"Exactly. The universities. The military. The noble families. Anyone with power and money. If they find out a nobody from the western sector has a Private World full of spiritual resources and a leveling speed that shouldn't be possible, they'll come for us. Some will try to recruit us. Some will try to control us. And some will just try to take everything."
"So we stay quiet," Aurora said.
"We stay quiet. We level up here, in secret. We sell the spiritual grass and herbs in small amounts — enough to improve our lives, not enough to draw attention. And in three years, when the barrier drops, we'll be ready for whatever comes."
Randolf nodded. A slow, firm nod. The nod of a man who finally had a plan after years of having none.
"Wise as expected of my son," he said, and he smiled.
It was the first real smile Ran had seen on his father's face in a very long time.
Meanwhile: The Sayan World
While the Aldric family celebrated their first levels on a quiet island in a Beginner World, the rest of the multiverse kept turning. And the multiverse was much, much bigger than they could imagine.
Far from the Beginner Worlds — so far that the distance couldn't be measured in miles or light-years, only in tiers of existence — there was a place called the Sayan World.
The Sayan World was an Advanced World. The scale of power there reached Level 10,000. The beings who lived there could shatter mountains with their voice and cross oceans in a single step. Compared to the Laroncia Empire, where a Level 500 expert was considered legendary, the Sayan World was a different universe entirely.
In the Sayan World, power was visible. You could see it. Literally.
Every person's hair changed color as they grew stronger. It was a biological response to the accumulation of spiritual energy — the more power you had, the more your body changed. The color of your hair told the world exactly how strong you were, with no room for bluffing.
Level 1 to 3,000: Yellow hair. This was the majority of the population. Workers, farmers, low-level soldiers. Common.
Level 3,001 to 6,000: Purple hair. These were the warriors, the commanders, the regional rulers. Respected and feared.
Level 6,001 to 9,000: Red hair. The elites. The people whose names were known across continents. The ones who could level cities if they felt like it.
Level 9,001 to 10,000: White hair. The legends. There were fewer than a hundred of them in the entire world.
In a floating city that hung above the clouds, a man with White hair stood at the edge of a platform and looked down.
The city was massive — a sprawling web of towers, bridges, and open-air arenas suspended in the sky by ancient formation pillars. Millions of people lived here, going about their daily lives a mile above the ground. Below the city, the regular world continued — forests, rivers, mountains — all of it looking small and distant and unimportant from this height.
The White-haired man was the Dragon Lord.
His name was known across the Sayan World. Level 9,510. Rank 95 on the Heavenly Ranking — a list of the strongest beings in existence, maintained by the Sayan World's governing council. His martial innate soul was a Storm Dragon, and his private world was filled with dragon-type creatures that he had spent centuries cultivating and subduing.
He was powerful. He was feared. And right now, he was annoyed.
"The Dragon Lord is recruiting!" a voice screamed from the streets below the platform. It was a cultivator — a purple-haired man with a loud mouth and not much sense — and he was running through the market district, shouting at everyone he could see.
"The Dragon Lord is recruiting warriors for his private world campaign! This is your chance! Fame! Power! Resources!"
Another man — yellow-haired, skinny, wearing patched armor — jumped up from a food stall. "It's my chance! Finally! I'll leave this dirt behind!"
A third man, also purple-haired, looked at the skinny one and sneered. "Your chance? Look at your hair, peasant. The Dragon Lord wants warriors, not trash who can't even fly straight."
"I can fly!"
"You can hover. There's a difference."
"At least I'm trying! What are you doing, sitting there eating dumplings?"
"I'm a Level 4,200 Combat Specialist. I don't need to try."
The argument continued, but the Dragon Lord wasn't listening. His attention was elsewhere.
High above the floating city, something was approaching. A shape, massive and burning, cutting through the upper atmosphere like a comet. The clouds around it didn't just part — they evaporated. The air turned hot. The sky turned orange.
It was a Phoenix.
Not a small one. Not a spirit-form or a projection. This was a Majestic Red Burning Phoenix — a beast of the upper tiers, Level 8,000 at minimum, with wings that spanned half a mile and feathers made of living fire. Every beat of its wings sent shockwaves through the atmosphere. The sound it made was not a cry — it was the roar of a furnace the size of a mountain.
The Dragon Lord watched it approach. His red hair blew in the heat wake. His eyes narrowed.
The Phoenix descended until it hovered just above the platform, its enormous body blocking out the sun. The heat was so intense that the stone tiles on the platform began to crack. Below, in the streets, people shielded their eyes and backed away.
The Phoenix opened its beak.
"Dragon Lord!" it screeched. Its voice was sharp enough to shatter glass and loud enough to shake the foundation pillars of the floating city. "My master sends a message! The Northern Territories are no longer yours to claim! Withdraw your forces, or face—"
"Tsk." The Dragon Lord spat to the side. His expression was bored. "Tell your master to come talk to me in person. I don't negotiate with pets."
The Phoenix's entire body flared. The fire around it doubled in intensity. The sky above turned white.
"You arrogant worm!" it shrieked. "You think your dragons make you untouchable? My master will crush you! Your private world, your forces, your rank — all of it will burn! You have—"
"If he wants a fight," the Dragon Lord interrupted, his voice dropping to something quiet and cold, "I'm right here."
He didn't shout. He didn't raise his hand. He didn't move at all.
But his aura expanded.
It came off him like a wave — invisible to the eye, but felt by every living thing within million of miles. The air pressure changed. The temperature shifted. The Phoenix, a creature of fire and rage, flinched.
The Dragon Lord's eyes changed. The pupils stretched into vertical slits — narrow, golden, reptilian. His White aura — the visible manifestation of his Level 9,510 power — erupted outward from his body in a pulse that shattered every cloud within a million mile radius. The sky, which had been orange with the Phoenix's fire, went clear in an instant.
The Phoenix recoiled. Its wings folded slightly. Its fire dimmed.
It was afraid.
And then, between one heartbeat and the next, a man appeared.
He was standing on top of the Phoenix's head. Perfectly still. Arms at his sides. He wore no armor, no robe, no visible weapon. His face was calm. His eyes were empty.
He hadn't been there a second ago. There had been no flash of light, no sound, no distortion in the air. He was simply not there, and then he was.
The Dragon Lord looked at the man. His aura pulled back slightly. Not out of fear — out of acknowledgment. This was the one he had been waiting for.
"That's better," the Dragon Lord said, and the corner of his mouth twitched upward. "Now that you're here, let's make the trade."
The man on the Phoenix's head didn't speak. He didn't nod. He didn't blink. He just stood there, his silence heavier and more threatening than anything the Phoenix had screamed.
Below them, in the streets of the floating city, millions of people stared upward. Most of them had never seen that kind of expert move. They had never felt the pressure of two beings at that level standing in the same space.
Some of them fell to their knees. Not out of respect. Out of the simple biological inability to remain standing under that much power.
The two men looked at each other across the burning sky.
-----
And somewhere, a very long way away, on a quiet island in a Beginner World, a family of four was sitting on a white sand beach, eating glowing berries, and arguing about attribute points.
The multiverse didn't care about fairness. It never had.
But for the first time in his two lives, Ran Aldric had a chance.
The Aldric family stayed up until past midnight.
They sat around the small kitchen table — the same table where Randolf had sat with his head in his hands just hours earlier — and they talked. Not the quiet, worried, careful kind of talking they had done for the past few years. This was different. This was planning.
Ran laid out the rules.
"Nobody talks about the Private World," he said. "Not to friends. Not to coworkers. Not to neighbors. Not to anyone. If someone asks why we seem different, we shrug and change the subject. If someone notices we have more money than before, we say Dad got a bonus at work. If someone sees something they shouldn't, we deny it."
"What if someone catches us disappearing?" Mia asked. She was sitting cross-legged on her chair, her chin on her hands.
"We only enter from inside the house. Door locked. Curtains closed. We never enter the Private World from anywhere public."
"And the schedule?" Randolf asked.
Ran had thought about this. They needed to maximize their time in the Private World without making their lives in the real world look suspicious. If Randolf suddenly stopped showing up to work, people would talk. If Mia stopped going to school, teachers would ask questions. If any of them started acting too different too fast, the wrong people would notice.
So they set a schedule:
Mornings were for the real world. Ran would go to school — he still had one week left before graduation. Randolf would go to his carpentry job. Aurora would stay home and handle the house. Mia would go to school.
Lunchtime was the window. Everyone would come home at midday. They'd lock the doors, close the curtains, and enter the Private World together. They'd have roughly four to five hours inside before they needed to come back.
Late afternoon was the exit. They would leave the Private World before evening, every single time. Ran had explained that the island's inhabitants — whatever creatures lived in the forest — became more active and more dangerous after dark. They weren't ready for that yet. Not at their current levels.
Evenings were for rest and selling. On certain days, Randolf or Aurora would take small amounts of spiritual grass to the city's trade center and sell it quietly, in amounts small enough to avoid raising eyebrows.
"Small amounts," Ran repeated. "We're not dumping a cart of spiritual grass on the market. We sell a few blades at a time. Different shops. Different days. We never sell to the same place twice in a row."
Everyone agreed.
The plan was simple. Blend in. Don't draw attention. Get stronger in secret.
They went to bed that night with something none of them had felt in a long time: a reason to wake up excited.
Morning came.
The sun came through the thin curtains of Unit 14 and lit up the kitchen. Aurora was already at the stove, making breakfast. The smell of rice porridge filled the small space. Randolf was lacing up his work boots by the door. Mia was in the bathroom, arguing with her hair.
Ran came out of the bedroom with his school bag slung over one shoulder. He was smiling. Not his usual forced, "I'm fine" smile. A real one. The kind that reached his eyes and made his whole face look different.
"Mom, Dad, I'm heading out now! See you later!"
Aurora turned from the stove and looked at him. For a second, she just stared. Then she smiled back — wide and warm — because she hadn't seen her son look like that in years.
"Be careful, honey. Don't do anything that stands out."
"I know, I know."
He gave his dad a nod. Randolf nodded back — a short, firm nod between two men who understood each other.
Then Ran stepped out into the morning air and started walking to school.
His mood was incredible, and it wasn't just because of the levels.
Last night, after his family had gone to bed, Ran had stayed up for another hour. He had entered the Private World alone — just for a few minutes — to dig deeper into the knowledge from the Complete Beginner Knowledge Book.
And he had found something that changed everything.
The Basic Orb — the martial innate soul that the entire stadium had laughed at — was not actually his martial innate soul.
It was a vessel. A container. A key.
The one million people across the multiverse who had been chosen as Lords — every single one of them had received the same thing: a Basic Orb. It wasn't a soul. It was the delivery mechanism for the Private World key. The Orb's only job was to connect the Lord to their Private World. That was it.
The Lord's real martial innate soul — their true, natural-born soul — was still inside the Orb. Hidden. Sealed. Waiting.
According to the knowledge book, the true soul would reveal itself when the conditions were right. The Lord had to reach a certain level, enter the Private World, and perform a specific summoning ritual. Only then would the Orb crack open and release whatever was really inside.
Which meant Ran didn't actually know what his martial innate soul was.
The grey ball everyone had laughed at? That was just the shell. The wrapper. The real gift was still inside, and it could be anything. A beast. A weapon. A mythical creature. There was no way to know until the moment of summoning.
And here was the other thing: Mia was in the same boat.
Mia hadn't had her official Awakening Ceremony yet — that was still two years away. But the moment she entered the Private World and registered as a Subordinate, the System had tagged her as "pre-Awakened." She had a martial innate soul inside her too, sealed and waiting, just like Ran's. The Private World could bring it out early — years before the school ceremony would.
Both of them were walking around with hidden souls that nobody — not even they themselves — knew the identity of.
"That explains why I didn't get any new skills at Level 5," Ran muttered to himself as he walked down the narrow streets of the western sector. In this world, reaching Level 5 was supposed to unlock your first active skill. But Ran had hit Level 5 and gotten nothing — because the Orb wasn't a real soul. It had no skills to give. His real soul was still locked away.
He wasn't worried, though. He was excited. Because the knowledge book also mentioned that true souls summoned from within the Private World tended to be stronger than souls awakened through the normal ceremony. The Private World's spiritual energy acted as a catalyst, feeding the soul and helping it develop before it even emerged.
Whatever was inside Ran's Orb, it was being fed by an entire island's worth of spiritual energy. And it had been feeding since the moment he first touched the Crystal Orb at the Awakening Ceremony.
He couldn't wait to find out what it was.
But that was for later. Right now, he had a role to play.
Normal student. Average grades. Basic Orb. Nothing to see here.
Aetheria High School was buzzing when Ran arrived.
The front gates were wide open, and the main courtyard had been transformed. Rows of colorful stalls lined both sides of the central walkway, each one decorated with banners, holographic displays, and the logos of various universities and military branches. Recruiters stood behind the stalls — sharp-dressed men and women with polished smiles and tablets in their hands, scanning the crowd of students like shoppers at a market.
Today was the University Selection Fair.
It happened every year, right after the Awakening Ceremony. The universities and military academies sent their scouts to Aetheria High to recruit the best talent from the graduating class. Students with Rare-type souls or higher could expect full scholarships, housing, personal trainers, and a fast track to power and prestige. Students with strong Normal-type souls — especially attack-types — could land internships, part-time positions, or conditional offers.
Students with Basic Orbs got nothing.
Ran walked through the courtyard with his bag on his shoulder and his hands in his pockets. He didn't stop at any stalls. He didn't make eye contact with any recruiters. He just walked, blending into the flow of students, looking exactly like what everyone expected him to be: a disappointed kid with a useless soul, showing up for his last week of school because he had nothing better to do.
Nobody looked twice at him. That was the plan.
"Ran! There you are!"
Two figures cut through the crowd and fell in beside him. Ken and Leo.
Ken punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Where have you been, man? We've been trying to reach you all morning. We sent you like ten messages about that security guard internship."
"My communicator died," Ran lied. It was an easy lie. Their family's communicator was old and unreliable — it cut out at least once a week. Nobody would question it.
"Well, get it fixed," Ken said. "The City Guard is offering a group internship for new graduates with attack-type souls. The pay is garbage, but it's steady work and they let you use the training grounds after hours. Leo and I are signing up together."
"Three is better than two," Leo said, elbowing Ran. "Come with us. Your Orb isn't attack-type, but the internship only requires Level 1 to apply. You'd qualify."
Ran felt a flicker of something — gratitude, maybe — at the fact that his friends were still trying to include him. They knew his soul was considered useless. They didn't care.
"I'll think about it," Ran said. "What else did I miss?"
Leo's expression shifted. He leaned in closer and dropped his voice.
"You hear about Victor Alfonso?"
Ran shook his head. "What about him?"
Leo jerked his thumb toward the far side of the courtyard. "See for yourself."
Ran looked.
A crowd of students had gathered near one of the university stalls. But they weren't looking at the stall. They were looking at the boy standing in front of it.
Victor Alfonso was the kind of person you noticed before you wanted to.
He was tall — taller than most seniors — with slicked-back dark hair, expensive clothes, and the kind of posture that said "I'm better than you" without him having to open his mouth. His family was one of the wealthiest in Glory City. Not noble-class rich, but business-class rich — the kind of money that came from owning trade routes and supply chains.
Victor's martial innate soul was a Poison Worm. Normal-type, attack category. On paper, it wasn't impressive. A worm that could spit weak acid. In the Awakening Ceremony two days ago, a few people had snickered at it — though not to Victor's face, because nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of the Alfonso family.
But today, Victor wasn't Level 1 anymore.
He was Level 5.
"How did he level up that fast?" Ran asked, even though he already knew the answer.
Leo crossed his arms. "His family hired a Party. You know — professional dungeon runners. A full squad of Level 30-plus experts. They took Victor into the nearest E-rank dungeon and basically carried him through it. Victor didn't have to do anything except stand in the back and collect experience while the Party killed everything in sight."
"That's legal?" Ran asked.
"It's not illegal," Ken said. "It's just expensive. A Party carry like that costs tens of thousands of silver. Maybe more, depending on the dungeon rank and how fast you want results. Only rich families can afford it."
"Victor's family could afford ten of them," Leo muttered.
Ran watched Victor from across the courtyard.
The rich kid was standing in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by a mix of students who were either admiring him, sucking up to him, or trying to stay on his good side. He had one hand raised, palm up, and sitting on his palm was his martial innate soul — a slimy, purple worm about the length of a forearm, coiled in a lazy spiral, dripping with a faint green liquid.
As Ran watched, Victor pointed his palm at a nearby trash bin and said something Ran couldn't hear. The worm uncoiled, opened its mouth, and spat a thin stream of green acid. It hit the trash bin with a sharp hiss. The metal surface bubbled and melted, leaving a fist-sized hole.
The students around Victor cheered. Victor grinned — a wide, self-satisfied grin that made Ran's jaw tighten.
"He's been doing that all morning," Leo said. "Spitting acid at things. Walls, benches, trash bins. He melted someone's backpack an hour ago. The kid didn't even say anything — Victor just pointed at it and dissolved the strap."
"The teachers didn't stop him?" Ran asked.
"Victor's family donates more to this school than the City Mayor does," Ken said flatly. "The teachers suddenly have very important things to do in other rooms."
Ran watched Victor turn away from the melted trash bin and scan the crowd. His eyes moved over the students around him — students who were Level 1 or 2, who had Normal-type souls, who couldn't afford Party carries or private tutors. He looked at them the way a person looks at furniture. Things that were there but didn't matter.
"Level 5 in two days," Victor said loudly, making sure everyone could hear. "And this is just the start. My father already booked a D-rank dungeon run for next week. I'll be Level 10 before any of you trash even figure out which end of a sword to hold."
A few nervous laughs from the crowd. A few students looked at the ground.
Ran turned away.
He was Level 5 too. But his power was earned — gathered one tree branch, one stone block, one workbench at a time, with his own hands, alongside his family. No Party. No dungeon carry. No rich father writing checks.
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. The time for talking would come later.