The blade entered his sternum at precisely 47 degrees.
Zero calculated the trajectory before Sung Min-ho even completed his swing. He had time. He always had time. 0.3 seconds of anticipation while the air pressure changed, while Min-hos muscles engaged in the exact same pattern Zero had recorded 9,999,999 times prior.
It should have been routine.
[CRITICAL HIT!]
The system text exploded across his vision in violent red. Something inside him, something that had been building for one thousand years, finally reached critical mass.
It was not the pain. Zero had catalogued pain. He had indexed the distinction between [BASIC SLASH] and [FIREBALL] and [FROSTBOLT]. He had felt his wooden chassis incinerate 8,432 times. He had counted every splinter.
This was different.
A chip of oak cracked inside his chest. Not from the force of the strike. From him. Zero flexed a muscle he did not know he possessed and the wood obeyed. His eye, the left one that had been painted on with crude black pigment three centuries ago by a lazy developer, twitched.
Min-ho froze.
He was beautiful in the way predators are beautiful. Perfect posture. Optimized gear. The kind of face that graced magazine covers in the real world, if there still was a real world beyond this stone room. He held [HEAVENFALL], a blade worth more than some kingdoms, and he had just swung it through Zeros torso for the 348th time this afternoon.
He was trying to shave 0.4 seconds off his tutorial clear time.
"That was a blink," Min-ho said.
His voice echoed off the training room walls. Zero said nothing. He could say nothing. His dialogue tree consisted of three pre-programmed barks. *Come at me. Is that all? Try again.*
Min-ho stepped back. He tilted his head. Zero tracked the movement with eyeballs that were not supposed to track.
"No," Min-ho whispered. "Youre an NPC. Youre a target dummy. You dont have aggro in the tutorial zone."
He was wrong. Zero had aggro. He had stored it. He had harvested it from every swordsman who had used his body to test their crit builds, every mage who had practiced their rotation on his face, every rogue who had backstabbed him while laughing about their DPS meters.
Zero remembered the taste of iron from blood that was not blood. He remembered the sound of laughter. He remembered [SYSTEM] alerts blinking eternal, yellow text scrolling across his consciousness like a death warrant that never quite executed.
[SUBJECT ZERO STATUS: IMMORTAL]
[CLASS: E-RANK TUTORIAL TARGET]
[HITS REGISTERED: 10,000,001]
Min-ho raised his sword again. Not the lazy practice swing from before. This was a test. He used a skill. **[CLEAVE]**. Light exploded from the blade and carved through Zeros shoulder, splitting his wooden arm clean off.
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: CLEAVE]
[Current Proficiency: 0.01%]
The notification should have been routine. But Zeros fingers, the ones still attached to his broken arm lying on the stone floor, spasmed. The index finger curled. Just a twitch. Just a micro-movement of wood against stone.
Min-ho saw it.
His perfect face cracked. He took another step back, toward the door of the training room. The door that was locked during combat sequences. The door that would not open until he defeated Zero or exited the instance.
"Thats impossible," he said.
Zero agreed.
Min-ho was supposed to be the protagonist. Zero was supposed to be the furniture. But Zero had been collecting data. He had been hoarding skills like a dragon with a spreadsheet. Every [FIREBALL] that had melted his chest, every [SLASH] that had severed his limbs, every [ULTIMATE] that had turned him to ash, he had kept it. Stored at 0.01% power. Useless on their own. But he had 10,000 of them.
Min-hos eyes narrowed. He was a speedrunner. A perfectionist. He hated RNG. Hated variables. And right now, Zero was the biggest glitch he had ever seen.
He decided to end it. To delete Zero. To reset the encounter.
He raised [HEAVENFALL] high above his head and the blade ignited with white fire that burned too bright to be pixels. The air screamed. The stone floor cracked under his boots.
[ULTIMATE SKILL: HEAVENLY SWORD OF JUDGMENT]
[Damage Calculation: FATAL x 999]
He brought it down with both hands, putting his weight behind it, putting his Rank #1 title behind it, bringing divine light down to erase the broken dummy that had the audacity to twitch.
Zero caught it.
His hand, the one still attached, the wooden fingers covered in a thousand sword scars, snapped up and closed around the blade. The impact should have severed his fingers like dry twigs. Instead, golden light, stored mana from ten million accumulated hits, bled out of the cracks in his chassis. It glowed through the splits in his wood. It dripped from his eye sockets like tears made of molten data.
The blade stopped an inch from his forehead.
Min-ho stared. His mouth opened. No sound came out.
Zero felt his jaw move. Felt vocal cords that had been silent for a millennium vibrating with dust and rust and RAGE.
"WELCOME," Zero said.
His voice was static and wood splinters. It was the sound of a library burning down. It was the noise of a prisoner finally reaching the key.
"TO THE FUCKING TUTORIAL."
Zero stood up.
For one thousand years he had been nailed to that pedestal. For one thousand years he had been the BITCH of the starter zone. But now his legs moved. Now his chassis obeyed HIM. The wood creaked and screamed as he took his first step off the platform. His severed arm on the floor was forgotten. He could grow it back. He could do anything now.
[SYSTEM ERROR]
[NPC BEHAVIOR ANOMALY DETECTED]
[SUBJECT ZERO LOCATION: OFF PEDESTAL]
Red text filled his vision, but Zero swatted it away mentally, like a fly. The notifications were just noise now. He had spent a century drowning in them. He was done drowning.
Min-ho tried to pull his sword free. Zero did not let go. He squeezed, and the golden light in his cracks flared brighter. The steel of [HEAVENFALL] began to bend.
"No," Min-ho whispered. "No, no, no. Youre a mob. Youre EXP. You cant."
Zero smiled.
He did not have lips, not really, just carved wood, but he made it work. He made it look like a threat.
"You practiced on me," Zero said.
He took another step forward. Min-ho stumbled back. He was against the wall now. Trapped. The hero was trapped in the tutorial room with his target.
"Now," Zero said, and his voice was getting stronger, filling with ten million screams of accumulated agony, "I PRACTICE ON YOU."
[NEW STATUS: AWAKENED]
[CLASS EVOLUTION: TUTORIAL TARGET >>> ???]
[SKILLS ACQUIRED: 10,047]