Levi lay sprawled out on the wooden floor of Mae's hut, back against a stack of itchy old pelts that barely counted as a cushion. A dull beam of early morning light crept in through the small cracks between the boards. Dust danced in the shaft like lazy fireflies, the only movement in the room besides Levi's slow blinking.
He yawned. Loudly. With no shame.
"This is it," he mumbled. "My third day in medieval mystery land… and I still haven't died of dysentery or lizard attacks. That's a win, right?"
He stretched his legs, the tips of his borrowed boots nudging a splintered stool that creaked ominously. His eyes flicked toward the corner where Mae had kept a bowl of dried swamp berries and something vaguely jerky-like. He'd eaten the last of it last night. Nothing left now but stale air and the faint smell of boiled lizard.
"I should be doing something," he said, mostly to himself.
But he wasn't.
Because that's not how Levi Hallow operated.
He glanced toward the small pile of kindling near the hearth, untouched. Mae had said something about chopping more wood today, helping out in the garden, maybe asking around for odd jobs in the village if he was feeling up for it.
Spoiler: He wasn't.
Instead, Levi rolled to the side and reached under the straw mat he'd been using as a blanket. From a tucked-away fold of the inner lining, he pulled out the oddity—the only thing in this strange world that made a shred of sense to him.
His own little miracle.
A hidden menu. A system only he could see.
A cheat engine.
It had first appeared like a hologram, just once, floating briefly in the air when he'd screamed in joy outside the village. Since then, it had gone silent—tucked away in some metaphysical file space only he could access. Not with a wave of the hand or a thought, but through muscle memory, like opening an old game save folder or navigating a registry hack.
And Levi had done just that.
From Mae's crude writing tools—an old charcoal nub and a scrap of animal hide—he'd scratched together a few button labels. File, Edit, Table, Memory View, D3D, Help. The interface wasn't a fantasy RPG menu. It was Cheat Engine, in all its retro, plain, functional glory.
And it still didn't do jack.
He tapped a few imaginary keys in the air. No confirmation chime. No animation. Just that vague mental "click" he'd been training himself to feel. He closed his eyes and focused on what he remembered from his last few fidgeting sessions.
The memory view had been empty.
Nothing to select.
Nothing to scan.
Because, as far as he could tell, the cheat engine was working—but only as a tool, not a guide. No friendly AI voice. No stats. No health bar. No glowing "YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN" nonsense. Just raw data, blank entries, and a save file directory that he was slowly trying to understand.
He sat up and exhaled.
"I need something… anything… with a number," he muttered. "Food, coins, even a rusty spoon. Something I can scan. But nooo, I'm just Levi the Lazy, adopted by a village of potato farmers and swamp dwellers."
Mae wasn't around. She'd left early to barter with a trapper who'd come by offering something that "smelled better than usual." Levi hadn't asked what that meant. He didn't want to know.
Instead, he sat cross-legged on the floor, drawing mock-up tables in the dirt.
He sketched a rectangle labeled:[GOLD] = ???[FOOD] = ???[WOOD] = 0[WEAPONS] = Nope
He scratched his head. "If I can get a real object, then I can find its value and maybe start tweaking… or duplicating."
His heart raced a little.
Duplicating. That was the dream, wasn't it? The gamer's fantasy?
He stared at the invisible interface again, willing it to show him something. Anything.
Instead, his stomach growled.
"Ugh," he sighed, dragging himself to his feet and opening Mae's door a sliver. The sunlight outside was brighter than expected. He squinted. Some kids ran past, one of them shouting about a frog the size of a chicken. Typical swamp nonsense.
He closed the door and slumped back down.
"Two days of grace left," he whispered. "One and a half, really."
He'd already been warned. If he couldn't make himself useful by then, Mae would send him off to the fields—or worse, someone else might report him. The village didn't take kindly to freeloaders. If they didn't cut your hand, they might just send you to the wall.
The Wall. Capital W. He still didn't know what that was.
It didn't sound like fun.
He tapped on the imaginary "Help" menu.
Nothing.
"Figures," he muttered. "Even my hallucinations are lazy."
He leaned back and closed his eyes, pretending the straw beneath him was memory foam, that the tiny hut was his old room, and that outside the window was the familiar street with parked cars and convenience stores.
Not moss.
Not mud.
Not lizard traps.
"I miss Wi-Fi," he whispered.
Then, reluctantly, he opened his eyes and sat up again. His fingers danced over his thigh as if typing on a keyboard.
Scan for value: 1Next scan: increased valueStill no results.No pointer. No address. Just… null.
He chuckled bitterly.
"This would be a whole lot easier if I had… like… an apple," he said. "Just one apple. I could eat half of it. Then scan for 'less.' Boom. Classic cheat engine start."
But there were no apples.
Only swamp fruit and dry meat.
And Levi was still too lazy to go out and ask someone for a job or a trade.
He scratched a few more notes in the dirt and flopped back down.
"I'll figure it out," he muttered. "Tomorrow."
Always tomorrow.
As the sun moved across the sky and the day passed slowly, Levi remained where he was—half-asleep, half-fiddling with a system that might be the key to changing the world… if only he could be bothered to use it.