Global Awakening: Starting With Ten SSS-Rank Talents

”Get out of here, you crazy bastard!”

A loud, angry voice boomed through the air, followed immediately by the heavy glass doors of the coffee shop slamming shut.

Jet was thrown out of the establishment, stumbling backward onto the hard pavement of the busy sidewalk. He waved his arms slightly, shifting his weight as he fought to get hold of his body.

After a few awkward steps, he managed to steady himself.

He paused and turned his head to look back at the coffee shop.

Through the clear glass windows, he could see the patrons and the manager staring at him, their faces filled with judgment and annoyance.He simply shook his head and walked off.

Their opinions meant nothing to him.

His mind was completely elsewhere, and his heart pounded with a wild, uncontrollable excitement as he walked along the concrete pavement.

”I can’t believe it,” Jet muttered, clenching his fist so tightly that his nails dug into his skin. ”All of this is simply too good to be true. I never thought that I would actually be able to go back in time.”

A part of him still wanted to believe that this was a dream. It felt like the kind of complex hallucination a dying mind would construct in its final seconds.

But reality was telling him otherwise.

The heat radiating from the asphalt, the smell of car exhaust, and the noisy chatter of the city were all too real, too sharp to be a trick of his mind.

He rubbed his reddened, stinging cheek. The sharp pain against his skin was the ultimate proof.

As the physical sensation registered in his brain, the smile on his face widened even more.

Combined with his pale face, the dark circles under his eyes, and his messy hair, his expression looked incredibly creepy.

The pedestrians walking past him took one look at his face, assumed he was some crazy, possessed dude, and immediately steered clear of him.

A wide radius of empty space formed around him as people actively avoided making eye contact.

Jet did not care about what looks he was getting.

He had much more important things to do right now than care about his image or public reputation.

”These people have no idea,” Jet muttered under his breath, his eyes scanning the crowd with a small smile.

”They don’t know that a great opportunity is coming. An opportunity that their parents and their grandparents missed.”

In his previous life, Jet had missed this exact opportunity. Because of that single failure, he had lived a decade of absolute regret, grinding through a miserable existence filled with unfulfilled promises.

But in this lifetime, things would change. He would grasp this massive opportunity with his own two hands.

Thinking of this, he quickened his steps. He kept his head up, taking in his surroundings as he walked down the central avenue.

Massive digital billboard screens mounted on the sides of skyscrapers displayed flashy footage of professional Raiders clearing dungeons. News tickers scrolled across the bottom of the screens, reporting on the stability of newly detected Dimensional Gates across the country.

”Everything looks exactly the same as before,” Jet said, staring up at the gleaming structures and the bustling streets.

”But it won’t remain the same in a month’s time.”

He looked away from the skyscrapers and continued on his way, his mind already drifting deep into the history of this world.

It all started fifty years ago, long before he was born. On that night, the world changed forever. The silver moon suddenly turned a deep, crimson red, looking as if it had been completely soaked in fresh blood.

Later, history books simply called the event The Red Moon. That night, a bizarre phenomenon occurred: people who happened to have tattoos on their bodies watched the ink fuse with their flesh. The tattoos transformed into powerful Divine Runes, granting their owners supernatural talents.

Immediately following that cosmic event, the first Dimensional Gates tore open across the planet, releasing waves of aggressive monsters.

Those whose tattoos had transformed became known as Awakened. They became humanity’s frontline defense, using their new supernatural abilities to fight against the monsters pouring out of the dungeons.

Over the next fifty years, humanity was introduced to a brutal new world order where the strong preyed on the weak. The Awakened became the undisputed center of human civilization. The Guilds they formed grew into massive global conglomerates, eclipsing traditional corporations, and a strict, unforgiving hierarchy based on rune power governed every aspect of daily life.

Jet’s generation, the ones born after that historic night, grew up completely ordinary. Tattoos obtained after the First Red Moon were just cosmetic ink. They possessed zero runic divine power, serving as nothing more than permanent drawings on skin.

Because of this, mainstream society viewed the small percentage of people who still got elaborate tattoos in hopes of a second event as crazy cultists, mockingly labeling them as:

”Moon Chasers.”

But Jet knew the truth. The ”Moon Chasers” were not crazy. They were simply ahead of their time. They were about to become the next generation to experience the exact same world-altering opportunity that the first generation had experienced fifty years ago.

The Second Red Moon was coming.Jet knew this because he had already lived through it. In his past life, on this exact timeline, the Second Red Moon would rise in exactly one month. It would catch the entire world completely off guard.

For half a century, top scientists, government researchers, and high-ranking Awakeners had publicly claimed that a second awakening event was mathematically impossible. Because of that false assurance, millions of people, including Jet, gave up the idea of getting tattoos altogether.

After all, what was the point of wasting money and skin space on painful ink when the Red Moon was never coming back?

But when the second wave finally hit, the mocked Moon Chasers who had tattoos suddenly awakened.

They instantly jumped from the civilian underclass to the global elite, gaining massive power overnight. The rest of the world was left behind, beating their chests in absolute, agonizing regret. They had missed the ultimate lottery ticket simply because they didn’t have tattoos on their skin.

Jet had been one of those regretful masses. He spent ten miserable years working as a low-level corporate drone, a disposable luggage carrier for a small, third-rate Guild.

He had watched the new legends of the Second Generation conquer the dungeons and gain global fame while he struggled to earn enough money to look after himself and his little sister.

And then, at age twenty-eight, the ultimate tragedy struck.

A massive Dimensional Impact occurred right in his sector. A high-rank Gate failed to close in time, causing the two realities to collide and overlap. A massive dungeon monster invaded the city streets.

Jet had died a brutal, painful death, his bones crushed to splinters as he tried and failed to shield his little sister from the beast’s massive foot. He had died in darkness, his mind consumed by absolute regret for his own weakness.

But now... now he was back. He was back to when he was eighteen years old, ten years into the past. His sister was still alive, the world was still stable, the Second Red Moon had not appeared yet, and he possessed a flawless thirty-day head start.

Jet stopped dead in his tracks. He raised his head, his eyes locking onto a massive billboard displaying a high-ranking Awakener unleashing a torrent of lightning to crush a dungeon boss.

Jet stared at the towering billboard, watching lightning tear across the enormous screen.

Ten years ago or rather, ten years from now, he had stood beneath that same world with nothing. No Rune. No power. No ability to decide whether the people beside him lived or died.

Never again.

His fingers slowly curled into fists. ”Thirty days.”

That was all he had. Thirty days before the moon turned red again.

A grin slowly crept across his face.

”This time, I’m getting tattoos.”

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