Awakening Memories

The streets blazed with neon, stylish young women wore skimpy clothes, traffic lights stood beside the crosswalk, and an out-of-control dump truck...

Beep~~

A shrill horn pierced the dream. Tao Yu jolted awake, drenched in sweat, and gasped for breath.

With each ragged breath, a faint smell of mildew and sour sweat crept into his nostrils, gradually bringing Tao Yu fully awake.

It was happening again. The same dream, so vivid he couldn't tell fantasy from reality.

Was he Tao Yu, a corporate drone from the twenty-first century, or Tao Yu, an Outer City youth about to turn eighteen? He could barely tell anymore.

He'd occasionally had this dream over the years, but as his eighteenth birthday—and the Awakening Day it represented—drew nearer, the dreams had become more frequent. For the past month, all he had to do was close his eyes.

At first, he'd thought the pressure of Awakening Day approaching was causing hallucinations. But as more information and memories flooded in, the coherent, self-consistent body of knowledge they formed told him that it was all real.

Going by the novels he remembered from the dream, he'd probably been reincarnated in another world...

He recalled the peaceful, warm, beautiful world from his memories. Then he looked at the damp bedstead cobbled together from bricks and wooden planks, the stains on the asbestos-board walls, and the window covered with cardboard.

Tao Yu's expression went blank.

Through a gap in the cardboard covering the window, he stared into the darkness outside. He listened to the wind, and to the indistinct murmurs and muffled whispers drifting from the night. His thoughts grew even more tangled.

An old oil lamp sat beside the bed. Its soybean-sized flame cast a hazy glow throughout the little room, but the light stopped abruptly at the window, as if not a single ray could pass through it.

The flame flickered now and then, making the shadows shiver across the room as if they were alive. It seemed the tiny flame might go out at any moment.

"Was there really a peaceful world where everyone could afford to eat meat...?"

Tao Yu had lived in this world for eighteen years. Thinking back on his past life's memories felt like looking back across another lifetime.

Things he'd taken for granted in his previous life were luxuries—impossible dreams—in this one!

Why couldn't the Tao Yu from this world have crossed over to that one?

With the combat and survival skills he'd practiced so diligently for eighteen years, he could at least have become a bodyguard or some rich family's live-in son-in-law in a twenty-first-century city.

The Abyss...

The sword of Damocles hanging over everyone in this world, the end of all worlds.

No one knew how many years had passed since the Abyss first set its sights on this world.

From the scraps of knowledge Tao Yu had gathered, he understood that when the Abyss first began to devour the world, the World Will had instinctively awakened and granted everyone the power to fight back.

Pioneers ventured deeper into the world fragments within the Abyss rifts, seizing wish power to keep the world alive. That was how it had managed to endure until now.

Tao Yu didn't know exactly what had happened over the years. But the Gray Fog, the sign of the Abyss's invasion, had already spread across the world, squeezing humanity's habitable zones into cities and shelters.

Most connections between cities had been severed. People could only travel through the Gray Fog by illuminating the way with a Will-o'-the-Wisp, and even then, they could barely maintain what little communication remained.

The Flame of Civilization that drove away the Gray Fog around each city, and the Awakening Day each person faced on their eighteenth birthday, seemed to be the World Will's final gifts...

Cluck-cluck-cluck~

A faint rooster's crow came from beyond the pitch-black window. In an instant, it seemed the darkness outside vanished, replaced by a hazy gray light.

The crowing pulled Tao Yu from his thoughts. Looking at the gray light beyond the window, he couldn't help sighing. Then he turned the oil lamp beside his bed, its surface caked in black grime, and extinguished the soybean-sized flame.

Disappearances in the Outer City had been on the rise lately. Who knew when they'd end? He hoped he could awaken a combat talent today. Given his parents' talents, Dynamic Vision was probably the best he could hope for.

If his Dynamic Vision reached C-rank or higher, his status might change.

Tao Yu slipped on a pair of rubber-soled shoes stained with some unidentified black grime and pushed open the old door. It creaked shrilly. Outside was a living room much like his room.

The living room walls were patched together mainly from asbestos board and sheet metal. In the center stood a rust-spotted table cobbled together from a tripod. The chairs were mismatched too, as if assembled from all kinds of scrap: wood, triangular boards, metal, and more.

He went to the water vat, picked up the porcelain basin beside it, and scooped water into it with a dented aluminum ladle.

He looked at his reflection: a thin face with a touch of delicate charm. His feelings were complicated.

He wasn't bad-looking, but he seemed malnourished. The frequent dreams this month had brought his thoughts increasingly in line with his past life. He felt like his mind had gotten sharper, too.

Creak~

Another shrill door opened. A dark-skinned, capable-looking woman stepped out of a room. When she saw Tao Yu, she smiled, revealing a row of white teeth.

"A'Yu, it's your Awakening Day. You should get some proper rest. I'll take care of the farm work."

"Sister-in-law, I couldn't sleep."

Tao Yu gave her a polite nod, then washed his face.

"All right. Mom and Dad should be back from their expedition around noon. They might bring you some useful weapons and equipment."

The woman sighed, thinking Tao Yu was just too nervous, and tried to reassure him.

"I'll get you something fresh to take along. You can eat it on your first day."

"Thanks, Sister-in-law."

After washing his face, Tao Yu thanked her.

She was his third sister-in-law. His eldest and second-eldest brothers had died on their Awakening Days; his fourth sister had married and moved away; his fifth brother had died on a cannon-fodder mission; his sixth sister had gone mad and been beaten to death by the Security Team. Apart from Tao Yu, only his parents, his third brother and sister-in-law, and his sixteen-year-old younger brother remained at home.

To lower the priority of being assigned cannon-fodder missions and raise their family's contribution score, his parents were probably considering having a ninth child. Tao Yu just didn't know if they could still have one.

His parents both had relatively steady jobs, so he'd had a "fairly stable" childhood. Still, he'd grown up accustomed to seeing people die.

When the Abyss invaded, the World Will awakened and granted humanity the power to fight back. Awakening Day was a major turning point in everyone's life.

From the day they awakened, everyone had to spend time venturing into the Abyss rifts to search for wish power and strengthen themselves. In doing so, they also strengthened the World Will and helped it resist the Abyss's invasion.

It wasn't exactly a system of stats and status panels, but after Awakening Day, the World Will let each person understand their abilities fairly clearly. They could use wish power to accelerate their growth, and they also awakened a personal talent.

Personal talents varied wildly. Most were of little use in combat, and they had a major effect on how quickly a person could grow.

Resources were limited, so companies were more willing to train people with combat-oriented talents, granting them certain privileges and resources.

For instance, Tao Yu's father, Tao Long, had Eagle Eye (C+). It offered limited help in direct combat, but gave him an edge in scouting, sniping, and reconnaissance. That was why he'd managed to survive all these years.

His mother, Hong Xia, had Agility (F). In theory, Agility was better suited to combat than Eagle Eye, but its starting rank was too low—only slightly better than the lowest rank, F-.

There were supposedly cases of people improving their talent ranks after awakening, even transforming them or gaining multiple talents. But such things clearly wouldn't happen in an ordinary family like theirs.

So his mother had eventually chosen to marry his father, hoping they could have a child with Dynamic Vision, a more suitable standard combat talent.

She herself had specialized in a manufacturing skill, and her nimble hands had earned her a position as a seasoned worker in a leather factory.

Combined with the contribution score they'd earned from having so many children, that was why the company hadn't assigned them any cannon-fodder missions over the years.

Individual talents were closely linked to heredity, but among Tao Yu's many siblings, only his third brother, Tao Tong, had inherited the improved talent his parents hoped for: Dynamic Vision (D+).

In theory, Tao Tong should have gone even further. He'd even joined the company's Security Team for a time.

But after losing both legs on a mission, everything came to an abrupt halt.

Neither an item capable of regrowing limbs nor mechanical prosthetics that would let him keep fighting was something the family could afford.

Fortunately, he'd been injured while carrying out a company mission. For publicity, the company had "graciously" exempted him and his wife, Li Li, from cannon-fodder assignments for life. They no longer had to worry about being forcibly drafted into such missions.