The world had long lost its color.
Concrete towers pierced the ashen sky, their shadows casting over cracked streets in a city that no longer knew peace. The air was thick with dust and exhaust, a stench that clung to the soul. Once, humanity ruled this planet. Now, it merely endured.
At the city's edge, a boy trudged forward, his steps unsteady, his body barely held together by stubborn will. Lee Jaehyuk, nineteen years old, nameless among the thousands who had lost everything in the chaos. His hair, black as soot, hung over eyes dulled by exhaustion. A faint scar beneath his left eye caught a glimmer of moonlight, the only reminder of his past that hadn't faded.
His lips were dry and cracked. He could still taste iron from an earlier beating. The city's hunters had passed him men and women in clean uniforms, sporting confident smirks, with glowing interfaces floating beside them like halos. One had shoved him to the ground, muttering about filthy strays without rank.
Jaehyuk didn't fight back. He never did. In this world, power was law, and law belonged to the Regime.
The Regime had rebuilt civilization after the Great Downfall, or so they claimed. But the people who lived under their "protection" knew the truth: the Regime didn't protect; it controlled. Every system, every dungeon, every hunter's license was under their iron grip. Living without registration was a crime. Rising without permission was treason.
And yet, Jaehyuk lived. Barely.
He stared at the flickering neon signs in the distance Guild Centers, Hunter Taverns, Item Exchanges. Inside those places were the people who shaped the world's new order. He used to dream of standing among them. But dreams like that were luxuries for the unbroken.
He lowered his gaze, gripping his torn jacket tighter as he stumbled out of the city's slums and into the forest, which separated the metropolis from the forgotten zones. The wind was dry. The trees, if they could still be called trees, were brittle, hollowed by the remnants of long-dead mana storms.
"It's all rotten," Jaehyuk muttered under his breath. His voice came out hoarse, almost foreign to him. "This world, this system, everything."
He didn't know where he was heading maybe nowhere. Maybe that was fine. But fate seemed to have other plans.
A faint blue light flickered between the trees. At first, he thought it was just another broken drone, one of the countless relics left behind after the Great Collapse. But as he stepped closer, he realized it wasn't a drone; it was a ship. Or what was left of one.
Its metallic hull was torn open, melted in some places, frozen in others. Strange glyphs lined the outer frame, pulsing weakly like veins under dying skin. Inside, the air shimmered with static, and the faint hum of energy echoed through the ruin.
Cautiously, Jaehyuk stepped inside.
Everything was wrecked panels shattered, screens blinking with incomprehensible code. Yet, at the heart of the wreckage floated a single object. A shard of light.
No, not light. A device floated above a broken console, rotating slowly as if it were alive. Its surface flickered with fragmented symbols, glitching and reforming like it tried to communicate.
Jaehyuk's breath hitched. He didn't know why, but something about it felt wrong, ancient. Like it wasn't meant to exist anymore.
He reached out cautiously. The moment his foot touched the base of the console, time stopped.
The world around him froze. Dust hung in midair. The wind's hum vanished. Then, the shard reacted.
It darted forward, straight into his chest.
"Ghh!"
Agony. A blinding surge of light flooded his veins, his body convulsing as electricity and data intertwined. His vision blurred; his heartbeat roared in his ears. Symbols and fragments of code flashed before his eyes incomprehensible yet strangely familiar.
Then, a voice echoed in his mind. Cold, mechanical. Yet almost human.
> [System Activation Detected...]
[Designation: AEGIS CONSOLE PROTOTYPE — Codename: ZERO]
[Compatibility... 100%. User recognized.]
[Welcome, Lee Jaehyuk.]
Jaehyuk fell to his knees, clutching his chest as the pain faded, replaced by strange warmth something alive pulsing beneath his skin. His eyes darted upward as a translucent blue window flickered before him, filled with unreadable data streams.
He blinked once. Twice.
"What... what the hell is this?"
> [System Online.]
[Initializing core protocols.]
[All restrictions removed.]
Then silence. The window faded, leaving Jaehyuk staring at his trembling hands, his breath shallow, his mind racing.
For the first time in years, he felt something other than despair. Not fear. Not confusion. But possibility.
The wind stirred again. The ship's ruins began to crumble. And standing amidst the falling debris, Lee Jaehyuk looked up at the dark sky and smiled faintly, but with something dangerous in his eyes.
> "If the world runs on a system…"
"Then I'll be the one who rewrites it."
That night, amidst the silent forest and the ruin of forgotten technology, a new variable entered the game the original system that the world thought had vanished. A program that should never have existed. A mistake the gods had tried to erase.
And its user
the boy with nothing left to lose
had just been chosen.