Chapter 1

I shot awake, blinded by a searing white light. Was I not… dead?

Gasping for air, I reached for my neck. There was no foul slime from the boss, no torn flesh or agonizing pain from having my throat ripped apart.

"Don't be afraid, Millie. Every creature has a soul. As long as we hold kindness in our hearts, those poor spirits won't hurt us," said Julian Clark, my cousin.

He stood there in a spotless white shirt, gently patting my sister, Millie Larsson, on the shoulder. He looked like some saintly priest offering salvation.

Hearing that prompted a scoff out of me. I had actually been reborn back to the day our family had just cleared the tutorial phase and entered the Safe Zone.

In my previous life, it all started here.

During the tutorial instance, Millie couldn't keep her hands to herself and looted an item from a corpse. That was enough for a low-level Wraith to mark her for death.

I grabbed my cleaver, ready to hunt down the wandering Wraith before it could make its move, but Julian had stopped me with those exact self-righteous words.

Thinking back to our life before the game, I couldn't help but laugh. In the real world, I worked three backbreaking jobs to pay for Millie's education and keep the whole family fed.

Every night, I came home reeking of engine grease and sweat, so exhausted I could barely straighten my back.

And what did Julian, the relative our family had taken in, do?

He spent the money I earned through blood, sweat, and tears on expensive art supplies so he could study painting. He frequented upscale restaurants, sipping afternoon tea with socialites.

He called it "pursuing spiritual fulfillment". How charming.

The incident that angered me most happened a year before we entered the game.

I was hauling cement at a construction site during a storm. The scaffolding slipped, and I crashed to the ground, tearing open my legs.

I limped all the way up six flights of stairs before finally scraping together the 700 dollars Millie needed for her tutoring classes.

In the end, Julian donated every penny to an animal rescue shelter.

He looked at me with that same saintly expression and said, "Money is tainted by worldly greed, but life is priceless. Gabriel, you should really expand your perspective."

I was so furious that I nearly lost my mind. I demanded to know what gave him the right, but Mom and Dad immediately rushed out and condemned me.

"Why are you so materialistic?"

"Julian is doing a good deed! Look at yourself, covered in mud and screaming your head off like some street thug!"

Even Millie pinched her nose in disgust. "You're so embarrassing, Gabe. All my friends think Julian is what a real gentleman is supposed to be."

That was my wonderful family.

The money I nearly killed myself earning wasn't worth as much as a single word of Julian's fake compassion. It was no different in this endless horror game when monstrous creatures roamed every map.

I had wiped the blood from my blade and escorted them through one instance after another, yet all they ever saw was how crude I was.

My ruthlessness, forced by circumstances, was a stain on my humanity, while Julian's nobility was the epitome of moral superiority.

"Gabe, what are you spacing out for?"

Millie's complaining tone snapped me out of my thoughts. She pointed toward the dark silhouette flickering outside the door, her voice trembling. "The monster's back! Hurry up and kill it already!"

She barked the order as if I had been born to be her personal bodyguard.

My eyes drifted to the black handprint on her shoulder—the Wraith's Mark. The Wraith would come to claim her life tonight.

In my previous life, I had nearly died fighting that Wraith to save her. Meanwhile, Julian accused me of piling up unnecessary bloodshed.

This time, I simply lowered my cleaver and put it away. I pulled over a chair, sat down comfortably, and coldly replied, "I'm not doing it."

Mom and Dad were stunned. Millie's eyes widened, as though she had heard something unbelievable.

She screamed, "Are you crazy? You're trying to watch me get torn apart, aren't you?"

I whipped my head at Julian, who was still putting on his holier-than-thou act. "Didn't he just say every creature has a soul? Since he's so noble, tonight's Wraith is all yours to cleanse. Go touch its soul with yours."

A mocking smile spread across my face. "And whatever you do, don't let a bloodstained brute like me offend your sense of ethics again."