Free Web NovelChapter 1: The Change That Changed everything
The blue glow of the television painted the ceiling in flickering shapes as David lay sprawled across the couch, one hand dangling off the cushion, the other resting near the ramen cup balanced on his stomach.
Steam curled off the broth, mixing with the general staleness of the apartment — cramped, iron-barred windows, junk littered across the floor like nobody had bothered in weeks.
On screen, some low-budget superhero delivered a line so wooden it barely qualified as acting.
’This might be the worst thing I’ve ever watched.’
He kept eating anyway. Trash TV and instant ramen were the only luxuries his budget allowed, and he’d made his peace with that a long time ago.
Reaching for his drink, his hand closed around an empty bottle. He set it down, already thinking about the one in the fridge, and got two steps toward the kitchen before his foot caught on something on the floor and the ground dropped out from under him.
His head cracked against the coffee table with a sound that didn’t feel real.
Then nothing.
A gap. No shape to it, no time passing, until he gasped, air slamming back into his lungs like his body had forgotten how breathing worked.
His eyes opened on his own ceiling.
He waited for pain that never came. His hand found the back of his head, fingers catching on something tacky and half-dried — blood — but when he pressed down searching for the wound, there was nothing. Smooth skin, like the injury had healed and left only the stain behind.
’Okay. That’s not normal.’
’Did I die? Is this hell — like that show, Lucifer? Reliving your worst memory on a loop?’
He sat with that thought, and something in his chest sank lower than the fall itself.
’God, that’d be depressing. My worst memory being — this. Ramen and bad TV and a coffee table I’ve owned since college.’
A short, humorless laugh got out before he could stop it.
’That’s not a punishment. That’s just a Tuesday.’
Then, his thoughts instantly cut short as the air in front of him folded inward.
[System Notification]
[Congratulations, Harem Conqueror. You have completed the criteria for System Possession.]
[Analyzing...please wait...10%...22%...43%...78%...100%]
[Analysis complete.]
[Welcome, Harem Conqueror.]
David went still.
’...A system?’
He flinched back into the cushions, heart lurching into his throat, before the panic cooled into something quieter — the calm right before deciding whether to trust your own eyes.
’Is this real?’
[System Notification]
[Confirmation: This is real.]
He let out a breath that was half laugh, half disbelief.
"Okay," he said out loud, to no one. "So it’s real. Great. Wonderful."
’Why me, though. Out of everyone on this planet — why me? I mean no offense that...’
[System Notification]
[Query not applicable.]
[Function: initiate.]
"That’s not an answer," he said flatly. "That is, categorically, not an answer."
It didn’t elaborate. Just sat there, patient in that infuriating, faceless way, and a laugh climbed his throat before he could stop it — the kind that comes from a place too worn down to keep being afraid.
’Fine. We’ll figure out the why later.’
Because a System was still something, and something was more than he’d had an hour ago — more than another identical tomorrow of ramen and bad TV, standing between him and nothing.
And in this world, something like this was the difference between staying invisible and becoming one of the names people actually said out loud.
That was the line the world had been cut along ever since the Mana Apocalypse — one in every ten people waking up Awakened, granted abilities ranging from barely-there advantages to something close to godhood.
Hunters, they called themselves, ranked from F, barely above ordinary, to S, a tier so rare most people only knew it from footage of collapsed towers and craters where blocks used to stand.
David had grown up inside that math, and it wasn’t a metaphor — the city wore its class lines in concrete. Upper side had towers scraping the clouds, funded by successful Hunters and the merchants circling them.
Lower side had cracked pavement and buildings held up by stubbornness, and people the upper side had a word for — low-born. Not quite an insult. Just a fact, stitched in from birth.
He was nineteen, and nineteen and un-Awakened meant nineteen and finished — the window closed hard around sixteen, seventeen if you were lucky. frёewebηovel.cѳm
He’d grown up without real internet, without much education, in an apartment that smelled permanently of noodles and old pipes, and he’d made his peace with all of it years ago, the same tired peace he’d made with the ramen and the television.
But there was a System hovering in his living room now, glowing patient and blue, and something in his chest that had gone flat a long time ago was lifting its head, slow and disbelieving.
’Maybe this actually changes something.’
He didn’t get long to sit with the feeling before the notification folded away and reformed into something with weight behind it.
[System Notification]
Player has received three gifts. Select one.
David blinked, and the fear in his chest lost its grip entirely, shoved aside by something faster and hungrier — real excitement, the kind he hadn’t let himself feel in years. But this wasn’t nothing. This had his name on it.
He sat up straight, ramen forgotten, blood forgotten, nothing left in the room but him and the glowing prompt waiting in the air.
"Yes," he said. "Show me the gifts."
