The first thing Prince noticed when he woke up was that he wasn't dead.
The sun glared down at him from its position in the sky... Which meant Prince had been asleep quite a bit.
A headache split through his thoughts, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. The memories of last night began to rush back in. He had collapsed the entire Goblin Village single-handedly.
He had also gotten a rush of notifications for killing the big bad. He summoned the notifications from before, one by one, and began to go through them one by one.
First thing- he had a new skill. Awesome. He had a powerup skill he could use as a finisher or a last resort.
Then, as it turned out, that energy he had felt was called Essence.
Now that Prince thought about it. He felt as if he could feel something different, like a sixth sense. Almost as if the world was painted in new colors. Prince then looked inward, surprised at what he saw.
Right above his navel, what appeared to be gaseous Essence floated. It seemed to clump together, but not form a defined shape. Branching outward appear to be something similar to veins. No- on deeper inspection, they were actually much, much more complex.
Prince got the sense that that hazy thing was his Essence. He smiled slightly. I get to use magic? Before he continued to experiment, however, Prince decided to continue looking at his notifications.
He got a new title as well, Planetary Frontrunner (1000). Prince had thought he was pretty strong, but he wasn't even in the top 10 for fastest people to level 15.
That also brought in a terrifying thought.
There just had to be someone that was jumping for joy when the apocalypse arrived.
The laws of probability demanded that there was someone who was physically fit and an experienced gamer. A person like that would easily be able to understand every nuance and terminology used by the System.
Prince dismissed the thought and went to the next notification.
World Leaderboard (Top Ten):
1. Dante King
2. Itzel Morales
3. Eric Walker
4. Ilyanna Carrera
5. Fukushima Takeo
6. Mose Ebrume
7. Malikov Luka Igorevich
8. Ku So-Yeon
9. David Walker
10. Tou He
Your Ranking: 89th
Holy Shit. Prince's eyes widened.
This confirmed many theories at once. The leaderboard only displayed the Top 100, but the Top 10 was the first thing one saw when they willed it open. Prince remembered seeing something like this, but he hadn't been lucid enough.
Dante King... Itzel Morales... Eric Walker...
Prince burned those names into his memory. A surge of competition welled up within him. He wanted to fight all of those guys. Well, and girls.
He wanted to fight... And win.
Prince scrolled down, and the name he saw in the 11th spot shocked him.
11. Luke Collins
Luke was the type of person where you could throw him onto an island of cannibals and find that ten months later he became the king of them.
In Luke's mind, Prince could never be his brother.
It would make sense that he was excelling in the apocalypse. Prince shook his head and continued down the list of notifications-
You can now choose your first class! Choose your class?
WARNING: This decision can only be postponed for 12 hours. (00:00:05)
Prince's eyes widened. "What the fu-"
(00:00:01)
(00:00:00)
Class selection failed.
Prince for once cursed his patience. He had been out for 12 hours straight, and then took his time looking at notifications. He didn't want to know what happens when the timer hits zero.
Unfortunately, the user is without a class-
Error- Subclass (Champion Victorious of Fighting) is interfering with class selection.
You have been assigned a class.
Class: Martial Warrior (Unusual)
Power must be used for a purpose. Use your power for war. +2 Str. +2 End. +2 Dex. +5 Attribute Points every level.
Princes worries vanished. He suddenly felt power course through him, his bones condensing and his cells become that much more vibrant. He felt overwhelmed with strength.
You have acquired the class skill: Drill (I) (Passive)
[Normal] Drill (I) (Passive): Concentrate your energy into a single area, making each strike that much more powerful.
You have acquired the class skill: Warrior's Will (I) (Active)
[Normal] Warrior's Will (I) (Active): Double your power temporarily for 5 minutes in exchange for 10 minutes of weakened abilities.
You have acquired the sub class skill: Victorious Spirit (I) (Active)
[Mythical] Victorious Spirit (I) (Active): Once a week, if your health drops below 1%, you can bring it back up to 1%. After recovering from that near-death experience, you gain +25% to all stats once you fight that being again.
You have acquired the sub class skill: The Odds Are Against Me (I) (Passive)
[Mythical] The Odds Are Against Me (I) (Passive/Active): Whenever facing an opponent stronger than you, you gain a 5% increase to all stats. If you say "The Odds Are Against Me" out loud, that boost increases to 10%.
Class Vision is ready.
View?
Princes eyes quickly scanned through the screens. From his peripheral view, he could see what appeared to be a mix between a mix between a crow and a vulture slowly approaching him.
When it got close enough to his unmoving body, Prince snatched it up with more ease than a shaolin monk. He promptly crushed the birds bones in his hand.
This'll be lunch, then. He thought, placing the dead bird to the side as he reviewed all of his new skills. His subclass had saved him from being classless.
Strangely enough, there was a new section next to the skills he had never seen before. It displayed their "rank". And one of his skills was a mythical.
Huh. He thought. Does that mean Unarmed Fighting is unranked? But that wouldn't make any sense.
Anyway, this is good. I literally get a Zenkai boost. This has to be rare.
Prince then turned to the last notification.
Vision? Sure.
The world fell around Prince.
...
Prince felt like a God.
Well, not really. But right now, he floated in the vastness of the air, overlooking a mountain that seemed to tower over everything else. Prince was ethereal, he felt like a spectator. And he was.
His body suddenly zoomed in on the singular, old man that stood at the top of the mountain. Prince scanned him.
Name: Qi Bao
(Shifting Fist Faction of #2Y-D380)
Race: Human
Origin: Planet Azure (#2Y-D380)
Level: 351 (C-Grade)
Prince paid attention to the planet name. #2Y probably meant they were in the same sector or division. But while Prince was in the B area, Qi Bao was in the D area.
Suddenly, the world seemed to slow. Every single wiry muscle in the man's body tensed. The man's physicality seemed tangible, like a god restricted to mortal form, a pressure so suffocating that Prince felt that even this form was getting crushed.
The System was likely protecting him from the worst of it.
The man's hand slowly extended.
That movement contained so many secrets, layers, mysteries, that Prince couldn't dare to unravel it. It contained unfathomable understanding, so much so that the world gave way.
All the air in front of him for a mile simply vanished. Was pushed out.
Then the man struck another movement. Then another.
Each one flowing seamlessly into the next, as if he were practicing some form tai chi.
Sometimes he was rigid. Sometimes he flowed, like water. Other times he was explosive, springy.
Each movement rocked the landscape. Where he would bring his hand down for a chop, a colossal scar would be left in the landscape stretching on for miles.
Even Prince, as stupid as he was, could tell the man had such complete understanding of martial arts that it wasn't even funny.
Prince was actually mad at the System for not letting him experience the full thing. If he did, though, he would die.
Finally, the man entered a neutral position, clapping his hands together.
The entire mountain he stood on split in half like butter, the land seeming to unravel. The old man stood on air, unbothered. Pulling his hand back, the man slammed the air below him with a palm strike.
The System zoomed out as the sky seemed to fall. Prince found himself in place, staring at the blue planet.
The entire continent had been flattened, leaving nothing but a giant handprint. Prince zoomed back in on the man, who stood on a now desolate landscape.
The man sighed as he looked at his hand. "Still not enough." He said.
Then his head snapped toward Prince.
Prince could swear the man could see him. No, not him, the System when it took this video.
The man raised his hand and squeezed it into a fist. "My Dao is mine and mine alone."
Prince was crushed. The vision ended.
...