The world changed in less than a second.

But Kai noticed something wrong before it happened.

Before the sky changed color, before anyone started screaming, there was one second where the whole world felt slightly wrong. Cars that should have braked a moment earlier didn’t, and conversations around him were delayed.

He saw it before everything changed.

A light came.

A blue glow spread across the sky. Everyone around him stopped mid-step, with some dropping their food or laughing, thinking it was just a projection.

The words appeared on the screen.

[System Initialization Complete]

[People of Luna, the world has entered its new age.]

Everything stopped.

A taxi sat frozen mid-turn in the intersection ahead, and even the wind went quiet.

Then the second line appeared.

[All humans will now undergo Awakening.]

But then something else appeared, not in the sky but in his vision.

[System Notice]

[Awakening determines your position. Low-tier classes will receive limited access.]

[Restricted zones. Restricted resources. Restricted protection.]

[Only the fastest will move beyond these restrictions. The rest will be buried.]

A class determines a person’s value. Only those at the top matter. Kai clenched his fist as the images of his siblings flashed. Leo had asked him last night what class he hoped for. Mina had not asked anything, which meant she was more worried than Leo was.

[Proceed to your nearest Awakening Zone.]

...

The Mythal city square was packed with more people than Kai had ever seen before. At the center was a stage filled with officials moving around, and names of people being called.

Screens had been set up on either side so everyone pressed in at the edges could see, and a crystal at the center of the stage that lit up every time a person touched it. The crowd’s reaction came a half-second later, every time, like they needed a moment to believe what they were seeing.

"Daniel Reeves — Rare Class: Flame Swordsman!"

Daniel held out his hand, and a black sword appeared. Then flames erupted around the blade, and the heat reached Kai from twenty feet back in the line. The cheers were immediate, people grinning at each other like they were the ones who awakened.

"Lily Blue — Epic Class: Spirit Archer!"

The crowd got louder for her. Kai watched Elena step back from the crystal. The crowd gave her more noise than Daniel. The officials noted her result on something he couldn’t see. Two people near the front of the crowd took photos specifically of her class display.

Whatever he got would put him somewhere on a list. And nobody at the bottom of a new world’s first list got to pretend otherwise.

The line moved forward in chunks as names were called. The people around Kai were talking about their own classes and hopes.

"So does it only go up to Epic or could there–"

"Even if it does, not like you would get it."

"If you’re low-tier, you won’t even get into most gates."

"Then what happens to them?"

"...They fall behind."

Kai didn’t have a strong feeling about knight versus mage versus anything else. He just wanted a unique class that Daniel and Elena got. Something the system gave him that nobody else had and wouldn’t make him irrelevant.

And it was then he got called.

"Next. Kai Rosefield."

He walked up to the stage before placing his hands on the crystal. It illuminated the area before it covered him, and a blue screen began displaying words to him.

Then it stuttered.

[Class Selection in Progress...]

He saw Knight, Mage, Archer, and Assassin appearing one after another. Clean text on a clean background, exactly what he’d seen the system display for everyone ahead of him in line. He looked at them and waited.

Then they froze.

[Error Detected.]

The screen flickered, and some of the texts weren’t showing.

[Attempting Correction...]

New entries pushed themselves into the list from somewhere, forcing the clean options sideways.

[Class: Invalid]

[Class: Undefined]

A murmur moved through the crowd behind him. He heard pieces of it without turning around.

"Is something wrong with his?"

"Is there a bug?"

"Or maybe this might be the first time we see a class failure." Someone said with a laugh, but they were shushed.

Kai looked at the options of Knight, Mage, Archer, and Assassin. All of them represented his possible path, but then he saw the broken one, sitting beside them like something that had gotten in by mistake.

He looked at the normal paths that he could easily walk.

But others were also walking those as well.

Then he looked at the broken one.

The system had already marked it as an error. Yet it was still there. It was unique, and he reached for it. The moment his fingers came close, the system went quiet.

The crowd kept murmuring.

"What’s wrong?"

"Did it bug out?"

"That’s... not supposed to happen."

"It’s not like we know much about this–"

"Yeah, but the others before were fine."

The system itself seemed to pause, like something reconsidering as it was deciding whether to allow it at all. Kai narrowed his eyes as that feeling from before arrived again. Pain rushed through him like the system didn’t want to accept it.

Then the feeling stopped, and a new set of words appeared.

[Are you sure?]

The crystal dimmed.

For half a second, every other screen in the plaza flickered. Like something inside the system had hesitated.

"Do it." He pressed accept.

The moment his finger touched it, everything slowed.

Not the world but the system.

[Selection Accepted]

[Warning: System stability fluctuation detected.]

The crystal went dark, and the square went quiet as the crowd stared

[Class Assigned: Null]

’...So this is it.’

For a second, nothing.

Then laughter erupted from behind.

"Null?" somebody said.

"Is that a mistake?"

"That’s actually pathetic."

"Should’ve just picked something normal."

"Dead weight already."

Someone behind him found it funnier than the others and kept going after everyone else stopped. "What a failure."

Kai didn’t react because he had heard worse, and the system had already said more than they ever could.

But then his attention began shifting because something else was happening that nobody in the crowd could see or even imagine. The class slot was empty, but underneath the emptiness, something moved.

[Calculating Initial Rewards...]

The number appeared and immediately changed.

10x.

Then changed.

100x.

The screen flickered.

Then—

1,000x

10,000x

The system paused like it couldn’t keep up. The interface flickered and bent inward at the edge like it couldn’t hold the output.

[Overflow Detected]

[Rewriting Parameters...]

Then the rewrite process began, and then everything went still. The previous numbers faded, and the system itself seemed to return to normal as if nothing had gone wrong.

[Welcome, Player.]

For a moment, the numbers didn’t disappear completely but sank. Like they had been stored somewhere deeper.

Kai stood looking at where the numbers had been. The crowd was still laughing behind him. The officials were already calling the next name. None of them had seen any of it.

The system hadn’t corrected the number but had rewritten the rules as if it were trying to accommodate it.

’Is it really Null? Or is it something that breaks the rule and can’t be identified?’

He removed his hand from the crystal slowly.

Kai stepped down from the stage.

The crowd parted around him without giving him another look. He walked through the gap they made and kept walking, past the groups comparing their results. The screens are still cycling through recent assignments, and the noise of a city that had just changed and hadn’t finished deciding what that meant.

Nobody stopped him.

Nobody called after him.

He had taken maybe fifteen steps when he heard his name.

"Kai."

He stopped before turning to see a man with blond hair and crimson eyes; it was Victor. He was leaning against the barricade at the edge of the clearing zone with his arm crossed. He was taller than Kai remembered from their school years but still looked and acted the same. His class result was still visible on the public display above his head.

[Victor Hale]

[Epic Class: Sovereign Blade.]

Kai looked at him and waited.

Victor had a smug smile. "Are you okay?" His voice rang out higher than needed, attracting those around.

"I know getting a class like Null isn’t what you were hoping for. It’s a surprise because I expected something better, but we can’t all be super talented." Kai slightly frowns at the sympathy in Victor’s tone. "If you need anything... My door is always open for my old buddy."

The crowd’s eyes shine as they look at Victor with admiration.

He said it like it was generous. Like reaching down to Kai was the kindest thing a man in his position could do.

Another person said. "Damn, to think that Null is getting favored by an Epic Class–"

"Some people have all the luck."

"Must be nice."

The murmur moved through the crowd, every face turning to him with sympathy. Which was worse. It meant they’d already decided he was someone to feel sorry for.

Victor stepped closer and spoke quietly. "Tell Leo and Mina I said hello. They at least need one big brother that they can rely on,"

Kai’s expression didn’t change.

But a sequence started the moment his siblings’ names left Victor’s mouth and was completed before Victor had finished turning away.

Victor turned around as two guards moved towards him, but they were four seconds away from him. Enough time for a strike to the throat, a kick to the back of the leg, and a fist to the face. With enough force that Victor would be eating the ground in two seconds and bleeding from it. Forcing the guards to rush to him and be distracted for a bit.

Then he noted the crowd between here and the nearest exit. The specific gaps to reach it before everyone else reacted. The sequence came back clean, faster than he had expected it to be.

He stood with it for one full second.

Then he stopped it.

Not because Victor had the guards. Not because the crowd was watching. But because Victor bleeding on the ground today was worth less than what came after.

One day, Victor would look up at him instead.

That was worth more.

Victor turned and walked away without looking back. The guards moved with him while Kai watched him go.

He frowned before walking away with his gaze glancing up to the blue-tinged sky. And then felt his status screen flicker at the edge of his vision.

[User...]

Gone before he could read the rest.

"...So it let it through." Kai exhaled slowly. "...Then this isn’t a mistake."

It’s an advantage, one that he will abuse fully. "...If the system broke trying to calculate me, I’ll make sure it never gets to recover."

If the system feared it enough to rewrite itself then it was worth everything.

Behind him, the display screen cycled to the next result. Victor’s name and class stayed visible a moment longer than the others before it moved on.

Kai didn’t turn around.

The crowd had seen a null class. The officials had logged a failed awakening. Victor had seen someone to pity.

None of them had seen the numbers.

And somewhere beneath the empty class slot, the system flickered again.

[Unknown Variable Detected.]