The final boss didn't roar.
It just watched me.
A tower of flickering geometry and corrupted runes, half-coded limbs twitching like broken strings. Behind it, the raid zone unraveled—terrain falling into a jagged wireframe void. The SYSTEM had stopped trying to hold the world together.
I wasn't supposed to be here.
Not alone.
My hands hung at my sides. No potions. No party. No spells left in the Lexicon. Just the quiet, stretching moment before deletion.
[You are dead.][Game Over.]
No fanfare. No fade to black.Just a window:
[You have obtained: Fragment of Origin (Unique)]Would you like to activate its power? Y/NEffect: Rewind the world to the beginning of Ascension. Warning: All progress will be lost.
I stared at it. My cursor hovered.
I wasn't some ranked legend. No record-holder. No guild commander. Just a quiet support player who survived longer than expected. Ten years of dungeons, bugs, power creep, content cycles—and failure. I never got strong enough. I never saved anyone who mattered.
And then the SYSTEM gave me this.
I clicked Yes.
I never learned what that boss was. No raid drop. No lore panel. Just a corruption that shouldn't have existed.
I woke gasping.
White ceiling. Dorm lights. A plastic fan clicking in the corner. My old VR pod sat next to the desk like a sleeping coffin.
I wasn't dreaming.
The date flashed on my cracked phone:March 1st, 2029.Launch Day.
Ascension hadn't started yet.
I staggered to the window. Same cracked sidewalk. Same hum of late-night trains. A billboard overhead still played the original Ascension Online teaser.
It was real.
Ten years of memory burned behind my eyes. I remembered the secret class trees, the bugged raid mechanics, the guild betrayals, the moment the SYSTEM stopped feeling like code and started watching.
I remembered how it ended.
And now… I had a second chance.
I stepped into the pod like I was returning to a grave.
NEURAL LINK ESTABLISHED.WELCOME TO ASCENSION.PLEASE SELECT A CLASS.
The options blurred into a wall of golden text:Warrior. Mage. Shadowblade. Cleric. Elementalist. Paladin...
I scrolled past them all.
I opened the Unstable / Dev-Protected section—an archive of classes marked as under development, unstable, or "not recommended for live environments."
There it was.
[Class: Spellforged Scribe]Support-focused. Low damage. High potential.Risk of user dissatisfaction: 98.4%Tag: Legacy Compiler Detected
In my past life, nobody played it. The Lexicon spell interface was a broken gimmick. But I had spent ten years rebuilding its mechanics from fragments, carving through dead code and forgotten systems.
I knew what it could become.
I selected it.
The world fragmented—then reassembled.
I stood at the edge of a forest clearing.
The air was too real—sunlight through branches, birdsong, NPCs chattering as they passed on cobbled paths. This wasn't a game anymore. Not really.
I opened my interface.Level 1.Zero gold.One spell: Spark GlyphInventory: Empty.
No—it wasn't empty.
One item pulsed at the bottom of the list.A rusted, unmarked amulet.
[Item Acquired: Forgotten Heirloom (Quest Item)]You feel an odd warmth from the amulet. It hums with something... ancient.
The Heirloom wasn't supposed to spawn this early. In my past life, I only learned of it years in, buried deep in old patch notes and rumor threads. Most players never triggered it at all.
But something about this timeline was different. The SYSTEM was already bending.
[Quest Started: Dust to Divinity]
I walked right past the starter town and ducked behind the blacksmith's hut. Buried beneath discarded metal was an old satchel.
Inside:
[Item: Beginner's Lexicon]A bound tome. Pages blank. Reacts to ink-based spell matrices and recorded magical patterns.Status: Dormant. Threaded Core Detected.
I touched the cover.
It pulsed once—like it remembered me.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: Anomaly Detected – Monitoring Initiated.]
...Looks like I wouldn't go unnoticed this time.
Let the others chase goblins and starter loot.
I had ten years of memory.
And a new future to rewrite.