Chapter Three: The Pawn's Awakening
The last thing Jae-hyun remembered was the searing pain of his ribs shattering, the cold finality of the floor, and the unholy screech of a new, terrible power overwriting his very soul. Then, a single, commanding voice. "Rise, for your Queen. My pawn, my instrument, my eyes in the new age. I will be back."
A cold, familiar terror. Then, nothing.
Now, a bell rang. A sharp, shrill sound that tore through the lingering haze of oblivion. The smell of old chalk and polished wood filled his nostrils. He felt a dull ache in his back, a sensation he hadn't experienced since his first days of training. He was sitting. The feeling was completely alien. His body was... different. Smaller. Weaker.
A girl's voice, full of exasperation, came from beside him. "Yah, Minwoo! Are you listening? Mr. Kim is going to call on you any second and you're going to get detention again."
Minwoo? The name felt foreign on his consciousness, yet it resonated with a strange, inherent familiarity. A flood of fragmented memories that were not his own surged through his mind: homework, lunch money, a crush on a girl named Yuri, the boring drone of a history lesson. He was in a classroom. A school.
His eyes snapped open. He was not in the pristine white chamber of the Tower, nor was he in a body forged by battle. He was slumped over a worn wooden desk, a history textbook open before him, and the late-afternoon sun was streaming through the windows of a high school classroom. The girl beside him, with a neat ponytail and sharp eyes, was staring at him. He recognized her from the fragmented memories—Hana, a classmate who seemed to be in a perpetual state of annoyance with him.
"Minwoo," the teacher, a portly man with a mustache, called out, his voice a bored threat. "Care to share your thoughts on the fall of the Goryeo dynasty?"
The old Jae-hyun would have been a warrior, a champion. He knew nothing of a forgotten dynasty. His world began and ended with the Tower. Panic, cold and sharp, seized him. This was a nightmare. A hellish afterlife. But then, a voice echoed deep within his mind. It was not a divine chorus, but the same cold, commanding voice he heard in his final moments.
[System Initiated]
[User Registration Complete]
[Warning: Legacy Status Corrupted. New Identity Assigned]
[Name: Kim Minwoo]
[Class: None (Yet)]
[Level: 1]
The message was a translucent blue screen that only he could see, a familiar sight from his old life. He was a Hunter. Reincarnated. But not as himself. His mind raced, pulling from the scattered memories of the "nameless one" he now inhabited. Kim Minwoo. A boy who had just turned eighteen, a slacker with no prospects. He was a nobody. The perfect host.
He took a deep breath, trying to steady his frantic thoughts. He was alive. The Tower hadn't fallen yet. The world was still as it was before the calamity. This was a second chance, but in a body weaker than a common goblin. He had been sent back in time, into a new life, a new identity.
The teacher's voice cut through his thoughts. "Minwoo? The Goryeo dynasty?"
"Uhh... it fell because of a new power," he blurted out, the words feeling clumsy and foreign on his tongue. He didn't know the answer, but the phrase felt right. The teacher sighed, shaking his head.
"A new power, he says," Mr. Kim muttered, but before he could continue, a collective gasp rippled through the classroom. Students were pointing, not at Minwoo, but at the windows.
He turned his head. High above the cityscape, where the pristine blue sky met the horizon, a colossal structure was materializing. It wasn't a building, nor was it a natural phenomenon. It was a pillar of white stone and impossibly perfect geometry that stretched from the heavens to the earth, a monument to a power beyond human comprehension. It was the Tower of Beginning.
The sight sent a jolt of recognition and dread through Minwoo's very core. It was exactly as he remembered it from the day his old life began. He remembered the awe, the fear, the promises of power. He knew what came next. The rifts. The monsters. The death.
Just as the Tower finished its manifestation, another system message, glowing with an urgent intensity, popped up before his eyes. This message was accompanied by the faint, chilling laughter of a young woman's voice, echoing from deep within his mind.
[Urgent Mission: Survive]
[Mission Goal: Achieve Class Awakening]
[Time Limit: None]
[Reward: Class Acquisition, Status Window Update]
He blinked, and the message changed, displaying his new name, his new stats, his new reality.
[Name: Kim Minwoo]
[Title: None]
[Level: 1]
[Class: None (Yet)]
[HP: 100/100]
[MP: 50/50]
[Stats]
Strength: 5
Agility: 5
Intelligence: 10
Vitality: 5
Sense: 15
[Stat Points: 0]
He was incredibly weak. The stats were pathetically low, lower than any he had seen even in a common Awakened. But a new line appeared at the very bottom, one he had never seen before in all his time as Jae-hyun.
[Note: Soul Integrity has been compromised. The host's essence is being held in reserve by a higher power. All stat gains and skills will be temporarily suppressed until a Class is acquired.]
He understood. He wasn't a hero, but a prisoner. He had been reincarnated, but his new life was not a gift from the gods. The Demon Lord, trapped in his old body, had sent him back. She was the "higher power" in the message. The mission to "Survive" was not a benevolent quest, but a command from a new master. And the suppression on his power was a leash, a promise that he would be bound to her will.
He looked back at the Tower of Beginning, now a permanent fixture in the sky, and then at his shaking, young hands. He knew what was coming. He knew the monsters, the dungeons, the legendary artifacts. But this time, he wasn't on a path to become a champion. He was on a path laid out by a vengeful queen, forced to start at the absolute bottom, a nameless boy with a demon in his mind. And he knew that somewhere out there, she was waiting for him.