The first time I saw a man split the sky, I was eleven.
A straight line cut through the white, peeling them apart as if the gates of Heaven were opening to welcome an Immortal. For a heartbeat, the sky looked thin, almost fragile.
I was frozen, mesmerized. I remember thinking it was beautiful.
Only when my grandfather pulled me down into his grasp did I tear away my gaze from the sight and realize no one else was staring.
His hands were shaking in trepidation. Around us, the entire street had already fallen to their knees, foreheads pressed to stone.
I didn't feel fear—I felt envy.
In the eight years that have passed since that day, I have come to know that there are two kinds of people in this world.
Those who stand above the sky, and those who must kneel and endure when it falls.
All my life, I have belonged to the latter.
The sky has never known my name.
My grandfather died a year and a half ago. He had carried me on his back, scolded me for being too stubborn, praised me for persistence I barely felt, and still, when sickness came, there was nothing anyone could do. I was left with the house he had built with his own hands, the fields he had planted, and the memory of a man who had been all the family I had left.
My parents had been gone for longer, taken by a carriage accident on a rainy mountain road. At least, that's what my grandfather told me—I was only a couple of years old. I never questioned it. Now, there was no one even left to ask.
When my grandfather passed, the village did not forsake me. Small as it was, it had benevolence and compassion. Except… I had no one left who understood me, no one who had ever looked at me and seen more than what I was.
So I took what little I had—my meager belongings, the tattered practice sword my grandfather had sharpened every morning, the stubborn hope that I might still matter—and I left. I enlisted as an adventurer for the kingdom, thinking it might be a way to carve some place for myself, to earn a name I could own, even a small one.
The reality was… well, blunt.
I was small, physically. My muscles had never grown beyond what a year of persistent training could manage. My reflexes were decent. My endurance above average for someone my size. But in a world where cultivators bent mountains and mages summoned storms with gestures, where swords moved faster than the eye could follow, I was… invisible. Not weak, just unnoticed.
And to me, that was worse.
At first, I tried anyway. I joined the local training grounds. I sparred with other recruits. I lifted, I ran, I endured, day after day. The masters were polite, but I have come to learn that politeness, in this world, is a word for people who want you out of their way. They did not see potential. They saw effort wasted on a small body with no affinity for magic, no spiritual roots, no hint of extraordinary talent.
Well, can't really blame them, they aren't wrong.
In this world, four in ten people lack magical affinity. Another four in ten are born without spiritual roots, the channels necessary to refine and store power. A lucky one in ten has both.
I am the remaining one in ten. I have neither.
I feel the weight of it every time the wind bends unnaturally in response to a cultivator's strike and I flinch, powerless to replicate it. Every time a fireball arcs overhead and the trainee beside me manipulates it as easily as breathing. Every time, the sky itself seems to whisper secrets that I cannot hear.
Nevertheless, I kept going. Not because I believed in change, and definitely not because I thought the world would miraculously grant it, but because stopping was worse. Stopping meant acknowledging that my life would never rise above dust kicked up by others' steps. I could never.
So, I endured.
I carried supplies, ran errands, cleaned the barracks' latrines (ughhh, never want to do that again), and polished armor. I learned where I could survive and where I could not (certainly not in cleaning duty, no, thank you). I learned to be precise in movement. Quiet, observant, patient. I remarked every shift in the wind, every vibration in the ground, every ripple in the aura of those around me.
That night, I found a quiet corner on the roof of a worn-down watchtower. The air smelled of burning timber and roast rabbit (a delicacy I had come to enjoy in the past year), and dust swirled across the stones in faint clouds. I looked up.
I counted the stars.
Of course, I have never believed in destiny nor thought the heavens owed me anything.
I counted the stars because I wanted to know how many lights existed above me—how many beings stood beyond my reach, shaping a world I could only endure from below. I traced constellations with my finger in the air. Whispered the names I had learned from the elders in the village.
One by one, I counted, until fatigue stole the edges of my vision.
The cultivators say the heavens respond to those who endure enough, that if you temper your core, refine your Dao, and align with the elements, the sky answers.
I have endured. And certainly, I have tried. I have tried until my eyes were bloodshot and sleepless.
The sky has never answered.
After all, the heavens above are not for people like me, the unlucky one in ten.
—until tonight.
The air above the city warped like heat rising from stone in summer. No wind. No clouds. No aura pressing down. Just a thin distortion, hovering in the night.
A rectangle unfolded in front of me. Clean. Perfect. Motionless. Waiting.
And then the words appeared:
[Welcome to the Unlimited Gacha System]
[User: Rylan Ash]
[Level 0: 10 Gacha Draws Available.]
I stared. The stars still hung above me, indifferent and distant.
But this… this knew my name.