Welcome everyone to Re: The System's Harvester!!! Do enjoy your stay!
Optional Music to Accompany the Chapter:
Rok Nardin - Rose (feat. ZALI)
https://youtu.be/lZtC0T0_8QI
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Late Evening - Early Fall : Year 0 | Month 0 : Charlotte, North Carolina
World: Earth | Rank: Unknown
Population: 8,062,931,781
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'Hi, my name is Evren! Nice to meet you:' A greeting once bright enough to break apart the darkest shadows of someone's day.
I used to be that girl: 175 centimeters of unfiltered enthusiasm, black hair tied back with a scholar's ribbon, and silver eyes that drank in every sunrise.
Back then, friends, family, and even classmates said I carried hope like the glow of a campfire in a frigid forest.
I was a beacon for those in darker days, spreading the light I believed was cast on myself like a pillar of glass.
But no matter how blessed one may believe they are, life will always find a way to test a pillar's foundation.
And for me, it came in the form of a phone call. Or rather.. a ringtone...
*Beep... Beep... Beep...* Father's voicemail sang its hollow hymn twice that morning—the morning of my twenty-second birthday. He never missed a phone call, even hearing his voicemail rattled my chest, yet classes kept me marching.
Trying not to think much of it, I continued with my day, perhaps expecting him to call back, but after moments turned into hours, worry finally drowned out caution.
Calling an old neighbour to check in on them, I wrapped up my classwork and headed back home for the evening, trying to ease my worries by finishing up my final assignments before graduation.
However, after hours of fruitless study, an unfamiliar number split my phone.
*Tap* "H-Hello?"
"Hi, is this Miss Evren Lestir? This is Sheriff Michael Kerta, Greenville PD."
-Huh?- I almost laughed hearing the deep, coarse voice, trying to ease my anxiety as I questioned if my friend had gotten caught into trouble.
But.. that wasn't the case. "I'm.. sorry to inform you, but..." Hearing pain creep into his weathered voice, my heart sank. "This evening, we responded to an emergency at your parents' home, and.. they were found unresponsive," he continued, every syllable landing like the strike of a sledgehammer. "Paramedics on the scene suspect it was carbon-monoxide poisoning... They passed away in their sleep some time last night..."
My surroundings instantly flashed over with frost, my phone freezing to my hand—immeasurably heavy yet impossible to drop.
In an instant, the pillar I believed I had chiseled—crumbled.
"I'm.. sorry for your loss..." The man's voice, burdened with sympathy, tried to strike me with a ray of warmth, but it was only scattered as it landed on a pile of shattered glass.
A nightmare, it had to be... A cold, chilling nightmare...
But.. it never ended.
And with it.. time lost its structure.
Before I knew it, weeks blurred into months: colorless dawns leaking through the cracked blinds illuminated plates of fossilizing filth, while the gentle glow of a monitor pooling job offers lit my dark.. exhausted face...
After the funeral, everything lost its meaning. Hugs felt hollow, and words felt cold. Friends sent scentless flowers, and distant family sent stale sorrows.
Some texted; I lied. Others visited; I pretended I wasn't home.
Eventually, they stopped trying, but the silence that followed was louder than any protest.
Having received an insurance payout like the delivery of a casket, I invested it like my life depended on it, hoping the growing numbers on my screen could bring light to the numbness.
But the ember never grew.
By twenty-five, I could have done anything I wanted: toured the world, started a studio, or even bought sunlight in bottles.. yet I couldn't summon the will to leave my apartment.
Instead, I let the worlds of fiction invade. With knotted earbuds and sleepless nights, I attempted marathons of pixelated heroism, embarking on adventures of exploration and discovery to search for color—somewhere.. anywhere...
But unlike the characters I played as, I never found the vibrance I lost...
Life never patched... Life never wiped...
Or at least.. that was what I believed...
One day, a gentle, unfamiliar beep pulled me from my shallow slumber.
Thinking it was my computer, I sat up, questioning whether to crawl out of bed and check on it. But the moment I opened my eyes and let my vision sharpen, I found a floating, half-transparent panel lighting up my face like the glow of an afternoon sky: 'Congratulations! Earth has successfully been integrated into The System.'
At first, I thought it was a dream—one of those desperate, pixelated mirages stitched from too many sleepless nights, but even as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, the panel remained.. humming...
*Vwowowoom...* -What.. the...- Watching it gently flicker with an indescribable whir, questions raced through my listless mind.
But before I could find an answer, another panel opened as if revealed by a curtain parting across a stage: 'You have been randomly selected to become a 'System Mercenary' in order to calibrate this World's 'population rank'.'
Still fighting lethargy, the words blurred and blended, sounding akin to gibberish in my mind: 'Please select a class... Weapon...'
Eventually, I just mindlessly hit 'Confirm', as I had in countless games.
But while my mind gently drifted, questioning the insanity of my dream, the next moment shattered everything.
*Vwoop* Hearing a gentle warp, my eyes, adjusted to the dark, were blasted with a blinding light, gravity compounded, and the very air in my lungs grew thick and electric.
*GASP* Jolting forward with an instinctive breath, I covered my mouth, frozen from a blend of shock and fear.
But as the blindness faded, and my adrenaline-numbed senses mellowed, I found myself standing atop a field of grass, with a gentle, cool breeze brushing my cheek like the forgotten caress of my mother.
I was.. outside...
*Beep* Hearing yet another haunting tune, I looked up to find another panel greeting me: 'Welcome to Orochi. World Rank: 7.'
Looking through it, I found nothing but rolling hills, like gentle waves beneath the bright sky.
But.. it wasn't Earth... The horizon was too distant...
*Beep* 'New Quest: Level up.'
-W..what..? Level.. up..?- Staring at the panel with a mind still stuttering, I reached up to touch them again... -P..perhaps like before.. it will do something...- And sure enough, it did.
But as the panels dissipated into a mist of particles, a wave of heat washed over my leg.. and my gaze lowered to find something metallic sticking through it—a spike glazed in.. crimson...
It was blood, gracing my mind with the sight of something I had forgotten...
Color...
"Uh.. aaAAAHHHH!" Letting out a terrible screech as the pain finally slugged my mind, I jumped forward, feeling the shard rip out of my thigh with a scorching burn before turning around to find a creature standing behind me—short and hideous, wielding a blade that painted its wrinkled, mossy green skin in blood while dripping crimson droplets onto a world I thought colorless.
Back then, I didn't know how to fight at all. When that filthy little creature charged at me, instinct simply took over—my hand was gored as I tried to disarm it, gritting my teeth with the metallic taste of adrenaline filling my mouth like blood I had yet to spit.
But despite my ineptitude, after getting a grip on the bastard's wrist, I pulled him in, grabbed his throat, and pinned him to the ground before using every speck of strength left in my deteriorated body to twist and snap its thin, human-like arm across my leg. *sNaP* *Clang*
Reaching to grab the fallen blade, it turned the splintered bone sticking out of its arm into a blade, impaling my other arm in a fit of desperation.
But by then it was too late. Setting its crudely crafted iron blade against its throat, my body had grown numb, my vision fuzzy, and with one swift motion... *Shik* It fell limp.
*Thump...* Watching its lifeless body lose all tension and collapse to the soil, I stumbled back, fruitlessly clutching my torn arm with a hand no less gored, struggling to catch my breath. "Hah... Hah..." -It's.. dead...- Blankly staring down at the grotesque little body, I felt my chest rise and fall with shallow, trembling breaths, a bitter heat filling my body as a gut churning disgust welled behind my eyes.
But the panel didn't wait for it to settle: 'You have killed a level 2 Goblin! Experience gained...'
...It was.. surreal.
Bleeding out, with every heartbeat thundering like a broken drum in my skull, words floated in front of me, blinking softly, almost mockingly gentle.
It looked like a game.. something that could only exist in a dream or nightmare...
But despite the searing, throbbing pain, and the distant, haunting shriek of monsters echoing through the air like the howl of a pack of wolves, the dimmest of gleams snuck into my gaze.
With every drop of blood, a metallic scent brought vibrance to every breath, and a crimson splatter returned color with every blink.
For the first time since my world had collapsed, I could feel.
My breath heaved as I stumbled backward, feeling the edges of my vision darken, while some stubborn, primal instinct kept my legs from giving way.
Pain clawed through my nerves, yet with every heartbeat, it brought clarity. Every shallow inhale was fire, every twitch of my wounded hand agony—but the world around me had never been sharper.
-Is this.. what being alive feels like..?- Looking up with a hint of doubt, I found the grass shimmering a golden green beneath a rich, powder-blue sky—the hills rippling outward like the folds of an endless tapestry—colors so vivid they burned into my soul.
Somewhere deep inside, something long-buried stirred—a faint ember reigniting a torch in collapsed ruins.
And in that moment, broken, battered, and stained, I realized something...
I didn't want to die anymore.
Despite my surroundings flickering and my body staggering, I didn't want to let go.
I was trapped no longer—I had a torch to light my way in the labyrinth.
And the longer I stared into the void beyond my torch's glimmer, the bolder my desire grew—to bring color to the darkness, and return color to the world around me.
Even if, after nearly five and a half centuries of wandering through that endless maze, lighting every torch I passed, believing I had returned color to everything, I was reduced to a frog in a well, finding beauty in the sky after forgetting anything else existed.
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