Cain Mathers stood on the balcony of his rundown apartment, a cigarette burning low between his fingers. Above him, the heavens had split. Thin, jagged lines—like cracks in glass—stretched across the twilight, faintly pulsing with colors that didn’t belong to this world. Veins of crimson and deep violet. Faint trails of gold, flickering like dying embers.
The air felt... off. Heavy. Too still, as if the entire world had taken a breath and forgotten to exhale.
He didn’t know how he knew, but he felt it in his bones: Something had broken.
Cain exhaled smoke and watched it drift into the heavy dusk. “The hell is this…” he muttered, voice rough from too many late-night shifts and cheap cigarettes.
The city below was alive with confusion. Car alarms wailed. People crowded sidewalks, heads tilted upward, smartphones flashing as they recorded the sky’s impossible wounds. The usual city chaos—horns, sirens, chatter—felt muted, like a soundtrack playing under thick glass.
And then—
A sound.
Not thunder. Not an explosion. But a chime.
High, clear, and resonant, like a great bell struck deep inside his skull. The hairs on his arms stood on end. His cigarette slipped from his fingers, spiraling ember-first to the pavement six floors below.
The world... froze.
No wind. No voices. No sound at all.
Only—
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION...][Loading Earth 2.0...][Integration: 99%...]
A screen—impossibly large—appeared in the sky, flickering in cold, crystalline blue. The same blue that would haunt his every waking moment from this day forward.
Then the voice came. It wasn’t heard with ears. It was felt—an announcement imprinted directly into the soul.
[Welcome, Survivors.][The Infernal Descent begins now.][System Difficulty: Hellbound.]
And Cain felt his heart stop.
Because he had heard those words before.
Fifty years ago.
The world around him shattered into chaos—cars crashing, screams rising, panic swallowing the streets. But Cain stood perfectly still.
His fingers trembled, but not from fear. From fury.
His voice was a whisper. “No. No, this isn’t possible…”
But it was. He knew every note of that System’s cold voice. The way it announced horrors with mechanical indifference. He could still smell the blood from battles long past. He had survived the monsters, the wars, the dungeons. He had endured fifty years of Hell.
And he had died.
Cain’s final memory: The shattered throne room of the Demon Lord. The taste of his own blood. The final, killing blow. And then—oblivion.
But now, he was back. Back to Day Zero.
His eyes snapped to the horizon. He knew what came next. The First Spawn.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
A scream tore through the air, high and sharp. From the stairwell. Too soon.
Cain’s body moved before his mind finished the thought. Boots pounding, he burst through the door into the dim corridor.
And he saw it.
The goblin.
The creature was no taller than his waist, its skin a sickly green, its limbs wiry and twisted. Filthy leather scraps clung to its body, and in its clawed hand, it gripped a crude, jagged knife—wet with blood.
The girl it had stabbed lay gasping against the wall, eyes wide with shock. Blood soaked through her hoodie, pooling on cracked linoleum. She couldn’t even scream—just a choked, wet gasp.
The goblin turned its head, yellow eyes glinting, and hissed through needle-like teeth.
Cain’s fists clenched. He knew this scene. He’d seen it play out a thousand times. In his old life, he had arrived seconds too late.
But not this time.
The goblin lunged.
Cain moved.
His arm shot out, catching the goblin's knife hand mid-swing. The blade’s jagged edge bit into his palm, and white-hot pain seared up his arm. But pain was familiar—an old companion. He didn’t flinch.
With a savage twist, he snapped the goblin’s wrist. It screeched, the knife clattering to the floor. Cain drove his knee up, crunching into the goblin’s ribs, then seized its skull in both hands and—
CRACK.
The goblin fell limp, its body twitching once before going still.
The chime rang again. Cold, clinical.
[You have slain a Goblin Scout.][+10 EXP earned.][Loot Dropped: Rusted Dagger]
Cain barely glanced at the loot prompt. His attention was on the girl, her chest heaving, blood bubbling at her lips. Her eyes—wide and glassy—locked with his. She was dying.
In his old life, he had never known her name. She had been just another casualty of Day Zero. But here she was, and this time—
"Not this time."
He pressed his hands over her wound, feeling the warmth of her blood. “Stay with me,” he muttered, voice low and fierce. “The System gives a tutorial quest. Emergency potions. Where the hell—”
The air flickered. A notification:
[Survivor Tutorial: Save a life.][Reward: Minor Healing Potion x1]
A glass vial materialized midair, dropping neatly into his palm. Without hesitation, Cain popped the cork and poured the bitter liquid into the girl's mouth. She sputtered, coughed—then exhaled a ragged breath as the potion’s soft glow sealed the worst of her wounds.
Her voice, barely a whisper: “You… saved me…”
Cain’s jaw was tight. “Yeah.” His hands, slick with her blood, trembled. “This time, I did.”
The reprieve was short. The sky cracked wider.
Cain’s head snapped upward, and his stomach dropped.
In his first life, the goblin scouts had been the only threat on Day Zero. Larger beasts didn’t appear until Day Two. But now—
The System glitched. The interface flickered, jittering unnaturally. And a new notification—one he had never seen before—appeared:
[Special Condition Triggered: Regressor Detected.][Difficulty Update: Infernal Mode – Hellbound Patch.][You are the anomaly.][The System will adapt.]
The voice—the System's voice—shifted. It was still cold, still mechanical. But it carried something new beneath the metallic indifference.
Amusement.
[Let’s see you survive this time.]
The screams returned—this time from everywhere.
The ground trembled. Windows shattered from a pressureless force. And from the darkness beyond the shattered sky—
They came.
Not just goblins. Not just beasts.
But creatures that shouldn’t appear for weeks.
A Shadow Hound—all bone and smoke—prowled from a nearby alley, eyes like burning coals. From above, harpies—feral and feathered nightmares—swooped down, talons flashing. And from the far end of the street, something worse: A Troll Berserker, its massive frame outlined by the hellish glow from the sky.
The System’s voice purred:
[Infernal Patch Active: Enemies scale to player knowledge.][You wanted a second chance. Here it is.]
Cain’s pulse pounded, but his lips curled into a humorless grin.
“So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh?” His voice was low, rough, and burning with a challenge. His eyes flashed with something cold and lethal. “You want to crank the difficulty just because I know your tricks?”
His fists clenched, and he felt the faint burn of experience already sinking into his bones from the goblin kill. Not enough. He needed more. Needed to level.
Needed to survive.
Cain turned to the girl. “Run. Find shelter. If you can’t fight—hide.”
Her voice trembled. “W-What about you?”
The harpy’s screech pierced the air, and the troll’s footsteps shook the pavement. Cain stepped forward, rolling his shoulders, his body moving with the muscle memory of fifty years of war.
He flashed the girl a smile, cold and razor-edged.
“I’ve got a score to settle with the System.”
The hound pounced—
Cain moved—
And Hell began again.
[Welcome to Infernal Reboot.]
*[The Game has changed. The Rules are broken.]
[You have one objective:]
[Survive.]