One SSS Affix per Level: My Novice Club Can Slay Gods!

"Minor illnesses aren’t worth worrying about. If it’s serious, I’ll just die."

At the insurance counter, John slapped a stack of documents onto the desk.

"Medical insurance is a pass for the weak. Daring to die is the epitaph of the strong!"

The young woman behind the counter looked up.

Through the transparent protective screen, she glanced at the gas mask covering John’s face, then at the insurance cancellation form he had handed her.

After two seconds of silence, she lowered her head and scanned the documents.

She had seen plenty of people like him.

Some were buried in debt. Some could no longer afford treatment. Others simply had no reason to keep living.

In this era, canceling one’s medical insurance was hardly unusual.

Anyone healthy enough to make it to the counter in person was already doing better than most.

"Once your policy is canceled, your medical coverage will terminate immediately."

She tapped the screen a few times.

"The refund will arrive within three minutes."

A moment later, John’s phone vibrated.

[United Medical Insurance refund received: 18,600 credits.]

John glanced at the notification and nodded in satisfaction.

"Efficient."

Ten minutes later, John returned to the parking lot.

An aging electric car sat in a dark corner. Its body was coated in a thick layer of gray-black dust, as though it had just been dug out of a coal heap.

He climbed inside and shut the door before finally removing his gas mask.

Turbid, frigid air carrying a metallic stench immediately flooded his nostrils.

John frowned, started the engine, and switched on the vehicle’s filtration system.

Bzzzz—

The ancient machine struggled to life, sounding like a dying patient drawing one final breath.

John raised his head and looked through the windshield.

The sky was gray-black.

Not the gray of an overcast day.

It looked as though someone had wiped the entire world with a filthy rag, only making it dirtier with every pass.

Fine black dust drifted through the air. When illuminated by the headlights, it resembled countless dead snowflakes.

John muttered under his breath.

"In a world like this, aren’t ordinary people destined to die from disease sooner or later?"

"Buying insurance is nothing more than lying to yourself."

This was his third day since being reincarnated into this world.

After spending three days browsing the internet and sorting through the memories left behind by the body’s original owner, he had more or less figured out why this world had become such a disaster.

In 2032, an unknown membrane appeared around Earth.

No one knew where it had come from.

From that day onward, sunlight grew increasingly scarce.

At first, experts called it the "Unidentified High-Altitude Refractive Layer."

Later, they gave it a more alarming name.

The "Extraterrestrial Anomalous Membrane."

Eventually, no one cared what it was called.

No matter how professional the name sounded, it could not stop the Earth from growing colder by the day.

By 2035, the global average temperature had fallen by ten degrees Celsius.

In 2037, humanity founded the United Council.

It held press conferences every day.

Every day, it promised that a solution was being developed.

Tens of billions of credits were burned through.

Each proposed solution sounded more impressive than the last.

And each one proved more useless than the one before it.

In 2040, more than half of the world’s crops died from insufficient sunlight.

Food prices skyrocketed. Riots erupted across cities. Prices on the black market changed by the hour.

At long last, the United Council came up with a truly ruthless plan.

They fired nuclear warheads at the sky.

The launch was broadcast worldwide.

That day, all of humanity sat in front of their screens and watched the missiles rise.

Then they watched their hopes explode into fireworks.

The membrane remained intact.

Instead, vast quantities of matter broke loose from its surface and slowly drifted back down to Earth like black snow.

From that day onward, hospitals became busier than shopping malls.

Radiation sickness.

Cancer.

Immune-system collapse.

Organ failure.

Humanity had poisoned itself half to death with its own prescription.

Half an hour later, John arrived home.

It was an old, dilapidated apartment building.

Half the lights in the corridor were broken. The remaining half flickered madly.

He pushed open his door.

The apartment was small. The windows had long since been welded shut, and an aging air-filtration unit in the corner emitted a piercing mechanical screech.

Creeeak—bzzz—creeeak—

It sounded as though someone were sawing through metal beside his ear.

John placed a carefully sealed box on the table.

The emblem of the United Council was printed across its surface.

Beside it was a single word.

[Apocalypse]

A smaller line of text appeared beneath it.

[The world’s first fully immersive virtual-reality game.]

John glanced at the clock on the wall.

11:47 p.m.

Thirteen minutes remained before the public launch.

"Perfect timing."

He tore open the packaging.

Inside was a silver-gray gaming helmet.

Its craftsmanship was exquisite, and its price astronomical. It looked completely out of place in the shabby rented apartment.

To purchase it, John had just canceled his medical insurance.

More precisely, the refund had allowed him to scrape together the down payment.

As for why he had to buy it—

Because reality had left him no other path.

The United Council had failed to find a way through the black membrane. The only useful discovery it had made was that the membrane appeared to be growing gradually thinner.

Thus, the experts proposed another plan that sounded perfectly reasonable.

Mass hibernation.

Wait.

Endure.

Place humanity into a state of reduced consumption and survive until the day the membrane naturally dissipated.

Apocalypse was the preliminary testing ground for the hibernation project.

The official explanation was beautifully worded.

Mental synchronization.

Consciousness stabilization.

The accumulation of data for future long-term hibernation.

Translated into ordinary language, it meant:

Everyone was going to lie around waiting to die anyway, so they might as well lie inside a machine and test government equipment while doing it.

Of course, the government was not stupid.

To attract more participants, Apocalypse included a virtual-asset trading system.

Equipment, materials, and currency obtained inside the game could all be legally exchanged for credits.

That was enough.

John had been an elite gamer in his previous life.

He could not guarantee success in many things, but when it came to making money through games, he was a true professional.

The original owner’s parents had both died from radiation sickness years ago. The savings they left behind had not even been enough to pay for a respectable funeral.

The wealthy could live in luxury residences equipped with advanced filtration systems. They could eat fresh food cultivated in underground greenhouses and hire private medical teams to prolong their lives.

Ordinary people?

Their lives were worthless.

The public launch of Apocalypse was the only opportunity John had to put his expertise to use.

He connected the device, lay down on the bed, and placed the helmet over his head.

His vision instantly went dark.

The next moment, a vast starry sky unfolded before him.

Countless points of light flowed through the darkness like a slowly revolving galaxy.

There was no grand narration.

No epic introduction.

Only a cold system notification.

[Welcome to Apocalypse.]

[Please confirm your game ID.]

An input box appeared in front of John.

After a moment of thought, he entered a name.

[Endbringer]

[Game ID confirmed.]

[The player’s in-game appearance will be synchronized with their real-world appearance.]

John raised an eyebrow.

His real appearance was mandatory?

It made sense.

The game would most likely be integrated with the hibernation project in the future. Its identity-verification system was bound to be strict.

The next second, his virtual body began to materialize.

Brown hair.

Blue eyes.

A slender build.

His complexion was pale from years without sufficient sunlight.

He looked exactly the same as he did in reality.

[Entering the Talent Selection Phase.]

[Notice: Players will acquire a Talent before selecting a Class.]

"Rolling for a Talent before choosing a Class. That’s fairly reasonable."

John muttered to himself.

A colossal wheel slowly emerged amid the stars.

Gray, white, green, blue, purple, gold—

Lights of various colors flashed across its surface at tremendous speed.

John watched the colors without feeling particularly nervous.

Truthfully, he had never expected much from his own luck.

He had already been reincarnated into this hellhole.

He had started with both parents dead, no home, no money, and nuclear-contaminated black snow falling outside.

Obtaining a God-rank Talent would be far more unbelievable than drawing garbage.

As long as he could earn credits, it would still be better than waiting to die in the real world.

The wheel spun faster and faster.

Its lights blurred together.

John had already begun considering whether he should choose smithing or alchemy if he received a lifestyle Talent.

At that moment—

BOOM!

A brilliant golden light filled with countless colors exploded before his eyes!

The entire starry sky was instantly illuminated.

Countless points of light trembled violently, as though something that should never have existed had forcibly descended into this place.

The next second, a system notification appeared.

[Congratulations, player "Endbringer." You have obtained the unique God-rank Talent—Supreme Evolution!]

[Supreme Evolution]

[Quality: Unique God Rank]

[Effect: Every time the player gains one level, they will receive one Affix of SSS rank or higher.]

[Affixes may be embedded into weapons or equipment.]

[Notice: This Talent is unique. It cannot be copied, extracted, or traded.]

John stared at the notification before him.

His pupils abruptly contracted!