The sky above Seoul wept fire and dying physics.
Kael, the SSS-Rank Hunter known as 'Sword of Damnation', hovered above the molten ruins of the final defensive ring. His body was a masterpiece of human evolution, a culmination of the brutal ranking ladder: F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SF, SE, SD, SC, SB, SA, SS, SSF, SSE, SSD, SSC, SSB, SSA, and finally, SSS. He was the absolute peak. The strongest human to ever draw breath in the 300 years since the Gates had opened.
Below him, humanity's greatest army—a glittering sea of S and SS-rank hunters in gear worth planetary GDPs—lay broken. Their power, bought with quadrillion-won Skill Stones and exclusive Grimoires from guild monopolies, was ash before the storm.
The storm had a name: Anomaly-07.
It wasn't a monster. It was a fact. A walking statement of celestial indifference. It manifested as a shifting prism of impossible geometries, and from it radiated a pressure that cracked the very System interface in Kael's vision. Its designated rank, visible for a nanosecond before Kael's display fritzed, wasn't part of the human scale. It was a realm beyond: God-Like.
The economic world Kael had been born into—a world of hyper-inflated skill markets and corporate guilds—meant nothing here. The ₩450-trillion S-rank [Supernova Core] skill used by the Golden Tiger Guild Master had barely made the Anomaly shimmer. The priceless, nation-owned SS-rank [Reality-Sever] grimoire technique had failed to cut its form.
This was the truth the guilds and the Global System Regulatory Commission hid: the human ranking system was a cage. A training yard. The real powers, the God-Like entities beyond the Gates, viewed their highest "SSS" rank as children playing with sharp sticks.
"Kael." The voice was the sound of stars going cold. It bypassed his legendary mental defenses. "You have reached the top of your little anthill. Do you wish to see the mountain?"
A tendril of non-light, quieter than silence, licked out. It didn't attack. It acknowledged.
Kael's ultimate defense, an SSS-rank [Aegis of the Final Dawn], a skill so valuable it was considered a strategic asset of the entire Human Federation, simply ceased to exist. Its complex mana pattern, the result of a lifetime of battle and fusion, was not broken. It was deleted, as a man might erase a line of chalk.
The shock was not of pain, but of profound, absolute irrelevance.
Another tendril. His [Dragonheart Furnace], the source of his near-infinite stamina—gone.
Another. His [Sword-Soul Domain], his very identity as the Sword of Damnation—gone.
He was not being killed. He was being unmade. Stripped, rank by priceless rank, back to zero. The Anomaly was demonstrating the fundamental gap between a human—even the greatest human—and what lay beyond.
In his final millisecond of coherent thought, Kael understood. The System, the Skills, the economy… it was all a sandbox. A playpen to keep humanity busy, docile, and measurable. His climb to SSS-rank had just been him growing taller within the walls of the nursery.
With the last spark of his will, the will that had conquered continents, Kael did not strike back. He turned his crumbling perception inward, to the core of his being where his connection to the System—that ancient, imposed interface—was woven. He focused not on his remaining power, but on the link itself.
If this is a cage… let me break the lock on my way out.
He triggered a cataclysmic soul-burn, a final, defiant act of will not against the enemy, but against his own programming.
ERROR. CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE.
SOUL SIGNATURE… DISPERSING.
The world dissolved into a silent, white negation.
There was no afterlife. No peace. Only a falling sensation, tumbling through a void of static and fragmented light. The echo of a god's voice. The taste of annihilation.
Then, impact.
Not on stone, but into a vessel—a weak, aching, wrong vessel. Alien sensations flooded the void where his consciousness had been: a dull, systemic throb of pain, the scratch of cheap sheets, the acidic scent of industrial cleaner. A torrent of memories—small, fearful, and laced with despair—surged up, overwhelming the fading grandeur of his past life.
He was not Kael.
He was…
Leo Vance.
18 years old.
Orphaned.
Diagnosis: [Fragile Body] – F-minus Rank. Bone density 40%, muscles 35% of normal. Chronic, systemic pain. Prognosis: 24 years.
Debt: ₩45.5억 원 ($35 million).
The cognitive dissonance was a physical blow. The mind of a god of war, a tactical supercomputer that had strategized against cosmic threats, was now housed in a nervous system that registered walking as a potential crisis. It was like trying to run the universe's most advanced combat AI on a calculator made of wet cardboard.
Reincarnation.
The word, a concept from old myths, was now a cold, degrading reality. He had not been saved. He had been… discarded. Flung into the furthest, most broken corner of existence.
Leo Vance opened his eyes to the buzzing, flickering fluorescent light of a public charity ward in Seoul's Dongdaemun District. The grand vista of a dying city was gone, replaced by stained ceiling tiles. The roar of cosmic annihilation was replaced by the low groans of the sick and the endless, tinny chatter from a wall-mounted screen playing KBS News.
"—and in economic news, Zamsung Conglomerate's stock surged 8% following the successful auction of a newly excavated A-rank [Glacial Tomb] Skill Stone. The final bid, from the Celestial Dominion Guild, settled at ₩11.2조 원 ($8.4 billion). Market analysts at Wolfe-Sach's say this reaffirms the bullish long-term growth of the high-rank skill commodities sector..."
The new memories clicked into place, painting a grotesque picture. Kael had died 300 years ago. The world had moved on, and it had become a shopping mall for power.
The discovery of Grimoires and Skill Stones had turned the System's gifts into hyper-inflated commodities. The rankings were the same, but their meaning had been inverted. Your rank was no longer just a measure of your strength; it was a measure of your net worth.
The screen graphics scrolled dizzying numbers.
"Standard Market Valuations (GSRC Standard):
F-rank Skill: ₩40억-60억 원 (*$3-5 million*).
E-rank: ₩260억-390억 원 (*$20-30M*).
D-rank: ₩3,900억-6,500억 원 (*$300-500M*).
C-rank: ₩3.9조-6.5조 원 (*$3-5 Billion*).
B-rank: ₩130조-195조 원 (*$100-150 Billion*).
A-rank: ₩6.5조-13조 원 (*$5-10 Trillion*).
S-rank: ₩195조-390조 원 (*$150-300 Trillion*).
SS-rank: ₩975조 원 이상 (*$750 Trillion+*).
SSS-rank: Priceless, national strategic assets."
A trillion won was an incomprehensible number. To Leo, buried under ₩45.5억, it was an insurmountable mountain. He was less than a speck of dust in this new, gilded world of hunters-as-CEOs and guilds-as-superpowers. People sold kidneys and pledged generations of indentured service to afford a single, low-tier Skill Stone. It was a world where the weakest body was a death sentence, and the strongest were walking financial empires.
A nurse approached, her face a mask of professional detachment. She looked at his chart and sighed. "Discharge time, Mr. Vance. Your 48-hour charity stay is up." She placed a hand on his forehead. A faint, cool warmth spread, barely taking the edge off the ever-present ache. A basic, F-rank skill. [Soothe Pain].
As the cheap, palliative mana flowed into him, text—glitched, corrupted, in a stark default font—scrolled over his vision.
[Primary System Integration Failed. Host Vessel 'Leo Vance' incompatible with Standard Mana Weave. Error: Fragile Body.]
[Fallback Protocol Engaged.]
[Assigning Unique Trait: Skill Mimicry (Unranked).]
[Skill Detected: Soothe Pain (F-rank).]
[Copy Condition: 'Understand the pain the user seeks to soothe.']
The mind of Kael, though drowning in weakness, snapped to focus. This wasn't a gift. It was a transaction. A test from a broken System.
He looked past the skill's effect, past his own pain. He saw the nurse's chapped hands, the tremor of low-grade mana depletion. He saw the hollow look in her eyes, the look of someone who has administered comfort in a place beyond hope for too long. Her pain wasn't physical. It was the slow death of empathy, the agony of being a cog in a machine that grinds the poor into medical debt.
His voice, when it came, was quiet but unnervingly precise. "You've used that skill seventeen times this shift. Your mana channels are inflamed. You're treating symptoms for a system that creates the disease."
The nurse jerked her hand back as if shocked. Her detached mask cracked, revealing a flash of startled vulnerability, of being seen for the first time by a patient. In that moment, Leo understood her pain completely. It was the pain of pointless labor.
[CONDITION MET.]
[Skill: Soothe Pain (F-rank) – Copied. Storage: Local. Mana Cost to Use: 2 units.]
A new pattern, simple and warm, settled into a quiet corner of his mind. Acquired. Not bought. Not inherited. Stolen, through comprehension.
The nurse recovered, her face hardening into annoyance. "The social worker has your debt portfolio and discharge papers. Good luck." She hurried away.
Leo lay still. The apocalyptic battle, the God-Like entity, the ranks from F to SSS—it was a fading dream. This was his reality. A body of cracked glass. A debt of ₩45.5억 ($35 million) that could crush a family for generations. A world where power had a price tag written in trillions of won.
And a glitched, backdoor System that asked for understanding as its currency.
On the screen, the news shifted to a profile of a young SS-rank heiress from the Lotte Guild, her smile worth more than the entire Dongdaemun market district. The chasm between this world and his past was absolute.
But as he felt the phantom weight of the copied skill in his soul, a cold, sharp clarity cut through the chronic pain. Kael's final realization in death mirrored his first in this new life.
The economy of this world was built on artificial scarcity. On the brutal, hyper-inflated valuation of power. It was a gilded cage, just like the ranking system.
And he had just picked the lock.
A ghost of a smile touched Leo's lips. It held no warmth, only the promise of a coming avalanche.
Let's see how the market handles a rogue variable.
[End of Chapter 1]