The second Jayden's foot crossed the gate threshold, two things happened simultaneously.
First, the System awakened.
It was the same phenomenon that had occurred two hundred years ago when humanity's first awakened stumbled into a gate and came out changed.
The System.
Nobody knew what it was. God? Alien technology? The universe's way of keeping score? Theories abounded, but facts were scarce. What mattered was that it was *there*, etched into consciousness like a divine brand.
Translucent blue text manifested in his vision:
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION...]
[NEW USER DETECTED]
[ESTABLISHING ETERNAL LINK...]
[ANALYZING POTENTIAL...
Welcome, Jayden Luther Cross
Current Level: 1
Experience to Next Level: 0/100
Achievements: None
Talent Grade: ERROR... RECALIBRATING... APEX GRADE CONFIRMED
[WARNING: Unprecedented talent density detected. System adaptation in progress.]
[TUTORIAL: The System tracks your growth within dimensional spaces. Only you can see your interface. Privacy is absolute.]
*
The text burned itself into his mind—not painful, just *permanent*. Like the universe had suddenly decided to start keeping score of his existence. The System didn't give a fuck about his Luther Cross name, his billions in crypto, or that he was supposedly Apex Grade. Inside gates, everyone started at Level 1.
Growth came from action, not potential.
Second, his cells went fucking feral.
Every atom in his body seemed to realize it had been starving for seventeen years. The Genesis Energy didn't trickle in—it flooded like a broken dam in monsoon season. His lightning cells gorged themselves, expanding, multiplying, evolving in real-time like cancer cells on steroids.
"Fuck me," he gasped, doubling over. His knees hit crystallized dirt that sparkled like ground diamonds.
But it wasn't pain. It was the opposite. Like mainlining pure potential, snorting cosmic cocaine cut with divine intervention, injecting liquified god-mode directly into his veins. Every nerve ending seemed to orgasm simultaneously. His vision sharpened until he could count the individual photons bouncing off dust motes.
The forest revealed itself in layers—normal sight, electromagnetic spectrum, Genesis flow patterns, probability streams—all stacked like transparent sheets.
Trees weren't trees anymore. They were skeletal frameworks of crystallized energy, their bark turned to living glass, pulsing with bioluminescent veins. The air tasted purple. Sound had texture. Reality felt negotiable.
His lightning cells spread outward like desperate addicts finally getting their fix, mapping the electromagnetic topology of this twisted wonderland. Fifty feet. A hundred. Two hundred. Every living thing became a ghost of bioelectricity painted on his consciousness in shades of neon violence.
A beetle thirty yards northwest, its tiny heart hammering at hummingbird speeds. Something larger—much fucking larger—prowling beyond the tree line, its electrical signature screaming apex predator.
He took a step forward to steady himself—
The world shattered into fragments of motion. His foot lifted from the crystallized dirt, each grain of disturbed earth floating upward like antigrav particles. He could see the individual motes spinning, catching light, refracting it into prismatic sprays. The air parted around his leg in visible currents, molecules scattering in slow-motion ripples.
His brain said step.
His body heard teleport.
The forest blurred into streaks of bioluminescent paint, each tree becoming a vertical light-stream.
He could see everything during the transition—a leaf falling at what felt like inches per hour, an insect's wings frozen mid-beat, Genesis particles hanging in the air like glowing snow that would never land.
Time had become thick as honey, and he was the only thing moving through it at normal speed.
When the world reassembled, he stood fifty yards from where he'd started. The air where he'd been was still parting, still showing the ghost-impression of his presence. The step he'd meant to take—maybe eighteen inches—had become a lightning-burst of fifty yards.
"Jesus fucking Christ." Blue lightning crackled between his teeth with the words, each spark visible as it formed, peaked, and died in what felt like slow seconds. "I should faster than that speedster from the old comics. Flash? More like Trash!"
The realization hit harder than the Genesis high: he hadn't trained for this. Hadn't built up to it. Zero to god-mode in one gate crossing.
No wonder the System had been confused.
He tried another step, focusing on control this time.
The moment his muscles engaged, time dilated again. He watched his own body from a disconnected perspective—lightning cells firing in cascading waves, electrical impulses racing through neurons at visible speeds. His leg muscles contracted in slow motion, each fiber observable as it bunched and released. The ground beneath his foot began to crater, cracks spreading outward like frozen lightning.
Then the movement hit.
The world became a tunnel of smeared light. He could track every microsecond—passing through the space where a butterfly hung suspended, its wings caught mid-flap in scales of orange and black. Threading between two falling leaves that would take another three seconds to hit the ground.
The air resistance against his face felt like pushing through water, then jello, then nothing as he broke through some barrier his physics-trained mind couldn't name.
When reality snapped back into focus, he stood on a branch sixty feet up, perfectly balanced despite never climbing. The wood beneath his feet sparked and smoldered from residual energy. Below, the butterfly finally completed its wing-beat.
"Okay. Okay okay okay." The words came out rapid-fire, his speech trying to match his new metabolic rate. "Think. Control. Don't just—"
Another involuntary burst. This time backward, through three trees that exploded into crystallized splinters, before landing in a crater of his own making. The impacts didn't hurt—his body absorbed and redirected the kinetic energy into more speed, more lightning, more everything.
Around him, the dungeon forest watched with predatory interest. His arrival hadn't gone unnoticed. Lightning called to lightning, and every Thunder element creature within miles had just felt the equivalent of a dinner bell made of pure electricity.
Jayden stood in his accidental crater, blue lightning coursing over his skin like living tattoos, Genesis Energy flooding his system faster than he could process. His ten-million-dollar preparation suddenly felt inadequate.
All that armor, that sword, those careful plans—useless when he couldn't take a single step without teleporting.
"Alright," he said to the alien forest, to the System watching silently, to himself. "Let's figure out what the fuck I've become."
In the distance, something howled. Not a normal howl—this one rode the electromagnetic spectrum, visible to his new senses as a wave of hostile intent painted in electric blue.
His lightning cells translated the message: New meat. Come play.
Jayden's grin was all teeth and static. "Yeah? Come and fucking get it."
The Thunder Wolf emerged from the crystallized undergrowth like a nightmare wrapped in electricity.
[Name: Thunder Wolf]
[Level: 3]
The System notification popped up, but those simple numbers felt like lies. This wasn't some video game mob. Four feet at the shoulder, but it moved with a predator's compressed power. Its fur wasn't fur—more like thousands of copper wires that stood on end, creating a constant aurora of blue-white sparks around its form.
Muscles corded with bio-electric fibers pulsed visibly beneath the metallic coat, each movement sending ripples of electricity across its body.
Its head was almost reptilian in its angles, elongated muzzle filled with teeth that looked like they'd been carved from lightning-struck glass. But the eyes—fuck, the eyes were balls of pure plasma, no pupils, no iris, just roiling electric fire that tracked his every micro-movement with intelligence that shouldn't exist in a Level 3 anything.
When it breathed, small bolts of electricity arced between its jaws. Its claws left smoldering marks in the crystallized earth. This thing had been born from Genesis Energy and shaped by the dungeon's twisted logic into a perfect electrical predator.
Should be easy. He was Apex Grade or even beyond. This thing was barely above training dummy level.
The wolf didn't attack immediately. It circled, testing, its electrical field probing his. Smart. Dungeon monsters weren't animals—they were Genesis Energy given hunger and teeth.
Jayden raised his hand, blue lightning already gathering. Time to show this discount dog what real power looked—
The wolf vanished.
****
Here we go guys, dungeons, power, sins, lust, politics, heroines and more! You ready?