Ryouta grinned evilly. He was being attacked by a major branch of an elite assassin guild, and still no one could touch him. He wasn't even dodging. They simply could not get through his defenses.

He opened up his system, watching the numbers rack up. He was currently trying to survive seventeen million damage, without any boosts, so that his defense attribute would rank up. It was at the peak rank, but there was still a progress bar. He wanted to see what was beyond Cosmic-Deity Rank.

He was so close.

Ten thousand. Eight thousand. Four thousand. 

Ryouta's grin widened. He had finally found a group able to do enough damage to advance the progress on his defense.

Just before he hit it, something hit him. It was a sword. A blade had pierced his defenses. 

"You should not be so confident," the man who had stabbed him said. "Someone is always stronger."

A single shudder passed through Ryouta's body, and then he was no longer standing, supported solely by the sword that had passed through his stomach.

[Emergency Procedure Activated: System Sacrifice]

[Emergency Points Added to Defense Skill]

[Defense Skill Promotion Triggered]

[New Ability Obtained]

And then Ryouta's world faded into black. 

-----

Ryouta woke up in darkness. It wasn't complete darkness. There was a low red glow. That probably wasn't a good thing.

He felt hot. 

'System, profile,' he thought. There was no response.

'Profile,' he thought again. This was strange. The system had never failed to answer him before.

Then he remembered. The system was gone. But so was he, wasn't he? Hadn't he been killed? Shouldn't he be dead?

Ryouta stood up. The red glow began to creep upwards.

"He's alive!" someone shouted.

A flurry of movement began around him. He heard sounds, but he couldn't identify them. He didn't seem to be in the place where the sounds were, but he could hear them.

"You are lucky, very lucky," another voice muttered. "You should be dead."

Ryouta still saw only a red glow, but it was creeping upwards. Soon, his entire field of vision was red. Then, he burst into movement. He whirled around. Behind him, there was still black. He needed to escape the red glow.

So he ran. Into the blackness. Into the darkness.

Suddenly, his foot felt no resistance anymore. He began to fall, picking up speed.

And then he jolted awake. He was lying on a bed. He resisted his impulse to leap immediately. He didn't know where he was. There was a white light on him.

"You're safe," the second voice whispered into his ear.

He didn't like those words. The last time that he had heard them, his entire family was murdered.

Ryouta tried to sit up slowly, but he felt a resistance.

"Can you speak?" the voice asked. Ryouta ignored it. He didn't like that voice. It reminded him of... unpleasant experiences.

The resistance lifted. Ryouta sat up. He looked around him. He was in a science lab. There was a girl with him. She appeared to be a teenager. She was doing rudimentary calculations on a holographic screen. Ryouta glanced over the screen. She appeared to be attempting to create technology using a substance that absorbed forces. His fingers started twitching. It had been too long since he had been able to create things, and the opportunity to experiment with a new material woke up the scientist in him.

He had a highly advanced intelligence stat. Or, at least, he had had a highly advanced intelligence stat. He wasn't exactly sure what had happened to it, but it didn't appear to have abandoned him entirely.

"How are you?" she asked him. He did not answer. she was not the second voice, but it might still be here.

She turned around to regard him with a frown. She noticed his twitching fingers, and appeared to deduce the reason behind it. She gave him an indulgent smile.

"Go ahead," she said, stepping away from her holographic screen.

Ryouta stepped up to it, and his fingers began moving.

"Hello," Ryouta made the computer say. The girl looked a bit startled that he had done something so quickly.

"Hello," she said cautiously.

"What is your name?" he asked using the computer.

"Shuri," she said. "What is yours?"

"I am called by many the Dead, by some Devoid of Soul, and by others the Destroyer," Ryouta told her through the computer. "But my name is Ryouta."

"Those are... impressive titles," Shuri said, hesitating. She clearly didn't know how to react to his casual statement.

"Not if you knew that people who call me that," was his response. "Can I have some of this 'vibranium'?"

"I am not supposed to give any to outsiders," Shuri said. "You shouldn't even be here."

"May I use your computer?" Ryouta asked through the computer.

"I shouldn't let you," Shuri said. "But I'm curious. Activate Lockdown procedure!"

The computer disconnected itself from all outside signals. Within five seconds, Ryouta had reconnected it, and he began to scan through information from the rest of the world.

The girl's computer was piggy-backing off of satellites. This place did not have legal internet access. That was what they called the system of signals that joined all of the computers together to a central node here. Internet. What a funny word. Outernet would have been a better word, because the goal seemed to be to connect people, and not to keep them inside their own worlds.

Then Ryouta found a half-competent firewall. Firewalls as advanced as this one appeared to be rare in this world. There were many different languages here as well, though, and those could be as good as any firewall when it came to defense of secrets, unless you happened to be facing someone as intelligent as Ryouta.

Ryouta quickly got himself through the firewall, and then he saw what had been hidden.