"Kaelen, want to grab some dinner together after work?"
At the grand entrance of the Neo-Veridia Astral Library, a strikingly pretty colleague leaned in, batting her eyelashes as she invited Kaelen Thorne out.
"No, thanks. I've got things to do at home."
Kaelen didn't even break his stride. He shook his head, flatly rejecting the invitation, and walked straight past her into the evening breeze.
"Ugh, he is so unbelievably boring. What a total waste of such a gorgeous face," the girl muttered, stomping her foot in sheer annoyance. She rolled her eyes at his retreating back and huffed away.
After clocking out, Kaelen strolled down the bustling neon-lit street. He paused at a crosswalk, lifting his gaze to the sky. High above the cityscape, ten colossal, black-hole-like rifts tore through the clouds, swirling with an eerie, violet luminescence. A hint of lingering confusion flashed in his eyes.
He was a transmigrator from Earth. His previous life had ended in a remarkably stupid fashion: choking to death on a piece of glow-in-the-dark sashimi contaminated by nuclear wastewater. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in this parallel world—a world that looked like Earth, but was fundamentally broken.
A thousand years ago, this world's civilization mirrored his own. But then, the Ten Rifts violently ruptured the sky. From within those abyssal tears, a mysterious, cosmic energy flooded the planet.
Humanity called this phenomenon the "Astral Flux."
Any living creature that absorbed this energy underwent brutal, terrifying evolution, gaining extraordinary superhuman abilities. The humans who harnessed this power became the elite class of society, revered as "Aether Adepts."
However, the speed and efficiency at which one could absorb the Astral Flux entirely depended on innate genetic aptitude.
And the body Kaelen had transmigrated into? Total trash. He possessed the lowest grade of aptitude possible, damning him to remain at the very bottom of the social hierarchy—the ultimate working-class wage slave.
Sigh.
Kaelen sighed heavily in his heart. To think I was a corporate drone in my past life, only to cross time and space to become a literal fantasy minimum-wage worker. And the so-called 'cheat' I brought with me is completely useless.
That was the bitter truth. Kaelen did have a cheat.
A System.
But immediately after his transmigration, the robotic voice had only left him with one, single, ominous warning:
[Alert: World identified as High-Fantasy Dimension. Danger Level: Catastrophic. Host is advised to maintain absolute anonymity to preserve your pathetic life.]
After delivering that bleak message, the System vanished. It completely ghosted him. No matter how much Kaelen pleaded, cursed, or called out to it in his mind, it remained dead silent.
Disheartened and accepting his fate, Kaelen resigned himself to a life of quiet mediocrity.
Fortunately, his current gig wasn't the worst. He was a junior archivist at the Neo-Veridia Astral Library. It was the largest repository of knowledge in the entire city, housing a massive collection of ancient cultivation manuals and combat arts left behind by legendary pioneers.
As an archivist, Kaelen earned a meager 3,000 credits a month. It came with a tiny housing stipend, and most importantly, he got to enjoy the library's state-of-the-art air conditioning all day long.
Honestly? Kaelen was content. In a chaotic, monster-filled fantasy world, a stable, boring life was the ultimate luxury for someone with his garbage stats. Surviving was the only priority.
After a leisurely twenty-minute walk, Kaelen arrived at his destination: a cramped, dilapidated apartment in the city's outer ring. The library's measly 500-credit housing subsidy meant he could only afford a room where the wallpaper was peeling and the floorboards creaked in protest with every step.
He tossed his keys on the counter, poured himself a tall glass of tap water, and flopped onto his narrow bed, ready to scroll through some mindless holo-videos and detach from reality.
RUSTLE! Scratch, scratch...
Kaelen frowned, pausing mid-sip. A bizarre, clicking noise echoed from beneath his bed frame.
A rat?
He immediately swung his legs out of bed, whipped out his phone, and flicked on the flashlight. Squatting down, he peered into the dusty darkness underneath the mattress. A dark, bulbous shadow was skittering wildly across the floorboards.
Assuming it was just a bloated city rat, Kaelen grabbed the broom leaning against his nightstand and aggressively swept the shadow out into the open.
"Huh? Is that a... cockroach?"
Kaelen froze, utterly bewildered by the creature now sitting in the middle of his room.
It was a cockroach, alright, but it was the size of a fully grown rat. Its body was encased in a thick, menacing crimson carapace that almost looked metallic under the overhead light. It looked entirely alien.
"As expected of a high-fantasy world," Kaelen muttered, a mix of disgust and dark amusement washing over him. "Even the roaches are built different."
Without hesitating, Kaelen lifted his foot, fully intending to squash the giant bug into oblivion. Big or not, a roach was a roach.
But just as his sneaker was about to descend, the long-dead, silent System in his head suddenly exploded to life with a deafening screech.
[DING! WARNING! KING-TIER RIFT BEAST DETECTED: UNDYING COCKROACH!]
[WARNING! FATAL DANGER!]
[The power disparity between the Host and the King-Tier Rift Beast is immeasurable! PLEASE EVACUATE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY!]
[FLEE FOR YOUR LIFE!]
The System's mechanical voice was actually trembling, tinged with a digital panic as if it were staring down the apocalypse itself.
An Undying Cockroach?
A King-Tier Rift Beast?!
Kaelen's foot hovered in mid-air. His mind went entirely blank as the realization of what those words meant hit him.
In this world, Aether Adepts were categorized into two main realms: the Mortal Tier (levels 1 through 9) and the Awakened Tier—a legendary realm achieved by only one in ten thousand prodigies.
Just as humans absorbed the Astral Flux, non-human entities absorbed it too, mutating into nightmarish horrors known as Rift Beasts. Humans hunted Beasts for their power cores; Beasts hunted humans for their flesh. It was a brutal cycle of survival.
A "King-Tier" Rift Beast was the absolute apex. It possessed power equivalent to an Awakened Tier human grandmaster. One of those things could level a city block.
And the System was screaming that this skittering, crimson bug was a Beast King?
He was an ordinary guy who couldn't even light a candle with Astral Flux. Against a Beast King, he wouldn't even count as an appetizer.
[DING! Host, please escape immediately! You are going to die!]
The sirens blared relentlessly in his skull.
Yet, Kaelen just stood there, staring blankly at the giant bug by his sneakers, absolutely dumbfounded.
System bro... did you short-circuit? It's just a big-ass cockroach. Sure, it's uncomfortably large... but a Beast King? Isn't that a bit of a stretch?
As Kaelen locked eyes with the crimson insect, a translucent blue interface suddenly projected itself right in front of his face.
========================
RACE: Undying Cockroach (Harbors the dormant bloodline of an Ancient Abyssal Demon Swarm)
THREAT LEVEL: King-Tier
TALENT: Absolute Immortal Body
TRAIT: Hyper-Violent Temperament
It really is an Undying Cockroach? Kaelen blinked at the holographic text.
Wait, I have an appraisal eye now? I can see hidden stats? But more importantly... is this thing actually a Beast King?!
[ALERT! ALERT!]
[The Undying Cockroach possesses a hyper-violent temperament and is catastrophically dangerous! HOST, RUN!]
Kaelen's chest tightened. Instinctively, he took a slow step backward.
But as he did, he noticed what the 'catastrophically dangerous' giant cockroach was actually doing. It was spinning in dizzy, uncoordinated circles on the hardwood floor, occasionally bumping its head against the leg of Kaelen's desk like a broken Roomba. It looked completely lost.
This dumb-looking, clumsy thing... is a Beast King?
Seeing the bug's utterly harmless, pathetic behavior, all of Kaelen's tension evaporated in an instant.
Yeah, there is definitely a bug in this System. Pun intended.
Then, he glanced back at the glowing blue text. Talent: Absolute Immortal Body. A wicked, intrusive thought suddenly sparked in his mind.
Without a second thought, Kaelen raised his sneaker and stomped down with all his might.
CRUNCH!
A sickeningly loud sound of shattering chitin echoed through the room. The 'hyper-violent' giant cockroach instantly exploded under his heel, bursting like a grotesque water balloon. Viscous green guts and crimson shell fragments splattered across the floorboards.
Kaelen slowly lifted his shoe, staring at the squashed, unrecognizable puddle of gore that used to be a supposed apocalyptic threat. It couldn't possibly be any more dead.
A sneer slowly crept onto Kaelen's face.
This is what you call a Beast King?
Absolute Immortal Body my ass. One stomp and it's insect puree.
Kaelen rolled his eyes, utterly exasperated.
This System is seriously messed up!