"FUCK YOU ALL!"
"I'll kill every last one of you!"
Bang!
In the old, shabby bedroom, Rylan Creed suddenly shot up from his bed. His face showed both terror and rage, sweat streaming down his forehead. He was breathing heavily, eyes filled with murderous intent, as though he were locked in combat with some terrifying foe.
However…
The moment he jolted awake and took in his surroundings, the look in Rylan's eyes shifted from venomous fury to confusion and disbelief.
"No… I should be on the battlefield, fighting those monsters to the death!"
"How could I end up here?"
"This isn't the Doomsday Bastion!"
"This is… my home?!"
Staring at the bedroom that felt both familiar and strange, Rylan's eyes widened.
His fingers lightly grazed the rough bedsheet, then pressed down firmly. Coarse fabric, a soft pillow, the vibrant sensations of touch, all these clues told Rylan that this was not a dream.
In the next instant, he turned his head toward the window. Outside stretched a peaceful, silent night, and in the distance, Christmas lights twinkled on a tree.
"This is Los Angeles… my home!"
Click.
Rylan switched on the bedroom light. The digital clock on the wall told him it was December 20, 2051, not 2071.
"Did I experience rebirth?"
"And back to twenty years ago!"
Taking in the familiar sights around him, Rylan was utterly stunned. At the same time, images from his past life flickered in his mind, like a horrifying nightmare. Yet Rylan knew all too well they were not mere nightmares, but memories of events that had truly happened.
Twenty years ago, a new online game called "Myth" appeared. It was vastly different from traditional MMOs. Most notably, once the game ran for a certain period, the abilities you gained inside it could be carried over into the real world. A new era of gaming had arrived, society's order changed, and powerful players became the rulers of this new age.
While people across Earth reveled in this evolutionary frenzy, monsters began to appear one after another. Tear in space allowed mighty alien life forms to descend upon Earth, launching a massacre against humanity.
In the beginning, humans could still rely on the power they drew from "Myth" to fight back these monsters and defend their home. But that was until a massive plague swept in and changed everything.
No one knew where the plague came from. All anyone could say was that it brought unbridled hell on Earth. Once it appeared, the plague overwhelmed the planet like an avalanche.
Aside from a handful of lucky individuals, 99.999999% of the human race was infected.
Those who were powerful enough were left permanently weakened, their stats cut in half. They also suffered slow movement, constant HP drain, reduced health regeneration, and other crippling debuffs. Weaker people were simply poisoned to death.
The plague shattered humanity's defenses. Monsters and aberrations seized their chance to rise, rampaging across the Earth. In the end, the survivors banded together to build the Doomsday Bastion, but with humanity severely weakened, people still couldn't escape being hunted by monsters and mutants.
In his previous life, Rylan had fought in the final battle against them. Lucky enough to avoid infection, his combat strength was never compromised, and he fought relentlessly on that battlefield for ten days and ten nights. Ultimately, he couldn't withstand the endless tides of monsters and aberrations and was swallowed up by their onslaught.
He remembered vividly that, at the very moment his blade punctured the skull of a mutant leader, his chest was torn open by a sneak attack from a stinger beetle, leaving him with a gaping hole.
When consciousness returned, he hadn't gone to heaven—he had instead come back to twenty years earlier, to a Los Angeles that should have been obliterated by war.
…
In the bathroom, staring at the youthful yet handsome face in the mirror, Rylan still found it hard to believe.
Years of fighting in his previous life had turned him into a shabby-looking middle-aged man, but now he was eighteen again: healthy, energetic, with endless possibilities ahead.
"I never thought that something like rebirth would actually happen to me!"
"Praise the God for this gift. If heaven is giving me another chance, I'm going to enjoy life to the fullest and make up for every regret from my last time around."
He gazed at his reflection, brimming with hope for the future.
Right then, a thin line of red light spilled through the window and into the bathroom. His combat intuition, honed through countless battles, alerted him immediately. Rushing to the window, Rylan looked outside.
The city, which moments ago had seemed perfectly normal, was bathed in a faint bloody hue, an eerie sight. Rylan's expression changed instantly as he looked up at the sky.
There it was in the darkness: an enormous blood moon, dangling high overhead. Its scarlet light rained down like a giant crimson pupil, staring at everything below.
"How is this possible?"
"The blood moon shouldn't appear at this point in time!"
Rylan's pupils contracted. Armed with memories of his past life, he knew many things—such as the exact schedule and conditions under which "Myth" was set to arrive, and when the great plague should begin.
According to what he remembered, the blood moon served as a signal. Once it appeared, the arrival of the "Myth" game and its integration with reality was imminent. And in the fifth year after "Myth" went live, the plague would erupt.
But now, the blood moon had shown up much earlier than he recalled—by a full ten years.
"Is this because of my rebirth?" he muttered, staring at the crimson moon. The next moment, Rylan tightened his fists, showing no fear in his eyes.
"Well, this actually saves me some waiting time!"
"Even if the dates don't line up, I know a wealth of secret intel about Myth!"
"This time around, my achievements will surpass everything I did before!"
Rylan's tone brimmed with certainty.
In his past life, he had awakened only a C level talent, yet through his efforts he rose to be a somewhat famous presence in Myth. At one point, he'd even worked his way into the game's top 500,000 rankings.
Unfortunately, a C level talent was still too weak, especially since his was geared toward support, carrying no direct benefit for combat.
On the battlefield, besieged by countless monsters and mutants, Rylan had often wished that instead of a C-tier support talent, he'd awakened even a C-tier combat talent. Perhaps then, everything might have turned out differently.
Reborn, Rylan possessed knowledge of a hidden secret in the early stages of the game.
By using it, he could 100% acquire at least an A-tier, or even better, talent.
"This time, everything will change!"
"I will rewrite the fate of humanity!"