The System Awakens: Rise of the Champion

It was just another typically unfortunate day in Damian's life.

He followed his usual hated routine: waking up in his one-bedroom apartment and glancing around the cramped, congested room before letting out a deep sigh.

The apartment was minuscule, no more than an eight-by-eight room.

He lay on the hard floor, with only a thin sheet between him and the cold surface.

A small table fan spun noisily beside him, emitting an irritating dddrrrrr sound as its plastic blades scraped against one another.

On the other side of the room, a mountain of unwashed clothes towered in a corner.

Though Damian was a relatively clean person, the apartment complex allowed its tenants to use the communal washing machine only once every two weeks.

Worse, he didn't have any enclosed space to store the smelly, unwashed clothes.

So, he had no choice but to keep them in the open.

Even though he'd tied them up in a laundry bag he'd purchased, the pungent odor still filled the air, rendering the small room almost uninhabitable.

Suddenly, Damian's blue pupils dilated, and he began coughing violently.

The fit lasted for a minute, and even after it subsided, a burning sensation lingered in his chest.

"I just have to endure a little longer," he muttered to himself.

As if mocking his resolve, the room was soon filled with the eerie sounds of creaking and groaning, caused by a small tremor that shook the land beneath his feet.

Damian closed his eyes and waited for the tremor to pass.

It wasn't the first time he'd experienced something like this.

After a few minutes, the shaking subsided.

The power, however, didn't return.

The room grew stiflingly hot in the absence of the fan.

Damian sighed and turned to look out the dirty and blurry window.

For the past week and a half, the weather had been nothing short of chaotic.

A few minutes ago, the sun had blazed fiercely overhead, sending relentless waves of heat through the city.

The scorching temperatures had even sparked multiple forest fires in the surrounding areas.

But after the tremor, the oppressive heat seemed to vanish.

In its place, dark, raging storm clouds rolled across the sky, their shadows broken by flashes of lightning that illuminated the city below.

Gusts of intense, icy wind rattled the windows.

The abrupt shift from blistering heat to bone-chilling cold took mere minutes.

"I guess it really is the end of the world," Damian muttered.

The thought didn't sadden him; after all, he was already dying.

Damian was a twenty-year-old orphan, raised in an orphanage until the age of fourteen when he was sent out to fend for himself.

Now, he lived a lonely and impoverished life, resigned to his fate.

After being left to fend for himself, he did whatever he could to survive, taking up hourly wage jobs.

Though the pay was meager, it was just enough to afford him three meals a day.

Back then, he lived under bridges or at bus stops, anywhere the rain couldn't reach him.

Life was harsh.

With his abnormally weak body, he couldn't hold down a job for long.

Constantly changing jobs, he was forced to skip from one town to another.

When he turned sixteen, he met a man who was willing to take him in.

The man taught him simple typing skills and gave him a basic-level job as a novel editor.

The pay was enough to rent a small, low-cost studio apartment, allowing him to live a slightly better life.

Things were going much better than before.

He would wake up, go to work for about 13 hours, return home, buy something from the supermarket to eat, and sleep.

This monotonous but secure life continued, until it didn't.

At eighteen, he was diagnosed with advanced Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a progressive lung disease that causes airflow obstruction.

He also learned that there was no cure for the disease, and even the treatments to slow its progression were far too expensive for someone like him.

He didn't even attempt the treatments and simply resigned himself to his fate.

Over the next two years, the disease worsened, causing chest pain even during simple breaths.

As if his life wasn't tragic enough, strange phenomena began occurring across the globe about a week and a half ago.

It started with erratic weather patterns, with intense rains accompanied by dangerous lightning storms, followed by scorching heat waves.

Then came earthquakes in random locations, sowing turmoil and destruction.

Natural disasters seemed to strike one after another: hurricanes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, floods, and even meteors falling unpredictably from the sky.

The government offered various explanations for the chaos, such as magnetic pole reversal, crustal displacement, polar wander, and tectonic plate movements, but it was clear they had no fucking idea what was really happening.

They had no real idea what was causing these apocalyptic events.

Speculations ran rampant among the public.

Some declared it the end of the world, others spoke of Armageddon or even divine retribution.

Damian, however, didn't care about such things.

Whether the world ended or not, he had to work to afford his next meal.

No matter how destructive the environment became, those who needed to work kept working.

Only the rich had the luxury of staying safe at home.

If Damian didn't pay his rent for the upcoming month, he'd be evicted.

Homeless once again, he'd have to face the full brunt of the unnatural changes in the environment.

Not to mention, he had to earn money to buy medication to help him sleep through the pain and cope with the constantly changing temperatures.

And so, he did what he always did.

After staring out of his window for a few minutes, he got ready, grabbed his umbrella, and headed to the office.

It might have been because his luck had already maxed out, but the place where he lived didn't get affected by the strange phenomena too much, so his day-to-day life wasn't interrupted all that often.

After twenty-five minutes of walking through the rain pouring down the streets, he reached the office, but his expression quickly turned sour.