When David Wade lets his mind drift, it always goes back to the gym lights and the sound of leather on palms. He remembers the taste of salt on his tongue after a hard spar, the ribbon of sweat that ran into his eyes as he pumped through the last set, the small, bright trophy cases lined up at the town recreation center—his trophies, his medals, the ribbons that smelled faintly of effort and grease. At fifteen he lived for motion: sprint starts that left opponents coughing, the sting of a perfectly landed roundhouse, the crack of a board split by a karate chop. He was fast in a way that felt like cheating, precise as a metronome, and impossibly confident. Coaches told him he had a career ahead of him; kids at school said he'd make them proud. He believed it. He could not imagine a life in an office.
A single night erased the rest.
He remembers the sound before anything else—the scream of tires, a flash of bright metal, a voice on the radio, the world folding in on itself like paper. He remembers the headlights as a blade, the way the world tumbled slow and bright. He remembers his hands on the wheel, the impact like a fist hitting his ribs, the sense that his body had become glass. There is a hospital smell stitched through the memory: antiseptic and metal and distant crying. The doctors said he was lucky to be alive. They also said his spinal injuries and nerve damage had stolen most of what made him an athlete. Muscle memory was gone where it mattered; years of explosive power took months to become anything like motion again. They taught him to walk. They could not teach him to be fifteen again.
The loss hollowed him out. The competitions were gone, the path forward vanished like mist. He kept the trophies, boxed and placed on a shelf he rarely looked at. For a while bitterness was a constant companion; then, slowly, he replaced the gym's white noise with another rhythm—the glow of a computer screen, the tap of keys, the hum of an online world where his hands could still move faster than anyone else's. The virtual became a stage for the body he missed. He learned systems, maps, attack windows; if the real world would not let him sprint, the game would.
Now he is twenty-five and in fabric that smells of toner and cheap cologne. The alarm is the same cruel voice it has been for years. Morning is routine: dress, dress the stubble into presentable, bike ten minutes down the same cracked neighborhood street he has always known. The commute on two wheels feels mercifully short compared to coworkers who clutch commuter bags and endure an hour-long train tangle. He waves to Ms. Ito watering her balcony garden and the teenager with the dog. He arrives at a beige building that says "Kobayashi & Partners" in dull chrome, pushes a heavy door, says good morning to the same faces, and sits at the same desk with the same monitor hum. His work is spreadsheets and reports and a long list of things that must be completed before the inbox grows teeth.
There is a small, bright thing in his calendar: "Vacation starts tomorrow." It is a date written with the same eagerness he used to reserve for competition weekends. Tonight he will log into Eclipse of Magic, the academy RPG adapted from a beloved novel that stitched together a thousand fantasies. He beat the storyline multiple times—played every main route, every heroine, every side arc. He is the number one player in the world's online ladder. He can recite the NPCs' dialogue like scripture, knows the back alleys of the castle town by heart, can anticipate the big boss's last phase. In-game he is other people, he is gods—Keven Dreadfang, the tiger-blooded juggernaut, was his favorite main; a perfect 100% win rate in PvP. In the real world he is David, the man who remembers trophies and the smell of hospital floor polish.
At six the office empties; the city melts into neon and hunger. David grabs a go-to meal and juice from the convenience store, feeling the tiny bubble of indulgence in the microwave warmth. At home he slides his phone across the desk and taps the Eclipse of Magic icon. Tonight is different: an update prompt blinks, a custom-character creation mode added in the patch notes. Build your own legend, it promises with the gilded font. He feels that old muscle memory—for decision-making, for honing an edge—shiver awake. He has saved. He has invested in premium cosmetics before; he has spent on legendary packs as a test of devotion. Tonight, an option lets him buy extra perk slots.
David makes choices quickly: not because he's impulsive, but because he knows balance windows and min-maxes the way his hand once found a chin to knock out a sparring partner. He wants to be dangerous in a place where magic is the currency of power. In the game demons are hated, feared, powerful. He wants the advantages of that power without the public tragedy of being a mage; he wants to be a weapon you cannot bind with enchantments. He will create a fight-first character, built like the warriors he used to admire.
He names the character Akira.
Akira is a deliberate design. Half-human, half-demon—an unpopular hybrid in the lordly eyes of the game world, perfect for someone who wants benefits and prejudice in equal measure. He gives Akira no mana at all. That choice is vicious and brilliant: no magic, but the system compensates by allowing him to stack physical perfection. He spends his starting five perk points in ways that turn the lack of magic into an advantage. Then—because he has spent and saved and is the world's top player—he pays for five more perk slots. The screen glows. Confirmation. The GIF of a sword going through a spell circle makes him grin.
His perks are choices he crafted out of the things he missed and the things the world values less:
Enhanced Five Senses (OP): Akira can hear a whisper across stone, see the shimmer of breath in a blizzard, taste the iron in the air. Every sense is sharpened to a razor's edge.
Weapons Mastery: Any sword, polearm, chain, gauntlet—when Akira lifts it, he is a master. He can wield unfamiliar tools with the confidence of a veteran.
Killing Intent: A quiet aura that compresses the space around him, unnerving lesser men and making weak-willed casters falter.
Photographic Memory: Every pattern, every feint, every boss move he has seen is stored in perfect clarity. Once he watches a technique, he remembers forever.
God of Cooking: A ridiculous little luxury that gives stamina restoration and morale boost after meals. David smiles at the uselessness and the human comfort of it.
Acting Mastery: Mimic speech, mannerisms, tone—perfect disguise, perfect deception. Useful at councils and in taverns.
Lie Detection: He knows when someone is spinning a story. It simplifies politics.
Stat Sight (Usefulness Vision): A hovering overlay in his mind tells him other people's strengths and weaknesses like a readout. He can see usefulness, see where to strike.
Adaptive Reflexes: His body learns in real-time; new attacks become old counters after a single taste.
Unbound Strength: Without a magical core to cap him, his body can push beyond normal human limits at cost—fury-fueled bursts where he becomes a physical wrecking machine.
He makes minor cosmetic choices—short black curly hair, brown skin, a fit, compact frame. Contacts that are black in daylight hide demon irises that flare red with temper—he imagines Akira smiling and the contacts sliding back into place. The image is almost comfortable. He gives Akira a nameless origin: no surname, no noble house, which will let the character crawl under systems and slide between social cracks.
Mechanics translate into story. In the character backstory input box he types what he always wanted: born in the slums, survivor, no family name. The builder asks where he wants to start. Here the game gives choices engineered to shape narratives—royal wards, provincial academies, or the lawless boroughs where monsters chewed on the weak. He selects the slum. It is lucrative and dangerous. It is the place where a man who does not trust magic could make himself king.
His plan, logged in italics in his head, is clinical: start in the lawless town where noble oversight is minimal and monsters strike nightly; gain renown by protecting people who cannot afford a healer's potion; take control of the town's resources and make the people his army; earn the ears of the palace by being the bulwark the nobles cannot afford to ignore. From there a summon to the royal palace, a titled grant, a noble name—power bought the only way a man without blood can earn it: by force and utility. He envisions that the slum's mines and overlooked resources will yield an empire if he forges it into order. He will be a lord made by merit, and those nobles who cast stones will be forced to bow.
He thinks, with a grin that is part grief and part hunger, of the demon war that once scarred the world. If demons rise again, who will stand? Nobles with their spells and fragile wrists? Or a different kind of army—battle-hardened, weapon-true, and sworn? In the game he can rewrite history. In the game he can make himself more than the boy who woke to hospital lights and learned to walk again.
He hits confirm.
A soft chime. The world in the monitor steadies into place, the character's silhouette brightening. Akira's first loading screen blooms with a vista of cracked cobblestone and alley smoke. David sits back, throat tight with something like prayer. The living room hums. The old trophies make the corner of his eye ache.
The screen goes white.
David's breath catches—pain, or exhilaration, or both—and then everything goes out. Black sweeps across the edges of his vision with the speed of a closing lid. The last thing he feels is the hum of his PC fan, the faint echo of his own pulse, and the sense that the world has shifted beneath him.
He blacked out.