Free Web NovelChapter 5: The Hunger of the Ruin
The church began to pulse. It was not a metaphor, the floor was truly beating.
Like a gigantic heart buried beneath tons of ancient stone.
Thump, thump, thump.
The cracks beneath Gabriel’s body began emitting a crimson glow while his blood slowly disappeared between the corners of the church.
The air began turning heavy, becoming thick. Even breathing hurt at that moment.
The Paladin Knight remained motionless a few meters away. His powerful body was frozen.
His metallic figure no longer radiated absolute arrogance. Now... there was doubt. His instincts were afraid.
Gabriel smiled with difficulty from the bloodstained floor.
Or at least he tried to. He had always loved that, challenging impossible things.
The slums taught you quickly that if you could not win through strength... then you had to do it through cunning.
And he had just defeated a three-meter monster using pure desperation and a secret quest.
The church vibrated once more. Then the floor split apart, a wet and grotesque sound spreading throughout the entire hall.
An ancient secret was awakening.
Gabriel’s blood stopped spreading randomly. Now it flowed in a single direction, toward the sealed object at the back of the church.
The Knight finally reacted. He tried to slowly raise his sword, but it was already too late.
The ground collapsed and beneath it...
It finally awakened.
A red light exploded from the depths buried beneath rubble.
The Trail of the Blood Firmament.
The ruin was alive, and it was hungry.
The voices began immediately. Thousands of them, ancient whispers, indecipherable languages, curses and prayers.
Everything mixed together inside his head.
Gabriel clutched his skull while gasping.
"Gh...!"
Then he felt the call. It was not physical, it was deeper.
Something was pulling him downward, toward the ruin. They demanded his blood.
And finally, in that instant, he understood... what the price was.
The price of immeasurable power.
He had to abandon his humanity, he had to abandon who he was and be reborn.
The knowledge appeared naturally within his mind, as if the ruin itself were teaching him.
The eternal hunger, predation, the night, and blood.
Gabriel trembled.
At that moment, doubt knocked at his door.
He did not want to become some moldable thing. The voices insisted, louder and more aggressive.
ABANDON.
REBORN.
HUNGER.
CONSUME.
Visions violently began appearing within his mind.
A black castle, a throne, and oceans of blood.
Amazias Von Tepes.
Gabriel clenched his teeth.
"No..."
The pressure intensified against his resistance. The church floor began deforming like living flesh, demanding its meal.
The Paladin Knight stepped back for the first time. Complexity flooded his thoughts.
Gabriel kept resisting. He had to resist.
He still remembered things, he still remembered who he was... He remembered sleepless nights.
The small, simple, but real things.
The streets where he had grown up in Lower Neo-Atlas.
The horrible taste of cheap synthetic food.
The fights over credits.
The constant pressure poverty demanded.
The exhaustion. The desperation.
His life had been shit.
But it was still HIS life.
He did not want to trade away his own identity for another. He did not want to disappear because of temptation.
Then something strange happened.
The ruin stopped, its hunger abruptly ceased, and the voices vanished.
Silence. freewebnøvel.com
He felt himself being silently observed. He was being evaluated and, for a brief instant, accepted.
The red light exploded.
And Gabriel’s vision completely collapsed.
***
There was no darkness.
That was the first thing he noticed.
It was strangely comfortable. Warmth surrounded him, very different from the cold of death before.
Gabriel tried to move but failed. He quickly realized he had no body; and yet he could still feel.
Gentle waves traveled across what should have been his skin. Like hundreds of invisible hands slowly rebuilding every part of him.
His muscles, tendons, bones, nerves, and blood.
His biology was being remade.
Then a voice echoed out. It was not the Witch’s voice or the voice of Knowledge.
It was different. A deep and absolute presence.
Closer to the system itself.
CONGRATULATIONS ON SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETING YOUR MISSION.
The words thundered throughout the entire space.
YOU SURVIVED.
Gabriel felt his heart race.
"Fuck yes..!"
He had done it.
BY RESISTING THE HUNGER OF THE RUIN, YOUR SCORE HAS INCREASED ENORMOUSLY.
Crimson windows began appearing one after another.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
REWARDS OBTAINED:
• Unique Class: [Vampire]
• Classification: [Evolvable]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Gabriel opened his eyes.
Unique class. UNIQUE CLASS.
Even he knew how absurd that was. Normal players took weeks just to obtain rare classes and he...
Had just acquired something unique.
Another window appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SKILL OBTAINED:
[Leviathan’s Gluttony]
Description: "You possess the hunger of evil. Your appetite is voracious and primordial, capable of devouring all things upon land, sea, and sky."
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Gabriel remained silent for two seconds.
Then he let out an incredulous laugh. freёwebnovel.com
"That sounds ridiculously broken..."
He could eat anything.
Metal? Monsters? Trash? Corpses?
The skill seemed completely absurd. Its limits were not written in any logical way.
But then another window appeared.
Smaller, and much slower.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WEAKNESS OBTAINED:
[You cannot smile.]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Gabriel blinked.
"What..?"
He waited for more information, but got nothing. That was his only information.
You cannot smile.
Gabriel instinctively tried touching his face... and once again remembered that he had no body there.
"Not smiling? That’s a damn weakness?"
Honestly, he had expected something worse. Vampires were supposed to have weaknesses to sunlight, fire, and the need to drain blood.
But not smiling...
It did not seem that serious.
Though then he thought of something important.
"Wait... does that mean I won’t be able to smile at pretty women anymore...?"
The thought genuinely seemed hilarious to him.
After all, a smile helped a lot. Especially with attractive mature NPCs.
Gabriel slowly let out a breath.
He needed to relax.
The result was still absurd. He had gained a unique class, a broken skill, and above all else, he had survived.
For the first time in a very long time... he tried to smile, but he could not.
When realization struck him, he felt depressed. His emotions had been a complete roller coaster.
Then the space collapsed.
"Huh?"
Everything exploded into red light.
---
Gabriel reacted through pure instinct.
He twisted his body in midair and landed on both feet, perfectly balanced upon the stone floor.
The movement was so clean that even he was surprised.
Several people nearby immediately stopped.
"Whoa!"
"Nice landing."
"Was that a skill?"
Gabriel raised his head. It was the Novice Village.
He had returned, and dozens of players walked around among NPCs and improvised stalls.
A small commotion had formed around him.
But then one player let out a mocking laugh.
"Ha, look at that. Just a level one player trying to act tough."
Several others laughed at the comment. The attention immediately disappeared.
Thankfully, he thought.
He did not need unwanted attention. He needed to keep a low profile right now.
He quickly blended into the crowd while opening his settings.
He hid his level, stats, and public information. He kept everything private.
The last thing he needed was to become a target before understanding what the hell awaited him.
Then a new window appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
YOU ARE THE FIRST PLAYER TO OBTAIN THE UNIQUE CLASS [VAMPIRE]!
Would you like to announce it publicly?
[YES] [NO]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Vampire.
The word remained floating before him, only to remind him of something important. Ever since the game launched, he had never heard anything related to vampires.
In his memories, there were no classes, races, or factions connected to them.
Countless possible problems appeared within his mind. The weight of attention would be monstrous, with clans, corporations, and elite players trying to find information about him.
And Gabriel knew perfectly well what happened to weak people who attracted too much attention.
They died.
And in the best-case scenario, they were simply used.
So he pressed NO without hesitation. With that action, the window disappeared.
But only a few seconds later...
His surroundings erupted with excitement.
A massive notification appeared above every player.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CONGRATULATIONS TO PLAYER [UNKNOWN] FOR COMPLETING A UNIQUE MISSION!
Rewards obtained:
• Fame Points.
• Notoriety Points.
• Medium Chest.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
It was a breaking point.
"WHAT!?"
"Seriously?! A unique mission!"
"No way?!"
"Who the hell was it?!"
The players immediately became frantic. And the forums began moving at the speed of sound.
World chats started filling with messages.
Gabriel immediately lowered his head and continued walking through the crowd.
But inside... his heart was pounding heavily.
Because he finally understood. He truly had a chance.
A chance to leave behind the cold of Lower Neo-Atlas. No more delivering packages or fighting over scraps of synthetic food.
In The Heaven Above All, he had a real opportunity.
Gabriel slowly raised his gaze toward the village’s enormous artificial sky. And for the first time in years... he felt genuine ambition.
He no longer wanted to merely survive. The desire to rise ignited within his chest.
He wanted to stop being another statistic from the slums.
And while he walked among thousands of ignorant players... a small red window silently appeared before his eyes.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NEW PASSIVE UNLOCKED:
[Blood Nobility]
"The ancients remember."
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