The air smelled like ozone and lavender.
Kairen sat still, breathing it in like it might vanish. A forest if that's what this place was spread around him in perfect, impossible symmetry. The trees shimmered with soft twilight hues: purples, blues, flickers of cold white. The leaves didn't rustle. The wind didn't make a sound.
It was beautiful. But wrong.
The sky overhead was stuck in a soft, eternal dusk. No sun. No stars. Just light, like a screen frozen mid-animation. It reminded him of the moment between waking and dreaming when the world looked right but felt completely off.
Kairen stared at his hands. They didn't look like his.
Longer fingers. Clean fingernails. Pale skin marked with faint, black veins that shimmered occasionally like they were trying to light up from beneath. He flexed them, slowly.
Still him. Somehow not.
He reached under the black coat. No blood. No broken ribs. No gaping wound where a noble's carriage had turned him into pavement paste. Just… a new body. A scar across his side faint, healed. Not one he remembered earning.
"Did I get taller?" he muttered. "Or just... less pathetic-looking?"
A breeze rolled through. The grass didn't bend. The mist didn't stir.
"This place feels like a loading screen," he said to no one, voice hollow in the stillness. "Guess death came with a graphical update."
He stood slowly, adjusting to how his weight felt distributed now. His limbs were lighter but stronger. His reflexes were tuned, tight, coiled like springs. The body felt like a weapon, not a home.
Then came the flicker.
A sharp ping sliced through the silence, followed by a crackling wave of static across his vision. A pale-blue panel bloomed in front of him.
> SYSTEM ONLINE Host: Vessel of the Demon Core [Incompatible] Awakening Level: 3% Tutorial Mission: Kill a sentient being
Kairen blinked.
"Of course. Because saying hello or breathing didn't qualify."
Another panel slid in beside it, less stable. Lines of flickering text stuttered into clarity.
[Skill Tree] – All Nodes Locked
[Reputation] – Nonexistent
[Title] – Demon King's Vessel (Unstable)
[Perks] – None Available
[Status]
He tapped the last one instinctively. It opened like muscle memory.
> STR: 12.6 (Unstable)
AGI: 14.4 (Surging)
INT: 13.2 (Suppressed)
MANA: 22.0 (Corrupted)
Not numbers like a game no color coding, no cute meters. Just raw data and discomfort.
"I've got corrupted mana," he said flatly. "Great. Probably contagious."
He tried speaking directly to the system.
"Where am I?"
> ERROR: System adaptation incomplete. Awaiting organic trigger.
"What does that mean?"
> ERROR. Query invalid.
"...Thanks. Very helpful."
If this was supposed to be a second chance, it had the warmth of a dead fish.
Kairen walked.
The twilight forest seemed endless rows of trees that felt copy-pasted, the same angles, the same shadows, the same absence of noise. His footsteps didn't echo. The fog that curled around his ankles didn't swirl or shift.
He passed a brook. The water ran upstream.
"Okay. Nope. That's definitely not normal."
Farther in, the trees gave way to broken stone.
Ruins shattered pillars, toppled walls covered in black moss. A statue, headless and half-melted, knelt near an altar overtaken by coiling roots. The stone was scorched, cracked, like it had been burned from the inside.
This wasn't just abandoned. It was erased.
Kairen walked slowly, breath shallow.
"What kind of messed-up game spawns a guy into a graveyard?"
He stood before the altar, staring at its surface veined with glowing black threads, like nerves under cracked marble. His hand moved before he told it to, reaching out.
Fingertips met stone.
A jolt ran up his arm.
It wasn't pain exactly but something primal and hot, like his body remembered how to be dangerous. Something deep in his chest responded.
> Instinct trigger detected.
Passive unlocked: [Predatory Aura – Faint]
Kairen pulled his hand back, trembling.
"What the hell is happening to me?"
Then—
A sound.
Dry leaves shifting. A breath not his own. From the trees.
He turned slowly.
Something was watching him.
It stepped out of the fog.
Humanoid. Roughly his size, but hunched and twitching. Covered in dark, coarse fur. Bone plates jutted from its shoulders like armor made of old claws. Its face mostly wolf, partly human twisted in a half-snarl.
One eye glowed amber. The other was a socket of scar tissue.
But it wore pieces of armor scraps of leather, old iron buckles. It chose to wear them.
It wasn't a monster. It was someone.
And it was staring straight at him.
Kairen ducked behind a broken column, heart slamming against his ribs.
A whisper curled through the air.
> "Another vessel. Too early."
His blood went cold.
The system chirped, flat and emotionless:
> Threat Level: Manageable. Initiate combat for tutorial unlock.
"Manageable?" Kairen whispered. "This thing has teeth longer than my future."
His breath caught. No weapons. No spells. No training.
Nothing but a sarcastic mouth and a system that wanted him dead or mutated or both.
He considered running. Briefly. His body twitched in disagreement.
A surge of heat pulsed into his hands.
"No. No no no don't you dare."
The system wasn't listening.
Kairen's hand moved again, without full permission.
He crouched, grabbed a jagged chunk of stone broken from the ruins, sharp at one end. His fingers wrapped around it like it belonged there.
Across the clearing, the creature growled low. It moved toward him, one foot dragging slightly. Wounded? Maybe.
Kairen's knees locked. His thoughts screamed.
Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't—
A sound.
Ping.
A new panel exploded across his vision larger than before, pulsing red.
> [Demon Vein Surge: LOCKED]
[Brute Awakening: 4% - Incomplete]
Choose Combat Mode:
[1] Bare Survival
[2] Blood Baptism
Kairen stared.
The beast stepped closer.
His mouth moved before his brain caught up.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
And then the world waited for his choice.