The Hero's fist was already humming with that golden, self-righteous mana. He was winding up for the strike that was supposed to put me in a coma—the strike that, in the original novel, left Cian von Heist a broken heap on the stones.
However, I didn't flinch. I looked him dead in the eyes and spoke.
"Hey, you shit."
My voice was a wet, raspy growl. I dragged myself up, using the base of a marble pillar to steady my shaking legs.
"What was your name again? Elian? Kaelen? Whatever. Try me. If you don't love your life, go ahead and swing."
The courtyard went deathly silent.
The silver-haired prick—Kaelen—paused, and even the students who had been walking away stopped in their tracks.
In the original Hero of Aetheria, this was the part where Kaelen delivered a final, mocking one-liner and left Cian to rot.
But I had just shredded the script.
"You... you've finally lost your mind," Kaelen sneered. He pulled his fist back, the air whistling as he prepared a strike that would do more than just break my jaw—it would likely shatter my skull.
The crowd leaned in, eager for the "finishing move."
Any second now, I thought, looking past him at the blue sky. Do it. Open up.
I knew how this scene was written. In the book, Kaelen would leave, the sky would crack, and a monster would land right on top of Cian's unconscious body, crushing him into a red smear.
Then, just as the monster charged Kaelen, a teacher would "conveniently" appear to save the Hero's life.
The story claimed the teacher was coming to save Cian—but was "just a second too late."
What a load of shit.
If I stayed on the ground, I'd be the catalyst for Kaelen's awakening. I'd be the blood on the pavement that made the Hero look tragic.
I wasn't going to be a footnote in his legend.
I was going to make him the price of my survival.
"Die, you trash!" Kaelen roared as his mana-infused fist lunged forward.
He expected me to cower. To close my eyes.
Instead, I moved.
As his fist whistled toward my face, I threw my weight to the left, grabbing his silk-clad forearm with both of my shaking hands.
For a fraction of a second, my grip faltered.
Then I tightened it.
The pain in my ribs exploded into a white-hot scream, but I didn't let go. Using the force of his own lunge, I yanked him forward—straight into the exact center of the courtyard.
The Kill Zone.
"What are you—?!" Kaelen stumbled, his balance breaking under the sudden pull.
I spun him, my back slamming against the pillar as I shoved him into the precise spot where I had been lying moments ago.
To the crowd, it looked like a desperate, clumsy struggle.
To me—
It was a death sentence.
Now.
CRACK—!
The sky didn't just tear.
It exploded.
A jagged, violet rift split the blue wide open.
The sonic boom flattened the surrounding students, sending them crashing to the ground, clutching their ears.
Kaelen, still disoriented, looked up just in time to see the sun vanish behind a massive, falling shadow.
The air felt like it was boiling.
The story had described this as a majestic, terrifying display of power.
But this?
This felt like the world was being fed into a meat grinder.
It had already been two minutes since I'd woken up in this nightmare. In nine minutes, the rift would fully stabilize, tearing the sky open for the full invasion.
But two minutes was all it took for the first scout to break through.
High above, a second rupture formed—a jagged, pulsing wound in reality.
I looked up through the dust and saw it.
A massive, green-skinned hand—thick as a tree trunk—forcing its way out of the violet light.
I didn't wait.
I didn't care to see the Hero get crushed. Didn't care to watch the moment he realized his so-called "Main Character" protection had just expired.
I moved.
With every ounce of strength left in my battered body, I forced my legs forward. My vision swam. My lungs burned.
But I didn't stop.
One step.
Two.
By the fifth, the ground beneath me began to tremble.
It wasn't just the sky tearing open.
The dungeons were rising too.
By the eighth step, a shadow so vast it swallowed the sun engulfed the courtyard.
I took exactly ten steps away.
Behind me, the students stood frozen—caught between terror and a desperate, fragile hope. They were waiting.
Waiting for their Hero to stand.
Waiting for Kaelen to shine.
BOOM!
The impact didn't just shake the ground—it felt like the world itself lurched.
A cloud of pulverized marble and red mist erupted outward.
The Orc landed.
And its massive weight didn't crush my chest.
It slammed directly onto Kaelen's legs.
The sound of snapping bone was louder than the rift.
"ARGHHHH—!"
His scream tore through the courtyard—high-pitched, broken, utterly un-heroic.
The golden boy was gone.
In his place was something small. Fragile. Screaming in the dirt as a monster pinned him down like he was nothing.
The expressions of the students shattered in an instant.
Hope collapsed into despair.
Their protector wasn't standing.
He was begging.
I didn't look back.
I already knew what came next.
The sister's scream. The teacher's arrival. The last-second rescue.
The Hero would survive.
But the story?
The story was already bleeding out.
The air thickened, charged with a static that made the hair on my arms stand on end.
The narrative had called this the "Great Awakening."
From where I stood—
It felt like a slaughterhouse.
I had exactly seven minutes.
Seven minutes before the Second Wave.
Not scouts.
Not stragglers.
That was when the sky would turn into a sieve, and the ground would vomit out the nightmares buried beneath it for centuries.
In the novel, this was when the world changed.
To me—
It was a deadline.
I looked down at my hands—trembling, covered in dirt and my own blood.
No blue screen appeared.
No voice whispered in my mind.
No system. No gift. No salvation.
The universe wasn't offering me power.
It had already tried to bury me.
"If I don't have a system..." I muttered, my voice lost beneath the distant screams, "then I'll just have to use the only thing it couldn't take from me."
Memory.
Every spoiler. Every hidden item. Every "broken" piece of lore the fans had complained about.
If the world was going to play dirty—
I'd play worse.
I didn't have a Level Up button.
But I had something better.
I knew this hell.
And while everyone else was still frozen—staring at the fallen Hero—
Something far worse was waking up.
In the Academy's Sunken Garden.
"She'll be there..."
My voice dropped to a whisper.
In the novel, the Sunken Garden was nothing more than a peaceful backdrop—a place of quiet beauty. A place where Kaelen would one day share a romantic moment with the female lead.
"Eternal peace," the story had called it.
What a lie.
The peace wasn't there to comfort.
It was there to contain.
The story never mentioned what lay buried beneath it.
Never mentioned that the first true monster— the one meant to stand at the end of the first apocalypse— had been sealed there for three centuries.
The First S-Class Monster—the girl who was once human, and who had been broken so completely she forgot how to scream.