Rise from Zero

Some Confusion

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 tile, unbearable pain exploded throughout his body.

The agony from the slashes, cuts, and icy sword thrusts felt terrifyingly real. It surged through every nerve, making his head spin instantly.

Gatot grimaced, forcing back a groan.

He had no choice but to make his way out of the bedroom while leaning heavily against the rough wall to keep himself from collapsing.

Looking at his completely uninjured body, he was convinced the horrific events inside the gate had been nothing more than an extraordinarily vivid nightmare.

Yet the burning pain beneath his skin was no illusion.

It was far too real to be called a dream.

As he stepped into the combined living room and common area, his eyes landed on a teenage girl still sitting at an old wooden study desk.

He glanced at the aging wall clock, its steady ticking filling the quiet room.

It was nearly midnight.

Taking a long breath to steady his still-shaken voice, he asked, "Why are you still awake, Yasmin?"

His younger sister didn't look up immediately.

Her fingers continued writing complicated formulas across a sheet of paper.

"I'm going to finish one more problem, then I'll go to bed."

"A future doctor needs to stay healthy," Gatot said, forcing a smile despite how stiff his lips felt from the lingering trauma. "Don't make yourself sick from studying too much."

Yasmin finally let out a soft laugh, the bright sound easing some of the tightness in Gatot's chest.

Even so, her eyes never left the thick textbook in front of her.

"Hahaha. You don't know anything, Big Bro. Doctors don't have bedtime."

Gatot fell silent.

He pressed a hand against his temple as a strange throbbing spread through his head.

Something was missing.

A piece of his memory felt as though it had been ripped away, like a thread of time had been forcibly cut inside his mind.

"Yasmin... what's today's date?"

"The twenty-seventh," she answered casually while continuing to write.

"May?"

"Yeah, May. Why? Did you forget something?"

Gatot froze where he stood.

His heartbeat became strangely uneven.

May twenty-seventh.

As far as he remembered, his team had entered that cursed gate on May twenty-fifth.

That meant the massacre had happened two days ago.

But how was it possible that two entire days had passed without him remembering any of it?

Everything had gone completely dark after the holographic screen appeared.

"Yas... was I unconscious for the past two days?" Gatot asked urgently.

Hearing the strange question, Yasmin finally stopped writing.

She turned to face him completely, her brows knitting together in confusion.

"You? Unconscious? Come on, Big Bro. You cleaned this entire house by yourself yesterday."

She pointed toward the corner of the room with her pen.

"Look at that cabinet. The huge one dividing the room. You pushed it over there by yourself. You moved it alone without anyone helping you. Don't you remember?"

Gatot turned toward the cabinet she indicated.

An enormous antique teak cabinet, one that normally required at least three grown adults to move, now stood in a completely different corner.

Gatot slowly shook his head.

He had absolutely no memory of doing that.

Moving something that heavy with the physical strength of an E-Rank Hunter made no sense.

It was practically impossible.

"Yas... am I... am I still working as a hunter at the firm? What about the rest of my team?" Gatot asked again, ignoring the impossible mystery of the cabinet.

Yasmin's expression suddenly darkened.

She set her pen down on the desk.

"You were let go from the firm. Actually... no. That's not right. You chose to quit."

"I quit?"

"Yeah. Everyone who went with you that day was rushed to the hospital. Five people survived. One person died. But as soon as the five survivors regained consciousness, every one of them resigned from the firm."

The moment he heard those words, the hairs on the back of Gatot's neck stood up.

"Where's your phone?"

He hurried over to Yasmin's desk and took the smartphone she handed him, his hands trembling slightly.

His fingers quickly opened the browser and searched for news about the gate incident from two days earlier.

A local news article immediately appeared at the top of the page.

Gatot carefully read every line.

It stated clearly:

Seven hunters were discovered unconscious in a forest on the outskirts of the city. Party leader Rio, C-Rank, was pronounced dead at the scene after suffering multiple arrow wounds across his body.

Gatot stopped breathing.

He remembered it perfectly.

The countless arrow wounds covering Rio's body were there because Gatot had used the dead man's corpse as a shield against the elves' relentless volley of arrows.

The article continued.

The remaining victims had survived, but all of them were suffering from severe psychological trauma.

In testimony given before the Association, the five surviving hunters claimed, with unmistakable terror, that they had been attacked by a group of elves inside the gate. They had been tortured like playthings, and every one of them was convinced they had actually died inside that dungeon.

Gatot's name was also listed among the survivors.

However, the report stated that he had refused to give any statement and had immediately signed his resignation from his small firm.

Slowly, Gatot lowered the phone and handed it back to Yasmin.

His mind was in complete turmoil.

The article was real.

None of it had been a dream.

They really had been slaughtered by the elves.

But if they had all died...

How were they alive again?

Just as Gatot was drowning in confusion, a bluish glow suddenly appeared directly in front of his face.

A semi-transparent holographic screen floated in the air, displaying rows of digital text that flickered steadily.

"Yas... do you... do you see this holographic screen floating in the air?" Gatot asked in a whisper, unable to take his eyes off the mysterious display.

Yasmin let out a long sigh, assuming her brother was either delirious or joking.

"Stop bothering me while I'm studying, Big Bro. You're probably still traumatized after what happened inside the gate. Just go back to bed."

"You really can't see it?" Gatot insisted, his voice rising slightly.

"There's nothing there, Big Bro! Nothing!" Yasmin snapped, clearly annoyed that her concentration had been interrupted. "Just go already. I can't focus if you keep acting so weird."

Gatot took a deep breath, struggling to regain his composure.

"All right. You should get some sleep too, future doctor."

Without waiting for her reply, Gatot returned to his tiny bedroom.

He closed the door tightly behind him before sitting down on the edge of the bed.

His eyes fixed once again on the holographic screen, which moved wherever his gaze followed.

So...

Only he could see it.

Does this have something to do with those final moments inside the gate? Gatot wondered.

He replayed those final seconds in his mind.

The sword piercing his heart.

The instant the screen had first appeared while he hovered on the brink of death.

Then a faint memory suddenly surfaced, like fragments from an old film.

Yes.

Back then, he had chosen "Yes" when he was offered the chance to become a Player.

The moment he accepted that supernatural offer, something horrifyingly miraculous had happened.

The memories that had vanished now flowed back into his mind.

As soon as he answered "Yes" in his heart, the entire group of insane elves inside the chamber vanished without warning, dissolving into the air like black smoke.

The next instant, unbearable agony tore through Gatot's body as every severed limb slowly regenerated, knitting itself back together with newly formed flesh.

And the most unbelievable part was what happened to his teammates.

Julaiha.

Hasan.

Siska.

Rian.

Diki.

All of them rose stiffly from the stone floor like mummies awakening from death itself before collapsing unconscious once again at the exact same moment he did.

Everyone except Rio.

Rio had apparently been truly dead before the System had activated.

So all of this meant...

He had really become a Player?

An existence completely different from the ordinary hunters of this world?

Gatot slowly extended his trembling hand toward the hologram.

The instant his fingertip came within a few millimeters of the screen, the text suddenly turned blood red.

A new notification echoed loudly inside his mind.

[Player Activation System Complete.]

[Opening Your First Qualification Quest.]