The world is not a circle. It is a triangle of concrete, magic, and mud, its apex pointed toward a sky that none of us has ever truly seen.
At the top sits the Capital. Below it, the Metropolises, where magic flows like electricity and S-Rank Classes feast on high-level dungeon loot. Then come the Cities and Towns, suspended platforms where "useful" citizens cultivate their skills and status.
At the very base, crushed under the weight of billions of tons of indifference, lie the Sectors.
I was born at the point of maximum pressure: Sector Z, Block 17. Here, geography is a death sentence. If you look up, you see the underbelly of someone else's world. If you look down, you see only the oily sludge flowing between the shacks. In Block 17, you don't live; you wait for the log of your existence to close. The average lifespan is a statistic of forty years. Here, hope isn't a gift; it's a mental illness that the System corrects with blood.
The Fragmented Mind My name is Zero. I am 19 years old. I am nearly halfway through my statistical utility.
I am not "normal." The place where I grew up shattered my mind long ago. Seeing your parents vanish into a low-level dungeon for a handful of loot never to return, or tasting sulfur in the water every morning, breaks something inside you.
But from those cracks, something new emerged: a coldness that doesn't belong in this sector. While the other NILs around me dream of unlocking a magic skill by some miracle, I see the world for what it is: a series of variables. I see the wear on the corrugated iron, the movement patterns of the guards, the inefficiency of every emotional gesture.
I don't need a magical item to understand we are just meat for the grinder. My brain is my only weapon, a blade sharpened by desperation.
Level: 0
Status: NIL (Null)
Skill: None detected
The Fable and the Reality My parents used to tell me about the Radiant Monarch. They said he was the best of them all, the only one who climbed the abyss without asking anyone's permission, carrying items that shone like the sun. A fable. An anomaly that defies the logic of the System.
Yet, in the darkness of Block 17, that story is the only thing I haven't been able to destroy. I am no hero. Heroes have morals. I only have a visceral need to stop being crushed. I know there is no safety net. In this world of skills and magic, if you are born Zero, you stay Zero.
But if the System denies me a Class, I will build my own. If the world denies me loot, I will tear it from the hands of those above. My name is Zero because it is from this absolute void that I will begin to measure my upward thrust.
My only rule, the only thing holding the pieces of my mind together, is this:
NEVER ACCEPT THE COMPRESSION OF THE MUD. MY LIFE IS THE ONLY LEVER AGAINST THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD.
I open my eyes. The mud of Block 17 welcomes me, cold and implacable. But behind my pupils, the calculations have already begun. Welcome to Sector Z. Prepare for the ascent.