The moonlight filtered through the shattered stained glass of the abandoned chapel, casting kaleidoscopic shadows across the floor. The silence was deep, almost sacred.
Zero stood at the center of it all, his coat of reversal billowing ever so slightly in the wind that crept in through the broken arches. His hand rested on the hilt of his blades, but his eyes were closed—lost in thought, adrift in time.
It had been a long journey.
A warpath of fate and fury.
And now… a moment to breathe.
A moment to remember.
"Bad Omen." That was the first system perk he'd received—back when he was nothing more than a nameless shadow at the bottom of the Hunter's Guild hierarchy. A laughable E-rank, barely worth a passing glance. The perk had seemed like a curse at first. A passive aura of dread that attracted misfortune and escalated danger in his vicinity.
But even then, something had whispered to him: Every curse hides a blade.
when he was climbing through A-rank dungeons—this time not by accident but by purpose—he began to realize that "Bad Omen" wasn't just drawing stronger enemies. It was drawing attention. Bosses began to speak. Dungeons began to warp in strange ways, as if reacting to him.
They weren't just fights anymore. They were messages. Tests.
Are you ready, Sovereign?
We remember your blood.
And then the dreams started.
Flashbacks to places he'd never been. Faces he'd never seen. A woman in a burning palace. A crown of thorns. A throne of black fire. Were they visions… or memories?
The deeper he dove, the clearer it became. The perks weren't random.
They were echoes of a lineage long buried.
The turning point had been the samurai-themed A-rank dungeon. Stealth, a proud and powerful guildmate, had fallen during the duel with the dungeon boss—a talking, thinking enemy who wore honor like armor.
The duel was more than a test of strength—it was judgment.
And Zero, stepping into the arena with nothing but his blade and instinct, unleashed what had been hiding deep within him all along.
Using The Mask of Eclipse. The Coat of Reversal.
His perks became more than passive traits. They became his nature.
Bad Omen didn't just attract danger—it attracted truth. It peeled away the world's lies and masks. Every confrontation forced enemies to reveal more than they wanted to. Negation didn't just protect him—it broke their rhythm, their plans, their certainty.
By the time he entered the tournament, he knew. He wasn't normal. The others fought for fame, for rank, for honor.
He fought for something else.
He didn't yet know what it was. A name. A past. A future maybe. But the crowd felt it. Every time his sword moved, every time a powerful blow simply… missed its mark, there was a collective breathlessness.
Was it skill?
No. Fate bending. Plans unraveling. Stronger enemies cracking from within.
That was his perks in action.
The arena wasn't just a test of strength—it was a prophecy in motion.
When the system unlocked the Hidden Path of the Shadow Sovereign, it felt like waking up. Every step had led to this. Every fight. Every anomaly.
The trial revealed more of what he was. A child of the Sovereign line, chosen by the forgotten system that predated even the current age of hunters. It wasn't just about perks anymore.
It was about inheritance.
Negation, he now understood, was the body rejecting falsehood. Sovereigns were never meant to bow to the world's rules. And Bad Omen?
It was the system's way of isolating him. Sharpening him. Putting him through fire so he could emerge ready to reclaim his throne in the shadow.