Warmth touched her cheek—soft, golden, familiar in a way she couldn’t explain. Not sunlight, not firelight, but something gentler. Something patient.
Her eyelids twitched.
Then, slowly, she woke.
A ceiling of uneven stone greeted her, glowing faintly with veins of bioluminescent moss. The air was cool and damp, carrying the faint mineral scent of underground water. For a heartbeat, she simply lay there, breathing in the stillness, letting her muddled thoughts settle into something coherent.
Where…?
She pushed herself up.
The world lurched, tilted, corrected itself. Her head spun; her limbs felt both heavy and new—strange, yet familiar, as though her body had been reforged from memory rather than flesh.
She blinked a few more times, letting the cave come into focus.
A rough stone cottage surrounded her—not larger than a single room, its walls carved rather than built. Dust lay thick over the floor. Cobwebs hung in the corners like fragile curtains. And near the wall, a small stream cut through the cavern, its gentle trickling echoing like a whispered lullaby.
On the water’s surface floated lotus flowers—each one softly glowing from within. Pale blues, faint pinks, gentle whites. They drifted lazily, as if unconcerned with her sudden intrusion into their ancient silence.
A little gasp slipped out.
Beautiful…
She has always had a thing for flowers ever since she was very young.
The soft glow from the lotus blooms mingled with a second light source: a glowing yellow stone perched on a squat pedestal. Its warmth radiated like an eternal oil lamp, filling the single-room cottage with a welcoming amber hue.
Her eyes drifted to the only piece of actual furnishing—a straw bed in the corner, thin, lumpy, and covered in dust.
So that’s where I woke up… I guess I’ve seen worse respawn points.
She rubbed her forehead and sighed.
Then her gaze landed on something much less peaceful.
A figure was seated cross-legged near the stream—so still she thought it a statue at first. But no. The shape was slumped, the robes torn, and the flesh was long gone.
A mummified body.
An old man, judging by the thin grey beard that still clung stubbornly to the withered jaw. His hands rested gently in his lap, cradling a scroll so ancient it looked ready to surrender to dust completely.
For a moment, she simply stared.
A strange, reverent hush settled over her, as though she had stumbled upon the remains of someone important—someone who had waited a very, very long time.
“…Well,” she whispered, “that’s new-player guidance I’m not getting.”
She approached the corpse carefully. The scroll disintegrated the instant she brushed a finger against it, collapsing into powder that vanished on the cave’s low breeze.
“No tutorial notes? No secret inheritance? Seriously?”
She sighed again. “Typical. The first time I pick a class with ‘infinite potential’ I get nothing to start with.”
Something else glinted near the corpse.
She crouched.
A sword lay there, half buried in dust. Or what might have been a sword—its blade rusted almost to ruin, its hilt cracked and worn. But when she touched the grip, a faint hum pulsed beneath her fingertips, like a heartbeat struggling to continue.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“…Guess you’re mine, then.”
The moment she lifted it, a soft metallic chime echoed in her mind.
[Weapon Acquired: Rusted Sword (???) ]
The question marks lingered ominously, but she chose optimism.
“Hey, at least it didn’t break instantly.”
She stood… and froze mid-motion.
Her eyes widened.
Then narrowed.
Then widened again in disbelief.
“…I’m naked.”
Not figuratively. Not system-disguised naked.
Literally. Completely. And somehow she hadn’t noticed until now.
She slapped a hand over her face.
“I mean—yes—fine—newborn into a new world, rebirth symbolism, whatever! But this is just ridiculous!”
Heat rushed up her neck as she darted toward the straw bed, ripping up the least dusty linens she could find. The scraps were coarse, uneven, and definitely not fashionable, but she managed to twist and wrap them into something resembling a makeshift covering.
Barely.
At least the important parts were no longer freely greeting the cave air.
She tugged experimentally on the cloth.
It held.
“Not glamorous. But better than doing my first questline as a streaker.”
She huffed out a breath, regaining a shred of dignity.
Sword in hand, she turned her attention inward.
She could feel it—the gentle thrum of energy in her core. The spark of her newly chosen class. The dual spirit roots she’d selected just before the transition.
Heaven-grade spiritroots, both of them. Rare. Precious. Ridiculously overpowered, if she played things right.
She pressed a hand to her sternum, feeling the faint echo of that slow, sap-like warmth from the wood root, intertwined with the cool, fluid whisper of water.
It was comforting. Steady. Grounding.
I really did it… I’m here. I’m actually in Aldun.
Aldun.
She rolled the name mentally and snorted.
Still cliché. Still sounding like a discount fantasy novel world.
And yet…
Something in this cave—the glowing lotuses, the ancient corpse, the quiet hum of energy in the air—made it feel real. Tangible. A world waiting for her.
Her new world.
She drew a breath.
“Okay. Clothes? Kind of. Weapon? Sort of. Sanity? Questionable. Next…?”
As if waiting for the cue, a crystalline chime rang in her mind.
DING—
Her heartbeat steadied as the translucent screen finished forming, lines of text sharpening into focus like ink settling onto paper.
But before she even read it, something felt… off.
She’d seen glimpses of the standard Aldun status layout earlier—during her orientation, in the example projections displayed by the system instructors. Simple, game-like, almost painfully generic.
Name
Age
Race
Level
Main Class
Subclasses
Titles
Followed by the typical attribute spread:
Health
Stamina
Mana
Then the usual numbers:
Vitality
Strength
Agility
Dexterity
Intelligence
Wisdom
Luck
Basic. Predictable. Extremely cookie-cutter.
And then the skill list at the bottom, always starting with things like:
Beginner Sword Skill
Minor Magic Sense
Basic Endurance
But the screen floating in front of her was nothing like that.
Her eyes widened as she finally took it in.
Title – Immortal Sword Cultivator
Name: —
(Blank. Because she had erased it.)
Age: 18
Race: Human
Level: 1 – (Lower Stage: Qi Condensation)
A small line beneath it pulsed faintly, as if waiting for something within her to grow.
Health: 100
Stamina: 100
Spiritual Energy: 0 / 100
(Mana was gone entirely. Replaced, rewritten.)
Then the attributes:
Vitality: 10
Body: 10
(Strength and Agility fused into one stat.)
Dexterity: 10
Comprehension: 10
(Intelligence and Wisdom merged into a single cultivation-aligned trait.)
Luck: 10
Below that, another difference—small, but impossible to ignore:
Skills:
– Pending Skill (1)
– Pending Skill (2)
Two skills waiting to be chosen, shaped, or unlocked.
Nothing else. No pre-packaged combat techniques. No beginner martial arts. No basic spells.
Just potential.
Raw, unassigned, unbounded potential.
She let out a slow breath.
“Yeah… definitely different.”
The normal Aldun template felt like something printed from a template in a beginner RPG.
Hers felt like a framework. A seed. A blueprint meant to grow with her rather than dictate her limits.
She glanced at her wrapped chest, still held together by scraps of linen, then at the rusted sword at her side. The faint energy of her Wood and Water roots pulsed at the edge of her awareness—soft, patient, alive.
She swallowed.
“Okay,” she murmured. “Cultivator, sword user… weird hybrid stats… this is happening.”
The glowing lotus petals drifted serenely along the underground stream, casting ribbons of light across the stone walls. The ancient cave hummed softly with spiritual energy, as though welcoming her—or challenging her.
Probably both.
She squared her shoulders.
“Alright, Aldun,” she whispered again, softer but firmer this time.
“Show me what you’ve got.”
