I died alone, at my desk, solving a math problem.
No truck, no noble sacrifice, no final words. Just me, a stack of papers, and the sharp pain of my body giving up mid-equation. My pen slipped from my fingers. My vision flickered. Somewhere between the recursive loop and the answer, I lost my heartbeat.
Seventeen years old. Top of my class. Zero friends. No family left. Cause of death?Exhaustion.
Turns out, genius doesn't come with a health bar.
When I woke up, I expected white light. Angels. Maybe a judge with a clipboard.
Instead, I opened my eyes to chaos.
Screams. Flames. A sky the color of blood. Chains dug into my wrists, my neck, and my ankles.
I couldn't breathe. Something heavy slammed into my back — another body. Someone tripped over me. I barely caught myself before falling face-first into the mud.
Then a voice roared behind me, deep and cold:
"Move, Drudge! Or die with the rest of the fodder!"
Drudge?
I blinked, dizzy. My head felt like it was cracking open under too much noise and color. But my body — this body — moved on instinct. I staggered forward with a crowd of others, all in the same dirty tunics, all shackled and half-starved.
That's when I noticed the monster.
It dropped from the sky like a boulder. Wings of leather. Scales like rusted steel. A screech that pierced the air like a blade.
A wyvern.
I froze.
Somewhere deep inside, logic screamed at me — analyze, calculate, survive — but it was buried under the terror.
This was real.
This wasn't a dream or an afterlife. This was something worse.
I stumbled back, nearly tripping over a corpse — a boy barely older than me. He'd been torn open like paper. No weapons. No armor. Just a number branded on his chest and a gaping wound where his stomach used to be.
I couldn't look away.
"Hey! New meat! MOVE!"
Someone shoved me forward. My knees buckled. I hit the dirt, shoulder-first, pain blooming through me. My body was weak. Malnourished. Shaking.
I wasn't built to fight monsters.
I wasn't built to survive.
So why the hell was I here?
Then, without warning, a shimmering light blinked in the corner of my vision.
A voice. Calm, genderless. Soft, but final — like a knife sliding into water.
[Welcome, Aspirant.]
[You have entered the Trial World: Virellia.]
[Classification: Drudge.]
STATUS OPENED
🧾 Name: Itsuki Amagi
Class: Drudge
Level: 1
HP: 10
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Magic: 1
Luck: -30
Intelligence: ∞
Trait: [Hyper Cognition] — You are capable of processing information far beyond mortal limits. Side Effect: You will always know just how screwed you really are.
I stared at the screen, hollow.
This wasn't a game.
No stats to grind. No sword to swing. No tutorial fairy chirping about quests. I was weak, slow, fragile — and according to this damn system, cursed with negative luck.
Only thing I had?
Brains.
The voice was right.
I was screwed.
The wyvern shrieked again, sweeping low. Its claws tore through the front line of slaves, blood spraying across the muddy ground like rain.
People screamed.
Someone beside me fell, sobbing, their legs crushed.
I stood frozen. My mind raced — hundreds of thoughts overlapping, branching, calculating.
Three seconds. That's all I had.
Run = trampled. Fight = suicide. Beg = ignored. Hide—
Wait.
There.
Behind a collapsed wagon, partly covered by a corpse.
If I could just get there—
I ran.
Not like a hero.
Like a rat.
Scrambling, slipping in the mud, crawling behind the wreckage. I pressed myself flat, heart hammering in my chest, trying not to breathe.
The wyvern passed overhead. I felt the wind off its wings. Heard the bones crack beneath its weight.
It didn't see me.
For now.
I clenched my teeth, shaking.
Not from fear.Not even from the cold.
From something older. Deeper. Something that had always lived at the bottom of my chest, coiled and quiet.
Rage.
I didn't ask for this.
I didn't want another life, another world, another fight.
But if this was the hand I was dealt...
Then I'd play it the only way I knew how.
Like a goddamn strategist.
I peeked over the wreckage, eyes scanning the battlefield. Every movement, every angle, every threat.
I could already see it.
A path. A plan. A way out.
And maybe…
Just maybe…
A way to win.