Chapter 1: The Zero-Point Baptism
The world did not end with a whimper, but with a notification sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly against the soul.
Arthur Penhaligon was mid-keystroke at his desk on the 14th floor of a London office block. He was a man of patterns—a data analyst who saw the world as a series of recursive loops, logistics, and predictable outcomes. He liked spreadsheets because they had rules. He liked his life because it was quiet.
Then, the air turned into glass.
Across his dual monitors, the blue light stuttered. The flickering didn't stop at the screen; it bled into the physical world. The air hissed like a punctured tire, and suddenly, a translucent screen of impossible clarity manifested in his field of vision.
[Initialization sequence 100% complete.]
[Planetary Sector: Earth (Sol-3) has been harvested.]
[Current Status: Evaluation Phase.]
[Welcome, Challenger Arthur Penhaligon. Your climb begins now.]
"What is—"
Before Arthur could finish the thought, the floor didn't just give way; it ceased to exist. Gravity, the most fundamental rule of his life, flipped. He was sucked into a vortex of white noise and geometric shapes that defied three-dimensional logic. He saw his coworkers—Sarah from accounting, Dave the manager—stretched out like taffy, screaming in a silence so absolute it felt like pressure.
And then, the impact.
The Pit of Trials
Arthur slammed into a surface harder than concrete. The wind was driven from his lungs in a sickening woof. He lay there for a moment, tasting copper and dust, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
As his vision cleared, he realized he was in a gargantuan obsidian bowl. The walls rose hundreds of feet into a sky that wasn't a sky—it was a swirling sea of violet nebulae and jagged lightning.
Around him, roughly a hundred people were staggering to their feet. They were all from his office, but they looked different. Above their heads, small floating text displayed: [Level 1: Civilian].
[Universal System Patch 1.0 Applied.]
[Distributing Starter Gifts based on Soul Potential...]
A symphony of "pings" filled the arena.
"I got a 'Iron Skin' skill!" someone shouted.
"I have 'Basic Fireball'!" another yelled, a small, pathetic spark flickering from his fingertips.
Arthur waited. He felt a strange heat building at the base of his skull. Unlike the others, who were receiving standard RPG-style abilities, Arthur felt like a computer being forced to run a program it wasn't designed for.
[Scanning Soul Signature...]
[Error: Logic Density is too high. Subject perceives reality as a sequence of infinite recursions.]
[The System cannot assign a Standard Class.]
[Emergency Protocol: Granting 'Glitched' Unique Passive.]
[Unique Passive Skill Awarded: Infinite Regression (Rank: ???)]
Effect: Allows the user to select any action—kinetic, magical, or biological—and force it to repeat within a closed loop. The end of the action becomes the beginning. The force does not dissipate; it compounds.
Arthur stared at the screen. To a data analyst, this wasn't a "magic spell." It was a Logic Error. He looked at his hands. They were trembling, but not from fear—from the sheer amount of potential humming in his marrow.
The First Wave
[Trial 1: Survival.]
[Enemy: Rank-F Carrion Spiders (Quantity: 50).]
The walls of the pit ground open. From the dark crevices, horrors emerged. They were spiders, yes, but their bodies were made of wet, translucent muscle, and their faces were human—distorted, weeping masks of agony with eight milky eyes.
The panic was instantaneous. The "civilians" scrambled for a pile of rusted weapons in the center of the pit. Julian Miller, a senior sales rep with a streak of cruelty, shoved an older woman aside to grab a steel gladius.
"Stay back!" Miller roared, his eyes wide with a manic light. "I'm the only one with a real weapon! Stay behind me if you want to live!"
One of the spiders leaped. It bypassed Miller and aimed straight for Arthur, who was standing still, seemingly paralyzed.
"Arthur, move!" Elena, an architect from the floor below, screamed.
The spider was a blur of chitin and venom. As it reached the apex of its jump, its fangs dripping with paralytic sludge, Arthur didn't move away. He stepped into the strike.
He reached out and placed a single finger on the spider's forehead.
Loop it, Arthur thought.
[Skill: Infinite Regression—Kinetic Impact—Activated.]
The spider didn't fly back. It stayed stuck to Arthur's finger. To the observers, nothing seemed to happen for a micro-second. Then, the sound started.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
It sounded like a machine gun firing into a tub of butter. The kinetic energy of the spider's pounce, which should have ended the moment it hit Arthur, was forced to repeat. One pounce became ten. Ten became a thousand. A thousand became a million.
The force compounded. The spider's head didn't just break; it atomized. The shockwave of a million repeated impacts traveled through its body, shattering its legs, exploding its abdomen, and finally turning the entire creature into a fine, black mist that painted the obsidian floor.
[You have slain 'Rank-F Carrion Spider'.]
[Experience Gained: 500% (Overkill Bonus Applied).]
[Level Up! Level Up! Level Up!]
Arthur stood in the mist, his white dress shirt stained with ichor. He felt a cold, sharp clarity.
"One loop," Arthur whispered to himself. "I have two slots left."
The Breaking of the System
The other spiders stopped. Their primitive instincts, hardwired by the Tower to slaughter, were suddenly screaming danger.
Miller, seeing Arthur's display, felt a surge of jealousy that eclipsed his fear. "What did you do? That's a cheat! Give me that weapon!"
"It's not a weapon, Julian," Arthur said, turning his gaze toward the remaining forty-nine spiders. "It's just... math."
Arthur took a step forward. He decided to test the limits. He didn't just want to kill the spiders; he wanted to see if he could loop the Space between him and them.
[Slot 2: Spatial Regression—Active.]
As Arthur walked, the floor beneath him didn't move, but the distance to the spiders shrunk as if the world were a piece of paper being folded. He moved ten feet in a single stride, appearing in the center of the swarm.
He clapped his hands together.
Loop: Sound Pressure.
The "crack" of his hands meeting was caught in the regression. The sound didn't fade. It echoed back into itself, magnifying until the air in the pit began to ripple like water. The spiders didn't even have time to hiss. The sonic pressure, looped into an infinite crescendo, crushed their internal organs instantly.
The arena went silent. Fifty spiders lay dead.
[Floor 0: Tutorial Cleared in 2 Minutes 14 Seconds.]
[New Record for Earth-Sector.]
[Calculating Rewards...]
[System Warning: Anomaly Detected. Challenger Arthur Penhaligon has bypassed the 'Standard Growth Curve'.]
[Administrator 'The Overseer' is now monitoring this sector.]
Arthur looked up at the violet sky. He could feel a gaze on him—a cold, celestial eye that viewed him as a bug in the code. He didn't care. He looked at his hands, now glowing with the pale light of Level 10.
"You brought us here to play a game," Arthur said to the empty air, his voice echoing off the obsidian walls. "But you forgot one thing. If you give a man the power to repeat the beginning, he'll never let you reach the end."
From the shadows of the arena, a small, black cat with glowing eyes watched him, its tail twitching in amusement. The first Guardian had found its master.