Joanna’s face flushed deep crimson with unbridled fury. Her shriek cut so sharp it could have split the hallway air clean down the middle.
“The inheritance? You’ve got some fucking nerve throwing that money in my face!” She jabbed a finger straight at Jack’s nose, voice cracking with rage. “Ungrateful little parasite! Do you have any idea how much it costs to raise a kid in Prospect City? Prices are so jacked up you need a small fortune just to breathe! That sad child-support stipend got burned through on your food, diapers, and every other damn expense years ago!”
Jack stood stock-still under his cousin’s raging tirade, not shifting an inch.
He remembered the facts perfectly clear. By 13 or 14, he’d already been picking up every odd job he could find around the neighborhood: washing dishes at diners, hauling heavy raw materials for local alchemy shops. Most of what he earned went straight back to the household. As for that inheritance? His parents had explicitly gotten it notarized and locked down at the Professional’s Guild, earmarked strictly as startup capital for his awakening at 17. There was no way anyone could have withdrawn it early to blow on living costs.
But Jack said nothing.
Talking back to a fully enraged Level 16 Fire Mage when he was a freshly awakened Level 1 nobody would get him nowhere. Joanna had zero intention of handing over the money—arguing was just a waste of breath. He’d figure out another way. Worst case, he’d hit up the black market for a high-interest loan, just to scrounge up enough cash for basic starter gear.
That night, Jack curled up in the cramped, dim storage closet under the stairs. Through the thin walls, every word drifting from the master bedroom was impossible to miss.
Joanna was on the phone with his aunt. Even through the closed door, her whiny, resentful tone cut through loud and clear.
“Mom, why do you even care about him? He’s an F-rank talent blank-slate Archer! That kind of dead weight won’t last two steps down the professional path. Pouring money into him is a total waste!”
The voice on the other end was too muffled to make out, but his aunt sounded like she was scolding her sharp—probably worried about keeping up appearances, and the promises the family had made years ago.
They argued back and forth for ages over whether Jack deserved a single coin. Finally, Joanna huffed a heavy sigh, her tone dripping with impatience and reluctant surrender. “Fine, fine. I get it. Tomorrow I’ll take him outside the city to grind some levels. Throw him a few scraps, and that’ll be the end of it.”
---
The next morning.
“Take this.”
Joanna wrenched the front door open and tossed a beat-up wooden bow and a dust-caked quiver straight onto the floor at Jack’s feet.
> [Worn Training Shortbow]
> [Crude Novice Arrows: Quantity 100. Adds negligible physical damage.]
Bottom of the barrel white common-grade gear. Honestly, it was barely even that—looked like defective rejects some secondhand junk shop had thrown out. But Jack didn’t complain. He bent down, picked up the bow, and strapped the quiver tight to his lower back. A hundred arrows. It was enough to get started, at least.
“Thanks,” he said evenly.
Joanna rolled her eyes and snapped, “Save it. Just follow me. I’m taking you to a low-level grinding zone outside the city today.”
Half an hour later, they passed through Prospect City’s massive alloy gates and stepped into the wildlands beyond.
It was a transitional zone where open grassland bled into sparse woodland, mostly spawning low-level monsters between Levels 1 and 3. This time of day, the vast fields were already swarming with newly awakened rookie professionals. The air hummed with excited shouts from kids and the clanging of weapons slamming into monster hides.
Jack immediately spotted classmates from his prep academy.
The ones who’d awakened decent talents had already formed tight, balanced starter parties: a shield-bearing warrior tanking damage up front, mages dishing out burst damage from the rear, dedicated healers keeping everyone topped up. Their coordination was smooth, like they’d practiced for weeks.
A few of them noticed Jack approaching, but they just flicked a lazy glance his way before turning away in open disgust. Not a single one bothered to come over and say hi.
“Hey, you guys hear? Next week the school’s launching the graduation Novice Dungeon run,” a guy holding a brand-new iron sword said loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear.
“No shit, obviously we know. We don’t get our Professional’s Guild certified badges and officially qualify as pros until we pass the Novice Dungeon with a qualifying score,” the female mage next to him added.
The Novice Dungeon. It was the mandatory threshold every prep academy graduate had to cross: a sealed folded-space instance jointly run by the government and the Professional’s Guild. Monster strength inside was strictly capped within a fixed range, built specifically to test newbies’ real combat ability and survival instincts.
Clearing it didn’t just get you your official ID badge—the system also scored your performance based on clear time, monster kill count, and damage taken, then assigned a rating. The better your score, the fatter the gold coin reward from the school. Gold was hard currency here. Whether you needed advanced gear, health recovery potions, or the mandatory casting materials for level-ups, everything cost gold.
“And if you crack the top 100 on the historical leaderboard? The school even gives you a bonus Skill Book Chest!” another classmate chimed in, eyes shining with obvious longing.
Skill Book Chest. That was the top-tier resource every rookie would kill for.
In this data-driven world, aside from the tiny minority who awakened with unique innate skills, the vast majority of powerful abilities had to be learned from skill books. Wild monster drop rates for skill books were abysmally low, so market prices stayed sky-high—you could have piles of gold and still not find one when supplies dried up. A chest guaranteed to give you a class-appropriate skill was enough to launch a newbie miles ahead of the pack at the starting line, potentially shifting their entire future growth trajectory.
“Stop dreaming. Historical top 100? That’s only for freaks with B-rank or higher talents,” the sword guy scoffed. His gaze swept over to Jack standing in the distance, and his tone curdled with blatant mockery. “Meanwhile, some F-rank reject with zero starter skills probably can’t even hit the bare minimum clearance requirement. Anyone dumb enough to party with him might as well flush their own future down the drain.”
“Haha, yeah. Nobody wants dead weight like that. Bet he’ll be crawling back to his hometown factory job in three days.”
Jack tuned out every word of their useless chatter. His full attention was locked on the monsters up ahead.
Tall grass rustled, and a Level 1 Longhorn Hare spawned right in front of him. A thin red HP bar hovered over its head.
Joanna sauntered over next to Jack and casually lifted her right arm.
Her blue Rare-quality robe flared with a blinding mana shimmer. Fire elements in the air went berserk, condensing fast into a searing flame sphere in her palm. That was the Fire Mage core skill—Fireball. Joanna had already leveled hers up to 3.
BOOM
The fireball roared forward, trailing a long streak of flame, and slammed into the Longhorn Hare dead on.
A dull blast rang out, and the red bar over the hare’s head emptied instantly. The creature didn’t even have time to twitch before it collapsed into a charred, smoking corpse.
Joanna’s Level 3 Fireball, paired with the stat bonuses from her blue-tier gear, had dealt at least 300 to 400 points of damage. It was nothing short of absolute level-based annihilation.
“See that? These trash mobs are dead easy to kill. One hit and they go down,” she said, brushing dust off her hands like she’d done nothing more than swat a fly, and turned to look at Jack.
She glanced at the communication terminal on her wrist, and her face twisted with impatience. “I’ve got to head back to the city—meeting friends to go shopping. Don’t have time to sit around babysitting you. You saw how weak these things are. Just grab your bow and grind levels on your own here.”
Without waiting for a response, without even a second glance back at Jack, she turned and strode straight toward Prospect City. Within seconds, she’d vanished into the steady stream of people heading back through the gates.