Returnee

Hunter's eyes opened in an instant as he involuntarily sucked in a deep breath. He looked around to see a vast expanse of darkness dotted by countless rectangular, translucent glowing white prisms arranged neatly side by side.

Hunter was in one of these prisms.

Him, along with ten thousand other people.

Almost immediately, signs of mass confusion began to strike through the crowd like lightning. Countless different voices, male and female, of all different languages from all across Earth rose up in the clamor of panic universal to all humankind regardless of skin color, gender, age, and creed.

People began to bang against their prism prisons to no avail.

Screams began. Cries followed.

Chaos ensued.

The noise was overwhelming, and it fed on itself in a positive feedback loop, for as Hunter knew well, people were so easily influenced by each other when they were in a crowd.

Hunter remembered the first time he had been summoned for the Trial. How he had felt the exact same panic. How he had felt just as scared as everyone else here.

Now, however, Hunter just shook his head and stood up, cracking his neck as he took in a deep breath, making sure his body was intact and that he had not lost any combat readiness. He did this on instinct drilled into him through a decade of constant fighting.

Soon enough, the people here would become like him.

Well, those that survived, at least.

Hunter pre-emptively looked up, at the vast darkness above that never seemed to end.

As expected, a bright flash appeared, drawing everyone's attention to it. The flash coalesced into a giant sphere, and from that orb, a monotonous, droning voice echoed out, filling the heads of all below and enforcing silence.

[GREETINGS, SEEKERS OF THE ZENITH.

YOU ARE THE SECOND WAVE TO BE CHOSEN FOR THE TRIAL OF 100 WORLDS.

YOUR WORLD AS YOU KNOW IT HAS ENDED.

ALL THAT YOU HAVE VALUED, LOVED, AND OWNED HAS BEEN LOST.

TO SAVE YOUR WORLD, YOU MUST PASS THE TRIAL OF 100 WORLDS.

TO PASS THE TRIAL IS SIMPLE.

CLEAR EACH OF THE 100 WORLDS.

SEEK THE ZENITH.

ONCE THE ZENITH IS REACHED, THE TRIAL WILL BE COMPLETED AND YOUR WORLD RESTORED.

TO AID YOU, EACH OF YOU WILL BE GRANTED PERSONAL SURVIVAL AND GROWTH MECHANISMS KNOWN AS 'SYSTEMS'.

TAKE NOTE THAT THIS IS HUMANITY'S SECOND AND FINAL CHANCE TO COMPLETE THE TRIAL OF 100 WORLDS.

YOUR FAILURE WILL END IN THE FAILURE OF ALL THAT YOU KNOW.

ONCE YOU HAVE CHOSEN YOUR SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS, YOU WILL BE TRANSPORTED TO THE TUTORIAL WORLD.]

With that, the sphere of light disappeared, leaving ten thousand confused people to ponder what had happened.

Or rather, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine confused, because Hunter was already on top of things. He immediately opened his system, being intimately familiar with how everything worked already.

When Hunter saw his system interface pop up in front of him as a screen that was visible only to him, he let a faint smile curve at the edge of his lips.

<<<STATUS>>>

Name: Hunter

World Marks: 0

Primary Class: None

Level: 0

Stats:

HP: 10/10

Mana: 5/5

Strength - 1

Vitality - 2

Agility - 1

Magic - 1

Perception - 3

Attunement - 0

Essence: 100%

Passives:

-NONE

Proficiencies:

-NONE

Active Skills:

-NONE

Attuned Spells:

-NONE

Equipment:

-Basic Clothes [Full Body]

Total Equipment Load: 10%

>>>

The familiar screen of his system. Though far, far emptier than it had been when Hunter reached level 100 in his past life: the first Seeker to have ever done so.

Hunter truly had returned. To the start of it all.

He had almost forgotten how he had been at first. How it felt to be level 0. Just another lamb among ten thousand that would soon come into the slaughter of the Trial.

Though, as Hunter noted with a smirk, he was anything but a helpless lamb. His stats and status might have been just as lowly as everyone else's, but that was going to change very, very quickly.

Hunter was given a second chance. He would abuse it to its fullest. To make sure humanity got the chance it deserved.

Hunter saw a message prompt in front of him.

>>>

Proceeding to class selection.

Choose your Primary Class:

-Warrior

Grants +3 to strength and vitality.

Starts off with the weapon [Longsword]

-Ranger

Grants +3 to agility and perception

Starts off with the weapon [Bow]

-Mage

Grants +3 to magic and attunement

Starts off with the weapon [Staff]

-Assassin

Grants +3 to agility and strength

Starts off with the weapon [Dagger]

-Priest

Grants +3 to vitality and magic

Starts off with the weapon [Pendant]

>>>

Hunter sped through the selection process for everything.

Time was of essence here.

He needed to get to objectives quickly.

Faster than everyone else.

Especially because in the tutorial world, the first one hundred to defeat the boss would get special bonus rewards, with the first ten receiving their pick of the best.

Hunter immediately chose the Assassin class because it had the highest initial damage output.

Strength and agility were both offensive stats that directly contributed to melee damage, and the Assassin class was the only one that started with bonuses to both.

But this was highly secondary.

What Hunter really wanted the class was for the basic skill it granted: [Sneak]. This skill could be used to exploit the tutorial.

Hunter had no intention of sticking with the Assassin class.

Primary classes were difficult to change, but there were still ways to alter them. When he got to the point where he would set on the path to obtaining his original class, he would ditch the Assassin class.

Hunter felt as the stats tallied up and enhanced his body.

>>>

Stats:

HP: 10/10

Mana: 5/5

Strength - 1 > 4

Vitality - 2

Agility - 1 > 4

Magic - 1

Perception - 3

Attunement -0

>>>

Hunter had almost forgotten how physically weak he had been before the Trials. It was easy to forget life on Earth before the Trials, because the Trials truly did consume everything, taking every ounce of physical and mental effort to survive through.

Cozy and comfortable earth life quickly faded away to the back of the mind.

Stats mattered little in the grand scheme of things. They would increase extremely quickly if Hunter did things right.

Because what Hunter had over everyone else was knowledge.

The worlds of the Trial was quite similar to a game world, and what he made up with his weak physique was his experience as one of the best video game speedrunners in the world.

It sounded laughable, almost, that among ten thousand, many of whom had military backgrounds or were natural born leaders or even sociopaths, that speedrunning would give Hunter such an advantage.

Speedrunning gave Hunter two advantages.

The first: an intuitive grasp of game mechanics that had let him scale the Trial worlds and adapt to them in his first life.

The second, and perhaps most important: the determination, focus, and drive to thoroughly analyze the most optimal path to a successful clear and the willingness to try over and over and over again to the point of nigh insanity.

Now in his second life, Hunter knew every possible exploit there was for the worlds he had been through.

And he sure as hell would make sure to abuse each and every one he could.

>>>

The [Assassin] primary class has been chosen.

Next, choose a basic class skill to use:

-Sneak:

Rank: E

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Charges: 3 per rest

Effects: Grants ten seconds of lowered visibility and reduces fall damage.

-Backstab:

Rank: E

Cooldown: N/A

Charges: N/A

Effects: When attacking an enemy from behind while unnoticed, the user is capable of initiating a Finisher that deals severe damage. Does not work on certain enemies.

-Sharpen Weapon

Rank: E

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Charges: 5 per rest

Effects: Channel for 5 seconds to sharpen wielded weapons, increasing damage by 10% and granting weapons a 5% chance to inflict the [Bleed] status effect. All bonuses last for 10 seconds.

>>>

Hunter immediately chose the skill [Sneak] without a single ounce of hesitation and moved on. Backstab was useful, and he would pick it up later, but for now, it was unneeded.

>>>

Now choose your Gift. The Gift will remain with you for the entirety of your existence. Choose it wisely.

-Blessing of Health: Grants a permanent boost to health regeneration.

-Blessing of Might: Grants a permanent boost to strength and agility

-Blessing of Insight: Grants a permanent boost magic and perception

-Blessing of Mystique: Grants a permanent boost to mana regeneration.

OR

You may choose to forego a gift and instead start the Trial with 100 silvers.

>>>

Hunter did not hesitate again. He completely disregarded the blessings and chose to start out with the silvers.

The vast majority of people here would get tempted by the blessings because they were advertised as 'permanent boosts' that had to be 'chosen wisely'.

In reality, they were meager stat boosts that would soon mean little to nothing.

By now, Hunter was far ahead of everyone else in the system customization process.

This, he could tell with just a cursory look around.

Everyone in sight of him had their heads cocked, their brows furrowed, their eyes blinking blankly, or spoke up in confusion, trying to get help from others who were just as clueless.

Hunter knew he could speak out and help, but such a choice was so stupid it barely even registered in his head.

He knew he was supposed to save humanity, but he could not slow himself down for everyone here. He would just sabotage himself, and in the end, that would lose more lives than him powering through and reaching the Zenith.

In his past life, Hunter had reached the 50th World, the highest world anyone had reached, but that had not nearly been enough to save humanity.

Not to mention revealing he knew more than he should would just paint a massive target on his back.

Hunter knew exactly how to clear everything in the foreseeable future by himself. The only variable that could hinder him was other people that might thwart him or backstab him.

Because Hunter knew that people might have thought themselves as good, but when it came down to the wire, when survival was looming over their heads, precious few were truly good.

>>>

The selection process has been completed.

Transferring Seeker to the Tutorial World…

>>>