He died. His soul left his body. The final moments of his life repeated over and over again in his consciousness until darkness consumed him. Only it remained around him.

The legend of the underground fighting world, known by the entire shadowy realm of his homeland, died from a knife strike inflicted by the one he trusted with his heart. He emerged victorious from the toughest battles against world champions, but he couldn't defend against the hand of his beloved who betrayed him...

He could no longer see, hear, or feel.

He couldn't exist.

Yet, for some reason, he continued to be aware of himself, his past, and even his persona.

The only thing he forgot was his name. He even felt like he never had a name, but his memories said otherwise. Unfortunately, along with the life that slipped away like water through his fingers, he lost his name too...

The man didn't know how long he stayed in the darkness. Maybe an hour, a day, a year, or even an eternity. Or perhaps, only a moment had passed. There was no time here. Either way, gradually, something started to change, and he felt it very clearly. He felt it the way a newborn feels its first breath, or a miraculously healed paralyzed person feels his body.

As a person becomes aware of awakening...

He opened his eyes. Or rather, he tried to. His swollen left eyelid didn't even lift. The right one did so with difficulty.

At first, everything seemed unclear, but after a while, his gaze became slightly clearer.

A person beheld an expanse of blue, a never-ending and distant sky that resembled a pure and tranquil ocean stretching overhead. There was not a single cloud in sight, only the majestic shining of the sun. Suddenly, sound returned to the individual's senses, like a rush of water enveloping them. Nearby, the trickle of a stream could be heard while in the distance, the faint murmur of people speaking. Then came the sense of smell, pungent with the stench of filth and excrement, the putrid aroma emanating from all around them. Immediately following was the taste of metallic bitterness that lingered in their mouth -- the taste of blood. Last to arrive was the sense of touch, as if the person had finally come to feel their own body again. Hands, legs, torso, and head, all felt so unfamiliar after existing as an intangible soul in the darkness, so forgotten.

The individual had no desire to make any movement, as the slightest of motions brought nothing but unbearable pain. Even without any movement, the person still felt the searing pain in their hands, the blood seeping from the wound on their leg, the water mixed with waste touching their body. They could barely breathe, their shallow and intermittent breaths also pained them, especially with each inhale in their right lung. This was the life this person was left with.

Looking up at the endless sky, the individual pondered, contemplating why they were here and what purpose this life served. For what reason did the universe grant them this opportunity, and what do they stand to gain from it? Pain… their soul could not find rest even after death. How melancholic it all seemed.

Memories came flooding back. Someone else's memories started merging with the person's mind. Memories of someone who used to inhabit this body, who had recently passed away. Someone who had allowed him to be reborn.

The story of this boy's life was also tragic. He was only fourteen when he was maimed, killed, and thrown into a ditch because of a petty crime he committed to avoid starving to death.

His family had recently moved to this city, where an epidemic of some unknown disease began to sweep through, killing almost a tenth of the local population. The boy's parents died a year ago, leaving him with a small hut and a little money. He would have continued to live, but he was unlucky enough to cross paths with one of the offspring of one of the ruling families of the city.

Broken hands, and then death, became an unfair punishment for the boy.

Strangely, for the person now inhabiting his body, this did not bother him at all. There was no anger or hatred. Just boundless apathy and a hint of incomprehensible joy.

After all, the person finally had a name. Perhaps a stolen name from the former owner of this body, but still a name.

His name was now Kay.

Kay Arnhard.

For some reason, this brought him a little joy… Just a little…

Suddenly, a strange feeling rose in Kay's body. And then incomprehensible lines began to appear before his eyes, which surprised him a little.

-----

There was a discovery of vital and emotional activity...

Cancel deinstallation of the System...

Structure restoration...

Resuming operations...

The System was restored and ready for work...

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Opening the parameter menu for host consciousness check...

Parameters:

Age: 14

Race: Human

Status: Mortal

Grade: None

Level: None

Characteristics:

• [Power]: 0.24

• [Speed]: 0.49

• [Endurance]: 0.3

• [Resilience]: 0.5

• [Mental]: 2.1

• [Energy]: 0.67

Abilities:

None

Laws:

Unknown

-----

"What is this?" flashed through the mind of the shocked boy. Only after concentrating, he found the necessary part of memories from Kay's life.

As it turned out, everyone in this world possesses such a System. And the fact that it is a completely different world, not Earth, did not come as a surprise to the man. The existence of incredible martial arts masters capable of performing miracles and magic was worth it.

The System itself appears in people at birth and remains until death. Apparently, considering Kay dead, it began to self-delete, but the appearance of a foreign soul brought it back. It remained unclear only one thing: how and why did it infuse into a dead body and for what reason did it begin functioning again? What gave the impulse?

Kay knew very little about the System, as he lived in a poor and poorly educated family. But the man who replaced him in this body, who had lived on Earth for a long time, guessed that it was something like a neural interface - a computer in the brain that millions of people in his world dreamed of.

The few pieces of knowledge known to both the original Kay and the one who occupied his body were obtained from the System itself. After all, on a subconscious, intuitive level, it allowed them to understand the basic principles of its workings.

As the man understood it, at birth, the System scanned the characteristics of the body and displayed them as numbers in the carrier's brain. And it did this every time the value of any parameter changed. The System constantly monitored them.

All of this was calculated relative to some average value of physical abilities of adult male humans, which was set to one. That is, the average healthy twenty-year-old guy should have parameters, each of which was equal to one.

Right now, Kay's indicators were extremely low, even for his age. The reason - his beaten and battered body. However, the low energy level wasn't due to that, but rather because Kay was still a child.

As for the parameters themselves...the man once again trusted the System's intuition.

So then...Power corresponds to any manifestation of physical, muscular strength. Speed is an indicator of quick muscle contraction, neural signal transmission throughout the body, and even thought processing.

Concerning endurance, that much was clear and Kay's subconscious merely confirmed the new Kay's assumptions. The next characteristic - resilience - determined a person's resistance to various damage and their ability to self-recover.

Interestingly, however, this characteristic, which logically should be the lowest of all, was currently half a point.

Mentality reflected all intellectual and mental abilities. And as Kay suspected, such a high value in this category was due to social reasons. Since there was no proper educational institution in this world, even simply literate people were not as abundant as on Earth. Therefore, in comparison to the majority of the locals, he was a highly developed intellectual with two whole points and one tenth of a point in the parameter representing intelligence, all at just fourteen years old.

At least somewhere, he wasn't a loser...

And the last parameter reflected the amount of energy in a person's body that could be used to apply various techniques.

In this world, techniques were called special abilities that allowed one to create real magic, which was known as martial arts here. It could be said that in this case, technique was a synonym for the word "spell."

Suddenly, Kay felt weak. He shouldn't have survived, but since he did, he shouldn't remain conscious. Only the unknown power left from the soul fusion allowed him to regain consciousness for a dozen minutes.

Kay lost consciousness and once again returned to the darkness...

* * *

At that moment, in one of the alleyways rarely visited by people, just one hundred meters away from where the wounded man lay, were two others.

A pretty young girl of eighteen hurriedly walked down the alleyway, her thick chestnut hair tied tightly in a ponytail, and her warm amber eyes catching the attention of all who met her gaze. Her simple, plain dress perfectly encased her slender figure, and she held a wrinkled old man's hand.

Despite his age, the man walked tall and kept pace with his youthful granddaughter. Time seemed to have little control over him. Clad in a long cloak that only the city's medical practitioners were allowed to wear, he calmly walked ahead.

"I swear to you, Grandfather!" said his concerned companion. "You must see this! He looks just like him... very much like him..."

The old man questioned her in his elderly voice, "So what if he looks like him? You must understand, Ulia, that the past cannot be changed."

"I beg of you, please just look!" she pleaded, tears welling up in her eyes.

With a sigh, the old man followed his granddaughter.

After a few minutes, they arrived at the wretched alleyway with a drainage ditch. What the old man saw made him freeze.

A bitter sorrow filled his heart, for right there, amidst the filth and garbage, lay someone who was the spitting image of a person dear to him. His grandson.

A grandson who had gone missing over a year ago...

The old man couldn't believe his eyes. "This can't be," he whispered, stunned. Tears streamed down his granddaughter's face as she replied, "I told you. Could it be that he was able to return?.." The old man was silent, struggling to believe in miracles despite his years of experience.

"Remember when you told me stories as a child about compassionate heavens that could help mortals?" the young woman asked, approaching the young man with visible injuries and broken arms. "This…" the old man trailed off, as his granddaughter headed for the boy.

As she got closer, she finally got a good look at Kay. She saw all his wounds and broken limbs. "Grandfather…" the girl sobbed, falling to her knees beside the boy.

Ulia had no doubt that he was her younger brother. She refused to even consider the possibility that the heavens had not heard her and had not rewarded her for months of suffering. She wanted to believe that her missing brother had been saved.

Noticing her change of mood, the old man quickly went forward and quickly assessed all the boy's injuries with one look. The doctor's soul, as well as the hidden hope in his heart that it was indeed his grandson, did not allow him to simply stand and watch.

"Carefully lift him by the shoulders," he began directing Ulia. "We need to get him to our clinic as quickly as possible. I don't know who did this to him, but if we don't do something, he won't survive."

The girl, who had helped the old man all her life, obediently and quickly carried out his instructions. Without hesitation, she carefully lifted the exhausted boy by the armpits.

The old man took Kay by the feet, and they raised him together. Carefully and quickly carrying the wounded youth to their private clinic, which was right in their home and was part of it, they laid him on the bed, removing and throwing away his dirty clothes.

After washing Kay, the old man began treating him.