Lucky for me, I squeezed myself into the crowd of students and entered the building. Hina’s classroom was on the third floor, and this academy had four storeys. Fortunately, most students had already left this place. It made room for me. However, Hina was still unnoticed by my eyes and remained trapped on the third floor.

“HINA! WHERE ARE YOU! HINA!” I called out her name, hoping I could find her.

Everyone I passed by shrieked at the top of their lungs about monsters or whatnot nestling above us. I wasn’t paying attention and continued my hunt for my step-sister. She was important to me.

But as soon as I reached the third floor, my eyes widened in dread. And it was my mistake to neglect such an obvious warning from the students. Little did I know it would come back and bite me. The figure in front of me was what they called a “monster”.

“Fuck… No way. That ain’t real. Tell me that ain’t real,” I mumbled, and covered my mouth with my hand.

My eyes didn’t deceive me. The picture in front of me was a pile of corpses that belonged to a mix of students staying on this floor. Beside me was an amputated upper limb of a girl with her head on the farther side of this staircase. An acrid smell of something rotting away entered my nostrils and even made my eyes tear up a river. But I fought with the smell and persevered. However, one thing still made my legs quiver like noodles.

It was a beast like no other I had seen before.

The fiend had four limbs and moved like a rabid animal hunting for its next prey. It gnawed down the remaining students while breaking their bones with its hands. That monster looked like a leopard with a reptile’s skin covering its body. It also had two horns near its ears that punctured the corpses in front of it. And a growling sound echoed in the hallway as the beast looked around.

I couldn’t guess what I was even looking at. But I knew I had to run away. Every cell inside my body yelled at me to turn around and wait for the adventurers to arrive to deal with this freak. However, I had a mission to save Hina. And I didn’t care what would happen next, despite this monster before me.

But as the train of thoughts occupied my mind, a panel of some sort appeared before me. It was the box with the same features as when I first interacted with a portal six years ago. The window was akin to an interface from a game of some sort that showed the information to players.

“What the hell is this?” I thought.

[Welcome, adventurer! You have been granted a gift! A system!]

The window spoke inside my head. I tried touching the odd panel, but my efforts were put to no avail. It was as if the board was an intangible hologram meant for my eyes.

“A system?” I thought once more. “What does it mean?”

Thankfully, the panel answered my question. And it even gave me details about what was happening surrounding me. As it had turned out, every student inside this building was stuck in a portal. And the ones outside had already left the portal's site. The golden circles and the purple smoke I saw before foreshadowed the appearance of this portal. I was right about it. Even the panel, which introduced me to its system, indicated that this place belonged to a different dimension.

Despite being inside the portal, the dimension stayed the same. However, the walls became distorted and covered themselves with jet-black goo. A panel also popped out in front of my view, saying that this place was a D-class portal. And the monster in the middle of the hallway was a reptilian creature and the boss of this place.

It really felt like a game.

After digesting everything, my appearance changed. My usual school uniform morphed into a white cloak with sapphire hues splashed across the edges. The system also gave me white pants that complimented my overall attire. It didn’t give me accessories. But the system handed me an eye-piece that clipped itself beside my forehead, right beside my eyes.

And when I fiddled with the device, it showed me a clearer picture of my surroundings. It even gave me information about objects beside me and even miles away from where I stood. If I focused on one object, the eye-piece naturally locked on my target. The item was as if I had a built-in scope that belonged with my body.

“What the hell is this? What’s going on?” I asked myself, but there was nobody here to answer my question.

It wasn’t even just that. Another panel slid at my fore and presented my “status information” that acted as my identity. It felt like it. The box included my name, class, status points, level, skill, and weapon. My class was a sniper, and I was at level 1. I couldn’t touch my status points, but the numbers were there. The skills were still non-existence, considering these happened within a blur.

But the most peculiar part was the weapon and the gears that came with it. As the system introduced it, a sniper materialised in my waiting hands. The rifle weighed around seven kilograms and had the length of an immature snake that covered the entirety of my hand. It had a barrel length of approximately seven hundred millimetres. This AWP-like rifle could hold ten rounds with its magazine. But, for some reason, the system told me I had infinite ammo. I still needed to reload my bullets. However, the shells were made of magic, not the regular bullets used by the soldiers.

[Welcome, Aoi!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up! You are now level 1!]

[Name]: {Aoi Nakamura}

[Species]: {Human}

[Occupation]: {None}

[Age]: {18 years old}

[Class]: {S. Magical Sniper}

[Level 1] {Next Level-> 0/100 Experience}

[Stat points]

[STR]- 10 [VIT]- 10 [MEN]- 18

[DEX]- 25 [INT]- 15 [LCK]-1

[M. DMG]-100

[CRT]- 30.00%

[H. RATE]- 70.%

[C. DMG]- 40.0%

[DEF]- 2

[P. RES]- 1.0%

[M. RES]- 0.9%

[EVD]- 20.0%

— [Health] --- {100/100 [+5.0 Hp regeneration per minute]}

— [Arcana] --- {184/184 [+0.8 Arc regeneration per minute]}

Skills:

[Magic Bullet] - (Passive): Magic Bullet allows regular bullets (which deal physical damage) to transform into arcanic shells (which deal magical damage. These bullets deal normal magic damage and penetrate magical barriers and magical armour from enemies. It could also deal damage against the enemies’ physical defence without magical barriers but accumulate lesser damage than Regular Bullet. Magical penetration, critical, and damage would be applied to the current weapon and the player’s stats itself. This passive ability can be toggled indefinitely until the player wishes to switch bullets. The player can also optimise bullets with a blacksmith class or an innate skill through the system.

[Regular Bullet] - (Passive): Regular bullet deals with physical damage, incomparable to the ones made by humans as weapons for war. These bullets deal normal damage to monsters and penetrate physical armour, but accumulate less damage to magical barriers. It could also deal damage against magical defence to enemies without physical armour, but deals lesser damage compared to Magic Bullet. Armour penetration, critical, and damage would be applied to the current weapon and the player’s stats itself. This passive ability can be toggled indefinitely until the player wishes to switch bullets. The player can also optimise bullets with a blacksmith class or an innate skill through the system.

[Focus] - (Passive Sixth Sense): As a sniper, the player will be granted additional bonuses to your physical capability. The system gives you a sixth sense that eases the player’s body, performing better shots and lesser recoil from the equipped sniper. The player cannot equip any weapon besides a sniper made from a blacksmith or treasure drops as rewards from the portals. 

My system described everything. And despite this rifle’s weight and length, my body lifted it with ease.

It was a gun. At the end of the day, the weapon of choice that the system granted me was a firearm. I gritted my teeth as I pictured the death of my parents and the sniper resting on my hands. This gun and the one the masked man used were… slightly the same. I had no doubt about it.

It gave me this rifle among all the weapons that my system could think of. My lower limbs quivered out of fear, together with my hands. I could hold the gun properly. And my eyes circled in every direction, wishing I was elsewhere and not here.

I tried throwing the goddamn sniper away from my hands. It was a mistake. If that gun landed on the ground, the monster in the hallway would hear me. Fortunately, the trivial thought didn’t happen as the rifle emerged back on my side. It was as if the sniper glued onto me and never let me go, even though I wished to abandon it.

“Anything but this… Anything but guns!” I cried inside my mind, but no deity heard my prayers.

I was stuck with this rifle. Even though I tried, the gun refused to leave my hand. The system had already crowned me as a sniper that could level up. However, I wanted nothing out of this. All I wished was to save my sister from harm’s length, especially from this monster.

“I… I have to do it.” I told myself and steeled my courage.

The only one who could help me in this situation was myself. I had wished for power before when my parents died in front of me from a man as powerful as the monster. And now, the world granted me that wish. Since the situation repeated itself, I must protect Hina with everything I have. I didn’t want a family member for the second time. All I had to do was…

“...Pull the trigger.”

However, fear got the best of me. Even though I wanted to clash with the monster, my body did otherwise. I didn’t want to leave this place without Hina. But I had to reconsider my plan of searching for this monster guarding the area. However, when I stepped back and thought of a plan, the lone amputated arm made everything difficult for me.

A cracking sound reverberated inside as my feet pressed on the upper limb. The bone from the cut body part was too fragile after all it had been through. And I wore leather shoes that belonged to the school, which added pressure on my step. And thus, the sound alerted the monster.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. While that happened, my phone vibrated and played a ringtone. Someone had sent me a message. And when my phone fell to the ground as I reached for my pocket, the screen showed me the sender’s name. It was Hina. She told me she was still alive and hid next to the monster inside the classroom. Hina was with someone else behind the table. They were waiting for any help to arrive, and they heard me.

My hands desperately covered my mouth as I gasped from the occurrence. The monster didn’t hear my voice, but it listened to the splitting sound of that fragile bone I broke and the phone’s ringing sound. That occurrence only spelled doom as I came face to face with the feral reptile.