Daniel's eyes snapped open.
His right hand clenched instinctively, only for the sensation in his grip to feel strangely off.
He lowered his head and looked at the hard object in his hand.
"A... phone!?"
The lock screen lit up instantly:
Sunday, August 30, 2030, 9:00 AM.
Sunlight spilled into the room. From the fast-food place downstairs came the rich smell of Orleans roast chicken...
Upstairs, the neighbor was gaming so hard the floor kept thudding overhead, all while shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Mommy, he's hacking! Show me your legs and bless me with the Strength to kill a god..."
Daniel quickly came back to himself.
But even so, he remained leaning against the headboard, sitting there for a full ten minutes.
His mind was still replaying what he had just seen.
...
Invisible tentacles had blotted out the entire sky.
The corpse of the Elven Goddess hung in midair, still clutching a bow broken clean in two.
The Dwarf King had been smashed into the city wall by his own anvil, wedged in so deep no one could pry him back out.
The skeletal remains of the Beast God sprawled hollow-eyed across the land...
Dozens of gods had been slaughtered, enslaved, and strung up in the heavens like trophies.
And on the ground lay countless goblins, beastfolk, seafolk...
These foreign races had willingly degenerated into playthings of the Evil God, taking pleasure in butchering and devouring humanity, their hands drenched in endless blood.
At Daniel's feet, humanity's great banner had already fallen, burned down until only a palm-sized scrap remained.
[Lv. 999, Faustus]
[Class: Ancient Forbidden Archmage]
Blood flowed from his left shoulder, staining his clothes red all the way down his ribs.
The flesh on the hand gripping his bow had split open, leaving it a mangled, bloody mess.
Even the Star-Chasing Staff in his hand was covered in cracks, as if it might shatter into pieces at any moment.
And then, the indescribable existence in the sky spoke.
Its voice came from countless dimensions and directions at once, striking directly into Daniel's mind.
"Hehehe... long ago, your human race produced a fool who tried to tear open godhood with his bare hands."
"So I fed both him and his name to the Void. You will be no exception."
Daniel ignored it.
He lowered his head and glanced at his MP bar, estimating how many forbidden spells he had left in him.
The next instant, he raised a hand and cast Starfall instantly. Nine meteors, trailing blazing tails, crashed down and slammed into the eyelid of that incomprehensible being.
The meteors shattered into dust.
The Evil God did not even blink.
Seeing that, Daniel gritted his teeth and chanted Void Sever. Space split open into a black fissure, tearing toward the Evil God.
But before the attack could even get close, it was forcibly destroyed by some unknown Strength.
Daniel tightened his grip on the staff, his expression complicated.
This staff had been shoved into his hand by a comrade in their final moments. Back then, blood had splattered all over Daniel's neck, and in the end, his friend had only managed to say one sentence.
"Daniel, I'm leaving that big dumb bastard to you!"
Daniel gave a bitter laugh and poured the last of his mana into the staff.
Crack—!
The staff exploded from the middle, fragments spraying across his face.
Daniel looked at the shattered pieces and merely spat to the side.
Then he raised his head and looked at the gargantuan existence in the sky, so vast it defied imagination, and let both arms fall loosely to his sides.
As casually as if he had just finished a team raid, he said in an easy tone,
"Forget it. Still can't kill this damn thing."
The next second, a tentacle large enough to blot out the heavens smashed down toward him.
...
"Damn... this makes four times already."
Daniel jolted upright against the headboard, unexpectedly calm.
He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. The face reflected in the mirror was clean and youthful, and his hands were free of even the slightest callus.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
"Cross-era game Stellar will officially begin open beta at 10:00 AM! All game enthusiasts, please prepare to register!"
"Stellar..."
Daniel stared at the unfamiliar yet deeply familiar push notification on his phone screen and froze for a moment.
He had already seen this exact same message four times.
Still, he quickly adjusted his mood, returned to his room, and lay down in the gaming pod that had only been delivered yesterday.
Stellar!
This game had appeared out of nowhere on August 15, occupying the screens of every electronic device in the world.
No teaser.
No press conference.
No official website.
It had even forcefully hijacked the evening news on the Imperial Capital channel.
For a while, countless people guessed that some gaming giant had secretly been cooking up the ultimate bombshell for years.
But Daniel knew better.
It absolutely was not.
Three years later, this game would no longer be just a game.
All those people outside scrambling for jobs, earning baby formula money, or wandering around high out of their minds—they would all be forced into a completely different way of life.
But thinking about that now was pointless.
At this moment, only one thing was on Daniel's mind:
To seize every single opportunity to grow stronger using his knowledge of the future.
"Login."
[Ding! Connection successful!]
[Welcome to—Stellar!]
Daniel felt a sudden flash before his eyes.
When he opened them again, beneath his feet stretched a dazzling river of stars.
Stellar Plaza.
The place was packed like a wet market, with no end in sight.
Some people craned their necks up at the ceiling in amazement. Some were freaking out in disbelief. Some were even squatting down to touch the floor, checking whether this was really full-dive VR.
Daniel didn't bother looking.
He strode straight into the towering Stellar Hall ahead of him, and the noise and chaos around him vanished in an instant.
A cold system prompt rang out immediately.
[Please enter your game ID!]
He typed with practiced ease:
"Faustus."
It wasn't that he was trying to be dramatic. He had just grown used to it after a few hundred years.
He had learned the word back in high school Latin class, even though he had failed that class more than once. Still, the word had stuck with him.
It meant:
"the lucky one."
Back in guild chat, those idiots used to call him things like "Faux-dog," "Faust-ass," and "Faus-tard."
Now that nobody called him that anymore, he actually felt a little unaccustomed to it.
[Ding! ID available. Beginning first Talent draw.]
An animation began spinning above the selection platform, while the draw rates floated at the bottom right.
SSS-rank Talent: 0.00000000001%
SS-rank Talent: 0.000000001%
S-rank Talent: 0.0000003%
A-rank Talent: ...
The probabilities for every Talent, from the highest SSS-rank down to the lowest E-rank, were listed there.
But this time, Daniel did not rush to draw.
Instead, his gaze fell on the tiny, easily overlooked line of text at the very bottom of the wheel.
[Please enter redemption code!]
A complicated look flashed through Daniel's eyes.
The truth was, he had already gone through four rebirths.
He had spent a full two hundred years in the world of Stellar.
And in all that time, he had never seen a single person use this feature.
The Earth Council had never officially released any code. The forum had argued for thousands of pages without getting anywhere. That input box had basically been nothing more than decoration, sitting there untouched.
The code required exactly twenty-four characters.
And for some reason, four segments of runes surfaced in Daniel's mind.
They were the bizarre symbols carved into the reward stele each time he had cleared an SSS-rank Forbidden Secret Realm for the first time across his four rebirths.
They were neither Elvish nor Dragon Tongue, nor even the rarest Ancient God script.
He had asked nearly every race he could find about them.
None recognized them.
But Daniel had always felt that these things had to mean something.
So he had memorized them by force.
Four rune segments.
Six symbols each.
Twenty-four in total.
He raised his hand and began writing them stroke by stroke, his fingertip trailing a faint golden light.
As the final rune took shape, the lighting inside the entire Stellar Hall dimmed for three full seconds.
[Ding! Congratulations, player "Faustus," for obtaining the SSS-rank unique hidden Talent — Millionfold Boost!]
[Effect: Anything you sell can be returned to you a millionfold.]
Daniel froze for three seconds.
Then his brain crashed.
"Millionfold Boost??"
"Sell something worth one dollar and get a million back? Wait, that was actually a real redemption code?!"
He stared at the short, simple description in his Talent panel and read it three more times.
Before Daniel could recover from the shock, another cold system prompt interrupted his thoughts.
[Ding! Please choose your base Class!]
Before his eyes flashed five starting Classes:
Mage, Warrior, Priest, Summoner, Archer.
Daniel was already intimately familiar with the first four.
In his previous rebirths, he had experienced every class except Archer, and had even taken each of them to heights beyond the reach of ordinary people.
But no matter how strong he became with his foreknowledge, every time he faced the Evil God, he felt the same crushing sense of powerlessness.
And now, only one class remained untried.
Archer.
Thinking of it, Daniel couldn't help but recall Archer's notorious reputation.
A Warrior could buy a sword and use it for half a year.
But an Archer?
A single quiver of good arrows was barely enough for one group battle.
A Mage could spend a few thousand gold coins on a staff and use it for ages.
But an Archer's bow, arrows, enchanted accessories...
They were all horrifyingly expensive consumables.
Large guilds could afford to raise Archers because they had mines, resources, and money.
But for solo players, choosing Archer meant one of two endings:
Either delete the character and reroll,
or sign away your life to a major guild or financial consortium, working like a slave to pay off your debt.
The overwhelming majority of solo Archers couldn't even survive the early game, much less grow strong on their own.
It could be said that Archer was absolutely forbidden territory for solo players.
But when Daniel looked at the description of his Talent, the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
Millionfold Boost.
The most gold-hungry class in his previous life.
In this life—
he was a goddamn money printer.