[Post-Apocalypse | Special Agent Academy | Superpowers | Underdog's Rise | One Female Lead]
After the Third World War, nuclear ash veils the sun, and seventy percent of the land becomes a polluted wasteland known as the Ashlands. Humanity retreats behind towering walls. Beyond them lies a dead zone overrun by Corrupted Beasts and wandering Mindless.
Inside the walls, one in five people can awaken Ash Marks and gain strength several times greater than an ordinary person's. Fire, shadow, shield, eye... Those who awaken one of the nine Ash Mark types are drafted into the Special Agent Academy and sent out in teams to hunt, retrieve supplies, and scavenge resources from the dead zone.
But if using an Ash Mark pushes you past the safe threshold, you lose control and turn into a monster. There is no in-between.
Chen Yinfei is the most unremarkable blade-type cadet at the academy. The instruments can't determine his type, and his file contains only two words: Unknown.
During one mission in the dead zone, an invisible "line" at the back of his neck suddenly goes taut...
He vanishes from the spot.
Teleportation. It belongs to none of the nine types. The instruments can't detect it, and no one dares put it in his file. Each jump feels like his brain is being torn apart: half an inch leaves him bleeding, a meter drains his strength, and any farther means trading his life for it. He knows nothing about where the power came from or why he has it.
All he can do is hide his anomaly. In the least promising squad of all, he starts with half an inch, gradually probing the limits of this power and the limits of this world.
The Corrupted Beasts and Mindless outside the walls, the fate of those who lose control, the secret of the burning crystals inside the Corrupted Beasts, the experiments conducted by the underground organization "Furnace" twenty years ago, the death of his adoptive father in an "accidentally wrong turn," and the shadow-type girl who alone walked toward him during squad assignment...
He is drawing closer, step by step, to a truth everyone has tried to bury:
