Gatot jolted awake.He gasped for air as though every ounce of oxygen had just been drained from his room. His chest rose and fell in rapid succession while his heart pounded like a war drum. His entire body was drenched in cold sweat, his thin T-shirt clinging tightly to his skin.He grabbed at his chest.Nothing.There was no wound. No cold blade piercing through his heart and out his back.Under the dim bedroom light, Gatot looked down at his hands one after the other.They were whole.His fingers moved perfectly. Both of his arms, which had moments ago seemed to have been cleanly severed by the *elves' * blades, were exactly where they belonged without so much as a scratch. His right leg was still there as well, resting firmly on the bed."Was it... just a nightmare?" Gatot whispered into the silence of the night, his voice hoarse and trembling. "Please... please let it have been just a nightmare."He tried lowering his feet to the floor.The instant his soles touched the cold til

Gatot leaned back against the hard headboard, letting the lingering sweetness of the apple soothe his throat, which had only moments ago felt painfully dry.His eyes remained fixed on the holographic screen floating in front of him.Slowly but surely, he began to understand how this mysterious System worked.The pattern was simple, yet absolute.If he deliberately or accidentally failed to complete the daily quest it assigned, the System would automatically throw him into a deadly Penalty Zone.But hidden beneath that cruelty was a fair rule of compensation.Whether he completed the daily quest or survived the Penalty Zone, as long as he made it out alive, he would always receive a reward.At the moment, every muscle in Gatot's body felt as though it had been crushed beneath a freight truck.Each time he shifted his weight, his joints cracked with an uncomfortable series of pops.Yet with the final bite of the apple, the pain suddenly eased.A strange warmth spread from the center of

Gatot steadied himself.The distortion in the air around him vanished.He glanced over his shoulder, and the busy streets of his residential neighborhood had been replaced by a landscape that was both unfamiliar and horrifying.He continued following the glowing golden arrow guiding his path.His suspicion had been correct.This place was nothing like the real world.At first glance, it resembled a city district lined with rows of houses and storefronts.Yet it was utterly dead.Not a single person was anywhere to be seen.The windows of the buildings had all been shattered, leaving behind dark, dust-filled rooms.An oppressive silence hung over every corner of the deserted streets, as though every trace of life had been drained from this place.Krrreeekk...The scraping sound of shifting stone shattered the silence from behind a wrecked car abandoned along the roadside.A moment later, a short creature with wrinkled green skin and pointed ears leaped into view.A goblin.Gatot narrow

The thick cloud of dust from the collapsed buildings slowly parted beneath a cold gust of wind. From within the gray haze came the sound of something massive scraping across the asphalt.Screeeek... screeeek... screeeek...The noise echoed in a slow, rhythmic pattern, impossibly heavy, as though a gigantic slab of steel was being dragged across the ground.Gatot's eyes widened as the creature's silhouette finally emerged from the dust.It was nothing like the goblins. Nothing like the lycans.Slithering through the dead city's streets was a colossal serpent, its body as thick as the trunk of an ancient banyan tree.Its body was covered in jet-black scales that gleamed like polished steel plates. Its vertical pupils glowed with an eerie yellow light, locking onto Gatot with overwhelming murderous intent.This monster existed on an entirely different level.It was an apex predator.Hisssss!The giant serpent moved with impossible speed for something so enormous.Before Gatot could even

The footsteps of the group echoed with a constant rhythm along the stone cavern corridor, which was growing increasingly narrow. Gatot walked at the very back, maintaining a distance of about three meters from Gery. Along the way, his eyes never stopped monitoring the backs of the five senior hunters ahead of them. There was a nagging doubt that kept turning over in his mind, causing his brow to furrow deeply.​This group is strange, Gatot thought.​He recalculate the composition of the party in his head. The large leader at the front was a tanker who relied on heavy armor and a steel shield. The two men beside him carried longswords and dual axes, clearly oriented toward close combat as damage dealers. Meanwhile, the remaining two in the middle position carried a bow and a short magic staff, tasked with providing ranged combat support.​The five of them were pure combat types, each possessing offensive capabilities. However, not a single one of them carried a priest's staff or a holy