On the tenth of August, in the year 3980.
A young man woke up in a luxurious apartment located in the heart of a second-tier city within the Human Federation. He opened his eyes slowly, the white ceiling of the room reflected in his empty pupils.
His first sensation was not fear… but emptiness.
He sat up on the bed, looked around in silence, then murmured, "Where am I?"
The pain was not physical, but a strange heaviness in his head, as if something inside him had shattered. He tried to remember his name, his past—anything… but the memories did not belong to him. Overlapping images, a life that was not his, decisions he had never made.
After several minutes of silence, he calmly understood the truth: he had inherited another person's memories.
His name was Michael, a young man in his early twenties who had lived an ordinary life, searching endlessly for a job without success. But those memories came to an abrupt halt at a single event… the end of the world.
When the cosmic system collapsed, gates to other worlds opened, and creatures poured out like a flood. Earth was nothing more than a primitive world, incapable of resistance—yet at the same time, it became a land of opportunity.
Because with the end of the world, every human became bound to a hidden system: the Akashic Records.
That system did not grant power by chance, nor through empty experience, but through real training, achievement, and survival. Only a few managed to endure. Fewer still awakened special abilities.
Michael… was not one of them.
After only six months, he died. He was killed when the shelter he hid in was destroyed, and his body was pushed through a D-rank gate.
But the consciousness that had awakened now… was not his.
It had transferred to another world, into the body of another person—someone with the same appearance and the same name, yet weaker, sicker, and closer to failure. The original owner of the body had died after failing the ability awakening ceremony, leaving behind an orphan's fate and a fortune sufficient for living… but not for power.
The young man sat on the bed, looked at his slender hands, and said calmly,
"So… I'm useless once again."
He fell silent for a moment, then added in a tone devoid of self-pity,
"At least… I'm still alive."