Here is the first chapter of your epic slow-burn
Chapter 1: The Forsaken and the Abyss
The air in the grand city of Aethelgard tasted of ozone and burning incense. It was the Day of Descent, the single most important day in the lives of the Kingdom's youth. Today, those who had reached their eighteenth year would step onto the Astral Dais, touch the Monolith of Heavens, and pray for a god to notice them.
For a thousand years, the world of Elyria had been dictated by a singular, unyielding truth: power was borrowed, never earned.
Humanity was inherently weak, born at Rank 0—the Mortal realm. To rise above the mud, to escape the squalor of the lower tiers of society, one needed a Patron God. If a deity found a mortal's soul compatible, they would grant them a Divine Seed, elevating them to Rank 1: the Acolyte realm. From there, the path to supremacy was laid out across twelve distinct Ranks, each divided into three grueling sub-ranks: Initial, Profound, and Peak.
Jack stood in the middle of the sprawling plaza, the biting autumn wind tearing through his thin, worn tunic. Unlike the silken nobles or the well-fed merchant children surrounding him, Jack was a creature of the Slag-Wards. His hands were heavily calloused, knuckles scarred with thick, white tissue, and his muscles were lean and tightly coiled like wire. He lacked the innate spiritual aura that the wealthier youths cultivated with expensive elixirs. All Jack had was his body, honed through years of agonizing, relentless physical labor and secret, brutal training sessions in the dead of night.
He knew the statistics. He knew the world was cruel. But he also knew the depth of his own willpower.
"Next. Elara Vance!" the High Priest's voice boomed, magically amplified to echo across the marble expanse of the plaza.
A collective hush fell over the tens of thousands of spectators. From the front of the crowd, a girl stepped forward. She was breathtaking, with hair the color of spun moonlight and eyes like fractured sapphires. Elara was the prodigy of the Vance family. As she walked up the obsidian steps of the Dais, the air around her seemed to freeze.
She placed her delicate palm against the towering Monolith. For a second, there was silence.
Then, the sky shattered.
A pillar of blinding, frost-blue light pierced through the clouds, striking the Monolith and engulfing Elara. The temperature in the plaza plummeted. Phantoms of winged warriors holding spears of ice danced within the light.
"The Valkyrie Goddess!" the High Priest gasped, falling to his knees. "She has awakened the blessing of the High Valkyrie! Rank 1 Acolyte, Peak tier immediately!"
The crowd erupted into a frenzy of cheers and awe. Elara stepped down, her aura now terrifyingly heavy. As she walked past the crowd, her gaze briefly swept over the commoners. Her eyes locked onto Jack for a fraction of a second. There was no mockery in her gaze, but rather a cold, distant acknowledgment before she looked away. They existed in two different worlds now. She was destined for the highest echelons; he was just another face in the dirt.
Jack swallowed hard, his jaw clenching. Soon, he told himself. My turn.
"Next. Jack of the Slag-Wards."
The High Priest's voice was devoid of the reverence he had shown Elara. It was a chore to call out a surname-less orphan.
Jack exhaled a long breath, stepping out of the crowd. Derisive whispers immediately began to hiss through the air like venomous snakes.
"Look at him. The rat from the slums."
"He doesn't even have a mana signature. Why do they let the trash participate?"
"Just let him touch the rock so we can go home. The gods don't look at filth."
Jack ignored them. His boots felt heavy on the obsidian steps, but his posture was ramrod straight. He had spent ten years pushing his physical limits, breaking his bones and tearing his muscles just to build them back stronger, preparing a vessel worthy of a powerful god. He had bled for this moment.
He reached the Monolith. The black stone hummed with residual divine energy.
Give me strength, Jack prayed internally, closing his eyes. A god of war, a god of forge, a god of blood. I don't care. Just give me the strength to survive this world.
He slammed his scarred palm onto the cold stone.
He waited for the warmth. He waited for the sky to tear open. He waited for the descent of divine power.
One second passed. Then five. Then ten.
The Monolith remained completely, utterly dark. The hum of energy within the stone actually seemed to recede from his touch, as if the divine remnants were disgusted by his very existence.
Silence stretched over the plaza. It wasn't the silence of awe; it was the suffocating silence of absolute, irredeemable failure.
The High Priest frowned, his expression twisting into a sneer. He checked the magical runes at the base of the Monolith. They were functioning perfectly.
"Zero resonance," the High Priest announced, his voice dripping with contempt. "No divine entity has chosen you. You are entirely devoid of spiritual affinity. A Null. Forsaken."
The words struck Jack like physical blows. Forsaken. The crowd didn't even bother to cheer or gasp. They just laughed. It was a cruel, barking laughter that cascaded down from the grandstands.
"A Null! I haven't seen one of those in a decade!"
"Even the God of Dung wouldn't want him!"
"Get off the stage, garbage!"
Jack's hand remained plastered to the stone. His knuckles turned white. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped, dying bird. No, he thought, his mind racing. This is wrong. I worked harder than any of them. I bled while they slept. I broke my body while they drank wine.
"Remove your hand from the sacred stone, boy," the High Priest commanded coldly, gesturing to two heavily armored paladins. "You are dirtying it."
Before the guards could grab him, Jack ripped his hand away, turning his back on the Monolith. His face was a mask of cold stone, hiding the violent tempest of despair and rage tearing through his soul. He walked down the steps, staring straight ahead, refusing to give the mocking crowd the satisfaction of seeing him break.
Hours later, the sky above Aethelgard wept cold, piercing rain.
Jack was miles away from the glorious Awakening Plaza, deep within the Whispering Woods that bordered the Slag-Wards. This was his sanctuary, a clearing hidden by ancient, twisting thorns where he had spent the last decade forging his body.
He was standing before a massive ironwood tree, its trunk marred by thousands of fist indentations.
Thwack. Jack threw a right hook into the hardened bark. The wood splintered slightly.
Thwack. A left hook.
"Forsaken," he muttered, his voice raspy.
Thwack. A knee strike. The impact sent a shockwave up his leg, but he didn't care.
"No affinity."
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. His fists became blurs of motion. He wasn't using mana; he had none. He was using pure, raw, kinetic force generated by muscle, bone, and sheer, unfiltered rage. The skin on his knuckles split open. Blood, bright and crimson, sprayed across the dark bark of the ironwood tree.
"I am not weak," Jack roared to the empty forest, burying a devastating elbow into the trunk. A sickening crack echoed, but it wasn't the tree—it was his own forearm fracturing.
He ignored the searing agony. He punched with his broken arm. He kicked until his shins were bruised black and blue. He fought the tree, he fought the rain, he fought the unfairness of a world where hard work meant absolutely nothing in the face of divine nepotism.
For hours, he battered himself against the ironwood until he simply had nothing left. His stamina, honed to monstrous levels for a Rank 0 Mortal, finally gave out.
Jack collapsed to the muddy forest floor, panting heavily, his body a canvas of bruises and bleeding wounds. The cold rain washed the blood from his hands, pooling into red puddles around him.
He stared up at the dark, weeping sky. The gods lived up there, in their pristine domains, handing out power to pretty girls with silver hair and arrogant nobles with deep pockets. They looked down on him and saw nothing.
"Fine," Jack whispered, the word tasting of copper and mud. "If the heavens won't have me... then I don't need them. I'll carve my own path. Even if it takes a hundred years. I'll tear the heavens down with my bare hands."
It was a foolish vow. A Rank 0 Mortal could not hurt a Rank 1 Acolyte, let alone a god.
But as the words left his lips, something strange happened.
The blood pooling in the mud around Jack began to bubble. The rainwater hissed, turning into black steam. The ambient mana in the air, which had always ignored Jack, suddenly violently rejected him—fleeing from his immediate vicinity as if terrified.
A shadow, darker than the night itself, detached from the roots of the ironwood tree and slithered across the mud, wrapping around Jack's bleeding hand.
Jack gasped, trying to pull away, but his broken arm wouldn't obey. The shadow seeped into his open wounds, burning like molten lead. He clamped his jaw shut to stop himself from screaming, his muscles seizing up in unimaginable agony.
Suddenly, the pain vanished.
In its place was a terrifying, suffocating pressure. It didn't feel holy. It didn't feel divine. It felt like the depths of a slaughterhouse, smelling of rust, old blood, and extinguished stars.
A mechanical, yet distinctly sinister voice echoed directly inside Jack's skull.
[CRITERIA MET.]
[HOST IDENTIFIED: JACK.]
[ALIGNMENT: FORSAKEN BY THE HEAVENS.]
[WILLPOWER: BEYOND MORTAL LIMITS.]
[HATRED: SUFFICIENT.]
Jack froze, his eyes widening. "Who... what are you?"
[INITIALIZING SYSTEM...]
[DIVINE ENERGY DETECTED IN THE WORLD. CLASSIFICATION: ENEMY.]
A translucent, blood-red screen materialized in the air before Jack's eyes. The text on it dripped like fresh ink.
[THE GOD SLAYER SYSTEM HAS AWAKENED.]
[Welcome, Host. The Heavens have rejected you. Therefore, we shall consume them.]
[Current Rank: 0 (Mortal)]
[System Status: Level 1]
[First Quest Issued: Blood for Blood]
[Objective: Hunt and kill a creature possessing a Divine Seed (Rank 1 or higher).]
[Reward: Rank 1 Breakthrough, System Upgrade, 1x Mythic Skill.]
[Failure: System Detonation (Death).]
Jack stared at the glowing red text. His shattered arm throbbed, his knuckles were destroyed, and he was nothing but a Rank 0 street rat. The system was asking him to kill a Rank 1 being—something considered mathematically impossible in this world.
A slow, dark smile crept onto Jack's bloodied face. The gods had ignored him, but the abyss had answered.
"Finally," Jack whispered, his eyes reflecting the crimson glow of the screen. "A fair game."