Chapter 1: A Simple Result
The Awakening Hall was loud.
Not with chaos—but with expectation.
Crystal pillars lined the circular chamber, each one humming softly as names appeared in light. Every flash brought cheers, gasps, or disappointed sighs. Rankings mattered here. They always had.
A-Rank.
Applause.
B-Rank.
Nods of approval.
C-Rank.
Sympathetic claps.
The lower the letter, the quieter the room became.
Aion Vale stood near the back, hands in his pockets, posture relaxed. He wasn't nervous. He wasn't excited either. He was observing.
Patterns formed quickly.
The rich families sat closer to the front.
The confident stood straighter.
The desperate stared too hard at the crystals.
Interesting, Aion thought. They already believe the result decides everything.
A staff member called his name.
"Aion Vale."
The room barely reacted.
He stepped forward calmly, placing his palm against the crystal pillar. It was cold. Smooth. Old technology layered with magic—inefficient, but reliable.
The crystal flared.
Light surged upward.
Then stopped.
A single line of text burned into the air.
Class: UNKNOWN
Rank: E
Silence.
Then laughter.
Not everyone laughed—but enough did.
A boy near the front scoffed openly. "E-Rank? Seriously?"
Someone else muttered, "What a waste."
A coin clinked against the floor near Aion's feet.
"Pick it up," a voice said. "Might be the only reward you get."
Aion looked down at the coin. Then he looked back up.
He smiled.
Not embarrassed.
Not angry.
Amused.
The staff member cleared his throat awkwardly. "You may step aside."
Aion nodded and walked away without a word.
That reaction confused people more than anger would have.
Behind him, the next name was called.
The crowd moved on.
They always did.
That night, Aion sat alone in his rented room.
The space was small. Bare. Cheap furniture, old wiring, a cracked screen on the desk. The kind of place people ended up in when no one expected much from them.
He liked it.
Silence made thinking easier.
He closed his eyes.
The world shifted.
LIMITLESS INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM — ACTIVATED
▸ Access: Complete Knowledge Archive
▸ Status: Locked by Creation Protocol
▸ Warning: Direct utilization prohibited
▸ Requirement: Independent Construction
Aion exhaled slowly.
So that was it.
Not power.
Not strength.
Blueprints.
Images flooded his mind—not overwhelming, but precise. Cities optimized for energy flow. Networks designed to collapse corruption without force. Machines that shouldn't exist yet. Solutions to problems humanity hadn't realized it would face.
All of it usable.
None of it free.
He laughed quietly.
"So I have to build everything myself."
The system did not respond.
Aion leaned back in his chair, eyes half-lidded.
"Good," he said softly. "Shortcuts are boring."
He dismantled the old phone on his desk.
Carefully. Methodically.
The room filled with the faint sound of metal clicks and exposed circuitry. He repurposed parts, rewired connections, adjusted voltages. Hours passed unnoticed.
Finally, the screen flickered to life.
A simple interface appeared.
ORION — v0.1 ONLINE
Aion tilted his head. "You're slow."
ORION: "Correction. I was verifying system stability."
"Fair," Aion replied. "Status?"
ORION: "Processing speed limited. Functionality minimal. Observation recommended."
Aion smiled again.
"Observation is my specialty."
On a separate screen, encrypted data scrolled quietly.
A local guild leader.
Financial discrepancies.
Hidden transfers.
Illegal dungeon resource sales.
Aion hadn't hacked anything directly.
He'd simply noticed what didn't align.
He adjusted a few variables.
Sent the information anonymously.
Then leaned back.
The next morning, news feeds exploded.
Authorities raided a guild office.
Accounts were frozen.
Names were leaked.
People argued online.
Blamed each other.
Demanded justice.
Aion watched it all from his chair, sipping cheap coffee.
ORION: "Action successful. Probability of retaliation: low."
"Of course it is," Aion said. "They don't know who to blame."
ORION: "You remain officially E-Rank."
Aion glanced at his reflection in the dark screen.
Messy hair. Calm eyes. Unremarkable.
Perfect.
"Let's keep it that way."
Outside, the city buzzed—loud, chaotic, confident.
Aion watched.
And somewhere deep in the system, a single variable shifted.
End of Chapter 1.
Chapter 2: Observation Is Control
The city woke in chaos.
Newsfeeds still buzzed with the story: the guild raid. Screens flashed images of confiscated tech, shocked employees, and headlines calling it a "miracle" or a "curse." Nobody knew who did it. Nobody would ever know.
Except one person.
Aion sat in the shadows of his room, ORION humming quietly in the corner.
ORION: "Public perception indicates confusion, fear, and curiosity. You remain underestimated."
AION: "Perfect. Let's leave them guessing."
He turned back to the monitors. Multiple screens displayed city maps, financial transactions, dungeon gate movements, and satellite feeds. Lines connected like neurons, pulsing with tiny green lights.
Everything is predictable.
Everything is manipulable.
Step One: Resource Acquisition
Aion's finger hovered over the keyboard.
He wasn't breaking the law. Not exactly. He was exploiting gaps. Loopholes. Inefficiencies that only someone with infinite knowledge could see.
A corrupt executive funneled dungeon loot into a hidden offshore account.
He didn't know Aion was watching.
He didn't know Aion knew the password before it was created.
ORION: "Probability of success: 98.7%."
AION: "Make it 100. I don't like probabilities in my favor—I like certainty."
A few keystrokes later, funds rerouted into untraceable accounts.
Not for charity. Not for glory.
For experiments.
Step Two: The Watcher Begins
Aion moved through the city unseen, using drones he had constructed months ago. Tiny, silent, efficient. Cameras in their cores. Real-time data feeds. Every district, every guild, every elite mansion.
"Let them think they are safe," he murmured.
The public, the corrupt, the powerful—they moved like chess pieces. Most of them didn't even know they were on a board.
He noted patterns:
Who lied when asked a simple question
Who panicked at the wrong moment
Who trusted strangers too easily
ORION: "You are gathering behavioral datasets at an unprecedented scale."
AION: "Observation is control."
Step Three: A Lesson in Humility
By midday, a wealthy merchant had tried to publicly humiliate an E-Rank hunter during an auction.
The crowd laughed. The hunter froze. Everyone assumed this was a minor joke.
Aion smirked.
Within seconds, a subtle anomaly triggered in the merchant's online ledger. Tiny. Insignificant. Invisible to anyone else.
By evening, the merchant's assets were frozen. Private messages leaked. Credit lines denied. Social media erupted.
"Let them laugh at E-Rank," Aion whispered. "They won't laugh for long."
Step Four: Reflection
The city lights flickered in through the cracked blinds. Aion reclined in his chair.
ORION: "You have accumulated a significant advantage. But your rank remains E."
AION: "That's the beauty of it. Everyone underestimates the quiet ones."
He glanced at his reflection on the dark screen. Unremarkable. Calm. Invisible.
"And that's exactly how I want it."
For a brief moment, he allowed himself a private laugh.
"Tomorrow, we begin the real work."
Outside, the city moved. Chaos, order, greed, ambition. All predictable. All manipulable.
Aion leaned back, hands behind his head.
And somewhere, deep in his system, a new idea sparked.
A creation. Something that would change how the game was played entirely.
Not yet. Not today.
But soon.
End of Chapter 2.
Chapter 3: The First Move
The night was quiet, but the city was not.
Every street, every alley, every hidden warehouse hummed with activity. Guilds scrambled to recover stolen resources. Merchants whispered about hacked accounts. Hunters speculated wildly about who was behind the chaos.
And in one small, overlooked apartment, Aion was awake, calm, and collecting data like a conductor listening to an orchestra.
ORION: "Target: Guild Alpha. Estimated resources: sufficient for experimental testing. Risk: moderate. Public exposure: low."
AION: "Good. Moderate risk is fine. It's time they learn humility."
He swiveled his chair to face a wall of monitors. Each screen displayed a different piece of the city's puzzle:
Satellite overlays of dungeon entrances
Financial transactions with timestamps and anomaly alerts
Public feeds showing gossip and rumors about the mysterious "E-Rank genius"
Everything tells a story, Aion thought. Everything can be used.
The Chessboard Begins
The guild leaders had underestimated him. They assumed he was weak, desperate, or reckless. They assumed wrong.
Aion didn't just see numbers; he saw patterns: how greed dictated behavior, how fear dictated timing, how arrogance dictated mistakes.
He activated a network of drones. They flew silently, invisible to the human eye, and began mapping every exit, every security camera, every guard rotation.
ORION: "They are already reacting to your previous actions."
AION: "Good. Fear is a tool. Panic is a weapon."
By midnight, the guild's secret vault had been infiltrated—not by brute force, but by subtle redirection. Credits rerouted. Loot moved. Security logs manipulated to show ghosts.
When the guild finally realized their resources were gone, their confusion was complete.
A Small Lesson
Meanwhile, a minor guild member tried to brag about surviving the "E-Rank genius."
"I've seen him. He's nothing!"
Two hours later, his bank accounts were frozen, his equipment traced, and his name posted online—not as a hero, but as a cautionary tale.
Aion watched from his screen, a quiet smirk on his face.
AION: "Observation teaches. Experience punishes."
ORION: "Your intervention is noted. Probability of public awareness: 42% and rising."
AION: "Perfect. Let them guess the rest."
Reflection
At dawn, the city appeared calm again—but beneath the surface, the ripples spread.
Aion leaned back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
"The world thinks I'm weak. They think I'm an E-Rank joke. And that's exactly how I want it."
He opened a new terminal. Code scrolled like rain.
Tomorrow, he would build something more. Something bigger. Something no one could ignore.
And somewhere, in the back of his mind, a question lingered:
If I am watching everything… who watches me?
End of Chapter 3.
Chapter 4: Building the Invisible Empire
The city slept, or at least pretended to.
Aion did not.
In his apartment, dozens of screens glowed like constellations in the dark. Aion leaned over a holographic grid of the city's underground network, his fingers moving like a maestro conducting chaos.
ORION: "Analysis: You have sufficient resources for experimental construction. Estimated output: medium scale. Risk: moderate."
AION: "Moderate is boring. Scale it to large. If they notice, it'll only make the lesson more memorable."
Step One: The Blueprints
Aion pulled up a blueprint from the Limitless Intelligence System. It wasn't just technology—it was knowledge itself, compressed into actionable plans.
Machines that could harvest dungeon resources automatically.
Micro-drones that could monitor guild leaders from a mile away.
A device to trace hidden financial transactions instantly.
Everything needed to be built. Nothing was free.
Every wire, every chip, every circuit had to pass through his hands.
This is the cost of omniscience, he thought. Nothing is given. Everything is earned.
Step Two: Silent Construction
By midnight, his apartment had become a laboratory. Tools clattered softly. Screens displayed complex simulations. Tiny drones hummed as he assembled and programmed them.
ORION: "Efficiency suboptimal. Consider multi-threaded assembly."
AION: "You mean faster. Fine."
Minutes later, multiple drones zipped through the room, delivering parts, tightening circuits, and aligning machinery with surgical precision.
Step Three: First Field Test
Aion released a single drone into the city. Its target: a corrupt merchant who had been flaunting illicit dungeon loot.
The drone followed the merchant unnoticed, capturing every movement.
Then, subtly, it made adjustments:
Misrouted shipments
Minor accounting errors
Digital evidence planted anonymously
By dawn, the merchant's empire was in chaos.
And still, Aion remained invisible. E-Rank. Weak. Nothing.
ORION: "Probability of public identification: 2%."
AION: "Good. Let the world play in the dark while I watch."
Step Four: Observation as Art
Aion sat back, sipping coffee.
He watched the city, the guilds, the merchants, the hunters. All acting predictably. All moving like chess pieces.
"Observation is the first step."
"Intervention is the second."
"Manipulation is the third."
The first step was simple. The second required skill. The third… required genius.
And he had all three.
Foreshadowing: Bigger Moves Ahead
In the corner of the apartment, a small, black case hummed quietly. Inside, raw components waited for assembly. Aion stared at it with a faint smile.
"Soon," he said.
"The game begins."
Outside, the city lights flickered as a new day began. No one knew that, in the shadows, a mind infinitely smarter than any of theirs was orchestrating every move.
And no one would see him coming.
End of Chapter 4.
Chapter 5: The Game Begins
The city buzzed with rumors.
Guilds were scrambling. Merchants were panicking. Even the hunters—supposedly the strongest—were confused, frustrated, and angry. Something was happening. Something unseen.
But no one knew the source.
Aion, however, did.
He sat in his apartment, surrounded by screens, drones buzzing silently around him like obedient insects. ORION hovered in the corner, reading data streams faster than the human eye could follow.
ORION: "Alert. Multiple anomalies detected in Guild Beta operations. Estimated chaos: high."
AION: "Perfect. Let's turn the chaos into entertainment."
Step One: Subtle Control
Aion didn't need to fight. Not yet.
He merely needed to influence outcomes.
A minor dungeon gate opened in the wrong district.
Monsters wandered into merchant shipments.
Hunters got false intelligence.
All small, almost insignificant mistakes. Yet combined, they created pressure, confusion, and fear.
ORION: "Cumulative impact: exponential. Probability of guild leadership collapse: 67%."
AION: "Good. Keep it rising."
Step Two: Public Influence
By evening, the first "E-Rank genius" stories appeared online. Anonymous accounts praised the mysterious operator who exposed corruption and ruined greedy merchants.
People whispered:
"Who is he?"
"How does he do it?"
"E-Rank…? That's impossible."
Aion leaned back in his chair, watching the reactions scroll.
"They laugh at me because of the E-Rank label.
Let them. The joke is on them."
Step Three: First Real Test
Guild leaders, desperate to restore their wealth, tried to track the anomalies. They hired hackers, mercenaries, and even hunters.
Aion watched them all like a predator observing ants.
ORION: "They're moving predictably. Probability of identification: less than 5%."
AION: "Exactly. They'll never see me coming. And if they do… it'll be too late."
A single command triggered his drones to misdirect shipments again, while another minor dungeon anomaly pulled hunters away from the city. All without leaving a trace.
Step Four: Reflection
By midnight, the city was quiet again. Only whispers remained.
Aion's apartment was calm. His drones returned to their docks, recharging silently. ORION calculated remaining resources, adjusting plans for the next wave.
Aion stared at the ceiling.
"They still think they control the world.
They're wrong.
Observation is power. Preparation is control.
Action… is inevitable."
He leaned forward, tapping into a fresh blueprint.
Tomorrow, he would begin large-scale construction—a device that no one could detect, yet would give him absolute reach over dungeon activity and resource flow.
"The game begins in earnest."
And somewhere, hidden in the shadows, the first whispers of a name started spreading: "The Handsome Watcher."
The city didn't know it yet, but a new player had arrived.
And everyone was already on his board.
End of Chapter 5.