The first thing Harley felt wasn't the heroic surge of power or the thrill of a new world. It was the heat.
It was an aggressive, unrelenting sun that beat down on him with a ferocity he had never experienced in his air-conditioned room back on Earth. He groaned, his consciousness stitching itself back together like a frayed tapestry. His lungs burned with the intake of air that tasted of heavy salt, roasting minerals, and a strange, floral sweetness he couldn't quite place.
He pushed himself up, his hands sinking into coarse, white sand. It felt strangely satisfying—the tactile sensation was heightened, sharper. He stood up, and for a moment, he felt a wave of vertigo. He was taller. Much taller. His center of gravity had shifted, and his limbs felt heavy, not with lethargy, but with a terrifying amount of compressed density.
Harley stumbled toward the water's edge, his shadows stretching long and distorted across the pristine beach. As he reached the crystal-clear tide of the turquoise ocean, he knelt and looked down.
He didn't recognize the man in the reflection.
His skin was a haunting, porcelain white—the color of a lunar eclipse or a corpse drained of its lifeblood. It wasn't sickly, though; it looked like polished marble. His face had sharpened, the soft jawline of a nineteen-year-old replaced by lethal, predatory angles. And his body… he looked like an Olympic god carved out of obsidian. His chest was broad, his shoulders thick with ropey muscle, and his core was a ladder of defined strength. He looked like the ultimate version of himself, a version that had spent a lifetime training in the dark.
"So, the Arbiter wasn't joking," Harley whispered. His voice had changed, too. It was deeper, vibrating with a subtle, metallic resonance that sent a shiver down his own spine.
He closed his eyes, trying to calm the racing of his heart. As he did, a flicker of light ignited behind his eyelids.
[Initialization Complete.]
[System Online.]
A translucent interface hovered in the center of his vision. It wasn't a clunky screen; it was a shimmering, violet-and-gold rift in reality that only he could see. Harley stared at it for a long beat.
"System?" he muttered. "That's it? Just... 'System'? You've got all the cosmic power of the universe and you couldn't come up with a better brand name?"
The interface pulsed, a line of text scrolling across the void.
[User: Harley]
[Template: Galaxy Slayer Zed]
[Level: 1]
[Status: Healthy / Cosmic Integration 12%]
Harley navigated the menus with a mere thought. It felt intuitive, like moving a limb. He found a tab labeled [Inventory & Loadout]. To his surprise—and hidden delight—it looked exactly like the HUD from League of Legends. There were six distinct item slots, glowing with a faint, empty hum. Beside them were additional sockets labeled [Augments].
"Hey, System," Harley asked, pacing the shoreline. "How do I fill these? I doubt there's a shopkeeper sitting behind a desk in the middle of the ocean."
[Emotional Resonance Points (ERP) required,] the System replied, its voice a neutral, genderless hum in his skull. [Points are harvested from the intense emotions of sentient beings—fear, awe, hatred, or joy—directed toward the User. ERP can be exchanged in the Dimensional Store for Items, Cores, and Arena-tier Augments.]
Harley let out a dry, short laugh. "So I'm playing a high-stakes game of ARAM, but the 'gold' is how much I can freak people out? That fits. Zed was never much for making friends anyway."
He opened the [Store] and his breath hitched. It was all there. Duskblade of Draktharr, Youmuu's Ghostblade, Lord Dominik's Regards. But even crazier were the Arena items—Sword of the Divine, Hellfire Hatchet. The prices, however, were astronomical. He was currently sitting at a grand total of zero points.
He checked his skills. At Level 1, he had one skill point to spend. He looked at his Passive: [Contempt for the Weak]. It was already hardwired into his soul. He could feel it—a cold, calculating instinct that told him exactly where a living creature was most vulnerable, especially when they were bleeding.
"I'll take the W – Living Shadow," he decided.
In this world, being a glass cannon was suicide. If he was going to be an assassin, he needed a way out. He needed a twin.
[Skill Learned: Living Shadow (Rank 1)]
"Now," Harley said, his eyes narrowing as the sun glared off the water. "System, let's see the threads. Auto-equip the Galaxy Slayer mantle."
The transformation didn't happen with a flash of light. It was more visceral. From the very pores of his skin, a dark, viscous substance began to ooze. It looked like liquid obsidian, swirling with microscopic stars. It moved like a living thing, crawling up his legs, wrapping around his torso, and forming jagged, sleek plates over his shoulders.
In less than two seconds, the transformation was complete.
Harley looked down at himself. He wasn't wearing armor in the traditional sense. The material felt organic, like a second skin made of high-tech silk and nightmare matter. It was incredibly light, yet he could feel its indestructible nature. The golden accents—the "cosmic gold"—flowed like molten veins across the black surface.
He flexed his right hand. With a thought, the liquid metal surged toward his forearm, extending and hardening into the iconic, curved blades of the Galaxy Slayer. They weren't just blades; they were extensions of his will, shimmering with a faint, purple-gold energy that seemed to warp the air around them.
"This is..." Harley paused, searching for the word. "...Perfect."
He moved, and he felt the System's influence. His old, clumsy gait was gone. He moved with a terrifying, fluid grace. He wasn't just walking; he was gliding. He approached a thick, gnarled coconut tree that leaned over the sand. He didn't even put strength into the blow. He simply lashed out with his right claw in a blur of motion.
The blade passed through the wood as if it were passing through a cloud. There was no resistance, no "thwack" of impact. A second later, the top half of the tree slid off the trunk, the cut so smooth it looked like a mirror.
"God, I love this," he whispered, retracting the blades back into his gauntlets.
He spent the next few hours testing his limits. He tried the Living Shadow. He threw his hand forward, and a mass of dark, cosmic energy erupted from his palm, taking the shape of a silhouetted version of himself ten feet away. He felt a tether between them, a bridge of shadows. He willed himself to swap, and in a blink—literally faster than he could perceive—he was standing where the shadow had been, and the shadow was where he had stood.
The disorientation lasted only a second before his new biology compensated. He did it again. And again. He was a boy playing with the most dangerous toy in the universe, and for the first time in his life, he didn't feel like a background character. He felt like the protagonist of a tragedy.
As the sun began to dip toward the horizon, painting the sky in bruised purples and fiery oranges, Harley's heightened senses picked up something.
A sound. The rhythmic thump-thump of a drum? No. The creak of wood against the tide.
He climbed a small rocky outcrop, the cosmic armor blending into the deepening shadows of the island. On the horizon, a ship was approaching. It wasn't a large warship, but it was sturdy, with dark sails that caught the dying light.
Harley's black eyes, now devoid of iris or pupil, focused on the vessel. He felt a surge of something—not fear, but a cold, predatory hunger.
"First contact," Harley murmured, his golden claws slowly sliding out from his gauntlets with a lethal clack. "Let's see how much 'Emotional Resonance' a boat full of sailors is worth."
The shadow at his feet seemed to ripple in agreement, stretching out toward the approaching ship as if it couldn't wait to meet them.