Viktor pulled his coat tighter against the chill, his boots crunching over the frost covered ground. The surrounding forest was eerily silent, broken only by the occasional whisper of the wind through the branches. He had been wandering for months, following rumors of hidden places and venturing into them, but this one in particular just seemed too different, and a bit weird.
He was no stranger to gates. Those rifts in the fabric of reality that connected earth to other worlds, home to monsters that had slowly bled into humanity territories over the past few centuries. Not only that, but he'd fought through them, explored their darkened landscapes, and barely escaped with his life more than once, so he was not scared of whatever outcome that might come his way.
But this gate was different this time around than it was when he had ventured back when he was still in his military days with his platoon members for investigation of some forgotten occurrence.
It had been left abandoned for decades, an anomaly in the global system. And like all anomalies, it had been forgotten. People avoided it, too scared to even acknowledge its existence. After all, what is left to explore? It has been over centuries now, humans have houses, factories, and different things going on in gates over the world.
Over the years, the gates had evolved into an uneasy paradox for humanity, a source of both progress and peril, almost like a backyard world to those who dared to explore them. When they first appeared, they were seen as nothing short of miraculous. These portals granted access to untold riches and opportunities, reshaping human potential in unprecedented ways. Those who ventured into the gates often returned transformed, their bodies enhanced with supernatural strength, speed, and other extraordinary abilities.
Magic, once a concept confined to myths and legends, became tangible. Mystical artifacts, potions, and weapons were extracted from these otherworldly realms and integrated into daily life, revolutionizing industries, economies, and even warfare. What had started as an anomaly became the cornerstone of humanity's advancement, a phenomenon woven into the very fabric of society.
Over time, what was once considered extraordinary became commonplace. Cities sprang up to the inside and around most of the gates, entire industries developed to harness their resources, and generations grew up viewing them as humanity's greatest asset. The gates were no longer seen as gateways to the unknown but as extensions of human territory.
Or so it seemed.
Beneath the surface of progress lay an insidious truth. The gates were not static entities. They were alive in their own way, tethered to Earth's life force to sustain their existence. Initially designed as temporary passages to the other realms, they should have closed long ago. But something had gone horribly wrong. Instead of fading, the gates lingered, feeding off the planet itself. Their prolonged presence disrupted Earth's natural balance, siphoning energy in slow but relentless pulses.
As decades turned into centuries, the toll became undeniable. The planet's ecosystems were ravaged, its climate destabilized, and its vitality drained. Crops began to fail, natural disasters grew more frequent, and entire regions became uninhabitable. What humanity once viewed as its greatest triumph now loomed as its greatest threat.
The gates, once stable and controlled, began to fracture under the strain of centuries of overuse. Their once-structured energy became erratic, their boundaries blurred. Reports of anomalies in zones where the laws of physics broke down or where time and space twisted unpredictably became more frequent. Entering the gates became increasingly dangerous, with even seasoned adventurers meeting untimely ends. And yet, humanity pressed on, unwilling or unable to abandon the gates that had given them so much.
Now, the gates lingered on the edge of collapsing, their seams unraveling. The very fabric of their existence was breaking down, threatening to burst open in an uncontrollable surge of chaos. What once seemed like humanity's backyard, an extension of their world now loomed as a volatile force that could undo everything. The prolonged reliance on these portals, their ceaseless draw on Earth's life force, had set the stage for a reckoning no one was prepared or dared to face.
Viktor didn't know why he'd come here. Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was fate, even with how dangerous it seemed for him with his average abilities he was still drawn to it like a moth to a burning flame.
The gate loomed before him, an unnatural shimmer in the air, warping the world around it. It was a massive towering structure, an archway of pulsating energy that hummed with power had become twisted, unstable over the centuries. He could feel it even now, the heavy weight of its presence pressing the air, a constant reminder of the imbalance it caused.
The world had been dying for over 200 years. The initial burst of energy when the gate had first opened compared to the current generation is in a dire situation, and the initial balance had been shattered. The very fabric of the earth itself had been stretched thin, as the gates had continued to draw from it long after they were supposed to close.
The air around the gate seemed alive, a shimmering mirage that distorted reality. Viktor took a cautious step forward, his boots crunching against the frost-bitten ground. He could feel the gate's pull, like an invisible tether drawing him closer. Despite the danger, he couldn't help but marvel at the sheer scale of it. The energy radiating from its surface was chaotic, pulsating in uneven waves, casting an eerie, ethereal glow onto the surrounding forest.
He paused, his breath visible in the frigid air, and glanced over his shoulder. The forest stood still, almost as if the trees themselves were holding their breath. There was no turning back now. He'd come too far, and whatever lay beyond that gate, he needed to know.
Viktor reached out, his gloved fingers brushing against the edge of the gate's energy field. A shock ran up his arm, not painful but jarring, like an electric hum resonating through his bones. He gritted his teeth, muttering under his breath,
"This one's different, alright."
As he stepped through, the world shifted around him. It wasn't the usual sensation of entering a gate which he always experienced when he went through them, the stomach lurching disorientation or the oppressive darkness. This was smoother, quieter, as if the gate itself was reluctant to let him in.
The landscape beyond was unlike anything Viktor had ever seen in his years of exploring. The sky was a deep, roiling red, streaked with black clouds that churned as if alive. Jagged mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks glowing faintly with an unnatural light. The ground beneath his feet was cracked and barren, the soil a sickly gray. There was no sound here, no wind, no distant cries of monsters, just an eerie, oppressive silence that pressed down on him like a physical weight that he couldn't shake off no matter how hard he tried.
Viktor crouched and touched the ground, his fingers brushing against the brittle, lifeless dirt.
"This place feels… dead," he murmured.
Standing and scanning the horizon. His hand instinctively rested on the hilt of his blade; a habit honed from years of surviving these otherworldly realms.
He began walking, his senses on high alert. Every step felt heavier, the atmosphere thick and suffocating. There were no signs of life, no tracks or disturbances in the ground, and yet Viktor couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched.
After what felt like hours, he spotted something in the distance, a faint glimmer of light. He quickened his pace, his heart pounding as the light grew brighter, revealing a structure that seemed to rise from the desolation like a ghostly apparition.
It was an altar, ancient and crumbling, carved from obsidian and adorned with intricate runes that seemed to pulse faintly with a dim, bluish glow. At its center rested a small, crystalline object, floating above the altar's surface as if suspended by an unseen force.
Viktor approached cautiously, every instinct screaming at him to turn back. But the object drew him in, its glow intensifying as he neared. It was unlike anything he'd ever encountered, a shard of pure energy, its surface shifting and refracting light in ways that defied logic.
He hesitated, reaching out slowly. The moment his fingers brushed the shard, a surge of power exploded through him, sending him staggering back. His vision blurred, the world around him spinning as he quickly started to get back his senses, the blue holographic view of the human's system hovered In front of his view as he opened his eyes quickly.
[The final piece of the system has been found, "luck"]
[Total time before the gates break: minus 200 years]
[Countdown to the breaking of the gates: 48:00:00]
Viktor collapsed back to the position he was earlier, now even more confused and bewildered. The weight of the message sank in, its implications chilling. The gates, unstable, chaotic, draining the very life force of the earth, were about to rupture.
He stared at the shard in his hand, its glow now pulsing in sync with his racing heartbeat. The final piece? What did it mean? Why had he been the one to find it?
A deep rumble shook the ground, snapping Viktor out of his thoughts. The altar began to crumble, the runes dimming as the world around him started to collapse. He didn't have time to think or look around for any surrounding clue. Clutching the shard tightly like it was the solution to all that he was experiencing at that point, he turned and ran, his instincts screaming that whatever was coming, he didn't want to be here when it arrived.
The ground cracked beneath his feet, the sky splitting open as jagged bolts of energy tore through the air. He ran right through the gate just as the world behind him erupted in a blinding flash of light.
Stumbling back into the forest, Viktor collapsed to the ground, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. The gate shimmered violently behind him, its energy surging erratically before stabilizing.
He sat there for a moment, clutching the shard and staring at the now quiet gate. The system message is coming back up again with a new message.
[Quest completed]
[Locate the final part of the system]
[Reward: Luck stat unlocked]
As he was trying to understand the quest because he didn't get any quest request that he was trying to complete before entering the gate or even in a long time. Right after, the system came with another message.
[Luck stat unlocked: Current value 9,999 (Max)]
"What…?" Viktor muttered, his voice trailing off as the implications hit him like a freight train. Luck. A Stat no one had ever seen before. A stat that supposedly didn't even exist.
Almost immediately he called his status window to see all his stat value to confirm what he just saw and there it was, a title he had never heard before was hovering right under his name.
"The lucky guy"
And then proceeding down there, it was "luck". He had never seen or heard of it being possible with any method or item that will give the stat luck among the other 6 major stats lingering there with a max value never seen before.
Just as he wanted to lie back to try to think about the current situation, right between the leaves on the branches, he saw strands of light which were originally not supposed to be there. He scooched over a bit to get a clear view of what he thought he was seeing, and surprisingly got a clear view of what was later known as the countdown to the end of humanity as we know it.