"Holy shit, this place is way too cold and lonely."
A thirty-year-old man with an exhausted and haggard appearance. His dark circles were so deep they looked like permanent bruises under his tired, nearsighted eyes.
He narrowed his eyelids every time a light blinked too brightly, protecting a vision that could no longer handle long screens or sleepless nights.
He wore the same gray office suit he had used for years: the wrinkled jacket, the loose tie, the worn-out shoes.
In his right hand he gripped an old black briefcase, not with affection, but with a kind of silent hatred, as if that object represented everything he detested about his life.
He waited for the last subway train, glancing sideways at the screen of his old phone, thinking about the empty apartment he would return to.
A place with white walls, a half-empty refrigerator, and a bed that always smelled of loneliness. He knew he would go back there, like every night. It was his routine. His punishment, perhaps.
The metal benches were empty, covered with a thin layer of dust. No one else. At this hour, normal people were already home, sleeping or watching dramas with their families. He was there because, once again, he had said "yes" when his boss asked him to stay late.
He sighed, white breath in the cold air.
"I've been here for more than half an hour… and nothing. Not a damn train."
He laughed to himself, a bitter and humorless laugh.
"At thirty years old… and I'm still waiting for trains that never come. What a shitty life."
He yawned, covering his mouth with his free hand. The fatigue weighed on his shoulders like a backpack full of stones.
"I just want to get home and sleep. According to the schedule, the last one passes at 1:30… where is it?"
He looked at the phone again.
"A little longer. If it doesn't come, I'll sleep at the office. After all, I'm already used to it."
He leaned against a cold pillar and opened the novel app. He started scrolling, lost in the words. It was his only escape.
He sighed again, this time with something resembling tenderness.
"This novel… it's still incredible. Even if I read it a thousand times, it still hooks me."
But then the bitterness returned.
"What a shame they canceled it. Just when it was in the best arc…"
[The Rise of the Heroine of Humanity]
A web novel that had been a sensation eight years ago. Millions of views, endless debates on forums, fanarts everywhere… and suddenly, canceled. Not by the original author, but by the co-author. No one understood why. He understood it even less.
Because he had been the scriptwriter.
He had scripted a large part of those 2,675 chapters. He had made the plot addictive, the characters come to life, the readers cry and scream in the comments. And because of that, for a few glorious years, he had made real money: between $4,000 and $8,000 a month. In Korea, that was living like a king for someone his age.
He remembered how it all started.
He was eighteen when he argued with his mother for the last time.
"I don't want to spend my life working to death for a salary that isn't enough, Mom. I want something better!"
She, exhausted after another double shift at the factory, only told him:
"Study, work hard, and one day you'll get ahead. That's life."
But he didn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it.
His father had left when he was six years old, without saying a word as he closed the door forever. He ran after him, crying:
"Dad, don't go!"
But he left. And left the five of them: mother, him, and his three older brothers, struggling to survive.
His mother was a silent heroine. She worked sixteen hours a day, sewed at home at night, saved every won. But they never escaped poverty. Always living day to day, always tight, always content with just surviving.
He hated that. He hated seeing his mother age before her time. He wanted to get them all out of there… but not at the cost of becoming another slave to the system.
So he left home.
The first years were hard. He shared a damp basement with university roommates, worked as a cashier in the mornings and as a waiter at night. He barely slept. He barely ate.
But he read web novels and webtoons to distract himself a little from time to time.
He even started writing his own web novels.
They weren't bad. They had good reviews. Some readers left comments that made him smile for days.
[My Supposed Husky Dog Is an Alien?!]
Genre: Comedy/Science Fiction
Views: 3.7M.
Rating: 7.5/10 (1.7K reviews).
Chapters: 645.
Volumes: 10.
Comments: 941
Status: Completed
----------------------------------------------------
[I Am the Master Mecha Engineer]
Genre: Comedy/Science Fiction
Views: 4.5M.
Rating: 8.3/10 (2K reviews).
Chapters: 516.
Volumes: 7.
Comments: 1402
Status: Completed
---------------------------------------
Until one day he received an email:
["We are looking for a scriptwriter for our web novel. We are beginners at this writing thing, but we have the money to pay you very well for your work. Are you interested?"]
He thought for a second and replied:
"Why not? I have nothing to lose. Besides, they say they'll pay me well."
And that's how his rise began.
With his talent, the novel exploded. The chapters he wrote broke view records. The money came in like a river.
He rented a nice apartment in a decent neighborhood.
"I want this house," he told the agent.
"Good choice, young man. Sign here."
He bought good clothes, went out with new friends, bought himself a shiny black Porsche GT3 RS.
"That one. The metallic gray."
The seller almost cried with excitement.
"Of course, sir! Sign here."
He bought whatever he wanted. He traveled. He went out with girls. He was popular at university for the first time.
And, without realizing it, he stopped calling his mother.
He stopped visiting his brothers.
He stopped being the son who promised to get them out of poverty.
He became someone he no longer recognized.
Until one day he opened his email and read the co-author's announcement:
["For personal reasons of the original author, and by my own decision as well, the novel ends here. Thank you for accompanying us on this great journey."]
He screamed into the emptiness of his luxurious apartment:
"What? This can't be real! How can the novel be canceled?!"
He called the assistant. No answer.
He called the co-author. Nothing.
And he couldn't call the original author, because he didn't even know him; in the first place, he had never asked about him, he didn't know if it was a man or a woman, if he was Korean or some other foreigner.
Time later the novel died. The income was cut off abruptly, and he ended up in debt and bankrupt.
He had to sell the car.
Sell the apartment.
Sell everything.
He became poor again. Worse than before, because now he had debts and shame.
His "friends" disappeared.
His girlfriend left him with a cold message.
He ended up working as an office worker in a mediocre company, making reports that no one cared about, staying late because he didn't know how to say no.
His boss always yelled at him whenever he could, and he even came to think he did it on purpose.
"Finish this before Friday or I'll deduct it from your salary!"
"Yes, sir… don't worry."
A colleague he never got close to would ask him with a fake smile to take care of his duties for overtime.
"Bro, I have a dinner with my fiancée… can you cover the forms for me? You don't have plans, right?"
"Sure… no problem."
He deserved it, he thought. It was all his fault for burying himself like that; the consequence of not trying hard enough, he paid more than he should.
When he found out his mother had died, he didn't go to the funeral. He couldn't look them in the face; he never had the courage to face that, to visit the mother he had abandoned, and the last thing he remembered with her was having argued fiercely.
It was better to disappear completely and not self-destruct any more than he should. Because when he did, he hurt the same people who had been with him.
Now he was alone. Completely alone.
He looked attentively at the time shown on his phone with the frequent tiredness hitting his eyes.
[Time: 2:05 AM]
[Date: March 25, 2029]
"Two in the morning already? How time flies when you're reading…"
He looked at the digital cover of the novel one more time, which showed all the details of the work from the preview on the page.
[The Rise of the Heroine of Humanity]
Genre: Modern Fantasy/Cultivation
Views: 450.7M.
Rating: 8.9/10 (5.3K reviews).
Chapters: 2675.
Volumes: 17.
Comments: 12.3K
Status: Canceled
He had been part of that, from its beginnings to its end. All that was left was to see the product of his work.
He sighed.
"I can't complain, after all nothing earthly is permanent even if it seems more so, it's my fault for not knowing that before."
"Anyway… tomorrow I start work at 8 AM. Six hours of sleep isn't enough for anything."
He prepared to leave, to walk back to the office and sleep on the hard sofa in the rest room.
Then at that exact moment his phone started vibrating precisely in his hands.
"Is someone calling me?"
Seeing the screen of his phone completely, the number had no name or anything, just an unknown number from a private call.
"At this hour? Please, don't let it be the boss…"
It's true, who would bother calling him at this hour? If he wasn't wrong, they only called him for work matters, his damn colleagues or it could be the unwanted boss he hated so much.
But beyond that, there would be no other reason why someone would have to call him, and especially on a private number. He had no friends who cared about him, no family he saw more often, and much less a girlfriend or wife waiting for him at home.
So who should that person be? With that thought, he motivated himself to answer the call, with the goal of that person clearing up all his doubts.
"Hello?" he answered with a hoarse and dull voice.
He didn't receive an immediate response, it was simply silence.
"Hello? Who is this?"
It was the same result, there was nothing else, just an uncomfortable silence.
"Is this a joke? Because it's not funny."
Then, a cold, emotionless voice, like generated by a machine, sounded from the other side of his phone screen.
"Lamb, grimoire, genesis."
Frowning at the absurd and incongruous response from that individual, in an instant the office worker didn't know how to react, the only thing that occurred to him was to get angry for that waste of time.
"What the fuck? Who are you?"
The voice repeated, identical:
"Lamb, grimoire, genesis."
The anger rose.
"Look, you son of a bitch, I don't have time for that nonsense. And if it's some kind of prank call… go to hell."
He hung up angrily.
He put the phone away, furious.
He turned around to leave. Determined to get out of that damn subway station.
And then he felt the push.
A brutal force on his back.
He fell forward, toward the tracks.
The world slowed down around him, with confusion he perceived everything that was happening, but without any apparent justification.
"What…?"
The train lights emerged from the tunnel like the eyes of a predatory monster lurking in the darkness. Ready to devour its prey.
The roar filled everything.
"Shit… I'm going to…"
The voice returned, now inside his head:
"Lamb. Grimoire. Genesis."
Was he really about to die? He was going to be run over by a train.
The only thing he managed to see in that instant was the individual with a wide black robe and long sleeves as if detailed with dancing shadows. He couldn't see his face, but at that moment, that was the last thing he could remember.
"Y… you… why?" he murmured with regret.
The impact was instantaneous.
Pain.
Darkness.
The phone fell onto the platform with the screen shattering.
Blood on the concrete.
And then… nothing.
Just a black, infinite void, like floating in a bottomless ocean. He heard nothing but the currents beneath the water.
He had just died, but strangely it didn't bother him. It was as if he felt free from it. Now he wouldn't have to keep working. After all, he no longer had anyone with him, not even anyone he could hurt again.
Until suddenly, a translucent blue window without apparent reason appeared in the middle of nowhere, where white runes were holographically transcribed.
[Consciousness Spell – Activated]
[Status Window]
Name: Darius Maximoud
Race: Human
Rank: G-
Strength: G-
Agility: G-
Endurance: G-
Intelligence: G-
Aura Control: G-
Aura Potential: G-
Talent Grade: G-
Profession: [Elemental Mage – Level 1]