I Break Through Realms All the Way with Bounty Hunting

Three years ago, someone swung a white waxwood staff at the wood yard. What A San remembered was something else: some debts in this world aren't written down in plain sight. They're written in people's names.

He carried firewood, kept accounts, and entered the inner courtyard, climbing step by step until he reached a place where he could accept jobs.

Only he could see that line of text: deadline, stake, reward. Screening a job meant accepting it; confirmation locked up the stake. When the deadline came, an unaccepted job vanished, but an accepted one had to be completed.

Every job he took was a wager with his life: the shorter the deadline, the higher the stake and the greater the reward.

His name was in the wood yard's ledger. The extra name on the register had yet to be crossed off, and the person who would strike it out came knocking first.

He had just one skill: taking jobs no one else dared accept, then surviving long enough to finish them.

(A restrained, cool style; there is a System, but it gives prices, not answers. Every object has a history, and every line of dialogue comes at a cost.)