The only sounds in the apartment were the ones Klaid permitted.
The whisper-quiet hum of his custom PC rig. The low, steady whir of his VR capsule. And a silent, unwelcome intruder that blinked with hostile red on his monitor: an additional hospital charge notification. $15,000 for escalated neurological treatment. Due in 48 hours.
He ignored it—for now.
Shink.
Dressed in loose, grey workout clothes, Klaid moved through the empty center of the room. His feet whispered across the polished hardwood floor, tracing patterns born from tradition. He held a shinai, a bamboo practice sword, but his mind treated it as a live blade. Every movement was precise, economical, and utterly devoid of wasted energy.
The first kata: a downward strike, shomen-uchi. His hips drove the motion, his arms merely guiding the force to its inevitable conclusion. The tip of the shinai stopped a single millimeter from the floor.
This was not Kendo. Not really.
To his old master, this would have been sacrilege. It was the body of the art, stripped of its soul. There was no zanshin, no lingering awareness. No spirit. No fire. Each swing was cold calculation, an exercise in maintaining muscle memory and physical conditioning.
In a full-dive VR environment, physical fitness wasn't a bonus. Reaction time, stamina, the ability to endure marathon sessions without mental fatigue. It all began here, in the real world. This was just another system to optimize.
Inches of an advantage in-game translated to dollars out of it. And dollars were the only thing that mattered.
Completing the final kata of the sequence, Klaid held the finishing pose. Deep and even, his breathing stayed controlled. His heart rate followed suit.
For a single, fleeting moment, the quiet focus of the dojo settled over him. A ghost of a feeling, a memory of a life he'd been forced to discard. The thrill of a perfect strike, the rush of ki flowing like poetry through his veins.
But poetry didn't pay bills.
He dismissed it. Nostalgia was a useless stat. Just like guilt over that blinking red reminder.
Setting the shinai back in its simple wooden rack, he moved to his command center. Three monitors arranged in a slight curve displayed a constellation of data. Spreadsheets, community forums, and a meticulously compiled document that was the result of three months of obsessive research.
He was not a cheater. Cheaters relied on leaks and inside information, both of which were unreliable and left you vulnerable. Klaid was an analyst. He had devoured every piece of public information about Crown of Destiny, the revolutionary VRMMO that swallowed its predecessors before it even launched.
Developer interviews, lore snippets from promotional material, thematic analyses of the art style, even code of conduct documents.
He cross-referenced it all, searching for patterns the way a cryptographer searches for a key. He found it in the game's origin story, buried under layers of heroic myth.
One of the narratives, plastered across Crown of Destiny promotional websites, painted King Valerius as the heroic founder who overthrew the Age of Tyrants and shared his bounty with the people. A tale of justice and equality. But Klaid had spent weeks analyzing a single piece of high-resolution concept art, released months ago and mostly forgotten, titled "The Age of Tyrants." It showed a forgotten tyrant's banner, and on it was a specific insignia: a stylized hawk clutching a broken crown.
Weeks later, when the developers released the final, detailed maps of the starter zones, Klaid saw something in one of them, the "Whispering Woods". The hilt of King Valerius's legendary sword, shown in the map's decorative border, bore the exact same insignia.
A contradiction. An intentional one, suggesting a darker truth: perhaps Valerius was the tyrant, hoarding the wealth instead. It was a pointer to buried treasure, hidden behind the heroic facade by the developers in plain sight.
His mind went into overdrive, treating the insignia as a constellation. He opened the high-resolution map of the Whispering Woods on one monitor and the concept art on another.
The hawk's sharp beak pointed west. On the map: "Eagle's Peak." The top-most point of the broken crown was in the north: The "Old King's Watchtower." The hawk's clutching talon was in the southeast. A dense forest called the "Grasping Woods."
He plotted the three locations. When he drew lines connecting them, the shape was a perfect, scaled replica of the tyrant's insignia. The lines intersected at a single, unmarked, and seemingly insignificant point: a small clearing deep in the woods.
But if someone completed the puzzle first... game over. For him, and for Mom.
This was it. His launch-day strategy was now brutally simple.
Klaid wasn't naive enough to think he was the only one who'd found it. But he was confident that he was among the best of those who did. The starter zones were the only content Yggdrasil Company had presented to the public. He had to make it count.
The reward for being first would be staggering. Game-breaking, to someone who could snowball from an early advantage. It would give him the edge he needed to dominate the early market.
Efficiency is king, he thought, his eyes scanning a spreadsheet of monster attack animations. And TTK in the first 48 hours determines your income for the next months. The data told him the Vexing Forest Wolf's lunge animation was a swift 0.7 seconds, but its heavy paw swipe was a telegraphed 1.2.
A jarringly cheerful ringtone shattered the silent temple of pure logic. He didn't use cheerful ringtones. Elara, his sister, had set it the last time she visited, and he never changed it.
He glanced at the screen. He let it ring three times, a small, petty act of control. Ritual. Boundaries. None of that mattered when her name lit his monitor.
He tapped accept on the desk. "I'm busy."
"Hi to you too." Elara's voice came through the speakers, already laced with familiar, weary patience. "I'm at the hospital."
His posture didn't change, but his focus split. Ninety percent remained on the data; ten percent vectored toward the call. "Is everything okay? Any change?" he asked, his eyes flicking back to the animation spreadsheet.
"She's the same," Elara said softly. He could hear a room through her speaker. Metal wheels, soft shoes, distant TV. "The doctor says her vitals are stable. She… she had a moment, earlier. When the nurse was adjusting her pillows," A small inhale. "I think she smiled."
Klaid's fingers, which had been drumming a silent, rhythmic pattern on his desk, paused. A ghost of an emotion, something uncomfortable and heavy, settled in his chest.
He pushed it down, walled it off behind pragmatism. Emotions were a debuff to productivity. He had learned that calculus the hard way.
"That's good," he said, his voice flat.
He pivoted the conversation back to the one tangible thing he could control. "Listen, the payment for next month's maintenance went through this morning. You should have gotten the confirmation."
The silence on the other end of the line was louder than a shout.
"I got it," she finally said, her tone clipped. "Thank you. I'm sure Mom appreciates you keeping the machines running."
Under the sentence sat the one she didn't say. While you stay away.
"Someone has to," the words came out sharper than he intended. "That stuff doesn't pay for itself. The new RIG subscription alone…"
"I know, Klaid. You 'work'," she cut him off. The word landed like a subtle jab. "The nurse read her one of your old postcards. The one from your graduation. She squeezed my hand."
He flinched. A genuine, physical reaction.
For a split second, he saw her. Mom, not in the hospital bed, but at his first kendo tournament, her eyes shining with pride that made his chest ache.
The Operator in him stamped it down.
"I have to go," he said, forcing his voice back to neutral. "The launch is in less than an hour. This is a big one, El. The biggest. If I get a good start, I can get ahead of the curve. That means better income, more stability."
He was speaking a language she refused to understand. He was talking about providing, about securing the foundation of their mother's survival. She just heard a brother choosing a game over his family.
"Right. The curve," she said, her voice small and defeated. "Just… call, okay? After you've… saved the virtual world."
The line went dead.
Klaid stared at the blank monitor for a full ten seconds. The familiar pang of guilt returned, sharper this time. I should be there, a voice whispered, raw and unfiltered. But he couldn't. Not yet. He acknowledged it, named it, and filed it away. It was a data point. A reminder of the stakes.
His duty was clear. His battlefield was waiting, and it was in a world made of light and code, a world where his specific brand of genius could be monetized.
He stood, his movements once again fluid and controlled. The brief emotional storm had passed, leaving behind the cold calm of resolve. He walked to the only personal item in the entire room: a small, silver-framed photo on a corner of his desk.
It was a picture of his mother, taken years ago. Her smile was wide and genuine, her eyes full of a light that he could barely remember seeing in person. She was healthy. She was happy. She was the reason for all of this. For the kendo he'd abandoned and the kendo he now practiced for profit. For the hours of research. For the call he'd just ended so callously.
He looked at her for a single, long moment, his face a perfect mask of stoicism. But in his mind, a single, clear thought echoed with the force of a vow.
I should be there. But this is the only way.
His fingers lingered on the frame a second longer than necessary, a rare slip in his control. The vow echoed not just in his mind, but in the hollow space where his heart used to beat freely.
He turned away from the photo. The transformation was instantaneous. The brief, flickering light of the worried son was extinguished. The cold, efficient mind of the operator took complete control. Every stray thought, every lingering emotional echo from the phone call, was purged. His objective was clear. His focus absolute.
He walked to the full-dive capsule, its white, aerodynamic shell resembling a futuristic sarcophagus. He ran a hand over the cool, smooth surface. It was the best consumer-grade model on the market. It was his primary tool, his weapon, and his prison.
With practiced efficiency, he keyed in the launch sequence. The hatch hissed open, revealing a padded interior laced with neural interface nodes. He lay down, the clinical scent of sterilizing agents filling his senses.
The hatch slid shut, sealing him in darkness.
On his monitor, the launch timer for Crown of Destiny ticked down.
00:00:05
00:00:04
00:00:03
00:00:02
00:00:01
00:00:00
A phantom limb, his right hand, twitched. His mind, already shedding the confines of his physical body, reached for a sword that wasn't there.
Millions of hopeful players were logging in, their new names lighting up the server like stars. Unseen and unannounced, a name that was a myth on the leaderboards of a dozen forgotten worlds had just slipped past the gates.
Klaid's mind sharpened. I should be there, the regret echoed. But the hunt began.
Kage was logging in.