The smell of rotting meat and cheap ale hit Si-woo's nose before he even opened his eyes.
"Wake up, you lazy sack of dog shit! The recruitment starts in an hour!"
A heavy boot collided with Si-woo's ribs. He gasped, lungs burning as if he'd swallowed hot coals. He looked up. It was the slums of District 12. The sky was that sickly, mana-polluted purple he remembered from his youth.
I'm back. God-fucking-dammit.
"Did you hear me, Si-woo?" The man over him—a low-level thug named Gapa—spat on the floor. "You owe the boss three silver. Either you join the Shepherd's Trials today and get that sign-on bonus, or I'm taking your fingers."
Si-woo slowly sat up, cracking his neck. The familiar weight of the "System" hadn't manifested yet, but his muscle memory was screaming. He looked at Gapa, a man who, in his previous life, he'd decapitated with a butter knife.
"Gapa," Si-woo rasped, his voice sounding like sandpaper.
"Yeah?"
"If you touch me again, I'm going to rip your tongue out through your goddamn throat and use it as a belt."
Gapa froze. The air in the cramped shack turned freezing. This wasn't the shaking, pathetic orphan from yesterday. This was something that had crawled out of the deepest pit of hell.
"What the fuck did you just say to me?" Gapa lunged, a rusty shiv appearing in his hand.
Si-woo didn't even stand up. He leaned back, the shiv whistling past his ear. In one fluid, brutal motion, he grabbed Gapa's wrist and twisted. The sound of bone snapping echoed like a dry branch.
"ARGH! MY HAND! YOU CRAZY BASTARD!"
Si-woo stood over him, his eyes dead and vacant. "The Shepherd's Trials, huh? Fine. I'll go. But first..." He stepped on Gapa's throat, leaning his weight down. "Give me your lunch money. I'm fucking starving."
Si-woo didn't wait for Gapa to stop gurgling. He rifled through the thug's pockets with the practiced indifference of a coroner, pulling out four dented copper coins and a single, blessed silver piece.
"Filthy," Si-woo muttered, wiping the blood off the silver onto Gapa's own shirt. "But it'll buy a bowl of soup that doesn't taste like literal piss."
He stepped over the groaning body and kicked the rickety door open. The morning sun of the District 12 slums didn't feel warm; it felt like a spotlight on a crime scene. Thousands of desperate bastards were already lining up toward the Iron Gate, the entrance to the Shepherd's Trials.
In his past life, Si-woo had crawled to that gate on his hands and knees, begging for a chance to eat. This time, he walked like he owned the graveyard.
The "Trials" were a meat grinder disguised as an opportunity. Hundreds of orphans and failed mercenaries stood in the mud, staring up at a high-ranking Shepherd named Commander Varick. Varick stood on a stone dais, his white cloak trimmed with gold—the kind of gold that could feed this entire district for a year.
"Listen up, you bottom-feeders!" Varick roared, his voice amplified by a low-level resonance spell. "The Empire is short on Shepherds. The wolves are at the walls. Today, you aren't people. You're candidates. If you survive the first hour, you get a hot meal. If you survive the week, you get a name."
"And if we die?" someone yelled from the back.
Varick smirked, a sharp, jagged expression. "Then you're just fertilizer for the mana-trees. Now, Enter."
The heavy iron gates groaned open, revealing a dark, artificial forest enchanted with "Mist-Mana." Inside, the Church had released Rank-F Shadow Cats—starved, feral beasts that could rip a man's throat out before he could scream "Help."
The moment Si-woo stepped into the fog, the world turned gray. The screams started almost instantly.
Creeaaaak.
A branch snapped to his left. Si-woo didn't flinch. He didn't even draw the rusted shortsword he'd swiped from a weapon rack at the entrance.
"Ten years," Si-woo whispered, his eyes narrowing. "Ten years of hunting these overgrown house cats. Do you really think hiding in the mist works on me, you pussy?"
From the shadows, a Shadow Cat lunged. It was a blur of obsidian fur and glowing violet eyes, its claws extended like obsidian needles.
Si-woo moved. He didn't use a flashy skill. He didn't have the mana for it yet. He simply stepped two inches to the right—the exact distance needed for the beast to miss—and grabbed the creature by the scruff of its neck mid-air.
"Rule one of the slums," Si-woo growled, slamming the beast's head into a jagged rock with a sickening thud. "If you're going to kill someone, don't growl first. It's fucking amateur hour."
The cat's skull shattered. A faint, blue wisp of mana floated out of the corpse.
[System Synchronization Initiated...]
[Analyzing User: Han Si-woo]
[Trait Detected: 'The One Who Returned from the Abyss']
Si-woo stared at the floating blue text. A cold, dark smile spread across his face.
"Finally. I was wondering when you'd show up, you piece of shit interface."
He looked deeper into the mist. He could hear a girl's voice—sharp, panicked, and punctuated by the sound of small explosions.
Liora. In the last timeline, she lost an eye in these trials because no one backed her up. Not this time.
"Baek In-ho! Liora!" Si-woo shouted, his voice cutting through the fog like a blade. "Stop running like headless chickens and get over here! If you want to live, you follow the bastard with the dead eyes!"