The first sensation was not pain, but the jarring absence of it.

For the last three years, Kaelen Vance’s existence had been defined by a constant, agonizing hum—a side effect of the parasitic mana pathways his class had forced upon him. On Floor 99 of the Spire, pain was just the atmospheric pressure. His lungs should have been coated in the corrosive ash of the Ashen Wastes. His right arm should have ended in a cauterized stump where the Vanguard Guild Master’s broadsword had severed it.

Instead, his chest expanded effortlessly, pulling in the stale, overly conditioned air of a cheap studio apartment.

Kaelen’s eyes snapped open. He shot upright, his body tensing in anticipation of an attack, his hand instantly reaching for a phantom blade at his hip. His hand grasped nothing but the soft cotton of a gray blanket.

He blinked, his pupils violently contracting as they adjusted to the blinding fluorescent light filtering through the cheap plastic blinds. He wasn’t in the Ashen Wastes. He wasn’t dying on the marble floor of the Guild Master’s throne room, choking on his own blood while he clutched the pulsing, iridescent sphere known as the Admin Privilege.

He was sitting on a sagging twin mattress in his old college dorm room off-campus.

"What the hell?" Kaelen whispered. His voice was steady, missing the gravelly rasp of advanced mana poisoning. He threw off the blanket and rushed to the cracked mirror hanging precariously on the back of the particle-board door.

The face staring back at him was impossibly young. There were no jagged claw marks across his cheek. His eyes, though wide and alert, lacked the hollow, dead-fish stare of a man who had murdered thousands of sentient beings just to climb a giant, interdimensional tower.

Kaelen scrambled for his phone, tossing aside a pile of unwashed t-shirts. He pressed the home button. The screen lit up: **September 15, 8:30 AM.**

"Ten years," Kaelen breathed, stumbling backward until his calves hit the edge of the mattress. "It actually worked. The artifact didn’t kill me. It reset me."

The memories of his dying moments flooded his mind in a chaotic rush. The Vanguard Guild, the people he had fought beside since Floor 10, cornering him in the final raid. The Guild Master’s sneer. *“Sorry, Kae. Only one person can hold the Admin Privilege. You’re just a liability now.”* Kaelen had known he was dead. But in a final act of spite, he hadn’t surrendered the glowing sphere. He had crushed it in his bare hand, absorbing its raw, unfiltered code straight into his soul.

The explosion had ripped the fabric of reality apart. And now, he was here. Back to the beginning.

Kaelen’s gaze snapped to the digital clock on his battered microwave. **08:32 AM.**

He felt a sudden, icy knot twist in his stomach. September 15th.

The Spire. The Integration.

It was going to happen today. In exactly twenty-eight minutes.

"No time to celebrate," Kaelen muttered, his survival instincts—honed by a decade of constant bloodshed—taking immediate control. He didn't have spells. He didn't have his absurdly high Agility stat or his legendary gear. He had the frail, pathetic body of an exhausted twenty-year-old college student who lived on instant ramen and cheap coffee.

He moved with frantic precision. First, clothing. He stripped off his sleepwear and pulled on thick jeans, a long-sleeved thermal shirt, and his sturdiest pair of hiking boots. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from his desk drawer and wrapped it tightly around his forearms, creating a makeshift bracer to deflect glancing blows. It wouldn't stop a straight stab, but it might save him from a goblin's ragged fingernails.

Next, a weapon. He didn't have the luxury of a broadsword. He raided his tiny kitchenette, bypassing the dull butter knives and grabbing the eight-inch chef's knife he had bought on clearance. It was relatively sharp, with a solid tang. He wrapped the handle in duct tape for a better grip.

**08:45 AM.** Fifteen minutes.

Kaelen walked to the window and peeled back the blinds. Outside, the campus was bustling. Students were hurrying to their morning lectures, coffee cups in hand, completely oblivious to the fact that their reality was about to violently end.

In exactly fifteen minutes, the sky would crack open. A colossal, obsidian structure—The Spire—would erupt from the Marianas Trench, displacing oceans and tearing through the atmosphere. Simultaneously, the `[Aether System]` would forcefully integrate Earth. Mana would flood the planet, altering physics and spawning designated 'Tutorial Zones' across every major population center.

Millions would die in the first hour. It wasn't just panic; it was the sheer brutality of the tutorial monsters. People thought they were playing a game. They didn't realize pain was real here until half their face was chewed off.

Kaelen knew he shouldn't stay in the dorm. It was a deathtrap. The narrow corridors were perfect for goblins to ambush terrified students. But he also knew something else—something that only a handful of people in his past life had discovered, and only years after the fact.

The Tutorial Zones weren't randomly generated. They centered around specific "Spawn Points." The closer you were to a Spawn Point, the harder the monsters. But, crucially, the better the initial loot.

The central quad of his university campus was one of those points.

Kaelen gripped his chef's knife tightly. He could run to the outskirts of town, hide, and easily survive the Tutorial by picking off weak stragglers. But surviving wasn't enough. Not anymore. He wasn't going to spend ten years grinding his way back to Floor 99 just to get betrayed by the Vanguard Guild again. He needed an absolute, overwhelming advantage from the very first second.

He unlocked his door and stepped into the carpeted hallway of his dorm. It smelled faintly of stale beer and cheap cologne.

**08:58 AM.**

Two minutes. Kaelen stood still, centering his breathing. He had done this a million times in his past life. He visualized his heart rate slowing, the adrenaline pooling in his muscles, ready to detonate.

**08:59 AM.**

The lights in the hallway flickered. Once. Twice. Then, all the power completely died.

From outside his window, a sound unlike anything Earth had ever produced echoed through the air—a deep, resonant *BWOOOM* that vibrated in Kaelen’s very teeth. It was the sound of the atmosphere being cleaved in half. Screams immediately followed. The sound of screeching tires and crunching metal drifted up from the street.

Before Kaelen could even brace himself, a translucent blue screen materialized violently directly in front of his eyes.

`[SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]` `[WORLD DESIGNATION: EARTH-774]` `[INTEGRATING MANA NETWORK...]` `[ERROR: ANOMALOUS CODE DETECTED IN SUBJECT #8841-B]` `[ATTEMPTING TO PURGE...]`

Kaelen gasped, dropping to one knee as a sharp, blinding spike of pain drove itself into his skull. It felt like someone was trying to scramble his brain with a massive mixer.

*The System is trying to delete the Admin Privilege,* Kaelen realized through the haze of agony. *It recognizes I don't belong here.*

He gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to scream. "No... you don't..." he snarled, visualizing the glowing sphere he had assimilated in his final moments. He pushed back against the invasive system scan, mentally wrestling with the code.

`[PURGE FAILED.]` `[ANOMALY INTEGRATION INEVITABLE.]` `[RECALCULATING...]` `[UNIQUE CLASS GENERATED: THE GLITCH]`

The pain vanished instantly, leaving Kaelen panting heavily on the worn carpet. He stared at the blue screen, which had begun to flicker erratically, the text glitching with strings of raw, green code.

"The Glitch..." Kaelen murmured, reading the class designation. He didn't have time to explore his new status screen. The Tutorial had begun.

At the exact opposite end of the long hallway, a spatial tear rippled in the air. It looked like a jagged wound in reality, leaking purple light. From the tear, a creature dropped onto the carpet with a wet, heavy thud.

It was a Goblin Scout. It stood about three feet tall, its skin a sickening, pale green. It wore a filthy loincloth and held a rusty, chipped shortsword. It sniffed the air, its oversized, pointed ears twitching.

To a normal human, it was a terrifying monster from a nightmare. To Kaelen, it was 5 Experience Points.

The goblin spotted him. It bared rows of yellow, needle-like teeth and let out a vicious shriek, charging down the hallway with surprising speed.

Kaelen didn't run. He stood up, adjusting his grip on the chef's knife. He needed to test this new body.

As the goblin lunged, thrusting its rusty blade toward Kaelen's stomach, Kaelen moved. His newly unconditioned muscles screamed in protest, but his mind knew exactly where to be. He sidestepped the thrust with an inch to spare.

Before he could strike down with his knife, his vision jittered.

For a fraction of a second, the world lost its texture. The walls, the carpet, the goblin—they all rendered as translucent, wireframe models. And hovering just above the goblin’s neck was a glowing, red, pixelated hitbox perfectly outlining its jugular.

`[Passive Skill Activated: View Hex Code]`

Kaelen didn't hesitate. He drove the chef's knife directly into the center of that glowing red box.

The blade sank in effortlessly, completely bypassing the goblin's tough, leathery skin, acting as if the resistance value of the flesh had been set to zero. The knife severed the spine in a single, clean motion.

The goblin didn't even have time to scream. It collapsed to the floor in a heap of green limbs and dark blood.

`[Target Eliminated: Goblin Scout (Lv. 1)]` `[Experience Earned: +5]` `[Level Up! You have reached Level 2.]` `[You have 5 Free Attribute Points.]`

Kaelen yanked his knife free, shaking off the blood. He stared at his hand. That strike should have taken significant force, perhaps even jarring the knife from his unpracticed grip. But hitting that red box... it felt like cutting through empty air.

"A vulnerability exploit," Kaelen realized, a cold, predatory smile spreading across his face.

The System wasn't perfect. And now, he was its virus.

Kaelen stepped over the goblin's corpse and headed toward the stairwell. The central quad was waiting, and with it, the Tutorial Boss.