"Just how did I end up like this?" Alex thought to himself as he was walking down the dimly lit tunnels of a mine.
The answer was simple.
It was all thanks to the greed of man.
"I can't believe I was actually living a decent life until not too long ago."
Well, maybe "decent" wasn't the right word for it. He wasn't living a glamorous life, that's for sure. But it was many times better than his current situation. He got scammed and now he owes money to some shady company. As if that is not enough, turns out that shady company is somehow linked to Valerian Klaus, the only 3-star awakened in City #17.
That's why he's here, looking through old mine tunnels in hopes that miners missed some valuable vein by chance. There were cases of people finding mana-infused iron and even [Vitality] or [Magic Crystals] in abandoned shafts.
It would've been easier if he just awakened naturally.
But he had no such luck. So he had to do it the other way.
The inheritance money his parents left him was enough for an intermediate 1-star skill shard, or to rent a mana concentration chamber, but not enough for an awakening stone.
He could've just gotten the shard, but this way he wouldn't awaken any talents, so his potential as an awakened would've been low. Mana concentration chamber could awaken a talent, but it gave you exactly zero guarantees. Some people would just sit there and nothing would happen.
Thus, his only true option was to somehow get enough money to afford an awakening stone, so he borrowed the money. As it turns out, it was a mistake. He was hit by a bunch of weird vaguely worded clauses that inflated the interest rate to ridiculous numbers. Now, he have to live like this.
To add an insult to injury, the status panel is still available to unawakened people, as if to taunt them.
[Alex]
[Unawakened]
[Talent: N/A]
[Strength: 4]
[Endurance: 5]
[Agility:3]
[Magic:1]
[Spirit:1]
[Skills:N/A]
The stat limit for unawakened people was 10 which was roughly three times stronger than an ordinary person. Up until ten, you could raise them with intensive training, but it will never go over ten, no matter how you try. Compared to a 1-star awakened whose limit was fifty, it was a complete joke. Just as he was about to dive into another bout of mental complaining, something had caught his eye.
A dim glow, deep purple in hue was barely noticeable in one of the side tunnels. Alex quickly went to investigate.
His heart was pounding as he got closer. If he was lucky, it would be a bit of mana-infused metal or maybe even a crystal, even though he hadn't heard about any of them being purple. But it would be very surprising if he were that lucky.
This branching-off shaft was almost completely devoid of light. Something cracked under his feet as he walked forward, but he chose to ignore it.
As he got closer, the faint glow became more and more intense, though due to its color, it didn't do much in terms of illumination. When he finally got close enough to make out the details, he saw a weird crystal seemingly full of white specks, which appeared to be constantly moving, giving off a pale violet glow.
He reached his hand to touch it. It was unexpectedly warm.
"Maybe this can pay my debt and I can go back to a normal life? Ahh... To get awakened..."
Alex kept thinking of possibilities as he picked up the weird stone, but before he could put it back into his backpack, his body stiffened, and he couldn't move anymore. A deep chilling fear paralyzed his body. An eye was looking at him from within the crystal, cold, dark, and full of disdain.
Then he noticed that the specks were not specks, but thousands of tiny eyeballs, all staring at him with the same cold and lifeless eyes as the biggest one.
Then, he heard one word:
"Inferior."
The voice echoed in his mind. It was quiet and deafening at the same time. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't even open his mouth.
Then he heard the voice again: "But... sufficient."
The crystal started dissolving into particles of light, each of them glowing purple. They rushed towards Alex's body, entering through his eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and skin. Then the world turned black.
***
The sky was still pitch black as a cloaked man flew just above the forest. The air around him kept distorting as if the fabric of reality itself was unstable. One might think it would be difficult to navigate while flying at such speed in such darkness, but it did not seem to bother the man. The cloak fluttered wildly as he weaved his way between the trees in an erratic pattern. As soon as he lost momentum, he would unleash bursts of compressed mana behind him, catapulting himself forward with enough force to knock down everything that stood in his way.
At first glance, it looked like he was escaping someone. However, after just a moment of watching him, any watcher would be filled with confusion.
He did not look like a human in distress. On the contrary, he looked like he was just having fun. As if he was some kid in an amusement park, playing tag, or some other children's game.
Even an inexperienced eye could tell that he was clearly not running for his life. Despite the unpredictable pattern of flight, he seemed to have some sort of goal he was following, judging by the way he moved forward.
Then he suddenly stopped.
He fell down from the sky like a meteorite, making the ground crack open underneath his feet upon landing. Small rocks flew everywhere and dust covered the entire area, obscuring it from any possible viewer.
"What the hell?" thought the cloaked figure.
The reason he fell wasn't that he was incompetent, but rather that the sudden appearance of chaotic mana waves simply canceled his skills mid-flight. He was certain he should've sensed something like this approaching. But it appeared to have bypassed his senses altogether.
Only a Leviathan could unleash a mana wave like this, but it was incredibly hard for such a big creature to hide its presence, let alone get close to him without being detected.
After he recovered, he used his skills once again to fly. This time he went lower, just for the sake of safety.
Just like him, many more people felt this mana wave. Local authorities called for an emergency, but nothing came. Some awakened scouted for several hours, but didn't manage find anything.
***
"Alex! Wake up, Alex!"
The voice pierced right into his head like a blade, spreading pain all over his brain. He groaned quietly.
"So he is alive, then," said another voice. It sounded familiar but Alex couldn't quite place it. "Just what happened here?"
As the pain subsided, he forced his heavy eyelids to open, only to be greeted by a blinding light. He shut them back immediately.
He tried again after a couple of seconds.
He saw two stocky men, one in his fifties, and one quite younger, donning a miner's attire. They were huddled by the entrance, as if afraid to enter.
Luca, his shift leader, and Richard, one of the miners. Luca was holding a flashlight pointed directly at him which was the source of the blinding light. Alex blinked a few times before his eyes got accustomed to the brightness.
It took him some time to gather his thoughts and recall how he got there. He remembered finding a weird purple crystal and he remembered some voice speaking to him, but everything was fuzzy. Then he looked around and realized that he was sitting on a pile of bones. Human bones in miner's clothes.
He immediately jumped up in panic, pushing the remains off his back.
"What is this, where am I?! How long was I unconscious?"
He noticed that there was something dark on his hands. That terrified him even further.
"Luca, do you think I killed this person?"
"Calm down boy, the bones are old."
Indeed, they were lacking any reminder of living tissue on them.
"That explains all those random disappearances." The other man spoke for the first time since Alex woke up.
"What disappearances?"
"The last group to disappear had two unawakened people, one was the boss's nephew. The guy would always go missing for several days before showing back up at his house. But this time, he never came back. And I'm pretty sure I can see his watch over there."
Luca explained and pointed at a half-crushed golden watch next to Alex's foot.
Alex had a really bad feeling about this. He remembered the words spoken by that mysterious voice. "Sufficient". Does that mean that these bones were all from people deemed insufficient then? Just what did he get himself into? What kind of a deal with the devil he unknowingly made?