The first thing Evan Cross noticed was the cold, then the quiet. Not the clean silence of a bedroom at night, but the kind that follows a drawn blade - air holding its breath, wood settling, something in the fog listening.
A square room. Rough boards. A single window cut into blank mist. A door barred with a wooden latch. And in the center, a faint white rectangle hung in the air like frost.
[WELCOME, LORD.]
The panel's letters weren't ink; they were angle and light. The rectangle changed without his touch.
[ORIGIN: EARTH][DESIGNATION: LORD][UNIQUE TALENT: LEGENDARY][TITLE: 100% DROP RATE]
He exhaled. 100% Drop Rate. As if reality had a loot slider snapped to the end.
"Okay," he said, because saying nothing would admit panic. "Okay."
The panel expanded into a neat list, each line in its own thin bracket. His reflection hovered inside the text: mid-twenties, tired eyes, hair that hadn't decided if it wanted order.
[LORD: EVAN CROSS][TERRITORY: 1× Lord's Hut / 1× Summoning Gate][TERRITORY SHIELD: ACTIVE][WORLD CHANNEL: ONLINE]
Beyond the window, the fog thickened and thinned like a living thing. Somewhere inside it, something hissed - a rasping, damp sound - and scaled claws ticked across stone.
"Great," Evan muttered. "Neighbors."
He slid the latch and opened the door. Cold air pushed in. The hut stood at the center of a clearing, the ground pale where feet had never walked. Ten steps away, a stone arch hummed under its own light. Even if the panel hadn't named it, he would have known what it was.
[SUMMONING GATE: READY]
A smaller rectangle unfolded with a soft chime.
[CONSTRUCT: SWORD-AND-SHIELD SOLDIER][COST: NONE (INITIAL)][STATUS: CONFIRM?]
"Free trial," he said, and tapped CONFIRM.
The arch replied with a low chord. Light webbed the span. A silhouette condensed - first a smear, then a soldier stepping forward with a hand to his chest.
He wore rough mail, a plain helm, a short sword and a shield thick as a door. His eyes flicked to Evan, then to the mist, then back.
"My Lord." His voice had manufactured steadiness with a human grain. "Awaiting orders."
"What are you called?"
"This unit answers to Sword-and-Shield Soldier, My Lord."
"Right. First order: stay close."
The fog shifted. Something large slithered beyond the clearing. The air tasted like pennies.
[ENEMY LIFEFORM DETECTED: DESERT MIST LIZARD][RANK: BLACK IRON - LOWER]
Evan moved to the edge of the clearing and felt pressure ripple across his skin - an invisible membrane humming against his palm.
[TERRITORY SHIELD: ACTIVE. HOSTILES MAY NOT ENTER.]
"Can we leave?"
[SHIELD DOES NOT RESTRICT OUTBOUND MOVEMENT.]
The soldier had already angled his body to cover Evan. "Recommendation?"
"Test the perimeter," the soldier said. "Harvest and return."
Harvest. Ugly word, perfect word.
Evan stepped through the membrane. Cold bit his teeth. The fog ate color out of the world. The clearing shrank behind them. Something rasped ahead.
The lizard came in low: a gray body long as a motorcycle, eyes like wet coins, legs bent wrong under scales the color of dirty ice. When it opened its mouth, Evan saw more throat than teeth.
"Shield."
The soldier met the rush with his whole body. The impact thumped through the ground. The shield skidded an inch and held. The lizard writhed, trying to slither around the edge. The short sword slipped in at the hinge of the jaw with workshop certainty.
Dark fluid smoked. The lizard spasmed, tried to pull back, failed. The blade severed something critical with a wet pop.
It collapsed. One second a problem; the next slack meat around a spine. The fog smelled like old salt and hot stone.
Evan waited for the sound of another, then realized he was waiting for something else too - a sound games had trained him to expect.
The chime came: a soft crystalline note. Light peeled out of the corpse in tidy shapes - icons stamped by a careful god - and drifted upward in a gentle arc.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][DESERT MIST LIZARD LEATHER × 7][BLACK IRON INGOT × 3][MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1][RANK STONE: BLACK IRON - LOWER × 1][BLUEPRINT FRAGMENT: BASIC WORKBENCH × 1]
Evan laughed, too loud, and clapped a hand over his mouth.
"Collect," he said, and the light swiveled toward him as if the word were a magnet. Icons slid into him without weight and settled as a sense of inventory.
[100% DROP RATE: EFFECT CONFIRMED.]
Numbers were borders; borders were safety. With this, he could build the first line of a wall.
The soldier nudged the corpse with his boot. "More will come," he said, like a farmer noting the weather.
"Let them," Evan said. "We do one more and go home."
They moved along the perimeter. The shield's edge hummed against his shoulder, a note just below hearing. The second lizard came from beneath a lip of stone, faster than the first. Evan saw the tell - a dark ripple - and shouted "Left." The sword went in with the same certainty.
The chime answered. Light peeled. The list wrote itself.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][DESERT MIST LIZARD LEATHER × 8][BLACK IRON INGOT × 2][MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1]
On the third kill, a sharp thought lodged in Evan's throat: attention. If loot fell like this for him every time, the world would notice.
He looked up. The fog moved. From the hut behind them, a faint tick marked a new notification.
[WORLD CHANNEL: BROADCAST]
Voices bled into his hearing, overlapping and huge, as if the air had become a chat window.
[HUMAN - EARTH / ID: 9,222,981]: Where is everyone? I woke up in a shack-][HUMAN - EARTH / ID: 9,127,004]: There's a gate! Mine says summon-][UNKNOWN RACE / ID: 81,044]: New lords again. Harvest day.][SYSTEM: THE SUPREME WILL GREETS THE NEW LORDS. SURVIVE. EXPAND. COMPETE.]
The soldier's eyes flicked skyward and then back to the fog. "Mute," Evan said, and the voices dropped to a thread like conversation through a wall.
The fourth lizard came in sideways, clever. It feinted at the soldier and then snapped for Evan's leg. The shield caught the teeth with a shriek; the sword hammered the eye. Light peeled. More leather, more iron, a second rank stone.
"How long does the initial cost-free summoning last?" he asked as they edged toward the Gate.
"Initial allocation: one unit. Additional units require materials."
"We have materials. We'll use the ingots and the core. I want the Gate spinning before the fog decides we're arrogant."
They fell back step by step, leaving the corpse field just outside the hum of the shield. The Gate waited inside the clearing like a mouth. Evan slid through the membrane and breathed warmer air.
Inside the hut, the white rectangle hung where he'd left it. It opened to a new menu.
[CONSTRUCTION: BASIC WORKBENCH][REQUIRED: BLACK IRON INGOT × 2 / DESERT MIST LIZARD LEATHER × 4][STATUS: AVAILABLE]
"Workbench first," Evan said. "Then attempt a second unit."
The soldier took position at the door, shield angled. "Understood."
The bench resolved under the window with the weight of something built with hands. It smelled of resin and hot iron.
[WORKBENCH: ONLINE][CRAFTING: SWORD-AND-SHIELD SOLDIER SUMMON TOKEN][REQUIRED: BLACK IRON INGOT × 3 / MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1 / LEATHER × 2][STATUS: AVAILABLE]
"Token?" Evan asked.
"A focus," the soldier said. "The Gate prefers shape over intent."
He fed the bench ingots, leather, and the core. Air over the wood shivered; a dull metal disc resolved with the weight of a coin. Evan picked it up and felt the Gate tug from across the clearing.
They moved together, soldier leading. At the arch, he held out the disc.
[SUMMONING GATE: TOKEN ACCEPTED][CONSTRUCT: SWORD-AND-SHIELD SOLDIER][STATUS: CONFIRM?]
"Confirm."
The chord rolled out of the earth. Light webbed the span. A second soldier stepped through, identical to the first, and saluted.
"My Lord."
Evan exhaled a laugh, then turned serious. "You two are Alpha and Bravo - no. Names later. Pair up."
They aligned, shields overlapping, blades angled like parentheses ready to close around a sentence. Evan felt the line where survival turned into momentum and stepped to it.
The world channel hissed louder for a heartbeat. [UNKNOWN RACE / ID: 2,991]: Scent of cores near the human start zones. Move fast.] Then it faded.
He looked at the fog. "We go again," he said. "Same pattern. But we don't overstay. We harvest fast and -"
The air inside the clearing went thin. A new panel unrolled over the Gate.
[SYSTEM NOTICE][LOCAL EVENT: INITIAL PULSE][DETAIL: MONSTER ACTIVITY WILL SPIKE NEAR NEW TERRITORIES FOR 30 MINUTES.][REWARD: BLUEPRINT - PALISADE WALL (FRAGMENT) / CONDITIONAL][CONDITION: DEFEND SUCCESSFULLY.]
Thirty minutes of attention. Thirty minutes to harvest - or to be found.
Evan looked at the two soldiers, then at the Gate.
"Decision, My Lord?" the first soldier asked.
Evan's palm tingled against the frame. The fog thickened. Scales whispered in the grass just beyond the shield.
"Shields up," he said. "We farm."