Chapter 2

Chapter 2
## Chapter 2: Beginning with Thirteen Latent Abilities

Thirteen Latent Abilities!

“Move it, you worthless property! Put some life into those steps!”

*Crack!*

A searing sting ripped me back to consciousness.

My frame hit the dirt hard, sliding without any control, and it wasn’t until my face was buried in the grit that I grasped the gravity of the shift.

‘What on earth is happening?’

The last thing I remembered was losing consciousness while the game’s opening sequence played.

Now, I was waking up to this nightmare.

It was completely disorienting, yet my cognitive functions sharpened with unnatural speed.

‘This isn’t my physical form.’

My hands were massive. The musculature was so dense and defined it would put a professional athlete to shame.

This body was foreign, yet the sensory feedback was as visceral as if I’d lived in it forever.

My wrists were locked in heavy iron, and based on the tension, I was being forced along a path.

I strained my neck to look up. A column of hundreds of men, all shackled and worn, were being marched forward in a grim line.

Between the man wielding the lash who had just struck me and the surrounding landscape, the conclusion was obvious.

‘Conscripted slaves.’

Soldiers from a broken army. Taken captive in the wake of a lost campaign and stripped of their humanity.

But what truly froze my blood was the colossal monstrosity guiding the front of the line.

‘A Hydragon!’

That grotesque creature—the nightmare fusion of a nine-headed hydra’s upper half and the massive haunches of a dragon—was terrifyingly familiar.

I had never encountered such a thing in the flesh, yet the second I saw it, I identified it without hesitation.

Hydragon.

The primary wall of difficulty every player was destined to hit in the early game!

The monster I once knew as digital pixels had manifested in the physical world before me.

I had built nearly a thousand avatars and watched them fall to that beast, so the recognition was instinctual—though identifying a fictional predator in reality felt like a descent into madness.

‘I have to get up.’

This wasn’t the time for a mental crisis.

Lying in the sand was a death sentence.

As I pushed myself to my feet, the whip hissed through the air again.

The pain made my skin crawl, but I bit back the scream, refusing to give them the satisfaction.

“Fall behind once more, and you’ll be the Hydragon’s midday snack.”

…So it definitely was a Hydragon.

The confirmation was final.

‘Pangeniar. I’ve actually been pulled into the game world?’

It was an impossible phenomenon.

Panic should have been my primary emotion, yet I felt an eerie, cold composure.

In seconds, I had already evaluated the environment and adjusted my mindset.

‘The physical feedback, the heat, the pain—it’s all too real. Which implies…’

This was a game world, yet it wasn’t a game. It was a tangible reality, but one governed by the dice I had rolled at the start.

Total randomness.

Everything had been left to chance, hadn’t it?

If this was where I landed, there was one vital piece of information I needed to verify.

“Status interface.”

In that instant, a sound like shifting paper echoed. A scroll of ancient-looking parchment manifested in my vision, unrolling with a slow, deliberate weight.

Level: 1

Might: 12 Vitality: 12 Reflexes: 12

Acumen: 12 Aether: 12

【Wellness】【Constitution】【Intellect】【Perception】

【Blade Mastery】【Bulwark Mastery】【Polearm Mastery】【Cleave Mastery】【Stiletto Mastery】【Marksmanship】

【Radiance】【Obscurity】【Pyromancy】【Hydromancy】【Geomancy】【Aeromancy】【Atmosphere】

【The Null】

【Aesthetics】【Erudition】【Command】【Scrutiny】

……

[Unlocked Latent Abilities]

【The Null】

【Precision】

【Omni-Adept】

【Armament Sovereign】

【Titan’s Spellward】

【Nature’s Kinship】

【Iron-Blooded Sovereign’s Core】

【Lord of Beasts】

【Aureate Favor】

【Empyrean】

【Divergence】

【Ravenous】

【Arch-Scholar】

……

[Pangeniar Erasure Progress: 6.12%]

‘This is insane.’

I had to clench my jaw to keep from shouting.

The interface was there, but the data it presented defied all logic.

First, the attributes.

Standard starting stats usually capped at 10 depending on one’s aptitudes. Yet here, every single value sat at 12. A perfectly balanced, superhuman starting spread.

In half a decade of playing Pangeniar, I had never witnessed a “Golden Start” like this.

And that was merely the surface.

‘Just how many aptitudes do I have?’

The parchment kept scrolling, seemingly without end. I had secured over 200 aptitudes, and more than ten latent abilities were currently active.

Latent abilities were legendary; possessing even one could turn a commoner into a world-shaping force. I possessed thirteen.

‘Thirteen latent abilities.’

Not even the high-tier NPCs who had reached divinity or the apex predators of the abyss held thirteen. Five was usually the absolute peak.

This was beyond precedent.

One specific entry caught my eye.

‘Iron-Blooded Sovereign’s Core!’

This was a composite latent ability that only triggered when every physical aptitude reached its zenith.

Functionally, it meant I would possess ‘unending endurance, an unshakable psychological state, and near-instantaneous adaptation.’

It also boosted hidden parameters like ‘Grit’ and ‘Prestige,’ while granting access to elite-tier missions and the ‘aura of a ruler.’

And I had twelve others of that caliber.

I scanned the list of abilities before focusing on the final warning.

‘Pangeniar erasure. The boundary with my world? I don’t understand the implications.’

It was a mystery. The only certainty was that the world was spiraling into a chaos far beyond the original game’s scope.

But I couldn’t stand there lost in thought.

“Hey,” I muttered to the man walking ahead of me.

He turned back with a hollow expression—I noticed he was missing two fingers on his right hand.

“What is it?”

“Where are they taking us?”

“……? We’re in the Kaltzman Wastes.”

I dismissed his judgmental stare—he likely thought I’d suffered brain damage from the sun—and pressed for more.

“The Kaltzman Wastes? Is our destination Paysalmer?”

The Kaltzman Wastes in the southeastern corner of the continent were a graveyard, ruled by three savage tribes.

They were fanatics who lived solely for raiding and human trafficking.

Paysalmer was the central hub where they liquidated their “stock.”

“Yeah. So don’t bother dreaming about a way home.”

That explained the dead look in everyone’s eyes.

Once you were sold in Paysalmer, you never drew breath as a free man again.

‘The one starting zone you avoid at all costs. If you roll Kaltzman, you delete the save and start over.’

The desert was infamous for its difficulty.

I’d tried a run there once out of boredom and gave up within minutes.

I had never gone back to it since.

‘Pathetic.’

This was the price of letting the dice decide my starting location.

I had no one to blame but myself.

I threw out my final set of inquiries.

“Do the Kaltzman tribes usually move this much ‘cargo’ at once?”

Typical traffickers moved a few dozen people, but this line exceeded 300.

The man gritted his teeth.

“How would I know that?”

“How did we end up in these chains?”

“How? Who cares—we’re just the leftovers of the failed campaign, I guess.”

“Campaign? Which one?”

“God… the push into the Abyssal Realm led by the Eight Paragons. We were routed, and you and I were caught trying to flee. Did the sun bake your brain?”

Eight Paragons? The Abyssal Realm campaign?

‘Wait!’

……That was my story.

Or rather, the legacy of the save file I had finished just before this one.

I had gathered eight legendary artifacts from the most powerful heroes to launch a final assault.

And we had failed spectacularly.

We reached the threshold of the Dark Deity’s Sanctum but couldn’t breach the inner sanctum. Game over.

Now, it seemed that failure had become a historical event known as the Great Campaign.

“Damn it all. If it wasn’t for the betrayals from within, we would have won…!”

Internal conflict?

What was he talking about?

I went to ask, but the earth began to tremble.

Simultaneously:

《Primary Quest 1: Endure!》

《Bounty: Scaled based on contribution》

《Penalty: Absolute Death – Demise in the world of Pangeniar will result in permanent death in the physical world.》

A mission window flared into existence.

Endure? Now?

But the penalty was what truly chilled me. Did “physical world” refer to my actual life back home?

The memory of the intro—the collision of worlds—flashed in my mind.

*Rumble! Rumble!*

There was no time for philosophy.

With a bone-shaking howl, massive shadows loomed on the horizon.

“Three Hydragons!”

“Close the line! Guard the perimeter!”

The slave drivers—hardened mercenaries—pulled their steel and moved into defensive formations.

But the attackers arriving with the Hydragons didn’t offer a parley; they simply began the butchery.

“The Serpentine Princess! It’s her!”

“Snake Princess! We had a treaty of neutrality!”

“Guaaaagh!”

The air was suddenly thick with the sound of dying men.

Agreements meant nothing here; this was a purge.

A systematic, brutal massacre.

‘If I stay here, I’m a corpse!’

My survival instinct took the wheel.

The attackers weren’t sparing the slaves. They were clearing the board entirely.

I lunged forward, snatching a ring of keys from the belt of the dead guard who had lashed me.

I snapped my locks open, gripped a fallen curved blade, and prepared for the onslaught.

“M-Me too!”

“Get me out of these!”

The former campaign soldiers saw the keys and started screaming.

These were men who had marched on the Abyss; they were my best chance for a meat shield.

But as I looked at them, I saw the truth.

【Lv. 1】

【Lv. 2】

Their levels were bottomed out.

The combination of injuries and psychological collapse had stripped them of their power.

How could an elite expeditionary force be weaker than a village militia?

*Thud!*

“Me first, damn you!”

“Get back! I’m going first!”

I hurled the keys into the center of the frantic group and let them fight over it.

I didn’t have the luxury of playing savior.

Around me, the slaughter intensified.

It was pure chaos. If hell existed, it looked exactly like this.

‘I am getting out of this alive.’