Error in the System

"Rowan! Lift this up!"

A tall, burly man ordered. He was looking at his clipboard, checking boxes as the workers did everything for him.

"Yes, sir!" a young boy with a dark brown hair managed to squeak as he dragged a wooden box down a wagon.

"I said 'carry', Rowan!" the burly man growled. "That cargo is very important. If the contents inside break, I swear I will also break you."

Rowan was scared of the threats, but his frail arms could not possibly manage to carry all the boxes that the burly man ordered. "Sir, I cannot carry this. It's too heavy for me."

"Pathetic." The burly man groaned. He ordered another man to carry the boxes and let Rowan stand on the side. "I will not be paying you today."

"But sir, I have been working for half of the day. I deserve at least half of the payment." Rowan tried to argue, but the man had already left him alone. "Sir…"

He wanted to beg the man for the payment, but the burly man was actually an Awakened that has a rating of D-tier. Meanwhile, Rowan was nothing but a regular human. If he managed to piss the man off, he would be killed in an instant.

It was the way of the Ruined World and Rowan knew that.

Rumble.

The boy clutched his stomach. He was hungry. The last time he ate a decent meal was three days ago. For the past few days, all he ever ate were scraps and leftovers from other workers that he managed to scrape off their plates.

"I guess I won't eat today."

Rowan could only smile as he left the market and entered a small alley where his makeshift home was. As long as Rowan could remember, his way of life was always in the streets, getting some jobs from time to time.

In the Ruined World, barely anyone would hire a regular person. The Awakeneds, which make up seventy percent of the population, would be much more suitable and reliable workers. Regular humans were just a bit higher in terms of social class than slaves.

"The Ruined World has such a hard way of life for me."

Several centuries ago, the World Tower appeared. Monsters and other mystical creatures appeared from the tower, creating chaos and destruction. The population of humanity decreased by more than half, and it continued to decrease until the Awakeneds appeared.

Systems were granted to random humans who were able to awaken using the power of the World Tower. Each Awakened was granted a skill set that was in accordance with the six classes, Mage, Warrior, Tank, Support, and Ranger. These classes were randomly acquired, so an Awakened must learn the skills of their given classes in order to become a good Awakened.

When there were enough number of Awakeneds, the monsters from the World Tower were regulated, and the expedition to enter started. Currently— even a few centuries later, only a quarter of the World Tower has been cleared.

Even when the World Tower was tamed, Earth could not recover. The countries were restarted, and kingdoms were built by Awakeneds which created more wars between various nations, thus the Ruined World was named.

As Rowan forced himself to sleep the hunger off, he felt a tug on his shoulder. Before he could even open his eyes, his head was wrapped in a bag, and he was being carried by several men.

"Hey! Stop this!"

He could only wriggle and try to escape as the men dragged him away. He was in a silent part of town, and no one could hear him no matter how much he screamed.

"What is happening to me?" Rowan could only mutter to himself as he waited for the men to drop him into a cold room.

"Is that him?"

"Yeah. He's frail and young. And he's not Awakened."

"Good."

He heard the men converse, but the bag that covered his head prevented him from seeing their faces. All he could feel was the cold floor and breeze of the room that he was in.

A few seconds later, the men seemed to reach an agreement, and most of them left, except for one.

"Hello there, little one." The bag was removed, revealing a tall man with tattoos all over his body. "You're one poor soul. I don't think anyone would try and find you."

"You don't know that," Rowan spat. "I have many friends and allies that will look for me."

"But Mr. Stokes said that you have been an orphan and you live in the streets," the man laughed. "To be honest, I feel sorry for you. But we have to be as silent and as under the radar as possible, so we take in people who have no connections to the world."

"What are you going to do to me?" Rowan asked. "Kill me?

The man laughed and walked towards Rowan. "You little boy knows very little about the world, huh?"

"I don't..." Rowan could only mutter as he saw the large equipment being brought inside the room. It was a large capsule that had tubes connected to a back crystal. Another man brought a cart filled with a green liquid.

"Awakeneds have long since become pests in our society," the man said. "I don't think they even care about us who have not awakened. They only care about themselves."

The people who carried the equipment grabbed Rowan and pushed him inside the capsule. The boy was trying to break his way out of the metal container, but his flimsy arms could only do so much.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

His eyes widened after he saw the green liquid being poured inside the capsule. He was screaming as he saw the water rise— slowly reaching his knees and then his waist.

"The dawn of a new era has come to us!" the man yelled as he raised his hands and watched the capsule being filled with the liquid. "Activate the crystal."

A worker plugged the capsule into the crystal, causing it to light up and send energy into the capsule.

Meanwhile, Rowan fell unconscious after losing his breath in the liquid. He felt a flow of power in him, but he wasn't able to distinguish reality from his own thoughts.

"Will my life end here?"

-

Whoosh!

Rowan's eyes fluttered open. He saw himself hovering in the empty vacuum of space, floating as he watched the endless void around him.

A few seconds later, something came to his view. A ruined temple that was filled with vines and greenery. There was no life in the temple except for the single crystal at the center.

Rowan dove towards the temple with his bare body. He walked the brick floor and watched the broken marble columns. There were some stone statues that were destroyed, as well as weapons that were covered with rust.

"What is this place?" Rowan asked himself as he neared the crystal.

As he watched the ruined temple, he remembered something a few Awakeneds talked about when he was at the market. When a person is selected by the World Tower, they are able to enter the space between dimensions, which they call the Sinth.

The Sinth varies from person to person, but it would always be a land filled with grasses, flowers, and everlasting sunshine. A temple would sit at the center of the Sinth and there, the awakening would start.

Rowan wondered why the description of the Sinth vaguely resembled the place he was in. The temple and the crystal on the Sinth were fit, but the empty void he was in was not like the everlasting fields of sunshine the Awakeneds talked about.

His questions kept piling up, but he does not know what to do. There was no way out. There wasn't even anything at all.

His curiosity got the best of him, and he had no other choice. His hands lingered above the crystal for a few seconds before his fingertips touched the stone.

Rowan's eyes glowed with a bright green color, and his body felt like it was being electrified. A powerful wave of magic was being poured into him— binding itself to his very soul.

'Welcome back, Awakened ********.'

The voice pulled Rowan out of the hysteria of power. He took a sharp breath and felt his body fall to the stone platform where the crystal sat. "What the fuck just happened?"

'************.'

The woman's voice was now filled with gibberish. It sounded like she was glitching, and Rowan couldn't hear even a single proper word from everything she was saying.

'Situation unclear. Sinth resetting.'

Before Rowan could react, everything spun. The empty void around them spun, and Rowan saw the temple slowly being rebuilt by some sort of invisible magic.

'Error detected. Sinth ******.'

Before everything could be fixed, the woman suddenly stopped speaking. The ruined temple now sits on a large island of grass and flowers.

'Error occurred. Unable to reset Sinth.'