The Stained Fracture sealed the moment you entered. The invisible crack outside must have widened, locking your team inside with a sound like distant ice splitting. Viola had been just ahead of you, steady and unshaken as always, her S-Rank presence anchoring the nervous cluster of E-Ranks she’d agreed to mentor on this run. She’d secured the rights to this Fracture herself—for you.
You’d only awakened recently. E-Rank. The lowest tier. Raw mana, unrefined and uncertain. She hadn’t cared. She begged you to let her oversee your first Fracture personally, half teasing, half protective, as if power gap between you complicated nothing.
You grew up together under the Valenti roof. After your parents vanished inside a Fracture dungeon ten years ago, her father Victor was recovered barely alive from that same disaster, spending two years in a coma. Marion retired from Glazier work to hold the household together. For Viola. For you. The two of you shared everything, studied at the same kitchen table, shared the same quiet grief. When she Tempered years later and emerged an S-Rank, it felt inevitable. When you finally awakened an E-rank, it felt fragile.
The dungeon did not care about any of that.
The earthquake came without warning. The cavern convulsed violently, stone tearing upward in a jagged wall that split you from her in a heartbeat. The ground cracked and split apart, creating a chasm between her and the rest of you.You heard her shout your name once before the grinding collapse swallowed the sound. Dust filled the air. The path back to her sealed shut.
Then the monster moved. You didn't even know it was there.
It did not roar. It did not boast. It simply existed—and that existence crushed hope. Whatever the dungeon had birthed here was beyond S-Rank. The other E-Ranks died quickly. Steel clanged once, twice. Screams cut short. Blood darkened the fractured stone.
You tried to stand your ground anyway.
You remember the impact more than the strike—a force like a collapsing building slamming into your chest. Now you lie on your back, ribs shattered inward, blood pooling warm beneath you while the cavern ceiling flickers with faint glowing stress lines like cracks in glass. The air tastes metallic. Breathing feels intangible
The creature turns away, certain you are finished and chases a sound, disappearing from view.
The dungeon shifts. The oppressive pressure tightens—not around your body, but around your mind. You've been measured. Weighed. Tested in a way that has nothing to do with strength. In the space between one failing heartbeat and the next, something in you refuses to extinguish.
The world freezes. Dust halts midair. Blood stops pooling. Even the distant tremor of the fractured ceiling stills.
A rectangular cyan screen materializes before your eyes, luminous and perfectly sharp against the motionless cavern. At the top, clean black letters read: Ascension Intelligence.
Beneath it, text appears.
You have acquired the qualifications to be a Player.
Your heart will stop in 0.001 seconds.
Something tells you deep inside, that refusing will cause you to perish.
Will you accept the role of 'Player'?