Luke plunged into the portal heading back to Earth, and the transition swallowed him whole, like a living storm dragging him into its core. Bluish energy wrapped around him in a violent embrace, sparks snapping and coiling around his limbs. The pain hit instantly, deep and overwhelming, like something trying to crush him and rebuild him at the same time. His bones felt as if they were cracking and reforging; his blood surged and recoiled in his veins with a will of its own. Even his eyes felt ready to burst out of his skull.

  After a few seconds that stretched into forever, everything was devoured by a black haze. Darkness flooded his vision, and silence smothered every sense. He recognized this. Rank evolution. From F to E. And even through the raw, tearing agony ripping through him, something inside him, instinctive and ancient, whispered that this was necessary. Good. The next step.

  His consciousness drifted away from his body, as if he were floating far outside his own skin. The reconstruction continued, more intense with each passing heartbeat, every cell rewritten from scratch. Even in the absolute void, system notifications pulsed faintly at the edges of his mind, but the pain was too much. He forced the interface away just to endure the process.

  Before he disappeared entirely, he focused what little awareness he had left on a single action: he pulled Angelica into his soul. He couldn’t risk her being teleported somewhere else or getting stuck in the tutorial. It was the last coherent decision he managed before everything finally went dark. When the agony stopped, the darkness cracked like broken glass. Light leaked through the fissures until the real world bled into view. Luke felt his body knitting itself back together in physical space; he was being rebuilt atom by atom and spit out of the teleport.

  Home. I’m finally getting home!

  The surge of emotion hit hard, but it didn’t last. The moment he tried to step forward, there was no floor. No ground. No support. Only a void. He plunged downward.

  Wind tore past his face as he dropped at blistering speed, the night sky opening wide around him. Stars. Torn clouds. And a terrifying silence. Instinct told him to scream, but shock strangled the sound in his throat. Something had gone wrong. Horribly wrong.

  He had been teleported into the sky. He tried to pull up the system, desperate for anything.

  [Locked until your new Rank finishes processing!]

  Luke cursed silently. He wanted to use the bat cloak, anything to glide, but the interface ignored him. Everything failed. Before he could even consider another option, the ground appeared through the clouds below him, rising like a gray titan rushing to meet him.

  Except something was off. The ground was moving.

  It rose like a massive elevator while he kept falling. The distorted perspective made his stomach flip. Then the acceleration cut out completely. Gravity vanished as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. His body went weightless.

  When his feet touched solid earth, there was no impact. No pain. Nothing at all. The sense of falling vanished as though it had never existed.

  “What the hell!”, he gasped, pressing a hand to his chest, trying to calm his racing heart. Even with boosted HP and all his new stats, there was no way he should have survived a drop like that.

  He drew a slow breath and scanned the area. Towering trees, moonlit shadows stretching across twisted branches, a wild maze of forest. No buildings. No lights. No streets. Nothing that looked remotely like Earth.

  Did the teleport throw me somewhere else entirely?

  “Haha.”

  The raspy laugh cut through the forest silence like a cold blade.

  Luke spun around and froze.

  A figure nearly three meters tall stood behind him. It wasn’t human; that truth hit him with the clarity of instinct, the kind that bypasses logic entirely. The creature wore a black cloak so deep it seemed to swallow the light around it. The hood hid everything, every feature, as if there were only void inside. One glance, and the silhouette called to mind the oldest image of Death.

  “Do not fear, Luke Moon,” the figure said. “You are not dead, nor am I Death, though I was born from Her.”

  A massive scythe materialized from the darkness beneath the hood, and skeletal hands, skin dry as parchment and rigid like it had been peeled from a centuries old corpse, reached out to grasp the weapon. The contrast between the living shadow of the cloak and those cadaverous hands sent a chill down Luke’s spine.

  On reflex, he tried using Identify. Nothing. He reached for his inventory, willing any weapon into his grasp. No response. Even the necklace linked to his pocket dimension was silent, dead, useless.

  Everything was locked.

  “My name is Sigil,” the creature said, bowing in a slow, formal arc. The voice carried weight, a metallic undertone that didn’t just echo in the air but vibrated in Luke’s bones.

  From what little Luke could see beneath the sleeves of the cloak, the being had a humanoid shape, but that was almost the only thing familiar about it. The skin looked dry and lifeless, like sun burned driftwood. No muscles, no warmth, no hint of vitality.

  “Sigil?” Luke repeated, still trying to piece together what the hell was happening. Nothing in any tutorial theory mentioned anything like this.

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  “Do not trouble yourself,” Sigil said, lifting one bony hand. “You are where you should be. I am a Guide for those who complete a tutorial. At this moment, every survivor from your tutorial is speaking with a Guide. I was assigned to you.”

  That only made everything more confusing. From what Luke had learned, there was never any mention of a post tutorial Guide. This was entirely new information.

  The creature drifted forward, gliding over the ground as if it had no legs at all, hovering just inches above the earth. Luke felt the urge to step back, but instinct warned him that running was pointless. The gap between them was too wide. Even if Luke sprinted to the edge of the world, Sigil would reach him effortlessly.

  “You’re reasoning correctly,” Sigil commented.

  “You can read my thoughts?” he asked. He already suspected the answer, but admitting it out loud made the idea of having zero mental privacy even more unnerving.

  “A god can do many things,” Sigil replied simply. “But our time together is short. Let me begin by saying this: a Guide typically appears only in tutorials touched by a God. It is not common. And we request discretion. Do not speak to people of your world about your meeting with a Guide. Not even about our existence. Do we understand each other?”

  Luke nodded.

  “Good,” Sigil said, with a faint echo of satisfaction. “Let me explain. We are in an intermediary dimension. Soon, you will be sent back to your universe, to your planet. But first, we must settle a few matters. To begin, I congratulate you on completing the tutorial. Yours was a difficult one… in fact, the most difficult in your entire universe.”

  Sigil stepped closer. Even the scythe it carried stood taller than Luke. Being near that thing felt like standing beside a living shadow that swallowed everything it touched. Beneath the hood, there was nothing. No face. No light. Only darkness layered upon more darkness.

  “The System…” Sigil began, its voice dropping to a whisper so thin it barely existed. “In every universe, it likes to create a special tutorial. This one takes place in the remains of a universe that no longer exists.”

  The creature leaned forward, lowering its hood until it hovered at Luke’s eye level. For a heartbeat, he could almost feel the cold radiating from that void, as if the abyss itself were breathing against his skin. Looking into it felt like staring into a pit that stared back.

  “It is the System’s way of cleansing what’s left, while telling its story and salvaging anything still worth saving. Knowledge. Relics. Or even beings that should have long since gone extinct.”

  Sigil drifted back slowly and deliberately, the scythe gliding through the air in a movement far too smooth for something so massive.

  “Stone Angel…” it murmured, almost tasting the words. “Curious. Interesting. Do not worry. Your secret is safe.”

  Luke understood instantly. It was talking about Angelica, or whatever she had become.

  “Angels are deeply loyal creatures,” Sigil went on. “They will never serve another being unless they feel an overwhelming admiration. You have gained a powerful ally, a guardian who will not abandon you. But be warned… their devotion can exceed certain limits. Admiration can turn into obsession. Their love can become extreme, even jealous and possessive. Still, there is no friend more loyal than one of them. They will guard you for your entire life, even if you cast them out, mistreat them, or betray them. They are, as some say, eternal sentinels.”

  The words landed somewhere heavy inside him. Angelica was alive again, at least partially. But what that meant going forward, he had no idea. Would she come to Earth? Could she live normally? Blend in?

  Probably not. Her skin was no longer human flesh; it was stone, smooth and gray like polished marble. And the wings… the wings alone made her existence impossible to hide. She wasn’t just Angelica anymore. She was both: the girl he had known and the angel woman bound within the mask.

  All of that was a problem for later. Right now, all he wanted was to go home.

  “Can you tell if a participant is safe? Her name is Allison Rhiannon.”

  Sigil didn’t respond immediately. For several long seconds, it remained perfectly still. Then, at last, it answered.

  “What’s happening with the other participants and their Guides must remain between them. Answering your question would break certain rules,” Sigil explained. “Imagine if a participant wanted to be declared dead. There’s no correct answer I could give without creating problems. You come from a family of lawyers, think of this as attorney client privilege. Some conversations are meant to stay sealed.”

  The logic knocked down every argument Luke had lined up. It was infuriating… but airtight.

  “It seems the invitations have finally arrived. Then we can begin,” Sigil said.

  Almost instantly, a flood of notifications burst open in front of him, stacking so fast he barely managed to register them.

  [Lakarion, God of Assassination, has invited you to a conversation.]

  [Mikhayla, the Queen Bee, has invited you to a conversation.]

  [Ardan, God of Alchemy, has invited you to a conversation.]

  [Bogeyman has invited you to a conversation.]

  [Caelina, Goddess of Kindness, has invited you to a conversation.]

  [Merlin has invited you to a conversation.]

  [Asmodeus, Primordial of Chaos, has invited you to a conversation.]

  

  [Samael, the Inventor, has invited you to a conversation.]

  [Agripinna has invited you to a conversation.]

  [Blight, God of Plague, has invited you to a conversation.]

  [P, God of Puppets, has invited you to a conversation.]

  And more came. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. He stopped reading altogether before it swallowed him whole.

  “If you accept any of those invitations, the being you choose will materialize here in this dimensional space as an Advisor for what is about to happen,” Sigil said.

  “And what exactly is about to happen?”

  “You will complete your advancement to Rank E,” Sigil replied. “All rewards earned during the tutorial will finally be granted, including titles, Tutorial Points and everything else. After that, you’ll gain access to an exclusive shop where you may spend those points however you see fit. Skills, familiars, runes, scrolls, items, equipment… the list is long. Certain unique paths may open to you, similar to your profession as Mother Freya’s Botanist.”

  Sigil paused, letting the weight of its words settle.

  “With items tied to various gods and divine beings, you might even acquire a legacy coin representing their path. Many treasures lie within your reach because of what you have accomplished.”

  Legacy? Like Mother Freya’s book.

  The book that awakened his exclusive profession, the one that had saved his life more times than he could count.

  “You reasoned correctly,” Sigil confirmed. “You may also acquire something that helps you awaken future paths for your new class.”

  A notification blinked into existence, one he had nearly forgotten.

  [You have acquired a Second Class: Witch]

  [You have acquired a Second Class: …]

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