SSS-Rank Luck: The First Kill

"One more round."

"Alex! That's already six times, are you serious right now?"

"Come on... just a couple more hours..."

The king-sized bed in Room 412 of the Midtown Manhattan hotel felt like a battlefield.

Sophia Lane pushed herself upright and shot a glare at the man lounging beside her with that infuriating, lopsided grin.

That man was Alex Carter, her coworker at Pinnacle Solutions Inc., and, as of last night, her client.

Of all the rotten luck.

It was her first night working a side gig through the agency, and somehow, somehow, he had specifically requested her.

What made it worse? He'd prepaid for ten hours.

Ten hours was half a month's rent in this city. She'd told herself it was just business. She'd told herself she could handle it.

She had not anticipated that Alex Carter, the same quiet, overlooked pushover who got steamrolled in every office meeting, would transform into something else entirely behind closed doors.

Something relentless.

Something dangerous.

"Miss Lane..." Alex tilted his head, propping himself up on one elbow, dark eyes glinting. "You wouldn't want to leave your boyfriend disappointed, would you?"

The word boyfriend dripped with poison.

And they both knew exactly whose boyfriend she was.

Derek Walsh.

Her supervisor. Alex's supervisor. The man who sat in the glass corner office on the 34th floor of the Hope Tower in Midtown and who had been systematically destroying Alex Carter's career for the past two years.

The moment Derek's name surfaced in his mind, something cold and sharp moved through Alex's chest.

Derek Walsh had made him work nights, weekends, holidays, squeezing every drop from him like cheap labor. And every time Alex delivered results, every campaign, every client win, every late-night miracle, Derek had swept in and claimed the credit.

The bonuses. His bonuses. Gone.

Alex had been drowning in student loans, credit card debt, and overdue rent notices. He had been this close to climbing out. And then Derek stole it all with a smile and a firm handshake in the boardroom.

How could he not hate him?

Sophia went quiet.

She was beautiful, she'd always known that. Long legs, sharp cheekbones, the kind of face that turned heads in the elevator. The men at Pinnacle stole glances at her constantly, pretending to look at the whiteboard.

She also knew the truth about Derek Walsh.

He had taken Alex's bonus without a word. He hadn't spent a single dollar on her in weeks. He treated people like stepping stones, including her.

Maybe it was time someone stepped back.

"...Fine." Sophia exhaled. "One last time."

She swept her damp hair back from her face, and in the pale gold light of the hotel room, she looked like something out of a painting.

Alex reached over and pulled her close.

"Gently," she murmured, her voice softer now. Almost a question.

Almost.

By the time pale gray light crept through the curtain gaps, Alex was sitting up in bed with a cigarette burning between his fingers.

He stared at the ceiling.

He was thinking about Derek Walsh. About the stolen bonuses. About how none of this, not last night, not any of it, came close to making things right.

His phone rang.

He glanced at the screen. Then at Sophia, still asleep beside him, her chest rising and falling slowly, cheeks flushed.

He answered.

"Good morning, Supervisor Walsh." His voice was calm. Almost cheerful.

A long pause on the other end.

Something was different. Derek could feel it, even through the phone. The old Alex, the spineless, apologetic, yes-sir Alex would never use that tone. Would never sound so... relaxed.

Derek shook it off.

"Carter. Did you finish the Henderson report?"

"Done."

"Bullsh" Derek caught himself. "I checked the security footage. You left the office at eight o'clock yesterday. I told you eleven-thirty. Eleven-thirty, Carter!"

"Are you treating my instructions like a joke? Do you even want this job anymore? Get your ass to the office. Now."

"Carter. Are you listening to me?"

"Hey, are you deaf?"

"..."

Alex waited. He let Derek finish. Every word, every curse, every threat.

Then he held the phone up to his ear.

"Understood."

Click.

In his corner office, Derek Walsh stared at his phone like it had just bitten him.

Then he slammed his palm on the mahogany desk.

"That little" He exhaled through his teeth. "No full attendance bonus this month. And next month, his performance review is mine."

He dialed Sophia next.

"The number you have reached is temporarily unavailable"

Derek frowned, rubbing his temple.

"Where is she?"

Alex stubbed out his cigarette and opened his banking app.

Available balance: $487.23

He laughed, short, humorless.

Last night had cost him. Of course it had. A moment of reckless satisfaction, and now he had less than five hundred dollars to his name in one of the most expensive cities on earth.

He thought about quitting. He thought about it every week. But the job market in New York was a graveyard right now, layoffs everywhere, companies folding, positions disappearing overnight. A paycheck that arrived on time was practically a luxury.

He had no safety net.

He had no one.

"In the end," he thought, staring at the hotel ceiling, "I'm still just nobody."

He carefully moved Sophia's legs off of him, dressed quietly, and walked out of the room without looking back.

Two and a half hours later, Alex stepped off the elevator on the 34th floor of Hope Tower in Midtown Manhattan.

He walked to Derek Walsh's office.

He stopped. Took a breath.

Pushed the door open.

The book hit him square in the face before he'd even crossed the threshold.

"You useless piece of"

HMMMMM.

The sound came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

It wasn't traffic. It wasn't construction. It wasn't anything that belonged to New York City or to the world Alex Carter had always known.

It was something else.

The floor trembled.

The windows shook.

And then, every single person in Hope Tower, in Midtown Manhattan, in all of New York City, in every city and every country on the surface of the earth, looked up at the same moment.

Because the sky had changed.

The blue was gone.

In its place stretched a vast, shimmering canopy of gold, like a divine screen pulled across the heavens and on it, in letters that needed no translation, no language, no explanation:

【 SYSTEM ALERT: END WORLD INITIALIZATION 】

【 Human civilization on Earth has reached critical threshold 】

【 Fusion with the End World: BEGINNING 】

【 All conventional weapons and signal networks: DISABLED 】

【 World digitization in progress... 10%... 37%... 62%... 】

The next instant, every human being on earth was swallowed by a beam of white light.

Alex blinked.

Derek Walsh was gone. The office was gone. The 34th floor, the mahogany desk, the book that had hit his face, all of it, gone.

He was standing inside a column of white light, suspended in a space that was both empty and endless.

But he could still see.

Through the light, he watched New York City come apart and rebuild itself in the same breath.

The skyscrapers of Midtown began to twist, not collapsing, but reshaping, their steel frames wrapped in sprawling vines thicker than subway cars. Central Park erupted, trees tripling in height within seconds, the grass swallowing pathways whole. The pigeons on the sidewalks outside swelled grotesquely, their feathers hardening into blade-like quills, their eyes turning amber and wild.

The Hudson River surged.

The Brooklyn Bridge groaned.

And Alex Carter stood in his pillar of light, watching the world he'd always hated become something he'd never imagined.

Is this... real?

An End World game? Digitization?

They said don't mess with ordinary men...

【 WELCOME TO THE END WORLD 】

【 All humans on Earth will receive a System Interface 】

【 Individuals under age 15 and over age 60 will be granted Native Status 】

A second prompt bloomed in his mind, not heard, not read, but known,

【 DING! Location detected: New York Sector, Territory of the Apocalypse Empire 】

【 Adventurer race auto-assigned: Human 】

【 Please enter your Adventurer name 】

Alex's hands balled into fists at his sides.

His eyes, for the first time in longer than he could remember, were alive.

Not desperate. Not defeated. Not the hollow, tired eyes of a man counting down the days to his next paycheck.

Alive.

The old world was gone. The rules were gone. The office politics, the stolen bonuses, the unpaid overtime, the debt, all of it, gone.

And Derek Walsh could rot with the rest of it.

A slow smile crossed Alex Carter's face.

He looked at the translucent, holographic interface hovering in front of him, clean lines, soft blue light, a cursor blinking patiently.

"Name: Ace."

【 Name available. Adventurer name confirmed: ACE 】

【 Please select your Class 】

【 MAGE / WARRIOR / ASSASSIN / ARCHER / PRIEST / KNIGHT / BEAST TAMER 】

He thought it through.

Warriors and Knights, too close-range. Too much blood, too much risk. In a world where the pigeons outside looked like they could tear a man apart, getting into melee range sounded like a death wish.

Priests needed a team. And Alex had learned a long time ago, you can only count on yourself.

He looked at the list one more time.

"Mage."

There was something poetic about it. Destruction from a distance. Power withou

t proximity.

And honestly? The magic just looked cool.

【 DING! Class confirmed: MAGE 】

【 Talent Awakening in progress... 】

【 !! CONGRATULATIONS, SSS-RANK TALENT UNLOCKED !! 】

【 Talent: GODS CHOSEN 】

(Talent Rank Scale: F → D → C → B → A → S → SS → SSS)