I Was Summoned as the Weakest Hero, But I Awakened a Military System

[Host: John Smith

Level: 46

Experience Points: 685,000 / 800,000

Mission: N/A

Troops: N/A

Soul: 456

Infantry: 0/300

Special Forces: 0/100

Non-Combat Personnel: 0/600

Military Hardware Limit Composition:

Weapons: 100

Land: 100

Air: 85

Navy: 1/30 (SOC-R Riverine Craft)

System Points: 130,500

Inventory: [Standard Infantry Kit, AN/PVS-31A NVGs, FN SCAR-H, FN FNX-45 Tactical]

System Shop]

John let out a low, appreciative whistle as the glowing status screen hovered before him.

”One hundred thirty thousand points...” he muttered, his fingers hovering over the blue interface. ”Level forty-six. That Javelin kill payed out big time.”

He briefly contemplated dipping into the recruitment pool to summon a squad, but the spatial constraints of the dungeon teleporters kept making solo maneuvers cleaner. He didn’t want a team spawning in a tight corridor or getting trapped in environmental traps like the acidic mire on Floor 8. For now, he would keep his points banked until he hit an area wide enough to deploy real troop power.

Closing the system interface, John turned his attention to his new surroundings.

The blinding flash of the teleporter faded, replaced not by the sulfur fumes of the mines or the damp reek of the swamp, but by the crisp, freezing bite of mountain air and the faint, sweet scent of burning sandalwood.

CRACK-CLACK.

John immediately dropped into a low combat stance, bringing his FN SCAR-H to his shoulder as his AN/PVS-31A night-vision goggles flipped down, the white-phosphor display illuminating his environment in razor-sharp detail.

He was standing on a circular stone dais, but this wasn’t a subterranean cave.

[Local Area Scan: Floor 6 - The Silent Sanctuary]

He was inside a massive, vaulted grand hall. Soaring wooden pillars carved with intricate, glowing draconic runes held up a pagoda-style ceiling forty feet above. Snow flurries drifted through broken paper-and-timber lattice windows, dusting the dark, polished wooden floorboards beneath his tactical boots.

Long rows of brass prayer bowls, heavy iron bells, and ancient meditation mats stretched down the central aisle, leading toward a towering, thirty-foot bronze statue of a multi-armed warrior deity at the far end of the sanctuary.

The air was dead silent, except for the soft, rhythmic scrape of wooden sandals on smooth timber.

John’s maxed-out Combat Perception flared instantly, tracking dozens of subtle thermal signatures emerging from the shadows behind the carved pillars and upper balconies.

Down the central aisle, twenty tall, gaunt figures stepped into the moonlight filtering through the high windows. They wore ragged, ash-gray monastic robes wrapped over polished steel armor plates. Their faces were covered by lacquered porcelain masks painted with crying or demonic expressions, and each monk held a long, gleaming naginata—a polearm capped with a razor-sharp, curved steel blade.

[Target Identification: Ashen Monks of the Silent Order (Level 45 - 48)]

[Quantity: 24 Signatures Detected]

Unlike the loud, barbaric roars of the Orcs or the mindless screeching of the Mire-Drakes, these entities didn’t make a sound. They didn’t shout a war cry. They simply assumed fluid, perfectly synchronized martial stances.

John stood up slowly, keeping the stock of his SCAR-H wedged tight against his plate carrier as he thumbed the selector switch to semi-automatic.

”A monastery, huh?” John growled softly behind his tactical mask, his cold eyes scanning the upper catwalks. ”Let’s see if your kung fu can handle seven-six-two.”

SWOOSH!

The twenty-four Ashen Monks blurred forward in terrifying, silent unison. Their wooden sandals skimmed over the snow-dusted floorboards with ghostlike speed, spreading into a fluid.

John’s maxed-out Combat Perception instantly kicked into overdrive. To his heightened senses, the world slowed to a crawl. He tracked the trajectories of six naginata blades thrusting simultaneously toward his throat and chest from his forward arc.

He didn’t give them the distance they needed to leverage their polearms.

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!

John squeezed the SCAR-H’s trigger, delivering rapid, controlled double-taps. Heavy 7.62x51mm AP rounds slammed point-blank into the three lead monks. The tungsten-core penetrators punched through their lacquered porcelain masks and steel chest plates like cardboard, shattering skulls and dropping the trio instantly into the polished timber.

[Target Eliminated: Ashen Monk of the Silent Order (Level 45) x3]

Without breaking stride, the remaining three lead monks adjusted their angles instantly, using their dead brothers’ falling bodies as temporary shields. Two naginata blades whistled through the air in a synchronized cross-slash designed to disembowel him.

John ducked low beneath the razor-sharp steel, feeling the vacuum breeze graze his tactical helmet. He lunged inside their guard, drove his heavy tactical boot into the knees of the monk on his left, and fired his SCAR-H point-blank into the chest of the monk on his right.

THWIP-THWIP!

The monk went flying backward into a row of brass prayer bowls, which clattered loudly against the stone walls.

Four more monks dropped silently from the high wooden catwalks forty feet above, descending like striking hawks with their naginatas pointed straight down at John’s head.

”Up top!” John growled.

Using his maxed-out Physical Conditioning, John executed a violent lateral dive-roll across the slippery floorboards just as four steel blades impaled the exact spot where he had been standing, splintering the ancient timber floor into flying shrapnel.

John rolled back onto his feet, dropped his empty 20-round magazine with a swift thumb release, and slapped a fresh box into the receiver before his boots even settled.

CLACK-CLICK.

Eight monks immediately closed the gap, sweeping their long polearms in interlocking horizontal arcs to trap him against a massive wooden support pillar.

John opened his system menu with a razor-sharp thought.

”System! Deploy AA-12 Automatic Shotgun!”

FLASH!

A heavy, matte-black AA-12 combat shotgun materialized in his hands, loaded with a 20-round drum of 12-gauge High-Explosive Frag-12 rounds.

John raised the combat shotgun one-handed and held the trigger down.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

The AA-12 cycled at three hundred rounds per minute, sending miniature high-explosive grenades tearing through the air at point-blank range.

KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM!

The Frag-12 rounds detonated upon impact with the monks’ steel chest plates. Overpressure and razor-sharp shrapnel shredded the Ashen Monks’ armor, blowing limbs clean off and vaporizing their porcelain masks into fine dust. The sheer kinetic shockwave sent four monks crashing through the paper-and-timber lattice windows, tumbling down the snowy mountainside outside.

[Target Eliminated: Ashen Monk of the Silent Order (Level 47) x4]

[Target Eliminated: Iron Monk of the Silent Order (Level 48) x2]

The remaining ten monks didn’t flinch or retreat. Recognizing the lethal nature of John’s ranged firepower, they crossed their naginata shafts in front of their chests, channeling dark, translucent ki barriers that formed glowing, ethereal shields around their bodies.

They charged through the smoke in a tight phalanx formation.

John ditched the AA-12, unslung his SCAR-H, and drew an M67 fragmentation from the system. He pulled the pin with his teeth, cooked it for two seconds, and skipped it across the slick floorboards right between the feet of the advancing phalanx.

”Frag in the pipe!”

KABOOM!

The grenade detonated directly underneath their formation. The shockwave cracked their glowing ki shields, throwing the monks off balance and staggering their momentum.

John capitalized on the split second of disorientation. He sprinted forward, using his maxed-out reflexes to step right onto the raised shaft of a monk’s naginata, vaulting into the air.

While mid-air above their heads, John unholstered his FN FNX-45 Tactical with his right hand while maintaining his SCAR-H in his left.

BOOM! BOOM! THWIP-THWIP! BOOM!

Dual-wielding his primary and sidearm, John rained high-pressure .45 ACP AP and 7.62mm rounds straight down into their unprotected helmets and neck joints.

By the time his boots hit the snow-covered floorboards on the other side of the phalanx, five more monks collapsed in a heap of bloodied silk and ruined armor.

[Target Eliminated: Ashen Monk of the Silent Order (Level 46) x5]

John landed in a low crouch, spun around on his heel, and emptied the remaining rounds in his FNX-45 magazine into the chest of the last standing monk, driving the creature back against the towering thirty-foot bronze statue of the warrior deity.

BOOM!

The final monk slumped against the base of the statue, its porcelain mask cracking in half to reveal empty, lifeless stone features beneath before dissolving into black ash.

Silence returned to the grand hall of the Silent Sanctuary, broken only by the whistling of the cold mountain wind blowing through the shattered windows and the rhythmic hum of John’s breathing.

[Target Eliminated: Ashen Monk of the Silent Order (Level 48) x5]

[Calculating Experience...]

[Experience Awarded: 65,000 XP]

[Cumulative XP: 750,000 / 800,000]

[System Points Awarded: +25,000 SP]

[Souls Received: 72]

John eject-loaded a fresh magazine into his FNX-45, reholstered it, and racked his SCAR-H. He wiped a dusting of snow off his tactical goggles.

”Not bad for a warm-up,” John muttered, stepping over the piles of ash and shattered naginatas as he headed deeper toward the sanctuary’s inner courtyard. ”Now where’s the boss hiding?”