Ten years after the final apocalypse, Earth had become unrecognizable.
The devastation stretched endlessly in every direction.
The entire world was now just a wasteland.
Cities that once housed millions were now graveyards of steel and stone, their ruins crawling with monsters and covered in mutated, monster-like plants.
The sky had turned a sickly green - well, it wasn't really a sky anymore.
Massive mutated trees had grown tall enough to cover everything above, their branches intertwining into a suffocating canopy that made day and night impossible to tell apart.
In this endless apocalypse, a lone figure walked.
Cipher moved slowly through the ruins. His condition didn't look good, and his clothes had turned to rags over the years. He navigated the skeletal remains of what might have been Seattle - though names meant nothing now.
Crumbling buildings surrounded him, vines thicker than his torso coiled around their frames, crushing concrete and rebar.
His boots crunched over debris with each step.
He looked up. The canopy above was so thick that no sunlight should have reached him, yet somehow he could still see clearly. Was this another ability of the Glitch Class? He wasn't sure.
The Glitch Class had been his greatest gift and his greatest curse.
The name of the class wasn't actually "Glitch" - the real name was a mess of incomprehensible symbols, but he'd nicknamed it that years ago.
Twenty years ago, the Apocalypse System descended on Earth, and with it came the Gates - portals to countless dying worlds, each locked in their own unique apocalypse.
The system granted humanity powers and abilities, letting them raid these apocalyptic worlds for even more strength. It seemed like a gift at the time. Humanity thought they were the conquerors.
They were wrong.
The Gates were just training grounds, with Earth's own apocalypse as the final exam.
Ten years ago, when Earth's apocalypse finally descended, even the strongest awakeners couldn't withstand it. The world fell in days. Cipher had spent the last decade wondering if things would have been different if they'd known.
If they'd prepared for what was really coming instead of treating the Gates like a game.
He shook his head. No point thinking about it now.
Then he noticed something changing in the sky above.
A bright light appeared between the intertwined branches of the canopy. At first, he thought it was the sun breaking through, but no - it was moving. Getting closer.
A meteorite?
That was... surprising. The mutated trees covering the world were absurdly strong. For a meteorite to punch through them like that…
Before he could finish the thought, the meteorite's trajectory suddenly changed.
It was coming straight toward him now.
And it was accelerating.
Cipher didn't even have time to move before the meteorite slammed into him.
[You have died]
...
Cipher opened his eyes.
He looked down at himself. Still intact. Well, he'd expected that. This was how he'd survived for ten years after the end of the world, after all.
He summoned the system and checked his status.
[Name: Cipher]
[Level: 1 (0/1000)]
[Species: Human]
[Class: @^&$%^&%#]
[Status: Dead, Hungry, Thirsty]
[Health: 500/500]
[Mana: 70/70]
[Strength: 5]
[Stamina: 5]
[Agility: 6]
[Intelligence: 7]
[Stat Points: 5]
The system glitched. The status effects flickered and cleared.
Cipher sighed.
This was his reality. Although he was practically immortal, the Glitch Class interfered with everything else. It prevented him from entering Gates. He couldn't gain experience. He couldn't even distribute his initial stat points - the five free points everyone got when they first awakened.
The system had given them to him twenty years ago, and they'd been sitting there unused ever since.
He was immortal, yes.
But he was also stuck at Level 1 forever.
…
Cipher looked around.
The impact had completely changed the terrain.
A massive crater now stretched out before him, the ground scorched and cracked in patterns that spread outward like a spiderweb.
The canopy above had a hole in it now, and actual sunlight - real sunlight - was streaming through for the first time in years.
It was... new.
For once, it wasn't the same endless dead world he saw every day.
Cipher walked to the center of the crater. Something was there, half-buried in the scorched ground. He knelt down and brushed away the debris.
A glowing crystal.
It pulsed with a soft blue light, almost like it was breathing. The moment he laid eyes on it, something stirred in his chest. An instinct. A pull. It was calling to him.
He reached out.
The instant his fingers touched the crystal, it dissolved. The solid form turned to mist, flowing up his arm and into his body before he could even react. He jerked back, but it was already too late - the mist had completely entered him.
His system screen manifested before him without being summoned.
Cipher stared.
There was a change. Right there in his status window, in the skill section that had been empty ever since he awakened years ago?
He finally had a skill.
And it wasn't just any skill. It was a Unique Skill.
His breath caught. Unique Skills were game-changers. Everyone who had one back in the day was a top-ranked awakener. The kind of people who could clear entire Gates solo.
The kind of people who became legends.
He glanced around at the ruined world surrounding him. Not that it mattered.
There had been dozens of people with Unique Skills when Earth's apocalypse descended, and they'd all died anyway. What difference would one make now? It wasn't like he could change anything.
Still... he decided to check it out.
He pressed on the skill icon. A description appeared.
[Unique Skill: Remnant of the Time God]
[Description: A fragment of divine authority left behind by a dying god of time. Allows the user to regress to any point in their past, returning their body and the world to that chosen moment.]
[Note: This is only a remnant and can only be used once. Upon activation, the user's memories and abilities will not be preserved. They will return to their past self completely, with no knowledge of what is to come.]
Cipher read it once. Then again.
Regression. He could go back. To before the apocalypse. To when Earth still had a chance.
But he wouldn't remember any of it. He'd just be his past self again, completely ignorant of what was coming. He'd make the same mistakes. Watch the world end the same way.
What was the point of that?
He stared at the skill description for a long time, his jaw tight.
Useless. Just like everything else.