Ah! It hurts! As Ren pried open his heavy eyelids, the incomprehensible murmurs and whispers swirling in his mind grew slightly louder. Ghostly, rainbow-colored hues veiled his vision.
His whole body ached like he had plunged into water from the top of a mountain.
With faint groans and grunts, he tried to move his body. As a sharp pain surged through his brain, his vision gradually began to clear.
He pushed himself up onto his buttocks, waves of pain stabbing into his ribs like knives.
As a dry, cold breeze licked his skin, the turquoise light reflected from numerous swords and suits of armor around him made him squint.
What's going on? Where am I? Ren blinked.
A little way ahead, his eyes caught sight of red text.
< Lv.3 Dwarf Paladin(Dead)>
When he lowered his gaze, he saw a dwarf lying on the ground, half of his face turned into a bloody mess of flesh. An oval shield, bent and battered, covered the left side of his armor, which was crushed in various places.
What the… hell? Ren slowly lifted his head and fixed his gaze on the moon in the sky. His eyes wandered over the shattered parts that made up a quarter of the turquoise moon, crumbling into tens of millions of fragments.
"Am I… inside Rings of Alkhen?" Ren let out a foolish chuckle and rubbed his eyes.
He was in a dream, for sure. And now that he realized it, waking up shouldn't take long.
He surrendered to ignorance and waited to awaken.
But as time passed, the careless smile on his lips froze.
"Why… am I not waking up?" he murmured.
A large cloud passed, curtaining the moon and cutting off the light that illuminated the land. The terrain was plunged into a gloomy and ominous atmosphere.
Ren flinched with a disturbing sense of awareness settling on him and looked around with full alertness.
The entire delicate face of a woman, soaked in blood, lay with her dull blue eyes fixed on the sky. Her unnaturally twisted arm was resting just beneath his leg.
With a jolt of revulsion and horror, he quickly pulled his leg back, only for another wave of agony to swallow his body whole.
"Ughh!"
Ren's pain-wracked body fell backward and slid down a small hill made of corpses.
His heart thudded in his ears as he gasped, struggling to get back on his feet. Ignoring the unbearable stabbing in his ribs, he managed to rise to his knees.
A thunderclap echoed through his numbed mind, and interwoven scenes began to flow before his eyes like a river:
A trip to the farm with his mother, father, and sister when he was just five years old.
Clinging to his mother's arm in fear on his first school day.
His sister accidentally breaking his arm while they were playing together.
The big party he threw with friends when he turned eighteen.
His confession to the girl he liked—and his first kiss.
And finally, losing control of his car and tumbling off a cliff.
Ren let out a shaky breath, his eyes wide open. "Did I… die?"
At that moment, notifications appeared before his eyes:
[Nether has found its chosen one!]
[Your Consciousness Map has been installed over Livinius, apprentice of Skingnawer Limpert, Chief of Tirid Mound!]
[Beware! You're a glitch born from Nether's secret interference with the laws. If the System becomes aware of your existence, it will send its Enforcers after you—you must delay that moment as long as you can. Remember! You only have one life, protect it well!]
[Your destiny is to prevent the capture of Alkhen Castle, unlike everyone else who seeks to conquer it.]
[A special Quest chain has been assigned to you! Keep completing them until Nether contacts you.]
[If you successfully defend Alkhen Castle until Nether completes its awakening, you will be granted immortality in the multiverse. If you fail, your existence will be destroyed.]
[Good luck! Do not disappoint Nether!]
Ren stared at the notifications hovering before his eyes in stunned silence. Even though his perception of the world around him felt strangely different, the awareness that all his senses were intact left him utterly at a loss for what to think.
How did I come to life inside a game?
How can I have my senses?
What is Nether, and what does it represent?
How the hell am I supposed to grow stronger in the ruthless world of Rings of Alkhen without dying even once?
How could it possibly grant me immortality?
His breath grew shallow as he forced himself to stand. It felt like a blizzard of thoughts was raging inside his head. He didn't believe any of it was a lie. After all, there was nothing to be gained from deceiving a dead man like him.
No matter how I look at it, it doesn't feel like a fake world. In fact… is it more real than the real one? Ren swallowed the bloody spit rising from his throat and drew a deep breath into his lungs.
Despite his confused mind, all he felt was a deep curiosity and excitement. The unknown had never frightened him—he knew it always carried the rarest opportunities alongside it.
The mundanity of his old life had pushed him to embrace this uncertainty with all his heart.
He thought back to five years ago.
Thirteen game studios under the Ryhten Group merged to launch a VRMMO called Rings of Alkhen.
What set this game apart from the countless others like it—and served as its most provocative marketing hook—was a unique feature: a vast, fantastical world inhabited by NPCs carrying the preserved consciousness of real, once-living humans.
From the first day it hit the market, this concept turned Rings of Alkhen into a phenomenon.
The process was established through an agreement with Rythen Group, whereby the parties were enrolled in a private health insurance plan. In the event of an inevitable and definitively determined death, their brain signals were recorded onto disks before they completely faded.
In the first version of the game, Consciousness Maps of the deceased were created through a process where numerous quantum processors scanned and analyzed brain signals. These maps were then transferred to the Rings of Alkhen Servers, granting NPCs the illusion of fake eternality.
During the advertising campaign, players were told that the NPCs were based on real consciousnesses rather than AI and computer code. This new approach attracted a vast audience, who subconsciously embraced the idea that the meaning of life was to leave a mark on the world.
Many people struck deals with the company, and an even larger audience nearly lost their minds in desperation to interact with NPCs integrated with consciousness fragments.
Ren and his family were among the few who had signed a contract with the company and fell under its special insurance umbrella.
A sudden clap of thunder snapped him out of his thoughts.
As he looked up at the gathering clouds in the sky, he still felt like he was dreaming—completely disconnected from reality. Just a few days ago, he had put his Level 47 account on hold in preparation for the upcoming guild wars.
The experience he was having now was incomparably more vivid than anything the DreamCore Device had ever provided. Every breath he took, every pain he felt, the wind brushing against his skin, the texture of the ground beneath his feet— felt entirely different from that of a regular online player.
Especially in the case of pain.
DreamCore devices temporarily suspend all neural pathways that connect the user to reality, interfering with the signals from sensory receptors and transmitting artificial ones to the brain instead. In the case of Rings of Alkhen, players were subjected to a controlled level of pain—just enough to keep them from becoming too careless about injuries in-game.
However, the pain was just like what he would have experienced in the real world.
So, will the HP system work for me just like it does in the game? Ren lowered his gaze.
This was a critical point!
In Rings of Alkhen, injuries varied depending on the sensitivity of different body parts. Severing the head, cleaving the throat, piercing the heart, or being struck by a meteor—extreme cases like these resulted in instant death.
However, even if hundreds of arrows struck an arm—crippling it or tearing it clean off—the damage would still be capped at a set percentage. Only special effects like poison or relentless bleeding could push past that limit and bring death closer.
Is the Mental Command System active?
Ren summoned his Status screen:
Status
Name: Livinius (Ren Linthar)
Race: Half-Elf (Male)
Class: Telekinetic (Unique)
Level: 1
Experience: 0/1,000
Trait(s): [Telekinetic Bond] [Telekinetic Transfusion] [Valor]
Profession(s): [Novice Swordsman] [Potioncraft I]
Relics: —
Fame: —
Health Points (HP): 56/550
Mana Points (MP): 120/120
Stamina Points(SP): 2/20
Attributes:
Strength (STR): 8
Vitality (VIT): 7
Agility (AGI): 6
Endurance (END): 5
Perception (PER): 5
Dexterity (DEX):5
Wisdom (WIS): 10
Intelligence (INT): 7
Charisma (CHA): 8
Willpower (WIL): 10
Ren examined the Status screen for a long while.
Since he had taken the place of an NPC, he had gained a Class that online players couldn't choose within the game.
In the game, each Class came with its unique Traits. His Level 47 Human Hunter had a Class Trait called [Hunter's Insight], which increased vision, target, and environmental perception range by 20% during combat.
However, depending on a player's Attributes and the Abilities gained from Relics, someone who chose Hunter as a Class could evolve far beyond the usual archetype and end up in a completely different build path.
Once, he had even tried building an Assassin as a Hunter—but after a certain level, the clash between the Class requirements became unbearable, and the Ability prerequisites turned into a nightmare. Moreover, the new Traits gained from a Class every twenty levels were designed to make creating an unconventional build—at least at higher levels—less reasonable.
"So what are these [Telekinetic Bond] and [Telekinetic Transfusion]?" he murmured.
He knew that the Trait [Valor] was exclusive to the Half-Elf race and granted +5 Charisma, but he had no clue about the other two.
A screen appeared in front of him:
[Telekinetic Bond]: You can form a telekinetic bond with an object and control it. If the object you bond with is a weapon, it will be treated as if you equipped it directly.
Charge: 3/3
You gain an extra Charge every 5 levels.
[Telekinetic Transfusion]: You can transfer compatible Abilities to objects you've bonded with through Telekinetic Bond.
This looks interesting, Ren thought as he pulled his gaze away from the screen and scanned the terrain. There were many dead dwarves scattered on the ground.
In Rings of Alkhen, NPCs—guided by imbued fragments of real human consciousness—can forge their own destinies and even wage bloody wars.
Did something like that happen here, or were they fighting real players?
Ren winced as a wave of pain hit him. Out of habit, he tried to open his inventory—but then remembered he was no longer an online player.
Players had an inventory within their bodies, located in their mana sea, with the number of slots increasing with each level they gained. To store or retrieve an item from it, a single thought was all it took.
I'm an NPC, and I don't have an inventory in my mana sea... so, am I missing something? Ren flinched with a sudden realization just as he began to question himself.
He quickly looked at the brass ring on his finger. "Do I have a Storage Ring?" he murmured, unable to hide his surprise.
The lowest tier of Storage Ring that one could possess was meant for Level 10.
Interesting... Ren examined the ring, and he realized it didn't have any identification.
He scanned the storage in the hope of finding a healing potion.
"Empty!"
He sighed and tried to calm his mind as he thought about what to do next. First, he would now call himself 'Livinius' because that was his identity in this world.
After scanning his surroundings, he hastily began moving through the corpses. He carefully selected those whose equipment seemed to have suffered minimal damage, bent over them, and with a single touch, transferred their belongings to his Storage Ring.
The dead NPCs had levels ranging from 2 to 5. This indicated he was in a low-level area. Finding a Relic at this level was nothing more than a dream, but these low-level items could still earn him a few silver as a start.
If only I could be lucky enough to find a small healing potion... Ren gritted his teeth as he stumbled through the bodies of the dead NPCs.
In this game, characters had four main armor slots: Head, Chest, Arms, and Legs. While the types and materials of the armor varied, the body parts they were meant to protect remained constant.
Before reaching the limit of his Storage Ring, he stopped collecting more items and leaned against the pole of a flag planted firmly in the ground, exhausted. Nearly all of the twenty-five slots of his ring were filled.
Damn it! What should I do? What should I do? Ren took a sharp breath, raised his head, and looked toward the horizon over the vast terrain. The silhouette of a tower, faintly illuminated by the ghostly light of the moon, could be seen in the distance.
Hoping to find someone or something that could help him, he made his way toward it.
The pale moonlight filtered through the clouds, illuminating the vast terrain as he trudged forward, noticing a flicker of firelight in the distance, obscured by the darkness.
Is that a campfire? Or is someone dangerous approaching? Ren stopped walking with tension.
The enormous open world of Rings of Alkhen was filled with countless dangers. Death would take only an unlucky moment when encountering a malicious, powerful player, NPC, or creature.
Quickly, he lay down in the nearby long bushes and began waiting for the light in the distance to approach.
As the minutes passed, a distant jingling sound reached his ears, and the wind brought a spicy aroma to his nose.
The small firelight gradually grew, and it turned out to be a lantern hanging from a cart.