Moon Cross groaned as a massive headache pounded his skull.
He peeled his eyes open and saw a water-stained ceiling that looked incredibly old.
"Where the fuck am I?" he muttered. His voice was raspy and completely unfamiliar.
He tried to sit up but a violent surge of memories crashed right into his brain. He clutched his head tightly as two different lifetimes stitched themselves together.
Earth. He remembered Earth perfectly. He remembered working a dead-end corporate job, slipping on an icy crosswalk, and the blinding headlights of a delivery truck.
But he also remembered this place. The Albion Republic on Earth Variant.
He was still Moon Cross, but in this life, he was an eighteen-year-old orphan surviving on scraps in the grimy district 4. He had no parents, no money, and absolutely no future.
He only had a mountain of debt and a cramped windowless apartment that he was about to be kicked out of.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The flimsy wooden door rattled against its hinges and shook dust from the doorframe.
"Cross! I know you're in there, you little shit!" a gruff voice barked from the hallway.
"Rent was due three days ago! You have exactly one hour to get me my credits, or I'm throwing your skinny ass onto the street!"
Moon winced and rubbed his temples.
'Great. Reincarnated just in time to become homeless. Could my luck get any worse?'
He stumbled out of the ragged cot and let his bare feet hit the freezing concrete floor.
He walked over to the cracked mirror hanging above a rust-stained sink. The face staring back at him was pale, gaunt, and framed by messy black hair.
He looked like a stiff breeze could snap him in half. His baseline physique was absolutely pathetic.
"Alright, think," Moon whispered to himself as he splashed cold water on his face.
"This is a variant of Earth, but the memories say things have been changing. People disappearing. Weird news broadcasts."
Before he could piece together the fragmented memories of his predecessor, a high-pitched mechanical whine pierced his eardrums.
It wasn't coming from the room. It was actually coming from inside his head.
[Ding!]
[Apex Convergence System Initialization Complete.]
[Host criteria met. Welcome, Moon Cross, to the Convergence.]
Moon stumbled back and his spine hit the bathroom wall. A translucent blue interface materialized directly in his field of vision. It hovered there completely ignoring the laws of physics.
"A system?" Moon breathed as his heart began to pound rapidly. "Holy shit. The standard transmigrator package. It's real."
He had read enough web novels in his past life to know exactly what this meant. He wasn't just some random orphan anymore.
But his joy was instantly snuffed out by the cold blood-red text that followed.
[Warning: The Apex Convergence is mandatory.]
[Phase 1: Mortal Ranks (F to SSS) has officially begun.]
[All selected candidates must undergo the Beginner's Trial. Failure to survive will result in immediate physical and spiritual erasure.]
Moon swallowed hard.
"Erasure? You mean death. You're telling me I just got a second chance at life, and you're immediately throwing me into a death game?"
[Scanning Host for latent abilities...]
[Scan complete.]
[Ding!]
[Congratulations! Host has awakened an Innate Talent.]
[Evaluating Talent Grade...]
The blue screen flickered violently and lines of code cascaded down the interface. The color shifted from blue to a brilliant blinding gold.
[Evaluation Complete.]
[Innate Talent: Limitless Plunder (SSS-Grade)]
Moon's jaw practically hit the floor.
"S-S-S-Grade? Are you kidding me?"
His predecessor's memories showed that Awakened individuals were extremely rare, and most of them had trash-tier abilities. They were E-Rank or D-Rank at best.
To have an SSS-Grade talent right out of the gate was like winning the cosmic lottery while getting struck by lightning at the same time.
"Show me the description. What does it do?" he commanded with a voice trembling with fear and adrenaline.
┌──────[ Talent Profile ]──────┐
│ [Talent]: Limitless Plunder
│ [Grade]: SSS-Rank
│ [Current Stage]: Stage 1 (Physical Plunder)
│
│ [Description]: The universe is unfair. Take what is theirs and make it yours.
│ At Stage 1, the Host can plunder raw attributes (Strength, Agility, Vitality, Mana) and innate skills from target entities.
│
│ [Activation Requirement]: The Host must physically touch the target's corpse within 60 seconds of its death, OR deal the fatal blow.
└────────────────────────────┘
Moon read the text three times to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him.
He could steal stats. He could actually steal skills. There was no cap mentioned at all.
If he killed a hundred monsters, he could theoretically absorb the strength of a hundred monsters!
"This isn't just a talent," Moon whispered, a dark grin slowly spreading across his face. "This is a cheat code. A literal cheat code."
But the system wasn't done with him. The golden screen dissolved and was replaced by a glaring red countdown timer that took up his entire vision.
[Mandatory Beginner's Trial Initiating.]
[Destination: The Ashen Wastes.]
[Objective: Survive.]
[Teleportation in: 00:00:30]
"Wait, thirty seconds?!" Moon panicked.
He looked around the cramped apartment. He had absolutely nothing. No weapons, no armor, and not even a sturdy pair of boots. He was wearing stained sweatpants and a faded gray t-shirt.
He rushed to the tiny kitchenette and pulled open drawers.
"Knife, knife, where's a fucking knife?"
It was empty. His predecessor had sold all the cutlery a week ago just to afford a loaf of synthetic bread.
[Teleportation in: 00:00:15]
He ran back to the bathroom and tried to wrench the rusty metal pipe from beneath the sink. He planted his feet on the wall and pulled with all his meager baseline strength, but the rusted bolts refused to budge.
"Come on, you piece of junk!" he grunted as his fingers slipped on the grime.
[Teleportation in: 00:00:05]
He gave up on the pipe and looked around wildly. There was nothing. He was going into a survival trial armed with absolutely nothing but a hangover and a skinny body.
[00:00:03]
"Shit!"
[00:00:02]
Moon clenched his fists and braced himself.
[00:00:01]
[Commencing Spatial Transfer.]
The dingy walls of the apartment warped and stretched. The sounds of the Albion Republic were instantly silenced.
A sensation of intense vertigo washed over him, as if the ground had dropped out from under his feet.
Total darkness consumed his vision.
When he opened his eyes a second later, the cramped walls of his apartment were completely gone.
He was standing under a dark sky. A thick layer of gray ash fell from the clouds and coated the desolate cracked earth around him.
There were no buildings. There were no trees. Just endless dunes of gray dust and jagged blackened rocks.
[Ding!]
[Welcome to the Ashen Wastes.]
[Trial Objective: Survive the siege.]
[Time Remaining: 03:00]
"Three minutes?" Moon coughed and covered his mouth. "That doesn't sound too bad."
A low guttural snarl echoed from the gray fog ahead.
Moon froze. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
Through the thick curtain of falling ash, a silhouette emerged. Then another. And another.
They looked human once. Now their skin was a sickly mottled gray that peeled away to reveal dark corrupted muscle. Their jaws hung slack, and their eyes were hollow voids of pure white.
Rot-Walkers.
There were at least a dozen of them shambling over the dunes, their heads twitching erratically as they caught his scent.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Moon muttered and took a step back.
He was unarmed, unarmored, and currently built like a twig. And a horde of undead was sprinting right toward him.
The three-minute timer in the corner of his vision began to tick down.
02:59.
02:58.
"Well," Moon said as a hysterical laugh bubbled up in his throat. "Time to see if this SSS-Grade cheat is worth a damn."
He didn't run away. He couldn't outrun them in this thick ash anyway. Instead, he dropped to his knees and his hands frantically dug into the gray dirt, searching for anything he could use.
The horde closed in and their snarls turned into shrieks of hunger. The trial had begun.