dungeons alone. not flashy, not friendly, but always returning alive.
He had money now enough to live, enough to eat, enough to drink.
But it meant nothing.
The people he had wanted to save were long gone.
…
"I died… because I was curious," Souta murmured now in the forest, wind brushing his cheek.
A faint smile tugged at his lips, not joy, but irony.
All that fighting to live.
All that pain.
And in the end, curiosity killed him.
That itch in his chest that refused to let him walk away. That need to see what no one else dared to see. It drove him into the core chamber of a dungeon, face to face with an S-rank demon he could never defeat.
He remembered the flames, the claws, the pain that split his body apart.
And then—darkness.
And then—this place.
A world not his own.
He groaned, pushing himself upright a dull ache ran through his body.
"STATUS," he whispered.
———~‡~———
Name: Souta Kaede
Age: 18
Class: Hunter of Boundless Path
Title: Reborn One
Level: 1
Rank: SSS
Strength: 32
Agility: 39
Endurance: 36
Intelligence: 27
Luck: 9
Skills: 2
Traits: 3
—————————
The glowing words hovered in the air like divine truth.
Souta clenched his fist.
"This time…" His voice was quiet, but steady, "This time, I won't waste it."
He rose slowly, moonlight gleaming in his eyes. Twin blades of light green, sharp and unyielding.
A new world, A second chance
He didn't know why he got it, maybe fate pitied him, maybe it was some cruel experiment or maybe the universe knew.
Souta Kaede wasn't done yet.
And this time?
He was going all the way.