Ronan was in a place he had been many times before. Fifty one, to be exact, and this made the fifty second. He stood in a strange empty place, with the sound of the system droning away in his mind, informing him of the 103rd Grand Integration and how it was going to change his life and his world.

He read through his status. It hadn't been that long since he last saw it in full, but even since that moment he had made great improvements, the most obvious being his newly alloyed crafting skill.

Name: Ronan Steele

Race: Human (E)

Heritage: Reverberating Chronosphere (Current Iteration: 52) +

Level: 0

Class: None

Sub-Class 1: Sorcerer (Uncommon)

Sub-Class 2: Blessed Dao Child (Heavenly) +

Fortune: None

[Stats] +

Health: 4851/4851

Stamina: 5851/5851

Mana: 3646/3646

Vitality: 17.28 (+30)

Endurance: 29.8 (+30)

Wisdom: 5.54 (+30)

Regeneration: 4.14 (+30)

Resistance: 18.35 (+30)

Strength: 46.04 (+30)

Agility: 52.46 (+30)

Intelligence: 13 (+30)

Dexterity: 47.93 (+30)

Acuity: 17 (+30)

Tenacity: 47.98 (+30)

Luck: 4 (+30)

Charisma: 8.64 (+30)

Available Points: 0

[Traits]

[Legendary]

Fate Alignment (Personal)

[Epic]

Luminous Nerves (Mutative), Luck is a Skill (Meta), Dual Mind (Mutative)

[Rare]

Mineral Skeleton (Mutative), Berserk Cultivation Body (Mutative), Animal Prescience (Evolutionary), Manasynthetic (Evolutionary), Shard Reprocessor (Mutative)

[Skills]

[Universal]

Unified Language Adaptation

[Legendary]

Porcupine Shield, Relentless Training, Stupendous Stats

[Epic]

Reverberating Path (Blessing), Surging Strikes, Ethereal Slash, Weapons Expert - Ranged, Enchant - Explosion, Artful Accumulation, Blade Maestro, Arcane Piercing Strike, Insightful Artificer

[Rare]

Learn Through Suffering (Cla5?), Light Manipulation, Cure Affliction, Pressure Cutter, Weapons Expert - Hammers, Quick Step, Enchant - Ice, Critical Tempo, Critical Experience, Stone Grip, Magic Strike

[Uncommon]

Treasure Hunter, Weapons Expert - Melee, Counter-Parry, Suture Wound, Flash Fear, Calculation, Conversion Cultivation, Dispel, Lightning Strike, Summon Insect

[Common]

Vital Surge, Magic Money, Eagle Eye, Freeloader, Idle Cultivation

[Mastery]

Pugilist II 2/100, Mana VI 9/100, Sword V 6/100, Shield I 1/100, Staff II 1/100, Spear IV 15/100, Stamina VI 8/100, Pain III 12/100, Anti-Magic 5/100, Perception II 3/100, Leadership 1/100, Stealth 1/100, Grappling 4/100, Club I 1/100, Critical II 11/100, Momentum II 1/100, Health V 3/100, Breath 4/100, Meditation 1/100, Mace III 2/100, Crafting 1/100, Dagger I 10/100, Throwing Knife 1/100, Sickle 1/100, Knuckleduster 2/100, Pan 1/100, Hammer I 1/100, Bow I 29/100, Enchant 5/100

[Cultivation]

Mind: Opal ★★★ (11.6%) [Seven Silent Clarities (Legendary), 13.8%]

Body: Iron ★★★ (26.1%) [Diamondback Gorilla (Rare), 89.2%]

Energy: Vibrating ★★★ (8.1%) [Nine Mouths Delta (Uncommon), 100%]

Soul: Yellow ★★★★ (14.4%) [Endless Wellspring Prismatic Soul Art (Legendary), 3.9%]

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[Blessings]

Blessing of Chronos (Boundless), Minor Blessing of the Temporal Obelisk (Unique), Tellen Mark of the Guardian Initiate (Epic), Minor Blessing of the Chronos Forge (Unique), Minor Blessing of the Dark Sea (Unique)

[Mutations]

+129% Mental resistance, +49% Magical damage resistance, +309% Physical damage resistance, +209% Toxicant resistance, +48% Exsanguination resistance, +69.57% Energy absorption efficiency, +217.49% All-Damage resistance, +1.2% Soul damage resistance, +32.8% Wind resistance

Honestly it was ridiculous. Like reading an essay. And even what was displayed there wasn't the full extent of his status. There were extra sections he could open.

His stat screen allowed him to see his collection of stat fruits and how many permanent stats he'd acquired through consuming those sweet delicacies.

His heritage now not only showed his enhancements and multipliers—the latter of which looked quite miserable right now after the baptism had reset them all to their baseline values—but also his concentration tier, which was currently two.

Then there was the newly added sub-class 2, blessed dao child, which not only had added itself to his status, but brought another expandable portion of his status that told him which daos he had aligned with. Currently, the list was rather sparse, consisting of only the dao of wind.

Your difficulty has been set to [Normal]! If you believe this is an unsuitable assessment, you are free to voice your complaints. Stage 1 will begin in 5…

4…

Ronan wasn't in a rush, but he certainly wasn't going to let the system sweep him into the normal difficulty tutorial. He considered how to word his request in a manner that wouldn't draw the ire of Schneevol, the administrative assistant.

3…

I have an issue with my difficulty setting. I want the hardest you can possibly throw at me. I love a challenge. No sooner had the thought echoed out from his mind, did the system respond.

Your complaint has been received!

Please hold while it is being reviewed…

Administrative Assistant Shneevol has reviewed your complaint!

Your tutorial difficulty has been adjusted from [Normal] to [Nightmare]!

Stage 1 will begin in 5…

4…

There was no attached insult or menacing warning with the adjustment of his difficulty. He wondered why, but the system had never seemed to have much compassion. Clearly it—and its administrators—didn't particularly care whether he lived or died, so long as he took part in its twisted machinations.

0…

Good luck, challenger!

The world around Ronan twisted and he was pulled. His subconscious mind barely had time to notice the shifting void around it as he was spat out into somewhere new. His feet stepped onto hard ground, which, upon looking down at said feet, he realised was asphalt.

That was only the first oddity. He looked back up at his surroundings and realised he recognised where he was. Intimately so.

He was back on the streets of his home city. London. Except this wasn't the system-ravaged city he had explored and grown to know over the past fifty or so lives, but the London before the system came and tore Earth apart.

Towering skyscrapers reached to the cloudy sky above, with impassive monuments of brick and mortar clamouring to fill the gaps between them. Despite the sudden liveliness of the city's architecture, and the nostalgia it filled him with, a distinct feeling of wrongness crept into the back of Ronan's mind the more he looked around.

There were buildings, yes, and even a few cars parked against the pavements, but there was a distinct lack of movement. Of life.

A red glow from his neck tore his attention from his surroundings, and Ronan remembered that he was supposed to be inside the tutorial. Fuck me, that must have been a powerful mental effect for it to have taken that long for all my anti-mind-magic defences to break it.

When he looked at his surroundings once more, Ronan frowned. They were exactly the same. Which made him wonder what exactly the mental effect that he had been freed from was doing. Then the ground beneath his feet shook, and the buildings began to tremble.

Loud booms echoed in the distance. Ronan saw red and orange flashes light up the sky, coming from somewhere towards the centre of the city, if his memories were accurate. And they should be.

With nothing else to go on, Ronan decided to walk towards the explosions. Explosions that had to be caused by something. Or someone.

From the very beginning, the nightmare tutorial had changed the rules of the game. No longer was he thrown against confused or weak goblins and expected to batter them into the welcoming embrace of death, but rather he had been given a new, yet familiar environment.

There was one question on his mind right now. What was he going to face in this place?

Ronan took off at a casual sprint. A casual sprint that was almost as fast as a car, thanks to his incredibly overwhelming base agility. Stupendous stats was a hell of a skill.

Two more explosions rocked the city as he ran, and each time one shook the world around him, Ronan knew he was getting closer to his goal. He had realised while running that the explosions came from the direction of King's Cross Station. A place he hadn't been to in… Well, many lifetimes.

He turned the corner and ran up the stone steps that led to the plaza just outside one of the side entrances of the station, seeing fire and molten metal from the moment he had turned onto the street that ran parallel to the station. The roof of the station was collapsing in on itself and great, billowing clouds of smoke puffed into the sky.

More ridiculous than that sight were the huge queues of people leading into the station. They were unmoving, even as the building crashed and burned around them, threatening to completely collapse on their heads at any moment.

He ran up to the nearest person and grabbed them by the shoulders, turning them around to face him. Their eyes were glassy and unfocused, but the moment he pulled them from the queue they seemed to sharpen and the mind within awoke. "No! Let me go! I must… I must deliver myself to the Great Purifier!"

With a strength that seemed unnatural, the person writhed and pulled themselves from Ronan's grip, before retaking their place at the back of the line of people. When they did that, they seemed to calm down, and as he walked forward he saw that their eyes had turned glassy once more.

If he had truly tried to keep hold of the person, they never would have escaped his grip. However, Ronan had no desire to hurt them when he didn't know what was going on. From what he'd just witnessed, he did learn a few things about the situation.

These people are all being mentally manipulated, but by what? And to what end? The building is burning and yet they are queueing up to enter. The Great Purifier? It all sounds very… evangelical. Casting his gaze further inside the station, his stomach turned.

He saw people queueing mindlessly even as shards of molten metal and glass rained down on their heads, burning and lacerating them. Dozens died even in the ten seconds or so that he watched. Am I supposed to save them?

At that moment Ronan realised something. All his deaths had desensitised him so much. In front of him, there were hundreds of humans suffering and dying, all while under the mental compulsion of another. Not just any humans, but his countrymen and women. Londoners.

Even if this was a tutorial, who knew how real it was? What kind of twisted fuck did it make him if he could just watch this happen without immediately stepping in to save them?

He might be level 0, but this was only the first stage of the tutorial. Even if it was nightmare difficulty, there would be a way for him to beat it, and grow stronger.

Ronan rushed into the station without caring for his own health. He had enough resistance and vitality to handle a few shards of molten glass and metal hitting him, and more than enough agility and dexterity to ensure that they never struck him in the first place. Let's find out what this Great Purifier is. And then punch the shit out of it.

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