Prologue: The Boy Who Wasn''t Meant to Be
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The first time I realized I didn’t belong, I was six years old.
It was during the Hunter Classification Ceremony, the day every child was assigned their Rank and Class—the day we learned whether we’d be heroes, leaders, or nobodies.
It was supposed to be a celebration.
I remember standing in a long line with the other kids, shifting on my feet, too excited to be nervous. My mother stood beside me, her hands resting gently on my shoulders. She was a kind woman—a healer-class hunter, low-ranked but respected. My father had been a B-Rank Berserker, a man of great strength and even greater arrogance. He had died when I was four, leaving behind only expectations and a name I had to live up to.
I remember my mother’s soft voice in my ear.
"No matter what rank you get, Tatsuya… I will always be proud of you."
And I had smiled up at her, oblivious, unafraid. Because I knew I would be strong. I had to be.
I watched as one child after another stepped onto the Classification Altar, their Hunter Codex shimmering to life above their heads.
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[CLASS: KNIGHT]
[RANK: B]
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Cheers erupted. The boy’s family wept with pride.
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[CLASS: MAGE]
[RANK: A]
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More applause.
And then—
It was my turn.
I stepped onto the altar, holding my breath as golden light surrounded me. I could feel it crawling under my skin, reading my soul, my fate.
The moment stretched.
A long, horrible silence.
The officials watching frowned. The glowing text above me flickered—once, twice—before suddenly flashing red.
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[ERROR: CLASSIFICATION FAILED]
[RANK: UNDEFINED]
[WARNING: ENTITY UNRECOGNIZED]
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The room fell deathly quiet.
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And then, the murmurs started.
"What does that mean?"
"A defect?"
"I’ve never seen that before…"
I stood frozen, not understanding.
My mother’s hands tightened on my shoulders. Her voice was steady, but I could hear the fear beneath it.
"There must be a mistake."
The High Examiner, an older hunter draped in ceremonial robes, stared at the flickering text above me. His expression was unreadable—not pity, not confusion.
Just cold analysis.
Finally, he spoke.
"The system does not make mistakes."
His words landed like a blade to the gut.
The murmuring turned to whispers, then laughter. Some of the other children pointed at me, giggling.
"He doesn’t have a class!"
"How weak does someone have to be for the system to reject them?"
I felt my stomach drop.
Weak? That wasn’t right. I wasn’t weak.
I turned to my mother, searching for reassurance, but she was staring at the High Examiner—pleading, desperate.
"There must be something you can do."
But he was already shaking his head.
"The system has deemed him… an anomaly."****"
He looked at me then, and for the first time in my life, I saw something in an adult’s eyes I didn’t recognize.
Not anger. Not disappointment.
Disdain.
Like I was something wrong.
A flaw.
A glitch.
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The Weight of a Defect
Life changed after that.
I learned very quickly that hunters only respected strength.
The moment I had been declared a Defect, the world stopped seeing me as human.
Teachers ignored me. Other kids avoided me. Those who didn’t bullied me in broad daylight, knowing no one would stop them.
I fought back, at first.
I took punches and threw them back twice as hard. I trained in secret, convinced that if I could just prove myself, the system would change its mind—that one day, my Hunter Codex would awaken, and I’d get my class like everyone else.
But the system never made mistakes.
And neither did society.
At twelve years old, I was denied entry to the Hunter Academy.
At thirteen, I was kicked out of public school entirely, because I had no potential worth investing in.
At fourteen, my mother—my only supporter, my only family—vanished without a trace.
Some said she left out of shame.
Some said she was silenced for defending an anomaly.
I never found out.
All I knew was that, after that day, I had no one.
So I fought to survive.
I took illegal jobs, hunting stray monsters that wandered into slums where proper hunters wouldn’t go. I worked myself to the bone, training until my hands bled, refusing to accept that the world had already decided my fate.
And then, on my sixteenth birthday, the Hunter Association finally came for me.
A squad of Enforcers. Their leader—an S-Rank, dressed in black and gold—looked me over with thinly veiled disgust.
"Tatsuya Vael. The system has deemed you unregistered."
"You are to be removed."
That was the last thing I remembered before waking up in the dungeon.
Chained.
Alone.
Hunted.
A system execution, disguised as a forgotten exile.
I was meant to rot in that hole.
To disappear.
To die without a name.
And then—
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[ABYSSAL OVERRIDE INSTALLING...]
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The first glitch in the system.
The moment the world made a mistake.
The moment I stopped being powerless.
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