The apocalypse: I can copy any talent

# Chapter 1: The Weakest Talent in History

The rift opened above the city at 3:14 PM on a Tuesday.

By 3:20, I was already the joke of Sector 7.

"COPY?" Bo Hai laughed so hard he nearly collapsed against the shelter wall. "That's it? You touch something and copy it at *ten percent*?"

Thirty survivors crowded the concrete bunker. Every single one stared at the fading blue light still glowing from my palm.

"Show us again," someone yelled from the back. "Copy something impressive this time."

I didn't answer.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Twenty minutes ago, the sky had split open. A monster made of teeth and too many joints crawled out of nothing. Officer Reyes got torn in half trying to hold the door.

I'd touched his sidearm on the way in. Panic. Grabbing for anything.

**[SYSTEM: Talent Detected - Marksmanship]**

**[Copy Successful - Efficiency: 10%]**

**[Slot 1/3 Occupied]**

Ten percent of a dead cop's aim. My grand Awakening.

"Copy," Bo Hai repeated, savoring the word like it offended him personally. He'd Awakened Iron Skin two hours ago and already appointed himself king of our shelter corner. "So if you touched me, you'd be ten percent as tough?"

"That's generally how percentages work."

A few people laughed. Not with me.

"Useless." He turned his back. "Stay against the wall, Copy-boy. Don't die where I have to look at it."

---

My name is Zhang Wei.

Six hours ago, I was a warehouse inventory clerk with a bad knee and worse credit.

Now I was the weakest Awakened in a shelter full of people who'd rolled actual talents. Iron Skin. Fireball. Enhanced Speed. One guy could talk to dogs-honestly more useful than what I got.

**[SYSTEM: Host Status - Talent: COPY]**

**[Current Slots: 1/3]**

**[Slot 1: Marksmanship (10%)]**

**[Note: Copy efficiency increases with training, repetition, and willpower.]**

"Willpower," I muttered. "So if I just believe hard enough, I stop being useless?"

**[SYSTEM: Correct assessment. Though phrased with unnecessary sarcasm.]**

I nearly dropped the sidearm. "You can hear that?"

**[SYSTEM: Always listening. It is my entire function.]**

I decided right then that I hated the System.

---

The screaming started an hour later.

Not the panicked kind-we'd had plenty of that. This was sharper. Closer.

"They're inside the perimeter!" Someone's voice cracked from the outer checkpoint, fear cutting through every conversation at once. "The mutants are inside the fence-"

Bo Hai moved before the sentence finished. Iron Skin hardened across his forearms in visible grey plates. He shouldered past slower survivors toward the door, confident in his new invincibility.

I grabbed the dead man's pistol and followed.

Staying in a room full of people who thought I was useless felt more dangerous than running toward whatever was trying to eat us.

---

The checkpoint was chaos.

Two mutated dogs-if you could still call them dogs-all wrong angles and too many teeth. They'd breached the barricade. Guards were falling.

"Fireball!" someone screamed.

Orange light caught one creature mid-lunge. It shrieked backward, burning fur filling the air.

The second turned toward the girl who'd cast it. Young. Maybe twenty. Her hands still glowed with unspent flame-but she was out of energy.

"Move!"

I raised the dead man's gun. Aimed with ten percent of a talent that belonged to someone who'd never use it again.

Fired.

The shot caught the creature in the shoulder instead of the skull. It shrieked, staggered-and turned toward me.

"That was either brave or stupid," the fire-girl breathed, scrambling back.

"Ask me again in ten seconds."

**[SYSTEM: Host has diverted a Class-1 Mutant's aggression. Reckless. Effective. Do not make it a habit.]**

The creature lunged.

I didn't have Iron Skin. Didn't have Enhanced Speed. I had ten percent of a dead man's aim and four seconds.

Two shots. First missed completely. Second caught it between the eyes.

The thing dropped mid-leap. Slid to a stop close enough that I smelled burnt fur and rotted meat.

Silence.

"Huh." Bo Hai's voice came from somewhere behind me, annoyed I was still alive. "Lucky shot, Copy-boy."

"Ten percent lucky." I muttered.

My hands shook so hard I nearly dropped the gun.

**[SYSTEM: Talent Efficiency Increased - Marksmanship: 10% → 14%]**

**[Reason: Combat application. Host demonstrated willingness to act despite low power.]**

I stared at the blue text.

For the first time since the rift opened, something other than dread moved through my chest.

*It goes up.*

"You're the Copy talent." The fire-girl appeared at my elbow. Up close she looked younger, dark hair in a hasty knot, hands still warm from her spell. "I'm Mei. You saved my life."

"I panicked and got lucky."

"You panicked, got lucky, and hit a moving target twice while it was trying to kill you." She raised an eyebrow. "I've seen Awakened with better talents freeze up doing less."

"Careful," I said. "Compliments go to my head. Rough day."

A surprised laugh escaped her, quickly swallowed-like she wasn't sure she was allowed to laugh yet, this soon after watching people die.

"For what it's worth," she said, quieter now, "Bo Hai's an idiot. Ten percent of a good talent, growing every time you use it, sounds better than a hundred percent of Iron Skin that never gets stronger."

I hadn't thought of it that way.

**[SYSTEM: Correct assessment. Host possesses the only Talent in this shelter with no theoretical ceiling. Recommend Host stop feeling sorry for himself and start training.]**

"You too?" I muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing. Talking to myself."

---

The shelter commander called an emergency meeting an hour later.

Survivors packed shoulder to shoulder in the main hall. Exhausted. Scared. Still smelling of smoke and blood.

"The rifts aren't closing." Commander Osei stood on an overturned crate. "Three more have opened across the city in the last two hours. This isn't contained. This is the start of something we don't have a name for yet."

Murmurs rippled. Someone near the back started crying.

I scanned the room out of habit-old warehouse instinct, count the exits, count the threats. My eyes landed on a woman near the commander's crate who hadn't spoken yet.

Thirty. Sharp-eyed. Tactical gear too professional for civilian. Watching the crowd with flat calculation, measuring exactly how much use each person might be.

Her eyes found mine.

Lingered half a second longer than anyone else's had all day.

"We need every Awakened talent catalogued," Osei continued. "Combat capacity first. I want to know exactly what we're working with."

"That won't take long for some of us." Bo Hai's voice carried, smirk thrown in my direction. "Copy-boy's running at ten percent of a dead man's aim. Real game-changer."

Laughter rippled through the hall.

My face heated-but before I could answer, the sharp-eyed woman spoke.

"Ten percent." Her voice carried easily, flat, cutting through the laughter without effort. "And climbing. Marksmanship, wasn't it? Fourteen percent after a single engagement."

The laughter died.

"That's a four percent gain off one fight." She was talking to herself now, calculating something behind her eyes. "Compound that over a hundred fights. A thousand." Her gaze pinned me. "Tell me, Copy-boy-what's your talent's efficiency cap?"

**[SYSTEM: Unknown. No recorded upper limit for Talent: COPY.]**

I didn't say it out loud. Something in my face must have given me away anyway.

The woman's expression shifted-sharpened-into something that looked less like curiosity and more like *want*.

"Commander." She didn't look away from me. "I'd like to requisition this one for the scouting team."

"He's a ten percent Marksman." Osei frowned. "We need combat capacity, not liabilities-"

"He's not ten percent of anything." The woman cut her off. "He's the only person in this room whose power has no ceiling. Everyone else peaked the moment they Awakened. This one's still climbing."

The whole hall went quiet.

Thirty survivors stared at me with expressions that had shifted from mockery to something far more unsettling-the particular attention people pay to something they dismissed too soon.

**[SYSTEM: New Faction Interest Detected. Recommend Host proceed with caution.]**

"Caution." I muttered, as the sharp-eyed woman stepped off the crate and walked toward me through the parting crowd. "Sure. I'll get right on that."

Behind her, Bo Hai's smirk had curdled into something that looked a lot more like worry.

I realized, with a lurch that had nothing to do with the monsters outside, that surviving the rift might be the easy part.

**[SYSTEM: New Quest Available]**

**[Join the Scouting Team: Y/N]**

**[Reward: Access to Class-2 Talent sources. Increased survival probability: 23%.]**

**[Warning: Faction politics detected. Trust no one.]**

The woman stopped in front of me. Close enough that I could see the faint scars along her jaw, the calluses on her fingers.

"Name's Han Xue," she said. "I lead the forward scouts. You come with me, you'll see more combat in a week than most see in a year."

"And if I say no?"

"You won't." She smiled-thin, not friendly. "Because you just realized your power grows. And you're already hungry for more."

She wasn't wrong.

Behind her, Bo Hai was still staring, face twisted with something that looked like fear. The mighty Iron Skin user, suddenly worried that the joke might stop being funny.

Mei caught my eye from across the room. Gave me a small nod.

*Go,* her expression said. *Be something more.*

**[SYSTEM: Decision Required]**

I looked at Han Xue. Looked at Bo Hai. Looked at the cracked ceiling that had opened into hell.

"Fine," I said. "When do we leave?"

Han Xue's smile widened. "Now."

She turned and walked toward the exit-and I followed, because staying here had never really been an option.

Behind us, the shelter's survivors watched in silence.

None of them knew they'd just watched the weakest Awakened in Sector 7 walk out the door.

None of them knew what he'd become.

**[SYSTEM: Welcome to the tutorial, Host. Try not to die.]**

---

## End of Chapter 1