World Awakening: The Legendary Player-Chapter 217: A Story Read Before

The ceiling was stained. A faint, brownish water spot in the shape of a crooked smile. Nox stared at it. He hadn’t seen that stain in centuries.

He sat up. The bedsprings groaned, a sound of cheap metal and long neglect. He was in his old apartment, the one from before. The air smelled of stale pizza and the damp, gray city outside his window. His body felt thin, weak. Human.

’So this is it,’ he thought. The memories were all there, a vast, silent library in the back of his mind. The wars, the power, the love, the long, quiet peace. And now, this. The first page. Again.

He got out of bed. His reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror was a ghost. A skinny, angry-looking seventeen-year-old with dark, messy hair and eyes that held the weight of a thousand lifetimes.

’Okay,’ he thought, splashing cold water on his face. ’New Game Plus. Let’s see if I can speedrun this.’

He put on his old, worn-out clothes. He didn’t eat. The food in the fridge was a science experiment he had no interest in repeating. He walked out of the apartment and into the familiar, oppressive gloom of his old life.

School was exactly as he didn’t remember it. The bored teachers, the clanging lockers, the smell of disinfectant and teenage anxiety. It was a cage, and he had forgotten how small it was.

He saw them in the hallway. Kendra, loud and confident, the queen of the jocks. Vasa, quiet and hunched over a textbook, invisible. Yeda, a silent shadow leaning against a locker, watching everyone and no one. His friends. His army. Right now, they were just strangers.

Then, he saw her.

She was new. She stood by the principal’s office, looking lost. Her hair was a soft, sun-drenched blonde, her eyes a shade of green that felt like a memory of a forest. She was just a girl, but to Nox, she was a queen, a goddess, the anchor of his entire existence.

Serian.

He walked toward her. He couldn’t help it.

She looked up as he approached, a small, polite, and completely clueless smile on her face. "Excuse me," she said. "I’m new here. Can you tell me where room 204 is?"

"Down the hall, third door on the left," he said, his voice quiet.

"Thank you," she said, her smile brightening. "I’m Serian."

"I know," he said.

Her smile faltered for a second, a flicker of confusion in her eyes. "Oh. Do I... know you?"

’Yes. Better than anyone. You’re the reason I’m doing this.’

"No," he said. "You just have one of those faces."

Before she could reply, a new, unwelcome voice cut in. "Well, well. Look what we have here. The freak is trying to talk to the new girl."

Mark stood there, flanked by his two idiot friends. He was exactly as Nox remembered him: loud, arrogant, and profoundly stupid. A tutorial boss. A walking loot drop.

In his first life, this was where the fear would have started. The cold sweat. The desperate wish to be invisible.

Now, Nox just felt... tired.

"She’s way out of your league, loser," Mark sneered, stepping between Nox and Serian. He gave Serian a greasy smile. "Don’t worry, I’ll show you around. The name’s Mark."

Serian took an involuntary step back. "That’s alright. He was just helping me."

"He can’t help himself," Mark laughed. "Now, get lost, Nox. Before you get hurt." He gave Nox a hard shove.

In his first life, he would have stumbled back, his eyes on the floor.

This time, he didn’t move. It was like shoving a mountain. Mark’s hand just bounced off his chest.

Mark stared, his brain, a slow and simple machine, trying to process the impossible data. "What the—"

"You shouldn’t have done that," Nox said, his voice flat.

He didn’t hit him. He didn’t use his power.

He just reached out and tapped Mark lightly on the shoulder.

And Mark fell.

He didn’t just stumble. His legs turned to jelly, his entire body went limp, and he collapsed to the linoleum floor in a boneless heap, completely unconscious.

His two friends stared, their mouths hanging open. Serian gasped.

’Simple nerve strike,’ Nox thought. ’Learned it from an Ashen Elf assassin two centuries ago. Very efficient.’

He looked at the two remaining bullies. "You were saying?"

They didn’t say anything. They just scrambled to pick up their fallen leader and dragged him away, their faces pale with a new, and very healthy, fear.

Nox turned back to Serian. She was staring at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock, fear, and a flicker of something else. Awe.

"How did you do that?" she whispered.

"He tripped," Nox said.

"He didn’t trip."

"He’s clumsy," Nox insisted.

He looked at her, at the quiet, brilliant, and utterly good person he had spent a lifetime fighting for. ’This is going to be fun,’ he thought.

Just as he was about to say something else, something that might have been charming, or witty, or at least not completely weird, it happened.

A faint, shimmering blue screen appeared in front of his face. And in front of her face. And in front of every other face in the crowded, noisy hallway.

[SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]

[WELCOME, PLAYER. THE TUTORIAL IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.]

The school fell silent. Then, the screaming started.

Nox just sighed. ’Right on schedule.’

The game had begun. Again.

---

The hallway was a symphony of chaos. Students were screaming, pointing at the blue screens that only they could see. Teachers were shouting, trying to restore an order that no longer existed.

"It’s a prank! A mass hallucination!" one of them yelled, his voice cracking with a panic he was trying to hide.

’It’s the end of the world as you know it,’ Nox thought, a strange sense of calm settling over him. ’And I feel fine.’

He looked at Serian. She was staring at her own status window, her face pale but her expression more curious than afraid. ’Even now, a scholar,’ he thought with a flicker of affection.

[PLAYER STATUS]

[NAME: Serian Feselian]

[LEVEL: 1]

[TITLE: The Lost]

[HP: 100/100]

[MP: 150/150]

Her mana was already higher than her health. He knew why. He was probably the only person on this planet who did.

He looked at his own screen.

[PLAYER STATUS]

[NAME: Nox]

[LEVEL: 1]

[TITLE: The Anomaly]

[HP: 110/110]

[MP: 90/90]

’The Anomaly,’ he thought. ’Subtle.’ It seemed the System, or the Administrator behind it, already knew he was a variable that didn’t belong. ’This could be a problem later.’

"What is this?" Serian asked, her voice a quiet whisper in the surrounding chaos. "It’s... real. I can feel it."

"It’s a new set of rules," Nox said simply. "For everything."

Before he could explain further, a new announcement, this one a deep, resonant voice that seemed to echo in everyone’s mind, rolled through the school.

[THE FIRST TUTORIAL SCENARIO WILL NOW COMMENCE.]

[SCENARIO: THE GOBLIN KING’S CURSE.]

[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE.]

[TIME LIMIT: 24 HOURS.]

[REWARD: CONTINUED EXISTENCE.]

The windows of the school turned black, an opaque, impenetrable darkness. The doors slammed shut, the sound of heavy bolts locking into place echoing through the hallways. The lights flickered and died, plunging the school into a terrifying, unnatural twilight, lit only by the faint, blue glow of a thousand status windows.

The screaming intensified.

"Everyone, calm down!" a voice roared. It was Kendra. She had shoved her way to the center of the hallway, her face a mask of fierce determination. "Panicking isn’t going to help!"

’There she is,’ Nox thought. ’The general.’

He saw Vasa in a corner, not screaming, but typing furiously on her phone, trying to find a logical explanation, her mind already working to solve the impossible puzzle. He saw Yeda melt back into a darkened alcove, her eyes scanning every shadow, her instincts already taking over.

His team. They were all here. They just didn’t know it yet.

"We need to stick together," Kendra was yelling. "We need a plan!"

"She’s right," Nox said, his voice cutting through the noise. He walked to her side. The other students instinctively quieted, their attention drawn to the strange, calm boy who had taken down the school’s biggest bully with a single touch.

"The objective is to survive," Nox stated. "That means we need three things. A defensible position, weapons, and information."

"The gym," Kendra said instantly. "It’s big, open, only has a few entrances to defend."

"Good," Nox nodded. "Weapons?"

"The locker rooms," a jock in the crowd yelled. "Baseball bats, hockey sticks."

"Information," Nox continued, looking directly at Vasa. "What can we learn from these screens?"

Vasa looked up, surprised to be addressed. "They... they seem to be a user interface. They show our status. It implies... growth. Levels. Stats. Like a game."

"Then we treat it like a game," Nox said. "A game we have to win."

A new sound cut through the hallway. A high-pitched, chittering sound, followed by a guttural giggle. It was coming from the far end of the hall.

From the darkened classrooms, small, green-skinned creatures with sharp, pointy teeth and rusty, jagged knives began to emerge.

Goblins.

The first scream of real, mortal terror was cut short as a goblin leaped onto a student, its knife a blur of motion.

The chaos that followed was absolute.

Nox didn’t move. He just watched. ’This is the first test. The culling. Who runs? Who fights? Who freezes?’

He saw Kendra grab a fire extinguisher from the wall and swing it, a brutal, crushing blow that turned a goblin’s head into a green smear.

He saw Vasa, despite her fear, pull a smaller student behind her, her mind already calculating angles and escape routes.

He saw Yeda, a shadow among shadows, use the panic as cover, a sharpened pen from her pocket her only weapon as she took down a goblin from behind with a single, precise strike to the eye.

And he saw Serian.

She was not a warrior. Not yet. She was standing over a fallen student, her hands glowing with a soft, golden light. The student’s wound, a deep gash on their arm, was closing, the light knitting the flesh back together.

She was a healer. And she didn’t even know it.

Nox finally moved. He walked toward the advancing wave of goblins. He didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t need one.

A new screen appeared before him.

[SYSTEM DIRECTIVE: CHOOSE YOUR PATH.]

[AVAILABLE CLASSES: BRAWLER, ARCHER, MAGE (BASIC)]

’Brawler,’ he thought, a flicker of nostalgia in his mind. ’Let’s do this the old-fashioned way.’

[CLASS ACQUIRED: BRAWLER (LVL 1)]

[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: POWER STRIKE.]

A goblin lunged at him, its knife aimed for his gut.

Nox’s fist shot out. It was not a flashy punch. It was a simple, brutal, and perfectly efficient transfer of kinetic energy. His fist hit the goblin’s chest.

There was a sound like a bag of wet gravel being dropped from a great height. The goblin didn’t just fly back. It... collapsed. Its entire ribcage had been turned to dust.

He walked forward, a calm, methodical engine of destruction. One punch. One dead goblin.

The other students, seeing his impossible, effortless violence, began to rally behind him.

He walked to Kendra’s side. "Get everyone to the gym. Now."

She just nodded, her eyes wide.

He looked at Serian, who was still healing the wounded. "You. Keep doing that. You’re more important than any of us."

She looked at him, a dawning understanding in her eyes. "You knew this was coming."

"I knew a story was starting," he said. He turned to face the horde. "Let’s make sure it’s a good one."