The first group of notifications that caught Rob’s attention were the usual warnings and alarms—nagging him once again about the dangers of descending any lower, urging him to climb back up for “better energy flow.”

  He brushed them aside without the faintest hint of remorse. Not for a single moment did he regret ignoring the system’s instructions. He couldn’t bring himself to trust that emotionless thing.

  And he had his reasons.

  Not the least of them being that anyone who had read his worth of novels and watched enough movies knew that any advanced, intelligent system meant no good.

  But really, he wasn’t just suspicious. It was the lack of transparency that He couldn’t stomach. The system ordered them to do this, to acquire that, yet never once explained why they were here in the first place. If it truly wanted to help—or cared in the slightest about their safety—the least it could have done was assign someone to receive them. It clearly had the ability to issue missions left and right, so it could certainly afford to create someone to guide them, to help them understand this bizarre new reality.

  [Second Mission completed successfully.]

  [Please check your avatar screen to view your rewards.]

  Rob read the notification, then reviewed the mission’s requirements. Piece by piece, he began to understand what had happened with that golden bird.

  [Congratulations, your energy technique has been completed. Please check your energy screen for more details.]

  His heavy mood began to lift as he scrolled through the different screens.

  First, he opened the avatar screen. He was fairly sure he’d already explored the energy screen before so it could just wait for a moment.

  Unlike the floating lines of text that appeared when he received messages or alerts, the avatar screen was far more vivid and detailed.

  The light twisted and swirled like fog until it condensed into the image of a card. On it was printed Rob’s own image. Plain as plain could be, he was wearing the same casual clothes he had when he first came to the Wall. At first, the background was empty, the same clear white as the Wall itself, but then the card rippled, fog shifting within the image until it revealed a majestic golden bird behind his image. Its wings spread wide until they blurred at the edges, its beak raised proudly in an eternal, silent cry.

  Then, text appeared across it:

  Name: Robert Wilson

  Level: Zero

  Avatar Card: Golden Spirit

  Avatar Aspect: Song of Ascension

  Aspect Powers: Magnetic Pull-Push, Magnetic Sense, Frozen Light, Energy Manifestation – Talons

  “Awesome,” Rob whispered. “So this is actually my superpower.”

  It didn’t take long for him to connect most of these abilities to the strange, fantastic feats he had performed while escaping from the black beetles.

  Only one puzzled him, Frozen Light.

  He focused on it, and the text changed before his eyes:

  Frozen Light:

  Light is ever-frozen within your eyes. Every scene you have seen or ever will see shall remain perfectly preserved in your memory, yours to recall at any moment.

  “What?” Rob almost shouted, catching himself just in time.

  He stuffed his filthy hand into his mouth to stifle the sound, then spat to the side, grimacing at the bitter taste on his tongue.

  Hurrying his steps, Rob looked for another hiding spot. He was childishly eager to test this power. Lying flat on the cold ground to conceal most of his body, he realized just how silly he must have looked.

  Here he was, excited over just some kind of photographic memory after everything he’d seen. after jumping meters into the air and sensing the world with his eyes closed, he was now amazed with this.

  Still, he couldn’t help it. He had to try.

  When he was sure no moving corpse lurked nearby, Rob closed his eyes and tried to recall one of the places he had seen since arriving in this world.

  At first, it was difficult to focus on any specific location. But then, with a faint nudge from deep within his heart, he suddenly knew what to do.

  And just like that, Rob traveled back in time.

  It was no exaggeration. No words could truly describe what he witnessed—except time travel.

  He had tried, for starters, to remember a simple scene: one of him standing on one of the small white islands, preparing to jump.

  But now, he was there.

  The memory didn’t appear as a flat image on a screen for him to examen.

  What He was seeing now was no mere creation of memories. It was Reality itself reborn before his closed eyes, complete with every flaw and imperfection. just as he saw it at that exact moment.

  He fumbled at his eyelids, half-expecting to find them open.

  Finding them still tightly shut, Rob tried to explore this virtual world—for it was nothing less than that.

  First, he noticed that, as expected, he could not see anything beyond what he had seen back there.

  What he could see instead was every detail, every grain of dirt and ripple of air that his brain wouldn’t usually process. All of it and more was now available to him to examine with monstrous precision.

  If his eyes had seen it once, it now existed forever in his head.

  Even more astonishing, Rob discovered he could move through the memory forward and backward. like scrubbing through a video.

  He could speed or slow the motion, focus on a single object, or blur out what he didn’t want to see.

  Without realizing it, a faint, happy smile curved His lips as he played with the visual memories in his head. He went back and forth, revisiting every place and trying to take in the small, invisible details he had once brushed aside in haste or indifference.

  But soon, that innocent, joyful smile grew stiff and froze on his face.

  Moments later, it dissolved and melted under the quiet fall of tears slipping from his closed eyes.

  He rewound time. Before the Wall. Before everything. He found himself once more at that simple, forgettable dinner table.

  But now, it wasn’t vague or blurry. Rob prided himself on having a perfect visual memory, yet he could never have dreamed of seeing his family and loved ones again with such life-like clarity.

  There they were. dishes full of food and faces full of happiness and contentment. For a long time, he just stayed like that, staring at the living memory of his family, a deep ache and a tangible sense of loss settling in his chest.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Finally, Rob couldn’t go on staring any longer. The more he looked at their faces, the heavier his sadness became. So he lowered his head, staring at that half-eaten bowl of pasta from their last dinner together. Then he said A few words and opened his eyes, dismissing the memory.

  “I will be back.”

  Rob promised himself, the two worlds, and the bird nesting within his chest.

  Wiping the tears from his face, he forced his thoughts away from home and continued reading the rest of the avatar powers.

  [Magnetic pull-push]

  [Your body is a magnet, and the world is your iron. You decide what to pull or push. Energy consumption scales with environment , distance, size, and velocity.]

  [Magnetic sense]

  You can sense the magnetic force in your surroundings and the magnetic direction of the closest celestial object. Range increases with perception.

  [Energy manifestation]

  Using one-tenth of your energy reserves, you can manifest a part of the golden spirit “Talon.” Energy consumed can be reclaimed upon voluntary dismissal, but will be permanently lost if the manifestation is forcefully destroyed.

  He didn’t gain much from those descriptions. He already had firsthand experience with how these powers worked, and they offered no new insight into his doubts.

  But that didn’t matter for now. Rob was starting to form the outline of a plan, and he would figure everything out in due time.

  Next, he checked his energy screen.

  [Access Energy: 2% – 110%]

  [Origin Energy: low-E]

  [Energy Technique: Incomplete, Stomach of Greed → Completed: Will of Greed]

  [Technique Description: You take more than you need, and you give less than you owed. Energy in your body is fully under your will. Its only purpose is to fuel your desire.]

  Of course, Rob first noticed his declining energy. He had expected it. When he reached the black sea, it was already below half. And although his encounter with those damned beetles was brief compared to the distance he had descended, he had used his powers the entire way. powers that clearly consumed a great deal of energy.

  The second thing he noticed was something he didn’t fully understand, the “Origin Energy” section. It had dropped from mid to low, and no matter how hard he focused on it, the system offered no additional information.

  Finally came the biggest change: the energy technique itself.

  Rob was irritated. The cursed thing was still insistent on calling him greedy. If he ever met its creator, Rob swore the first thing he’d give him would be a taste of his fist.

  Anyway, he was clueless about the technique, as well. Most of its description made little sense to him, so he ignored it for now.

  Instead, he chose to focus on what might actually help him get out of here ,his powers.

  When he had been playing with Frozen Light earlier and retraced his path to this point, he realized that if he managed to make better use of his magnetic powers and leap faster from island to island, he might stand a small chance of reaching the Wall again before the black beetles surrounded him.

  But first, he needed to improve his control over those powers. For example, landing on his feet every time he jumped instead of crashing down on his hands, knees—or worse, his whole body.

  And Rob knew exactly how to do that.

  “This is going to be dangerous. Very dangerous.”

  ***

  Rob found a chasm-like hollow on the edge of the black shore, lying slightly northeast of where he had first arrived.

  He circled the place a few times, cutting down the wandering corpses within a safe radius, then descended inside to deal with the few that hid in the darkness below.

  Once the area was cleared, he began preparing a spot to steal a few moments of rest. He piled up rocks, scraps, and whatever debris he could find along the narrow passage before his resting place. just enough to make a loud clatter if one of those damned corpses came too close.

  Still, he couldn’t be fully sure that was enough.

  “What if... one of those beetles sneaks up on me?”

  Rob muttered, his voice barely louder than his own breath, as he leaned his back against the cool, uneven wall of the chasm.

  But it was useless.

  By now, he knew that a fully safe place — like a home — was almost nonexistent in this warped world. This was the best he was going to get for now, and he had to take the risk if he wanted a sound mind to try and leave this hell of an island.

  So, without further thought and before the flood of dark images and dreadful possibilities could fill his head, He pulled his arms over his face, shut his eyes, and surrendered to sleep.

  The ease with which he drifted off only proved how utterly exhausted and sleep-deprived he was. He was spent in all aspects, body, mind, and soul.

  This, however, didn’t mean he was free from any unsettling thoughts, for his sleep wasn’t sound at all. It was an intermittent cycle of dreadful illusions when half-awake and suffocating, hellish nightmares when half-asleep.

  When he finally awoke with a jolt from one of those nightmares, he couldn’t help but wonder whether this had really been rest or just another kind of torment.

  Well, at least his head was no longer as heavy as a stone, and the acute pain behind his eyes had finally receded.

  Stretching his arms for a good moment and popping his neck a few times, Rob walked toward the center of the slightly empty space.

  He stood there, his hand under his chin, deep in thought.

  “So... how should I do this?”

  He pondered aloud. He wanted to train to better use his power and familiarize himself with all its aspects.

  But… he didn’t know where to start. It wasn’t like gaining superpowers was something he had ever studied for.

  In the end, Rob decided that hesitation would get him nowhere. So, he did what he’d been doing since he was six.

  He told himself this was just like another football practice.

  Without wasting another moment, Rob commenced warming up.

  He started with stretches, moving his arms and legs rhythmically to loosen his stiff muscles.

  After that came sets of squats, push-ups, and core drills.

  then Rob jogged a few laps around the chasm out of sheer habit.

  Finally, feeling as fit as he had ever been, He finished his last sprint and returned to the center.

  Blood roared in his ears as he threw his fists into the air and grinned.

  “Let’s go.”

  He believed that repetition was the only way for the body to learn. so he planned to do magnetic pulls and pushes a hundred times or so, just for his body to recognize the motion instinctively.

  And that was exactly what he did.

  For hours, Rob trained, propelling himself upward with bursts of magnetic force.

  At first, he must have looked like a kid overdosed on sugar. One time he would overdo it and leap far into the sky; another, he would miscalculate and land off to the side, far from his jumping point.

  But with time and repetition, Rob got better and better. His leaps became consistent, always reaching the same height with every Push. The radius of his landing grew tighter and tighter until he was almost jumping straight up and down in a perfect vertical line.

  After a while, Rob started to feel a change.

  At first, he dismissed it as the beginning of fatigue or maybe dulling numbness of repetition. But soon, he noticed a subtle pattern. a pulse that synchronized perfectly with each pull and push he made against the ground.

  Whenever he activated his Magnetic Pull-Push, he could feel a current gathering through his body and surging toward his feet.

  It was faint ; a feeling akin to blood moving through veins. Normally, no one could perceive the blood circulating inside their body.

  But it would be a completely different case if that same blood circulation were constantly reversing direction . flowing one way, then the opposite, again and again in a short span of time.

  And that’s exactly what He was doing by pushing and pulling relentlessly.

  He was, however, far from having any modicum of control over this movement of energy. He tried to stop it midway, but he couldn’t. The moment he willed a push or pull, it happened—whether he liked it or not.

  He didn’t mind that much. At least it was better to learn it here than in the middle of some dangerous jump. And it didn’t mean that he couldn’t change his trajectory midway if he wanted. He could, in a way, go around it by using an opposite Magnetic Push-Pull to cancel the previous one out.

  After noting that, Rob continued his training in other jumping positions.

  He leapt back and forth, drawing wide curves through the air; then left and right, shifting from side to side. He practiced magnet Pulling-Pushing while running and from a standing position. He even climbed to a higher ledge and threw himself down again and again, trying to figure out the best way to withstand a fall from high altitude. But that proved harder than he had imagined.

  Because he wasn’t waiting until he neared the ground to magnet push against it and halt his fall. Instead, he was attempting something much harsher. Rob wanted to master how to stop mid-fall by clinging to the nearest flat wall from him. The reason was simple: since he would spend the foreseeable future climbing a bottomless wall, a sudden, groundless fall was almost guaranteed. He needed to be ready for that.

  When He first thought of this method, it had sounded so perfect and cool in his head. He imagined himself leaping from a high cliff, then midway magnet-pulling toward the wall and clinging to it like Spider-Man.

  Reality, however, proved far more demanding. For one thing, it took him a good while to lie to himself just enough to gather the courage to jump from that height. And once he did, he quickly found many flaws in his vision.

  First, there was barely enough time to react. Within seconds, he would be speeding toward the rapidly enlarging ground, and if he delayed his push against it for even a moment, he risked a broken bone—or worse, a twisted neck.

  Worse still, he learned on his first attempt that simply tugging himself toward the wall wasn’t going to work. Too much force, and he risked dislocating his shoulder or twisting his elbow; too little, and he’d crash straight into the ground before his hands even brush against the wall.

  So Rob kept at it, trying to solve the problems as they arose.

  But training couldn’t go on forever, and eventually, he had to stop. Not because he was tired or sore, but because his Energy was almost spent.

  In fact, Rob had managed to train that long only because earlier he had collected forty energy points’ worth of cards after killing the few corpses closest to his camp. He had thought that would be enough. After all, eleven points usually filled his reserves completely. but he was wrong. The magnetic push-pull drained him faster than expected, and now he had only one card left, worth five points, not even enough to fill half his energy reserves.

  “I didn’t think I’d need to do this so soon,” He muttered as he wrapped up his training and began preparing for the hunt.

  Yea! super powers! finally.