Everything, in the end, came down to knowledge. In this twisted new world, information wasn't just power—it was the only shield against the whims of the divine. The moment I processed the recorded words of the old man and accepted them as absolute truth, I began to weave the threads of this trap.
According to the old man's records, if coins were the common currency of this apocalypse, then Blessing was its hard currency. It was the most precious resource in existence, the fuel that allowed the higher beings to manipulate the fabric of the System itself.
To gain Blessing, a being had to complete gruelling, nearly impossible quests and wait for agonizingly long periods to accumulate enough to make even a marginal difference in the world.
I was fully aware that the Angels were acting as the facilitators—the organisers of this planetary event. Such a position granted them a host of privileges and systemic bypasses that I couldn't hope to compete with through raw strength alone at this early stage of the apocalypse. If I wanted to survive, I had to use my brain. I had to be more than a warrior; I had to be a cunning architect of their downfall.
The old man's recordings were clear on one specific rule: the Guides arrived in this world with their "Blessing Accounts" entirely empty.
To ensure a semblance of fairness in the Great Game, the System stripped them of any previously accumulated Blessing, locking their vast reserves until a much later, more dangerous stage of the game. The System acted as the ultimate, impartial judge, trying to balance the scales between the predators and the prey.
Knowing this, I identified the Angels as my primary threat—the foremost danger to every plan I had for the future of the human race. To win, I didn't need to kill them yet; I simply had to undermine their authority and drain their resources by any means possible.
I knew they were coming for me. I knew they were watching my team like hawks. So, I waited. I stayed in that park and gave absolutely no indication that I had any intention of leaving.
Even though the field had already served its purpose and its utility was waning, I remained stationary. Even when my own teammates, growing restless and paranoid, asked about moving to a more defensible position, I refused.
I used cold, iron-clad logic to express my resolve to stay put, making sure my "stubbornness" was visible to any celestial observer.
All of this theatre was designed to lure those bastards into planning their next move based on a static target. And they fell for it. The arrival of the human group, peppered with obvious traitors, was the smoking gun—the evidence that they were overextending themselves to corner me.
But that was only the beginning. My true goal was to force them to consume every drop of the meagre Blessing they had managed to scrape together during the first part of the quest.
Since they were the ones who had issued the dark subquests to the traitors, they had accumulated a small reservoir of power. Though it was a "little" amount by cosmic standards, it was enough to be dangerous. They could use it to bind me, to issue enforced subquests, or to manipulate the environment to ensure my death.
The old man had explained that Angels operate within "Zones of Dominance." Despite being on the same side, they are not a unified front. They compete fiercely with one another for prestige and rank.
Therefore, it was impossible for any other Angels to step into this zone and interfere. Even if other Guides realised I was pulling a fast one, they wouldn't lift a finger to help their rivals. To them, watching these three Angels fail and lose their Blessing was a win.
So, I crafted a situation where it appeared I was trying to slip away with my entire group. I played the part of the arrogant leader, showing a flash of tyranny that I didn't actually possess.
I made myself look like a desperate man trying to keep his grip on power. It worked. They mistook my feint for a genuine move and issued that enforced subquest—a move that cost them a massive chunk of their Blessing.
But I wanted it all.
I pushed them deeper into the corner, acting out that final scene of defiance to force them to use the absolute remainder of their Blessing to "lock" the quest. I was like a magician, using flashy, aggressive movements to distract the audience while my real work happened in the shadows. Now, as I walked away with confidence, I knew their "accounts" were drained.
I was being monitored, of course. Getting away from my team in such a blatant manner would enrage them. In their fury and their lack of Blessing to issue more rules, they would resort to the only thing they had left: raw monster spawns. They would send a tidal wave of horrors to hunt me down, thinking they were punishing me.
But that was exactly what I wanted. By drawing the heat onto myself, I was leaving the group back at the park in a much more secure position. The Angels were so focused on "the criminal Hye" that they would forget to look at the pieces I had left behind.
I can't go directly there, I thought, keeping my stride measured and my gaze shifting constantly. I was acutely aware of the celestial eyes tracking my heat signature through the gloom.
The moment my true intentions were revealed to those petty Angels, they wouldn't stop at anything. Despite their current "Blessing Bankruptcy," they still held enough administrative sway to call for a full-scale monster crusade against me—a localised tide of flesh and teeth designed for no other purpose than my total annihilation.
My true target was a prize I had yearned for during my entire previous life, a relic of power that had eluded me in the original timeline. I would never allow a few winged facilitators to stand between me and that destiny.
To cloak my path, my next step had to be a convincing lie. I began to roam the park with a simulated aimlessness, moving in a jagged pattern while slaughtering every monster that crossed my path.
In the logic of the System, the density and strength of summoned monsters were determined by a complex set of variables: the number of humans present in a zone, their collective power levels, and the direct intervention of outer forces like the Guides.
Under normal circumstances, the Angels would be inflating these numbers to crush a defiant human like me. However, they had already spent their current allowance of influence to "lock" my protection quest.
They were effectively sidelined, unable to summon a catastrophic force until the conclusion of the second part of this quest. I had a window of opportunity, and I intended to use every second of it.
I turned my back on the area I desperately wanted to reach and headed east, toward the imposing silhouette of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Isabella had mentioned it earlier—the museum had been slated to host an international youth event. According to the old man's records and the fragmented memories of my past, that marble fortress held the largest concentrated group of survivors in the park. I doubted their current combat efficiency would match my elite team, but I couldn't let such a strategic resource slip through my fingers.
If I had already successfully nullified the Angels for this round, why not add a little more salt to their wounds? I would poach their "prey" and turn them into my soldiers.
Just wait for me, traitors, I snorted inwardly, my grip tightening on my hilt. I won't be late to claim your lives.
I wasn't sure if I would find any "good seedlings"—prodigies with high growth potential—among the museum group. But if a large number of people had survived the initial cull without a guide, it meant they possessed either decent innate power or a natural instinct for the brutal logic of this new world.
In my previous life, the trick of using power generators to repel monsters had been inspired by several different survivor clusters, and the museum group had been one of them.
While they likely hadn't figured it out in this first round of the apocalypse, they might stumble upon it in the next. If they hadn't, I would simply teach them—after I finished hunting the traitors hiding in their ranks.
"Howl!" "Howl!" "Howl!"
The sounds of the night changed. I stopped, tilting my head. A pack of annoying wolves had been trailing me for several blocks now, their paws whispering over the dead grass.
The museum wasn't far from the Great Lawn now, and with my enhanced ability to see through the darkness, I could easily spot their massive, hulking forms lurking between the trees. These weren't normal timber wolves; they were System-mutated predators, twice the size of a grizzly.
"Come then. What are you waiting for?" I whispered into the dark.
I had led them far enough away from the Great Lawn. Now, it was time to play against them with full lethality. Every monster in the apocalypse was designed with a specific vulnerability.
The System, in its cold desire for "balance," ensured that every predator had a flaw that a clever human could exploit. Knowing these weaknesses was the difference between a slaughter and a struggle.
I knew these wolves well. Unlike the scavengers and hyenas, they didn't have a physical weak point in their armour or hide. Their weakness was metaphysical. They had a vulnerability of the soul.
"Howl!"
A single, long, and mighty howl erupted from the shadows ahead. It was a call to arms, the Alpha signalling the final pounce.
"Finally, you decided to show yourself," I smirked.
I didn't wait for them to charge. I lunged forward, starting a full-speed sprint toward the source of the howl. My body felt incredible—the deep, soul-crushing fatigue from the previous quest had been entirely purged. When a human officially acquires the System, their physical vessel is refined; old injuries are knit back together, and scars vanish.
I knew that future levels would provide similar bursts of healing and rejuvenation, but to gain those levels, I needed either a direct Blessing or a Class. I had no intention of accepting a "Blessing" from the parasitic Angels after this quest. And finding a Class? That was a miracle in this early stage.
True Classes weren't handed out like participation trophies. They were earned through specific, gruelling Class Quests—challenges that wouldn't even appear on the horizon for weeks.
I wasn't helpless in this darkness. I had a plan, a roadmap etched in the memories of a failed future, and I would do whatever was necessary to transform myself into a force that could not be reckoned with.
I knew the Angels wouldn't simply swallow their bitter loss in this round; they would return with every celestial and monstrous resource at their disposal. When that time came, only strength would protect me—not luck, not allies, but my own raw, undeniable strength.
"Howl!""Howl!""Howl!"
Moving in a straight line toward the Alpha was an impossible task for a normal man. The path was instantly choked by tens of wolves that lunged from the underbrush, their fiercely coordinated howls vibrating in my very marrow.
"Stay out of my damn way!"
I didn't decrease my speed. I knew their patterns—the initial lunge, the snap at the hamstrings, the leap for the throat. I simply pivoted, evading their synchronised strikes by mere centimetres, my sword moving in a blur of cold steel to slash at their heads and necks.
The resistance was jarring. Their skulls were so dense and heavily plated with bone that I couldn't cleave through them smoothly. I didn't flinch; I had expected this. My stats were still at the baseline of a new player, and my sword was a standard-issue blade, not some legendary relic designed to ignore armour.
Slash!Slash!Slash!
Despite the physical resistance, I left a long, crimson trail of dead bodies behind my steps. I wasn't an inexperienced survivor flailing in the dark. I moved with a calm, surgical precision that bordered on the uncanny, steadily closing the distance to my target.
The fundamental weakness of the System's wolf packs lay in their Alpha. The Alpha was more than just the mightiest fighter; it was the psychic anchor for the entire group. Killing the leader would instantly sever the mind link between the Alpha and the pack, plunging the hundreds of subordinates into a state of vegetative confusion or mindless panic.
Normally, a pack of this size consisted of two hundred to five hundred wolves. Facing such a tide alone was usually considered suicide. Wolves were masters of encirclement; they would cut off every route of retreat and slowly wear their prey down through exhaustion and minor wounds before the Alpha moved in for the finishing blow.
But this time, I had flipped the script. I wasn't playing the role of the prey, huddled and waiting to be devoured. I was the predator. I was the one hunting the big black Alpha, and I was coming to kill it.
The Alpha watched my approach. No matter how it perceived my actions, it wouldn't retreat. Its pride—an encoded trait within the System's hierarchy—prevented it from fleeing a challenge.
If it ran, its authority would collapse, and the pack would fall into disarray. In this harsh world, any sign of weakness was a death sentence. The Alpha knew I was coming, and yet it stood its ground, its yellow eyes burning with ancient malice.
That was my primary tactic. Because the wolves had scattered their numbers to surround the Great Lawn, they had thinned their immediate defences, leaving their king vulnerable to a high-speed blitz.
"Got you, b*tch!"
In less than two minutes of carnage, I broke through the inner circle. The Alpha was flanked by ten elite protectors—massive, scarred beasts that looked significantly more powerful than the common pack members. But their presence wouldn't change the outcome. Just like the pack at large, this Alpha had a specific, exploitable flaw.
"I challenge you," I said, my voice cutting through the snarls and growls. I calmly raised my sword, pointing the tip directly at the Alpha's snout. I adopted a domineering tone, projecting an aura of absolute superiority. "A weak Alpha like you cannot be allowed to remain alive in my park."
"Howl!"
The beast understood me. It didn't need to know the human tongue; the System translated the intent and the weight of my challenge directly into its primal consciousness. The howl that followed was an explosion of fury—an angry, formal acceptance of my duel.
The Alpha's sole weakness was its inability to let a challenge pass. No matter how many subordinate wolves were standing right there, ready to rip me to shreds, the challenge turned this into a solo duel. The ten elite guards stepped back, forming a ring of fur and teeth around us.
"Let's begin," I whispered.
Even though I had successfully baited it into a one-on-one fight, I knew this wouldn't be an easy feat to accomplish.