Chapter 2: Failure Before Beginning.

Her name was Leon.

A name that never should have belonged to her.

As the memories settled into place—unwanted, intrusive, yet impossibly vivid—I understood that this was not knowledge I was learning.

It was knowledge I was remembering. As though her life had been etched into the body I now inhabited, waiting patiently for a mind capable of acknowledging it.

Before Leon was born, her mother had once lived a life others could only envy.

She was a noble-born concubine of Emperor Atlas—one among many, yes, but far from insignificant.

Though she held no promise of producing an heir to the throne, she carried herself with dignity, intelligence, and pride.

Her land prospered.

Her name was respected. Even within the vast and merciless hierarchy of the imperial household, she had carved out a place where she could stand tall without bowing too deeply.

Then came the tragedy.

A monster rampage.

A calamity.

One that swallowed entire territories in fire and blood.

Leon’s maternal lands were obliterated in a single night—defences shattered, people slaughtered, estates reduced to scorched earth.

By dawn, everything was gone.

Titles meant nothing without land to anchor them.

Nobility was fragile like that. In the blink of an eye, Leon’s mother fell—from respected imperial concubine to an inconvenient remnant of a ruined house.

She kept the imperial surname.

But only in name.

Her last hope lay within her womb.

A child of imperial blood could change everything.

Restore favour. Secure patronage.

Reignite relevance.

She clung to that hope with desperate fervour, praying that the blood of Atlas would manifest strongly, brilliantly—undeniably.

But fate, it seemed, had a sense of humour.

The child was born a girl.

In the imperial household, daughters were rarely blessings.

Unless one was born with overwhelming talent—genius-level aptitude, rare abilities, something worth cultivating—a girl was little more than a bargaining chip or a burden.

Still, the mother prayed.

Prayed that her daughter would awaken something extraordinary.

That imperial blood would answer her desperation.

It never did.

Leon was talentless.

Not “average.” Not “mediocre.”

Talentless.

Even compared to commoners, her aptitude was abysmal. Barely any magical energy.

No martial intuition. Just emptiness.

It was almost impressive in its cruelty.

Hope turned to bitterness.

Bitterness turned to hatred.

And hatred needed a target.

Leon sadly became that target.

From the moment she could walk, she was denied the right to exist as herself.

Her mother dressed her in boy’s clothing, cut her hair short, and gave her a name meant to deceive the world—and perhaps herself.

Leon.

A lie she was forced to live.

Every failure was a reminder. Every breath, an accusation.

Her mother’s words carved deeper wounds than any blade ever could—blaming the child for the fall of the family, for the loss of status, for the cruelty of the world itself.

And outside the home, things were no kinder.

Children mocked her awkwardness. Adults dismissed her presence.

She was too weak to fight back, too talentless to retaliate, too isolated to escape.

Even silence became a form of suffering.

Yet—somehow—she endured.

A fragile hope survived.

The academy.

If there was one place where destiny could be overturned, where talent could be discovered or forged, it was there.

Leon applied with trembling hands and a heart full of foolish optimism.

Perhaps this was where things would change.

They didn’t.

Reality was merciless.

Her aptitude was measured, tested, dissected—and found wanting.

Not even worth ridicule.

She barely hovered above the threshold of expulsion, existing in that humiliating limbo reserved for those deemed failures but not quite worth discarding yet.

The despair that followed was absolute.

And that was when the whisper came.

Soft. Persuasive. Promising meaning where none remained.

It offered her purpose, belonging—revenge disguised as justice.

The rebellion faction.

She joined without hesitation, because she had nothing left to lose.

They were crushed.

Utterly.

The student council descended like executioners, backed by the brilliance of the main character—the hero of this world.

The rebellion never stood a chance. It was less a battle and more a lesson.

Leon was branded a disgrace.

Her final punishment was absolute.

Stripped of the imperial name. Disowned completely.

Cast out—not just from the academy, but from the imperial world itself.

She ceased to exist.

With nowhere to go, no allies, and no future, she was taken in by a farmer who pitied her just enough to offer shelter—but not enough to offer dignity.

A place in the barn.

And that was where her story was meant to end.

Cold. Forgotten. Unnoticed.

That was the life of Leon.

That was the body I now inhabited.

And according to last memories—

This very place was where she met her end.

—

I lay back down on the hay she had slept on.

The rough strands pricked against my skin, but I barely felt them.

Leon’s memories still lingered, heavy and unyielding, like a weight pressed directly onto my chest.

Her life hadn’t been tragic in some grand, theatrical way.

There had been no heroic resistance, no last stand worth remembering.

Just a slow, quiet erosion.

Abuse that became routine.

Mockery that lost its sting only because it never stopped.

Hope that was crushed not once, but repeatedly, until it learned to stay buried.

Leon’s story was… sad. Not because it was unique, but because it was painfully ordinary, a common story that represents the unfairness of the world.

I exhaled softly and stared at the wooden ceiling.

So what now?

There was no academy to return to.

Expulsion meant permanence.

It meant I was locked out of events, story flags, and—most importantly—the hidden items that only academy students could ever touch.

Entire questlines required enrolment status.

All gone.

Even if I knew where everything was… it didn’t matter.

I raised my hand hesitantly. “System?”

Nothing happened.

“…Status?”

Silence.

I tried again. Louder. Firmer.

I called out every keyword I could remember—menus, prompts, commands that had once felt second nature.

Still nothing.

A knot tightened in my stomach.

Was this one of those reincarnations?

I let my hand fall back into the hay.

“…Please don’t be that.”

Instead of calling out again, I closed my eyes.

Not in sleep—just surrender. As if I let myself drift, unanchored, allowing the weight of thought to loosen.

For a brief moment, it felt like my body was sinking… no, being pulled. Drawn forward by something I couldn’t see.

Then—

I opened my eyes.

The barn was gone.

I stood on solid ground, though it felt neither warm nor cold.

The air was still, unnaturally so, carrying no scent, no breeze.

This place was quiet in a way the real world never was—as if sound itself was hesitant to exist here.

I knew this place.

The mental space.

Leon’s inner domain.

And the place where one would normally call forth the Class Selection.

Every character in End Starlight possessed a skill tree—though in the lore, it was referred to as the Tree of Wisdom.

It wasn’t merely a progression system. It was the symbolic representation of one’s existence, their potential made manifest.

The more it grew, the more branches it formed, the stronger one became.

But growth had a starting point.

The very first branch sprouted the moment a class was chosen.

Normally, characters were born with predefined classes.

Yet the system allowed flexibility.

Players could alter class trajectories, weaving passives into unconventional builds.

A paladin’s blessings twisted into a specialised healer.

A swordmaster re-forged into a grand archer.

A tank reimagined as sword god.

That freedom—true creativity—had once been the soul of the game.

Before it was strangled by power creep.

The choice of class shaped not only skills, but the very landscape of this space.

Depending on your path, your inner world would change to match it.

Warriors stood before battlefields soaked in blood and steel.

Mages gazed upon endless skies filled with constellations and magic formulas.

Rogues lingered in shadows that never quite touched the ground.

The world reflected the path.

So when I took in my surroundings—

I froze.

All around me were stacks of books.

Books piled atop one another, forming uneven mountains that stretched into the distance.

Some were pristine, others cracked and splintered, their contents long lost.

As I walked forward, I noticed objects drifting lazily in the air—chess pieces, black and white pieces.

It was… abstract. Disordered. Almost cluttered.

And at the centre of it all—

I found it.

Leon’s Tree of Wisdom.

It was no towering entity.

It stood at my height.

That alone told me everything.

I stepped closer, my footsteps unnaturally loud in the stillness, and let out a quiet sigh.

The tree was dry.

Its bark had turned a dull, ashen grey, flaking at the slightest touch.

The branches were thin, brittle, reaching outward as if grasping for something that no longer existed.

Not a single leaf remained. No glow. No vitality.

This wasn’t an unawakened tree.

This was a tree that had already given up.

A tree that had reached the end of its growth.

I stared at it for a long time, my reflection faintly mirrored in the lifeless surface.

So that was it.

Leon’s evolution had already concluded.

A total dead end.

And for the first time since arriving in this world, I felt something dangerously close to despair.

Not because I was weak.

But because, according to this world itself—

There was nothing left for me to become.

I couldn’t help it.

I laughed.

It slipped out of me, dry and hollow, echoing faintly through the silent mental space.

“This really sucks.”

The sight of the tree told me everything I needed to know. Leon hadn’t merely failed to grow—she had already reached the end of her path.

A class had been chosen long ago, nurtured clumsily, desperately, until there was nothing left for it to give.

Still… I sighed and stepped closer.

“Well, whatever. Let’s at least see what kind of mess I’m dealing with.”

Even a bad class could sometimes be salvaged.

That had always been my belief as a player. Build around weaknesses. Exploit edge cases.

Turn trash into something functional through sheer understanding of the system.

I placed my hand against the ashen bark.

The tree responded.

Light rippled faintly across its surface, and words surfaced in my mind—not spoken, but understood.

Class: Strategist

“…Ah.”

I leaned back, rubbing my face with one hand.

“Of course.”

Honestly, it felt like a personal insult.

Strategist.

On paper, it sounded impressive. Even noble.

In a tower defense game, no less—strategy was supposed to be king. Positioning, timing, foresight.

The very foundations of victory.

So how could this be bad?

Simple.

It had been replaced.

Power-crept into irrelevance by the class that came later.

Commander.

When Commander was released, it didn’t just overshadow Strategist—it gutted it.

Stripped away its mechanics, cannibalised its identity, and rebuilt everything into a flashier, more marketable package.

Commanders didn’t just plan.

They led.

You commanded mages, and you became a Mage Commander.

You led knights, and you became a Knight Commander.

Archers, assassins, hybrids—it didn’t matter.

Your buffs scaled with the group you led.

Your abilities evolved to match their combat style.

Your relationship bonuses skyrocketed naturally.

It was flexible, powerful, and most importantly—rewarding.

The strategist, in comparison, was… abstract.

No direct command bonuses.

No scaling tied to unit composition.

Just broad, unfocused buffs and delayed effects that required perfect planning to even notice.

The only thing Strategist had going for it was freedom.

It wasn’t locked into a specific command role once chosen.

But that “freedom” translated into one thing in practice—

Mediocrity.

I lowered myself to the ground, sitting cross-legged before the withered tree, staring at it like it had personally betrayed me.

“So she picked the worst possible option.”

Leon, in her desperation, had chosen a class that promised intelligence over talent.

A path that didn’t rely on strength or magic—only thought.

And the game had punished her for it.

My gaze drifted inward, past the trunk, deeper into the tree’s hollow core.

That was when I saw it.

A single flower.

Small. Delicate. Impossible to miss.

Its petals shimmered faintly with every colour imaginable, like light refracted through crystal. It didn’t belong in a dead tree. It shouldn’t have existed at all.

I leaned closer.

“…So you did awaken something.”

The knowledge surfaced naturally.

Innate Passive: All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods

Rank: EX

An end-of-life awakening.

A passive born not from growth, but from despair—triggered when Leon had lost everything else.

It was the final gift the system had granted her… or perhaps its final mockery.

And sadly—

I knew exactly what it did.

I let out a slow breath, equal parts amusement and resignation.

“Yeah… figures.”