Levi Morrison gasped as everything went… green?

A moment ago, he’d been fighting for his life. His heart racing, spells going off in all directions, blood running freely down the streets, friends torn apart in front of him, then...

He blinked and stumbled, his surroundings coming into focus. He stood on a sidewalk beside a park, in the middle of the day.

Gone was the smoky sunset ruin, the snarling hordes and Demon Lords, and the last hope of humanity falling before his eyes.

A park.

Occupied by normal people, walking? Laughing? Talking on phones?

He was dreaming. Or dead. Perhaps both. But he still felt his harsh breathing, the pounding of his heart, the adrenaline racing in his blood. He grasped for the sword that did not rest at his waist, finding only a thin belt with no potions, no weapons.

He stared, entirely disoriented. Where was he? His ears buzzed and his head had a dull throbbing ache that steadily faded as his breathing calmed.

Then something stung him in the leg, hurting far more than anything that small should, and he yelped in surprise. It had been a long time since he’d felt pain that acute. His high health and stamina usually protected him.

But now he felt weak, small, vulnerable. He glanced down to swat at whatever had stung him.

An angry gremlin creature about as high as his knee gnawed on his leg, its eyes gleaming with hunger.

“Oh. Hello there.” He didn’t know why he was speaking to the dungeon creature. The whole situation felt so surreal, and yet... "This seems very familiar."

Was this his life flashing before his eyes, the last remaining pieces of his consciousness showing him a soothing lie in his final moments?

Levi looked down at the dungeon gremlin latched onto his leg, gnawing with its pointy little teeth.

Maybe not too soothing.

He kicked the tiny creature with his free foot to knock it back. It resisted, tearing free a chunk of his flesh when it finally went flying with an angry squeak.

The sharp pain of his torn and bleeding leg didn't feel real, unblunted by his massive health pool, not immediately healing itself. He stared down at it, the pain so unfamiliar, pressing at his mind like a tangible static.

Wrong. This was all wrong.

He vaguely remembered this fight, the first time he'd encountered a dungeon creature, when he'd Awakened as a fighter in the distant all-but-forgotten past. Before any of the demon portals opened. Before humanity had even realized there was a looming threat of extinction.

The dungeon gremlin charged, its curved horn leading. Levi jumped aside. He felt unbearably slow and clumsy, but even in his unenhanced state he was faster than the level 1 dungeon beast. As it came close he retaliated, smacking it out of the air with a tight fist, sending it flying. It sprawled on the ground in a crumpled heap a good distance away.

Wait. If this was the first time he unlocked the system… did that mean he'd gone back in time nearly eleven years? Impossible. But... this didn't feel like an illusion or a dream. It may not always be possible to detect a false reality, but there was a sort of clarity to the true world that couldn't be imitated.

This was real. Even if his stat screen refused to appear at his command. Even if time seemed to have twisted back on itself against all reason.

None of the waves had hit yet, Earth still had… around two months before the first doorway opened and the demon invasion began. The dungeons and the system were only precursors to the real war.

And his family hadn’t been killed yet.

Right now, no one knew what was happening or why. Most people thought it was a joke or a hoax. Hardcore gamers and cosplayers went crazy trying out stupid builds that would later get them killed. The fact that the change to reality itself wouldn’t stop at dungeons appearing everywhere and people gaining classes and levels wouldn’t become clear to the world for a long time yet.

The dungeon gremlin got back to its feet, snarled and spun to charge again. Levi waited for the right moment, then lunged. He clamped its jaw shut with both hands, flipped it over onto its stomach, and landed on its back hard with both knees. It whimpered and struggled, but it was no match for Levi.

He was about to snap its neck when he remembered the meaning of his first kill. The way he handled this encounter could determine his fate. If he killed it in hand-to-hand combat, he’d Awaken the generic Fighter class. This had happened last time and he had eventually evolved Fighter into the more specialized and powerful Swordsman.

But if he truly had a chance to start over again from the beginning? He needed to give this careful thought.

There were far better classes available. Fighter was basic, bottom-of-the barrel kinda thing. Yes, it could evolve into better classes later, but it would be far preferable to start with an already good class and morph it into an amazing one.

Knowing what was coming, Levi had to think carefully about his choice before he ran off and started making ripples. If he was going to do anything about the coming invasion he needed far more power than any single person had ever attained. The Demon Lords were simply too strong. He’d been level 79 when he died, and yet Vorish the Scythe had torn through him like he was paper.

No matter how strong they got, no matter how much they leveled, humans simply weren’t capable of standing up to power on that scale.

The gremlin clawed at him weakly, unable to reach behind it properly with its face shoved into the grass and its shoulders pinned down. He supposed the creature might have horrified him once, but having seen the true horrors that waited to invade… he stared down at the weak thing dispassionately.

It was scrawny and pale lavender, with a sharp horn on its snout like a rhino’s but slender and pointed, long spiderleg fingers, and a spade-pointed tail. Typical low-level dungeon fodder, suitable for leveling beginner Awakened and not much else. They could be dangerous in swarms, but only single scouts ever left the safety of the dungeon.

It hissed and snarled, squirming and whipping its tail about, but it was easy enough for Levi to tuck a foot over the appendage and hold it still but for the twitching tip.

“What to do with you,” he mused aloud. “This is a very important moment. It will determine my future course.”

There were a few advanced classes he’d been interested in over the years and, before the invasions forced humanity into a corner and made information hard to come by, he’d done quite a bit of research on them.

Mage was always an option. Versatile, could be evolved into a number of more powerful classes such as Wizard or Elementalist. But mages had a certain innate squishiness to them that Levi disliked. There was a reason only one in twenty of the survivors at the final battle had been mage classes. It would require a little more setup to obtain than what he had to hand, but he knew the requirements well enough.

A specialized weapon skill might be a good fit as well. He’d considered the problem of converting guns into effective weapons and felt sure a Ranger class could be evolved into something like a Gunslinger if approached properly. There were enough rumors about it, at least. But he didn’t like the idea of risking his second chance on an untried path that may not even exist.

Fighter was a solid, if boring, choice. It provided enough bonuses to body stats that its survivability was all but guaranteed. But, as Levi had witnessed first-hand, even high-tier fighters hadn’t lasted long when it came down to the end.

No, none of the standard options would be enough. Levi thought back through the more exotic classes he’d heard about, the ones only unlocked by the truly adventurous, or insane. Bloodrager had its appeal, as a vampiric class that grew stronger as its enemies weakened, but it required too much up-close fighting for a class that provided only minimal boosts to body tempering. The high recovery was great… but if a Demon Lord could kill you in one hit, what did it matter? Tamer was an oft-overlooked class, but some of its later evolutions more than made up for its early weaknesses. Specifically, the Summoner branches.

The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. Summoners were mage-adjacent, but with the major advantage of not needing to be physically present. Minions could be commanded from a great distance, providing a layer of safety no other class could boast.

If even the strongest human fighter couldn’t stand up to the invaders, then he’d have to find a way to summon something that could. To bind powers beyond humanity and make them his own.

And that path started here and now.

Levi smiled down at the trapped gremlin. “So, little squirmer. What’s it going to take for you to submit to my will?”