The cobblestone streets of Oakhaven were always crowded, but today the noise felt deafening. James pushed through the sea of people, his shoulder occasionally bumping into a merchant or a passing traveler.
He didn't bother to apologize. His mind was elsewhere, stuck on the events that had unfolded only an hour ago at the Mana Testing Center.
He looked down at his calloused hands. They were the hands of a worker, someone who had spent years doing whatever it took to keep a roof over his sister's head.
In his past life on Earth, those hands had been stained with things much worse than dirt. Gang violence was a cycle that only ended in one way, and for James, it ended with a cold blade and a final breath in a dark alley.
When he woke up in this new world, he thought the slate had been wiped clean. It was a world of wonder, a place where people could manifest fire from their fingertips or call down lightning from the heavens.
He had spent years waiting for his day of awakening, hoping that magic would be the ticket to a better life for him and Emily.
The reality had been a slap in the face.
'Zero mana affinity,' he thought. The words of the priest still rang in his ears, cold and dismissive. 'A complete void. You are null, boy. Go back to the fields.'
The memory made his stomach twist. He had been reincarnated into a world of magic only to be denied the very thing that defined it.
It felt like a sick joke played by the gods. If he was meant to be a commoner with no power, why bother bringing him here at all?
He was so lost in his bitterness that he almost missed the flickering light in his peripheral vision.
At first, he thought it was a trick of the sun reflecting off a window. But then, it grew steady. A pale, translucent blue box hovered in the air, visible only to him.
[Host found..]
[System initializing..]
[Classes Assigned: Necromancy & Beast Taming]
James stopped in his tracks. People swerved around him, cursing his sudden halt, but he didn't hear them.
He stared at the blue light, his heart hammering against his ribs. Necromancy? Beast Taming? These weren't standard magic types taught in the academies. They were something else entirely.
The notification faded as quickly as it had appeared, leaving him standing in the middle of the street with more questions than answers.
He didn't have time to process it, though. A sudden realization hit him. He had been so distracted by the system and his own misery that he had lost track of time.
"Emily," he muttered.
She was supposed to meet him by the fountain after his test. She was only twelve, and while she was smart, Oakhaven wasn't the kind of place where a young girl should wander alone after dark.
The sun was already beginning to dip behind the jagged city walls, casting long, orange shadows across the buildings.
He turned toward the market square, his pace quickening. "Emily!" he called out. He cupped his hands around his mouth to project his voice over the din of the closing market stalls. "Emily, where are you?"
He checked the fountain. It was empty. He checked the bakery where she liked to watch the bakers work. Nothing. A cold pit of dread began to form in his chest, replacing the lingering anger from the mana test.
James knew this world. He knew that the strong did whatever they wanted to the weak, and without mana or a noble title, he and his sister were at the bottom of the food chain.
He turned into a side street, his instincts from his previous life kicking in. He began to look for the places people didn't want to be seen.
He moved deeper into the residential district, where the alleys grew narrower and the light grew dimmer.
"Emily! It's your big brother! Answer me!"
He rounded a corner and stopped. Ahead of him was a deep, shadowed alleyway tucked between two crumbling stone warehouses. He saw two figures.
One was small, huddled against a damp wall with long black hair falling over her face. The other was a man, tall and broad-shouldered, wearing the rough leather armor of a low-ranked mercenary.
The man was leaning over her, his hand gripping her shoulder. Emily was sobbing, her small body shaking with terror.
James didn't think. He didn't shout. He didn't wait for an explanation. The familiar coldness of his past life washed over him, a focused rage that turned the world into a blur.
He launched himself forward. The mercenary heard the footsteps and started to turn, but he wasn't fast enough.
James swung a heavy, desperate punch that connected squarely with the man's jaw. The sound of bone hitting bone echoed in the narrow space.
The man let out a grunt of pain, blood spraying from his nose as he hit the ground hard.
"You fucker," James hissed. His voice was low, vibrating with a lethal intensity. "How fucking dare you touch her."
The mercenary tried to scramble back, his eyes wide with shock, but James was already on top of him.
He dropped to his knees, pinning the man's stomach down with his weight. He balled his fist and drove it into the man's face again. And again.
"Please, I'm sor—" the man choked out, his voice bubbling through the blood filling his mouth.
James didn't let him finish. He didn't care about apologies. He didn't care about mercy. All he saw was the man's hand on his sister.
'He thought he could take whatever he wanted because he was stronger. He thought she was just a commoner girl with no one to protect her.'
The mercenary's face was becoming a ruin of purple bruises and torn skin, but James kept going.
Every ounce of frustration he felt about his mana test, every bit of bitterness about his reincarnation, and every drop of protective instinct he had for Emily went into his fists.
Emily stood a few feet away, her back pressed against the wall. She was frozen, her eyes fixed on her brother. She had never seen him like this.
"Brother, stop!" she finally screamed. Her voice cracked with fear. "All he did was try to take off my shirt! Stop!"
The words only fueled the fire. James reached into his pocket and pulled out a small utility knife he used for work. The blade was short, but it was sharp. He pressed the tip against the man's eyelid.
"Please," the man wheezed, coughing up a thick glob of blood. "I won't ever do this again. I swear..."
James looked him in the eye. There was no hesitation in his gaze. He drove the blade downward into the eye socket.
The man let out a harrowing scream that tore through the quiet alley. James didn't stop there. He grabbed the man's hand, the one that had held Emily, and sliced through the tendon of his middle finger, severing it with a jagged cut.
The mercenary's body convulsed in agony, blood gushing from the empty socket and his hand. James moved the knife to the other eye and repeated the motion, plunging the steel into his eye socket.
The screaming stopped. It turned into a wet, rattling sound, and then, silence. The man's body went limp beneath him. His chest stopped heaving.
James stayed there for a moment, his chest heaving as the adrenaline began to recede. He looked at his hands. They were stained deep red. He had killed a man in this world, just as he had in the last.
The strange thing was the lack of weight in his soul. He didn't feel the crushing guilt he expected. He didn't feel grief or horror. He felt... nothing. It was a cold, pragmatic realization. The threat was gone. The trash had been removed.
He looked up at Emily. She was trembling, her face pale as a ghost. It was a normal reaction. She was a child of this world, and she had just watched her brother turn into a monster to save her.
"Emily," he said. His voice was flat, drained of any heat. "This man deserved death. If he stayed alive, what would have happened to you? What would happen to other young women in this town?"
He stood up, looking down at the corpse. He felt a sense of disgust, not for the act of killing, but for the man himself. He spat on the mercenary's bloody face.
"There is no reason to feel bad for such scum," James said firmly. He reached out and took Emily's hand.
Her skin was ice-cold. "Let's go before the town's Magic Department comes. They won't care about why this happened, only that a commoner killed a registered mercenary."
He led her out of the shadows, walking away from the cooling body and toward the dark alleyway that led to the edge of town. Behind them, the blue system screen flickered for a brief second in the dark.
[First Soul Harvested.]
[Necromancy Skill: 'Soul Extraction' is now available.]