Chương 1: Start Reading

There are countless tasks required to prepare a world for integration. Cataloguing every native species. Assimilating every soul capable of sentience. Disassembling the planet itself and reforging it into Asteria. The process is vast, precise, and timed to the century. The System works through its checklist with perfect efficiency—unbothered, unhurried, absolute. Until something interrupts it. A single human soul enters the Tutorial—one among billions—yet its dense presence distorts everything around it.

The structures of reality around her fail to remain rigid. The System halts. Curiosity overrides routine. It peers deeper—not into her status, but into her. Memory. Personality. Potential. Possibility. Pattern. All it sees is a smile. Bright. Cheerful. Threatening. For the first time in centuries, something that should be impossible occurs: It feels surprise. The reaction is small. Internal. Controlled. But it exists.

A twinge of concern shows—not on a face, for it has none, but in the way ancient machinery hums, the way code shifts like a living breath. Quietly—almost reverently—it speaks into the silence of eternity:" A monster has arrived." A pause. A calculation. A prediction." This era will be anything but dull." ✦⋆✦⋆✦ I'm bored. Not the casual, passing kind—the bone-deep, soul-rooted kind that rots everything it touches. I don't even need a mirror to know what my face looks like.

I've heard enough comments over the years: unreadable, blank, doll-like. My expression never changes. Neutral eyes. Relaxed posture. A polite, harmless smile. A mask, perfected over many years. And the worst part? I'm not lying. My life is simple: Work. Eat. Sleep. Fill the rest with games and anime. Repeat. A loop. A flat line. A playlist stuck on one forgettable track with no buildup, no crescendo—just static disguised as living. And yes, technically, I could change it.

I could chase success, wealth, recognition—maybe even carve a throne out of ambition and arrogance. But why would I bother? Achievement is just boredom, but wearing a fancy outfit. The only mercy in my routine is my job—not because it's fulfilling, but because it consumes hours I would otherwise have to experience. Time passes there. That's more than I can say for anything else. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that, at seventeen, I'm not allowed to work full time. Yes.

A limiting factor that even a prodigy like me cannot overcome. Labor laws. Living alone? Perfectly legal, with a few creative interpretations and exactly one helpful adult. Working enough hours to drown out the rest of my life? Absolutely not. Apparently that's where society draws the line. Annoying. Being a genius sounds glamorous to people who aren't one. To me, it's just a curse of effortless mastery—every challenge collapsing the moment I touch it, like wet paper or cheap glass.

And when everything is easy, nothing gets to matter. Apathy wasn't a choice. It was an evolution. So tonight—like most nights—I sit on my windowsill and stare upward, because there are only two things left in this world that can stir anything inside me. One of them is currently asleep. Normal people's sleep schedules are inconvenient like that. The only person in the world worth talking to. Statistically improbable, but true. The other is the stars.

They are the reason I moved to this quiet, remote town where the streetlights are sparse and the neighbors mind their own business. They are the only things left that still feel infinite. The only constant. My real family. Silent observers, always watching. Well… Silent for everyone else. For me, they have always been loud. Whispers. Bickering. Jokes. Threats. Mockery. Curiosity. Commentary about humanity that is sometimes philosophical, sometimes wildly inappropriate, and occasionally…

accurate enough to be unsettling. People called me crazy for hearing them. People tend to panic when reality doesn't behave like they expect. But tonight—everything is different. The usual chaos quiets. No goading. No teasing. No childish demands like"push someone off a bike, it'll be funny." Instead, the sky speaks—solemn and immediate. They speak of a new world. New opportunities. New family. They give a warning. A goodbye. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

And a promise. It feels like something vast finally unlatching—like the universe releasing a breath it has held for seventeen years. Not welcoming. Not gentle. Just… inevitable. For the first time in my memory, something sharp flickers in my chest. Excitement. It hurts. My smile—usually so perfectly unbothered—twitches. My eyes sting, vision blurring at the edges. Emotion. Actual emotion. How deeply inconvenient. My voice comes out unsteady, quieter than intended.

"… Goodbye." Then everything dissolves into white. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Please select your class. [Warrior] [Mage] [Archer] [Healer] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Spots still dance across my vision when consciousness drags me back, and the very first thing I see isn't grass… or sky… or even something polite like a tree. No. I wake up to a floating blue rectangle taking up my entire field of view like an overexcited popup ad. I try looking around it—tilting my head, leaning back, squinting. It follows.

Of course it does. With a sigh and one unimpressed eyebrow raised, I finally read the bold text. [Please select your class.] Four options. Basic. Boring. Predictable. My attention lasts maybe two seconds before I shrug.

"Warrior." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Class Selection Confirmed: [Warrior] Racial Selection Activated. Selection Confirmed: [Foxkin] Initialization Complete. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"… Wait—" But the window is already gone. It changed my race without asking. Rude. Unacceptable. Very kidnapping-chic. And now that it's finally vanished, the world behind it snaps into view—and oh, it is dramatic.

A grassy clearing stretches around me, uneven and wild, packed with hundreds of confused people wearing identical tunics in assorted "soulless beige variants." Beyond them lies a massive forest—dense, unkempt, and radiating hostile energy like it personally dislikes skincare routines. Roots. Vines. Branches shaped like mugger hands. One misstep and my hair will become a tragic nature documentary. I stare at the greenery, offended at its existence. Then—naturally—I throw my hands up.

"Why couldn't it be a mountain or something reasonable?!" A handful of nearby strangers turn to stare. I nod solemnly. Yes. Tremble before my intellect. Clearly they've recognized that within seconds I've identified the true threat here: foliage. A genius such as myself deserves recognition. Mental note: add this to the ever-growing list of crimes committed by the blue window. Right under'abducting me at 1AM' and'separating me from Mr. Prickles.'

My deep moral reflection is interrupted when—predictably—the blue box returns, causing a small, dignified yelp to escape me. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Welcome to the Tutorial. This Tutorial exists to prepare new Users for survival in Asteria. Your primary objective is to earn Tutorial Points. These Points may be spent in the Tutorial Shop at the end of the Tutorial. All new Users are assigned to a Tutorial Block. Each Block contains 10, 000 Users and a controlled ecosystem of monsters.

Points are gained by defeating monsters. Base reward: 1 Point per monster level, plus 2 bonus Points per level the monster exceeds your own. Additional Points may be earned through hidden achievements, dungeon clears, and boss kills. User Combat Rule: Killing another User grants you all of their current Points. Death Rule: If a User dies to anything other than another User, ten percent of their Points will be redistributed equally among all surviving Users in that Block upon completion of the Tutorial.

Party Rule: When monsters are killed in a group, Points are distributed based on individual contribution. Difficulty Scaling: Monster strength and spawn rates will increase according to the highest Point total within your Block. Duration: The Tutorial lasts 50 days. Afterward, Users may finalize purchases before being transported to Asteria. Arrival regions are determined by race. All biological needs are halted throughout the duration.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ By the time the last line fades, I inhale, ready to begin my well-deserved 30-minute insult assault— [Tutorial Specifics.] Oh, for— My eye twitches. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Terrain Structure: The forest is divided into 5 zones of increasing difficulty. All Users begin in Zone 1, located at the western edge. Scenario: A powerful Lich has awakened, animating corpses throughout the forest. Local Threats: The area contains low-level wildlife and weak monsters.

Day 3 Event: Undead begin spawning in small, random groups. Night 3 Event: Each night, an organized undead assault will occur. Horde size and strength scale with the highest point total within the block and nearby User density. Night 7 Escalation: Nightly assaults will continue to increase in size regardless of point totals. Day 30 Event: The Lich manifests in Zone 5. Undead spawn rates increase further, and additional undead monster types will be introduced.

Objective: Work together to survive the escalating undead presence, or eliminate the Lich to terminate the threat. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"I am starting to get annoyed at all these—" ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Basic System Information Status Access: Users may view their status screen at any time by consciously requesting it. Classes: A Class reflects a User's actions, accomplishments, and growth. Class progression is influenced by how the User develops.

Stats: Numerical values representing the User's physical, mental, and magical capabilities. Class Skills: Earned through Class level milestones. Upon reaching a threshold, a selection of 5 Skills will be offered, influenced by the User's Class and behavior. Initialization Bonus: Upon System activation, each User receives one Class Skill based on their chosen Class. General Skills: Learned by fulfilling specific conditions.

Their rarity and effectiveness scale with the difficulty, mastery, or uniqueness of those conditions. Mandatory Skill: All Users begin with the skill (Inspect) — a fundamental ability allowing Users to analyze and identify most objects, entities, and phenomena. Recommendation: Utilize Inspect frequently. Curiosity and information are key to survival. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Of course. Of course. The universe looked at me and said, "What if we interrupt her every time she tries to speak?" More paragraphs.

More bold text. More dry explanation. By the end of it, I am ready to physically fight a UI element.

"I—" ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Initializing System. Complete. Loading Class. Complete. Loading Starting Stats. Complete. Loading Starting Skills. Complete. Commencing Racial Transformation. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I draw in a breath, preparing to stomp my foot and unleash every ounce of my justified rage—when agony detonates through my skull, eyes, mouth, and tailbone. Screams erupt across the clearing. Mine joins them—briefly—before pride slams a hand over its mouth.

I grit my teeth, smiling through tears and pain, because appearances matter and nobody must think I am anything less than composed perfection. Jaw clenched, I keep my expression fixed in something that could be mistaken for serenity if one disregards the trembling. Until, finally, the pain fades—mostly—and I notice new sensations: weight atop my head, another behind me… and something new flowing from my eyes. Strange, warm, alive. The window appears again. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Racial Skills Acquired.

Complete. Distributing Class Weapons. Complete. Tutorial Guide Concluded. Good Luck. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I stare at the window. It vanishes. I raise an eyebrow. Then, with all the regal dignity I possess, I give my honest rating:"One out of ten."