A New Era

Moen, Ideal City. A certain high school.

Teachers' office.

"There's a reaction similar to telekinesis, but it's nowhere near an Lv.1 rating... What a shame. Your telekinesis can't even bend a spoon."

The elderly teacher looked at the glaring "no ability" assessment on the test file in his hand, then at the plainly dressed boy before him. His expression was complicated, and his tone was full of regret.

"I remember you came to Ideal City through the Outer City Talent Development Program, right?

"I know you're unwilling to accept this. You still want to undergo a few more ability activation tests and gamble on the chance of awakening an ability.

"But you've already taken part in three ability activation tests. Even if your grades are excellent, another test would drain the limit of your student loan.

"You need to understand that if you fail to get into one of the three major academies, the student loans provided by the megacorps cannot be delayed by even a single payment...

"But there are only a dozen or so days left until the college entrance exams. Have you decided what you're going to do?"

Seeing the regret in the old teacher's eyes, Ron wanted to say that he had a solution too.

But after eighteen years in this near-future world ruled by superpowered people and megacorporations, the first thing he had learned was that human strength had its limits.

No money, no talent, no luck—

For an ordinary person with none of those three things, like him, unless he awakened his personal reality and became a superpowered person, he was destined to become one of the most basic gears keeping Ideal City running, struggling for survival at the lowest level of a megacorp for the rest of his life.

Seeing Ron remain silent, the old teacher sighed and could not help shifting his gaze aside.

A short-haired girl with tea-brown hair leaned against the wall, chewing bubble gum and lazily blowing pink bubbles.

Pale silver arcs of electricity danced through her hair like silver fish drifting through a forest of algae, producing faint crackling sounds.

She had awakened the rare ability Magnetic Field Rotation. The personal reality she had constructed was already enough to affect her surroundings at every moment, and her ability level was at least Lv.2.

A student with such potential in high school would either be directly admitted to one of the three major academies and take up an important position in a megacorp after graduation, or join the Moen City government and embark on a political career. Life would be effortless.

Thinking of that, the old teacher felt weary. Both of his prized students came from the outer city, and both possessed gifts far beyond those of ordinary high schoolers.

Yet because Ron had still failed to activate his personal reality, the difference between their futures was already obvious to the naked eye.

"If only you had talent like An Hui. With your computing power, as long as you awakened an ability, you would definitely reach Lv.2 and get into one of the three major academies."

He sighed, but still tried to think of a way for Ron.

"But you don't need to worry too much. The school has several guaranteed admission slots for Noah Pharmaceuticals Technical College. I can try to secure one for you.

"I know your grades are good, but a good vocational college isn't necessarily worse than a university!

"This is a specialized school jointly established by Noah Pharmaceuticals subsidiaries. If you seize the opportunity, you can begin an internship after only a week of study and become a megacorp employee, saving yourself several years of detours."

Those were a few too many detours to skip...

At a megacorp, someone with a vocational college degree could forget about promotion or a raise for life. The average lifespan of Noah Pharmaceuticals' bottom-level employees was less than thirty.

While he would no longer need to worry about being sent to a megacorp laboratory and sliced apart for failing to repay his loans, that was only a slow death.

Sure enough, Ideal City did not believe in tears.

If he could not become a superpowered person, then he could only choose between immediate execution and a suspended death sentence.

Fortunately, Ron had cheats.

He shook his head. "Teacher, I actually still have a way to become a superpowered person."

The old teacher was stunned by Ron's words.

"A way? You're poor... Ahem, what way could a student like you possibly have?"

In the entire school, who did not know that Ron came from a poor family and was all alone? He could not even find an emergency contact to take out a payday loan. There was barely any supernatural potential to squeeze out of him, so how could he hope to construct a personal reality?

"Teacher, have you ever heard about the previous era?"

Yet Ron seemed remarkably confident.

"Several decades ago, Heavenly Hearing Media successfully deciphered the writing of the previous era and interpreted the relics and texts left behind from that era.

"Through those texts, people learned that before the historical rupture caused by the Great Cataclysm, there had been multiple supernatural entities in the world with unimaginable power.

"Human civilization of that time revered them as gods, pursued their footsteps, and relied on their blessings to concoct a substance that could grant supernatural power after being consumed. It was called a [Sequence Potion].

"Heavenly Hearing Media generously collected all the translated documents in the municipal grand library. I heard that the formulas for those potions are among them.

"Perhaps I can use the information they disclosed to try concocting a potion for myself and become a superpowered person that way."

"..."

Listening to Ron's idea, which sounded no different from a daydream, the old teacher's gaze changed.

His regret for a good student became pity for a fool.

After a moment of silence, he carefully chose his words.

"Well... Have you considered the possibility that what you're talking about is far too vague and ethereal, dating back to the previous era from who knows how many years ago?

"After ten thousand years of change, everything from the old days has become vastly different from the present.

"Even if you could somehow ignore the passage of all those years and truly concoct that so-called Sequence Potion... it would have nothing to do with superpowered people.

"After all, we all know that the first superpowered person was Alpha, the CEO of Moen Commerce.

"She conducted the first ability activation experiment in human history, constructed her own personal reality, and only then opened this new era that belonged to superpowered people.

"I advise you to focus on something more realistic instead of indulging in such far-fetched fantasies..."

But Ron paid no attention to the old teacher's warning. Instead, he asked with a strange expression, "So you know about the previous era? You know that it was an age when people could become supernatural beings through Sequence Potions, right?"

The old teacher froze, unable to understand what Ron meant.

"Of course... The history of the previous era was included in textbooks when I was still in elementary school.

"I may be old, but I'm not some senile old man who can't remember anything. Those are the only verifiable records of the previous era. How could I possibly forget even that?"

Ron turned to the tea-brown-haired girl beside him. "You know too, right, Huihui?"

An Hui popped her bubble and gave Ron a puzzled glance.

"We both got perfect scores in history. How could I not know? Why are you asking such a meaningless question?"

Why?

Ron lowered his head, hiding the faint curl at the corner of his mouth as he glanced sideways at the light screen that only he could see.

Because the previous era, mysteries, potions...

Before yesterday, before Ron chose to alter this world, none of it had existed at all!

Dimensional Update Manual. That was the name of the light screen.

It had been loading ever since Ron transmigrated into this world, only completing its loading a few days ago.

Heaven have mercy on him. After arriving in this world as a transmigrator, every day he had either studied himself half to death or desperately worked part-time jobs while eating cheap nutrient paste, all just to barely survive in a world where superpowered people reigned supreme...

Compared to that, he had started missing the blessings of his previous life's 996 work schedule!

So the moment he saw that the manual had finished loading, tears filled his eyes. He almost wanted to open a command console, type in "whosyourdaddy," then bully the entire world to vent the fury of the Fourth Calamity.

But after briefly studying it, he discovered that this thing could not quite support his grand ambition of ruling the world just yet.

The manual's light screen contained only two sparse options and a player panel—

[Create New World]

[Enter World Save]

[Player Panel]

Name: Ron

Level: Lv.0

Class: Superpowered Person

Setting: [Fantasy Dissolution]

One look at the panel was enough to tell that Ron was merely a pitiful level-zero player, powerless enough that even a stray dog by the roadside could fight him all the way to the curb and still be impossible for him to defeat with all his strength.

The other two options were rather unusual. When the manual had just finished loading, neither of them could be selected.

It was not until Ron accidentally knocked over the bookshelf in his dormitory and picked up a long-dusty copy of Tarot Divination and Medieval Herbalism that the manual gave new feedback.

[Setting anchor detected. World settings generated—"Mysticism," "Potions."]

[Please select world settings to fill the blank world framework and create a new world.]

[Current maximum number of world settings that can be accommodated: 2]

The [Create New World] option lit up. Only then did Ron understand that this manual could use generated world settings as material to create a new world.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he searched afterward, he could not find another setting anchor. The only thing favored by the manual was that occult novel he had bought from a street stall.

With a try-it-and-see mindset, Ron had no choice but to select the only two settings, [Mysticism] and [Potions], then press [Create New World] on the manual.

The next second, a small speaker icon appeared on the manual—

[Version Update Notice: Version 3.000. We extinguished the First Flame, exiled everything of the Divine Age beyond the stars, and added the new world setting "Potion Sequence."

[Now, people can become supernatural beings by consuming potions.]

But apart from that inexplicable prompt, nothing happened.

He had thought his golden finger was a useless, unfinished product. But when he discovered that the occult novel serving as the anchor had become an unopened spellbook, and that a new passage about the previous era had appeared in the history books, he realized that he had misunderstood.

Creating a new world did not mean creating one from nothing. It meant altering this world and fabricating a new era out of thin air in an ancient, untraceable past!

Unfortunately, the [Enter World Save] option on the manual still had not lit up. Instead, a new prompt appeared in response to the spellbook that had appeared in Ron's hands.

[Infuse supernatural power into the setting anchor—"Introduction to Mysticism"—to charge it and open the gate to the created world, "Potion Era."]

[Current charging progress: 0%]

—So the question was.

Where was he supposed to charge this spellbook?

He absolutely could not reveal this thing to anyone. It seemed he could only rely on his telekinesis, which could barely lift a sheet of paper...

Recalling all this, Ron sighed as he returned to the classroom after leaving the teachers' office. He focused his mind and used his exceedingly weak telekinesis to touch the ornately decorated spellbook—

[Charging progress +0.01%]

[Current charging progress: 0.03%]

Well, it seemed that reaching the Potion Era would still be a long and arduous journey...

He packed up the guaranteed admission agreement and test file, stuffed them into his backpack together with the spellbook, then left the school and set out for home. Above him stretched a lead-gray sky.

Riding his somewhat old electric scooter, Ron was squeezed into the middle of the neon-lit stream of hovering vehicles, swept relentlessly forward like a tide.

Looking through the traffic from the corner of his eye, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Ideal City—

Here, the entire land was covered in steel and concrete. Skyscrapers soared along both sides of the roads, sleek cloud-rail trains flashed past from time to time, and together with the stream of hovering vehicles surrounding Ron, they formed an unceasing river flowing through the gaps of the megacity.

In 2077, humanity completed its first anti-gravity project.

Using that as a foundation, the three major megacorps invested in and launched the Ideal City Plan.

Endless steel erased nature, and layer upon layer of cityscape covered half the planet.

This was Moen City—the singularity of the world, a city of ideals.

Here, technology and the supernatural advanced side by side, leading humanity to conquer nature and seek a path toward the stars.

Even the bottom-level residents of Ideal City, who survived by selling their blood, could not help straightening their backs when speaking of this industrial miracle forged by the combined efforts of the three major megacorps.

Even the harshest critics believed this was an era of progress, and humanity's next leap forward seemed close at hand...

But that had nothing to do with ordinary people like Ron.

That leap forward belonged to superpowered people. Ideal City's ideals were nothing but a dream bubble to mortals, who had to struggle with all their strength simply to stay alive.

As he passed through one cramped alley after another, the towering buildings around him gradually became shorter. The bright neon lights grew sparse and dim, and the noisy voices disappeared, leaving the area cold and desolate.

Ron rented a student apartment in District D of Ideal City. The surrounding environment and facilities were poor, the room was tiny, and the soundproofing was awful. Every day, he could hear the young couple next door duo-queueing for ranked matches. But the rent was cheap enough to afford through part-time work, so he was fairly satisfied with the place.

But this place was usually such a mess... Why was it so quiet today?

"Creak—"

Ron squeezed the brakes and planted one foot on the ground at the roadside, frowning.

The hum of outdoor air-conditioning units, the drip of condensation, the chirping of sparrows flying overhead...

Yet there was not a single human voice.

District D of Ideal City was a well-known slum, with a population density far higher than the other districts. How could there not be a single human voice?

Something was wrong. Run first, ask questions later.

The unease in Ron's heart made him immediately turn his scooter around to head back the way he had come. But a burst of green light suddenly exploded in the alley behind him. Illegally piled scaffolding and steel plates along the alley walls were blasted over and scattered in a chaotic heap, blocking his path.

He had nowhere to retreat.

"Such sharp observation. As expected of the master thief who stole the Forbidden Codex."

A hoarse voice sounded behind him. Ron turned around and saw a hunched figure in a cloak walking toward him while applauding.

The figure pulled back his hood, revealing a gaunt, pallid face. He gave Ron an awkward imitation of a gentleman's bow and smiled without the slightest warmth.

"I set up a repelling barrier, a simple and practical little spell, to ensure that the two of us will not be disturbed by others for some time.

"The barrier implants suggestions into all ordinary people who have not perceived mysticism, driving them away from this place... Unfortunately, in a lowly slum like District D, your Ideal City law enforcers would not even bother taking a look.

"Otherwise, if a superpowered discipline patrol happened to pass through here, perhaps they might save your life."

What did he mean, save his life?

Feeling the venomous gaze that swept over his throat, Ron shuddered instinctively as a chill crawled up his spine.

He realized something serious—

Although this man's words sounded almost like the ravings of a daydream, he clearly was not filming some prank show, nor was he a lunatic who had escaped from a mental hospital.

He truly intended to kill him.

The old man did not care about Ron's increasingly solemn expression. He merely looked at him coldly and continued speaking to himself.

"You silently infiltrated the Ashen Church and stole the original Forbidden Codex, Key of Beginning. It was the work of a master thief, yet you did not use any vessel to store the Forbidden Codex and repeatedly attempted to trigger its mysteries...

"I cannot understand whether such behavior comes from pure confidence or a deliberate provocation against the Magician Association, but since I have come here, you have only one choice left."

As he spoke, he rubbed the emerald ring on his finger. The dark green gemstone gradually began to glow, and one flickering symbol after another emerged on the alley walls, shining an eerie green.

"Morti vocatum meum audiunt..."

The incomprehensible murmur brought bone-chilling cold. Rings of magic circles bloomed from thin air around him, vivid green magical patterns lit up across his body, and his face twisted hideously.

The next moment, cracks abruptly split open across the concrete ground before him, and a swollen, rotten, withered hand stretched out from within...

A shambling corpse crawled out. Its cold gaze locked onto Ron as it opened its mouth, eerie green light rising from its throat.

The magician's face visibly paler and his steps unsteady, he coughed twice and said in a chilling voice, "Return the Forbidden Codex to me... or die."

What Forbidden Codex? What magic?

Ron could not understand any of this at all.

If you wanted the Forbidden Codex, go look for it in churches and museums. If you wanted magic, perform it properly on a stage. Why come looking for me?!

But looking at the corpse in the distance, reeking of rot and letting out hoarse roars, Ron felt that this kind of performance was better kept off the stage.

At the very least, it definitely would not pass Ideal City's all-ages review...

With that thought in mind, Ron did not sit around waiting to die.

He calmed himself and swept his gaze over his surroundings—

If he knocked that scaffolding crooked, the illegally stacked steel pipes on top would rain down like arrows and turn this man into a sieve;

If he twisted off that window guardrail and sent the poorly maintained air-conditioning unit crashing down, it would strike dead center like a falling boulder and leave this man half dead;

That manhole cover... that streetlamp...

In an instant, Ron thought of many possibilities. He possessed computational ability comparable to a Lv.2 superpowered individual, enough to devise all sorts of ways to turn danger into safety, but...

No matter how many options he had, no matter how full of openings this strange man who clearly looked down on him appeared to be, he had absolutely no ability to defeat him.

Because his telekinesis could only lift a sheet of paper. It could not knock over scaffolding or twist apart window guardrails.

Because he was a Lv.0 powerless individual.

For a moment, Ron could not help gritting his teeth. This guy was so arrogant, yet he could so easily wield the extraordinary.

If only he possessed that kind of power...

No, even if it were weaker—even if he were only a Lv.1 superpowered individual—there was no way this man could beat him!

Such powerful extraordinary force... Wait, extraordinary force?

Looking at the green light growing brighter in the zombie's throat, Ron suddenly thought of that copy of Introduction to Mysticism.

The moment his telekinesis touched that book, it would immediately vanish, transformed into extraordinary power that was poured into the handbook as charge...

Then what about this zombie?

He did not even need to think about it. Even though he had never actually seen magic before, Ron knew that this zombie was probably about to spit out some deathly scream or soul shock and turn him into a corpse.

But if it could be used to charge the magic book...

Seeing Ron's expression constantly shift, seemingly lost in thought, the magician finally lost his patience and sneered.

"I know the Forbidden Codex is in your backpack. The spell Scream of the Withered Dead will not affect it, so I'm not worried about damaging the Forbidden Codex.

"The forbidden arts of the Necromancer School inflict damage that living beings can never withstand. With a single breath from it, you'll be reduced to ashes... You don't want to die without even a body left behind, do you?"

As he spoke, he extended a hand toward Ron.

"I'll give you one last chance. Hand over the Forbidden Codex!"

But Ron calmed down instead.

"If you want it, come take it yourself."

The magician did not see the fear that should have been on Ron's face. He only heard him say flatly,

"If your magic actually works."

"You overestimate yourself!"

A trace of anger surfaced on the magician's face. No longer bothering to maintain the act of a gentleman, he drove the spell at full force, and the magic circle flashed with blinding green light.

The zombie opened its mouth wide and released a piercing shriek. A green breath sprayed toward Ron—

But Ron had long since prepared himself.

Without hesitation, he flung his backpack forward and shielded himself with it. The dark green soundwave reduced the backpack to rotten scraps the instant it touched it, revealing an ornately decorated magic book.

In an instant, the frigid magic power abruptly stalled.

The next moment, the chilling breath seemed to be siphoned backward. In the blink of an eye, it was all swallowed by the magic book like a whale devouring water, as though it had never existed.

The handbook's notification sounded beside his ear—

[Charging progress +99.97%]

[Current charging progress: 100%]

[Configuration anchor "Introduction to Mysticism" has been fully charged. Its seal has been unlocked. Based on its charging attribute, the world anchor "Potion Era" has been selected, and its gateway has been opened.]

The final previously unavailable option on the handbook's light screen finally lit up. Ron tapped [Enter World Save] without hesitation.

"..."

In an instant, Ron felt a faint sensation of dizziness. Darkness swallowed his vision for a moment before dim lights gradually came into view.

He caught the pungent smell of coal smoke and saw kerosene lamps glowing faintly.

When he looked up, the layered concrete high-rises of Ideal City were no longer before his eyes. Instead, there were cold stone-brick walls, sticky moss creeping across them and giving off a faint stench of blood.

By the wall, a gaunt corpse had been shackled to it with cold bronze fetters. It had been dead for who knew how long. Its flesh had rotted and bred maggots, flies buzzed around it, and white bones could vaguely be seen beneath the decaying meat.

Ron frowned. At some point, cold shackles had been locked around his feet. A knife-like pain faintly pricked at his ankles; there were clearly sharp blades inside the restraints.

Turning his head, he saw a small window sealed by cold bars. Through it, he could see towering clock towers and churches. A steam train roared past, belching clouds of coal smoke.

Gentlemen in top hats hurried by, while ladies lifted their skirts and tiptoed over the mud. Public carriages raced along the streets.

Church bells rang, reminding Ron that he had arrived in a new era—an era that belonged to mystery—

But he had arrived as a prisoner.