I stood staring at a corpse, it had been long dead before my arrival. I realized that from the smell.
Rotten meat and the metallic scent of blood.
I had been walking for a long time, or that's what I felt like it was at least with nothing to tell the time with. I was searching for supplies, food, water, anything I can use for my survival in this world.
I was standing at the end of a collapsed street, staring down at the corpse of a man, what used to be a man at least.
He was half buried in the ground. Armor cracked open like an egg, dried blodd dying his clothes and armor, a missing arm with the other twisted in an unnatural way.
'His death must've been horrible ' I thought.
Besides him lay a pack, ripped open by what seemed to be claws, and looted.
"Great" I muttered sarcastically, "Welcome to the Tutorial I guess!" Opening my arms in a welcoming way, my left arm still full of cuts from the beast's teeth.
My stomach churned. I wasn't used to this, those bloody scenes, in the novel, deaths were just another line in the novel, part of the so-called plot.
Here, here they were real, smelled and rotted.
I crouched and forced myself to look, if I wanted to survive, I needed to get used to this. I searched the pack, looking for anything the beast that tore it didn't notice.
A dented canteen, nutrient bars, a cracked vial and a small leather notebook.
"Jackpot" I said happily.
I put everything in my pack, which I had found inside a building ruins.
The moment I held the vial, a notification appeared.
[Item acquired:Minor mana potion (damaged) Effect reduced by 40%]
I exhaled, "So it still works."
My head was throbbing, stomach felt emty, throat dry, and body fatigued.
[Status Alert!
Hp:Stable
Mp: Extremely Low
Stamina: 2.7/10
Hunger:Severe
Dehydration: moderate]
"...thanks for the reminder." I said dryly like I didn't already know.
I uncapped the canteen, which thankfully, had water in it and I didn't have the luxury to care if it was good or not. I drank heartly.
I started walking again, not knowing what time it was.
Time was strange under this cracked sky.
Clouds sometimes froze in place, sometimes they zoom past like you hit +5 on a MyTube video.
"Desolation Zone physics I guess." I said, shaking my head.
After some time, the ground changed from stone to ash and now to broken glass.
What looked like broken rune circuits glowed under my boots.
Then I heard sounds, human this time.
I stopped and hid behind a wall.
".....told you this route was unsafe."
"And I told you the supply cache was here."
"Was."
I peeked behind the broken wall, three humans, two men and one woman. They were armed with scrap weapons, seemingly refugees.
My heart started beating faster, hope for survival in this world, I can now know what to do and what to expect.
Before I could dream longer, a shadow moved behind them.
A void Crawler peeled off of the ruins like liquid darkness. It certainly didn't seem beginner friendly.
One of the men noticed first.
"Behind---" before he could continue, a tendril had pierced through his heart, instantly killing him.
I stared at the man's chest. The tendril didn't just pierce him; it erased the space where his heart used to be. Black ichor sizzled against his leather armor, smelling like burnt ozone and rot.
"RUN!" the woman screamed, her voice cracking.
She swung a jagged piece of metal, most likely a fragment of a Celestial Armament from the old world, but the Void Crawler was faster. It moved like a glitch in reality, flickering from one spot to another.
[Warning: High-Level Entropy Detected]
[Entity: Void Crawler (Stunted)]
[Threat Level: Lethal]
Stunted? I gripped the hilt of my rusted dagger. If this thing was "stunted" and still moving that fast, the original Aurelion must have been a monster to fight hundreds of these.
"Hey! Over here, you overgrown shadow!" I screamed.
It was a gamble. I was small, frail, and currently suffering from 'Severe Hunger' as the system called it, but I had one thing the refugees didn't, a map of this world. I knew how Void Crawlers moved because I'd complained about their "repetitive attack patterns" in the comments of Chapter 452.
The crawler turned. Its face was a smooth, featureless mask of white bone, save for a vertical slit that pulsed with purple light. It lunged at me.
I didn't move until the last second. It didn't teleport, it travelled space. I dove toward the broken rune circuits on the ground.
"Now!" I signaled
As the Crawler's weight slammed into the glass-covered ground, the dormant rune circuit, damaged but still connected to the world's leaking mana, reacted to the creature's high entropy.
ZZZT!
A surge of unstable blue lightning erupted from the floor, holding the Crawler in place. It shrieked, a sound like metal grinding on metal.
"The Lumen Fragment!" I remembered the warm glow in my pocket.
[Lumen Fragment (Rank: Broken)]
[Concept: Repair / Light]
[Usage: Apply to damaged vessels.]
I didn't apply it to myself, it won't help in this situation. I held the glowing crystal onto the hilt of my broken rusted dagger.
[Temporary Synergy Detected: Ashborn Bloodline Resonating...]
[Item Modified: Radiant Scrap-Shanker]
The dagger hummed with a frequency that made my ears ache. I grit my teeth and jumped onto the Crawler's back while it was paralyzed. I didn't aim for the head. I aimed for the vertical slit, its 'Reality Eye.'
"This is for the rushed ending!"
I drove the glowing blade deep into the purple light.
The explosion was silent. A wave of white light washed over the alleyway, turning the darkness into bright white and ash. The weight of the crawler vanished, leaving me face-down in the dirt, gasping for air.
[Enemy Slain: Void Crawler]
[Exp gained... Level Up!]
[Condition: Exhausted]
"Y-yo... you killed it?"
I looked up. The woman was standing over the body of her fallen comrade, her eyes wide with a mix of terror and awe. The other man had his sword drawn, but his hands were shaking so hard he looked like he might drop it.
"I got lucky," I grunted, pushing myself up. My hand, the one the hound had bitten, was throbbing with a strange warmth. The Lumen Fragment was gone, absorbed into the dagger, which now looked like ordinary scrap again.
"Who are you?" the woman asked, stepping forward. She noticed my tattered clothes, my small frame, and then her eyes locked onto my face. She gasped, recoiling slightly. "Those eyes... and that name on your gear... Ashborn?"
I looked down at the leather chest piece I'd scavenged. There, etched under a layer of grime, was a crest: a phoenix rising from a pile of gears.
"Eren," I said, my voice raspy. "Just Eren."
"We are from the South-Reach Refugee Camp," the man said, finally finding his voice. "I'm Kael. This is Elara."
My heart skipped a beat. Elara. In the novel, Elara Veyne was a minor scholar mentioned in the epilogue, one of the few who tried to record the history of the collapse before she was presumed dead. Seeing her here, alive but terrified, made the reality of this 'Bad Ending' sink in. This wasn't just a book anymore. These were people the author had thrown away. Forgotten.
"You shouldn't be out here," I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. "The Desolation Zones are expanding. The seals are leaking."
Elara stepped closer, her scholarly curiosity momentarily overriding her fear. "How do you know about the Seals? The Hero Aurelion took them to the upper-worlds. He saved us."
"He didn't save you" I said, looking up at the shattered sky, where the cracks seemed to bleed. "He overloaded the world. He turned this reality into a battery that's currently exploding."
They stared at me like I was a madman. In their eyes, Aurelion was their savior. To me, he was a player who had ignored the warnings in the UI and clicked 'Accept' on a cursed quest.
Suddenly, a low vibration shook the ground. Not an earthquake, a pulse.
[Alert: Reality Anchor 'Umbra' is destabilizing nearby.]
[New Quest: The First Remnant]
[Objective: Reach the ruins of Runebound Academy.]
[Reward: Origin Potential +1%]
"Runebound Academy," I whispered. That was the setting of the file I'd read. The place where the legendary Lexar Willson had started.
"The Academy is a graveyard," Kael hissed. "Nothing survives there but the Wraiths."
"Then I guess I'm going to a graveyard," I said, clutching my stomach as it growled again from hunger. "But first... you mentioned a supply cache?"
Elara reached into her satchel and pulled out a ration bar, handing it to me. Her fingers brushed mine, and for a second, a screen flickered.
[Affinity Detected: Elara Veyne]
[Current Relationship: 'Mysterious Savior' (10/100)]
I took a bite of the dry, tasteless bar. It was the best thing I'd ever tasted since coming to this world.
"If you want to live," I told them "Come with me. I know the way through the ruins. I know where the safe spots are."
As we started walking through the glass and ash, I looked at my status screen one last time.
[User: Eren Ashborn Title: The Chronicler of Ruin Core: Origin (0.01% Awakened)]
Aurelion had the Seals, but he didn't have the Origin. He was a native bound by the rules of the world. I was an outsider. And in a world that was broken, being an outsider meant I was the only one who could see the cracks for what they really were.