The last thing I remembered was the glow of my monitor at three in the morning.
I'd been debugging the wave spawning system for "Fortress Defense" for the past sixteen hours straight. The game was supposed to launch in two weeks, and the AI director kept screaming about how the goblin hordes weren't properly scaling with player progression. Coffee had stopped working around hour twelve. By hour fifteen, I was pretty sure the code was mocking me.
Then I blinked, and everything changed.
Cold stone pressed against my cheek. The smell of incense burned my nostrils. Somewhere nearby, someone was crying.
I opened my eyes to find myself lying on a floor that definitely wasn't my apartment. Above me stretched a vaulted ceiling with wooden beams that looked like they'd collapse if someone sneezed too hard. The walls were bare stone, damp with moisture.
My body felt wrong. Too light. Too small.
I tried to push myself up and immediately face-planted back onto the floor. My arms had the strength of overcooked noodles. When I finally managed to roll over, I saw my hands.
They weren't mine.
These hands belonged to someone younger. Softer. The kind of hands that had never typed a line of code or lived on instant ramen and energy drinks.
"Young master, please don't strain yourself."
An elderly man in servant's clothing rushed over and helped me sit up. His face was weathered and lined with worry, like he'd spent the last decade expecting bad news.
"The physician said you need rest after the shock of—" He paused, swallowing hard. "After the lord's passing."
Lord's passing? What lord?
I looked around properly for the first time. This was some kind of chapel or prayer room. A simple wooden altar stood at one end, and lying on top of it was a body covered in a white sheet. Several people in dark clothing stood around it, heads bowed.
One of them turned toward me. A woman in her forties, eyes red from crying. She looked at me with something between pity and disappointment.
"Quinn, you shouldn't be out of bed yet. Your father wouldn't want—"
The words hit me like a truck. Quinn. Father. The pieces started clicking into place in the worst possible way.
I was in a game. My game. Fortress Defense.
And I was Baron Quinn Kallstein, the tutorial zone's designated failure state.
In the game, Quinn was the pathetic lord of a frontier territory who died in the first goblin wave because he was too incompetent to organize a defense. His territory became a breeding ground for monsters, and players had to clear it out as their first real challenge.
I'd programmed him to be weak, cowardly, and completely useless. The kind of character who existed solely to show players what failure looked like.
And now I was him.
"I need to..." I tried to stand up. My legs buckled immediately. The servant caught me before I hit the ground again.
"Young master, please!"
"I'm fine." I wasn't fine. Nothing about this was fine. But I needed to see what I was working with.
As I steadied myself, something flickered in the corner of my vision. Text. Floating in the air where only I could see it.
[Developer's Eye - Activated]
[Target: Quinn Kallstein (You)]
- Level: 5
- Class: Noble (Untrained)
- HP: 45/45
- Skills: None
- Equipment: Funeral Attire (Common)
- Status: Malnourished, Grief-Stricken, Extremely Weak
[Special Note: This unit has a 97% death probability in the next 30 days]
I stared at the text. This was my debugging tool. The system I'd built to track unit stats during development. Seeing it here, in whatever this reality had become, should have been impossible.
But there it was. And it was telling me I was going to die.
"Young master, perhaps you should return to your quarters. The funeral will continue without—"
I waved him off and stumbled toward the door. I needed to see the territory. Needed to understand exactly how bad things were.
The servant tried to stop me, but I ignored him. The funeral attendees whispered as I passed, probably thinking the shock had driven me mad. They weren't entirely wrong.
Outside the chapel, the morning sun hit me like a slap. I had to squint against the brightness as my eyes adjusted.
What I saw made my stomach drop.
The "town" was barely worth the name. Maybe two dozen buildings clustered around a central dirt square, most of them in various states of decay. The wooden walls that were supposed to protect the territory looked like they'd been gnawed on by termites. I could see gaps between the logs wide enough to fit a person through.
People moved through the streets like ghosts. Thin. Hollow-eyed. The kind of desperate that came from knowing things weren't going to get better.
I walked to the nearest wall and placed my hand on it. The wood was soft with rot.
[Developer's Eye - Activated]
[Target: Outer Wall - East Section]
- Durability: 12/100
- Material: Rotting Oak
- Status: Structural Failure Imminent
- Estimated Collapse: 15-20 days without repair
[Warning: This structure will not withstand a Level 10+ assault]
I moved to the next section. Same result. The entire wall was basically kindling waiting for a spark.
The servant had followed me out. He stood a respectful distance away, wringing his hands.
"How many soldiers do we have?" I asked.
"Forty-seven militia, young master. And Knight-Captain Marriette."
Forty-seven. In the game, the first goblin wave sent two hundred enemies. I'd designed it to be an easy victory for players who knew basic tower defense tactics.
But I wasn't a player. I was the failure state.
"And money?"
The servant's expression somehow got worse. "The treasury contains... three copper coins, young master."
"Three."
"Yes, young master."
I almost laughed. It was so absurd it looped back around to being funny. Three copper coins wouldn't buy a loaf of bread.
"And the debt?"
"Lord Kallstein—your father—borrowed extensively to maintain the territory during the last wave. The amount owed is approximately fifty thousand gold pieces. The creditors are expected to arrive in sixty days to collect."
Fifty thousand. Three copper.
The math on that was spectacular.
Something else flickered in my vision.
[System Alert - Wave Countdown Initiated]
[Time Until First Goblin Wave: 29 Days, 14 Hours, 23 Minutes]
[Estimated Enemy Forces: 200+ Goblinoids]
[Current Defense Rating: F]
[Survival Probability: 3%]
Twenty-nine days. I had twenty-nine days to turn this disaster around or die screaming as goblins tore me apart.
The servant was still talking, explaining something about grain stores and winter preparations, but I wasn't listening. I was thinking about the game I'd made. About spawn timers and unit pathing and resource management.
I knew how the goblins would attack. I knew their AI patterns, their weaknesses, their spawn points. I'd programmed every single aspect of their behavior.
The question was whether that knowledge would be enough.
I took a step forward to get a better look at the town square and immediately tripped over my own funeral robes. The fabric was too long, designed for someone taller. I hit the ground face-first, dirt filling my mouth.
The servant rushed over in a panic. "Young master! Are you injured?"
I spat out dirt and tried to stand with some dignity. Failed. Ended up on my hands and knees like a child.
Several townspeople had stopped to stare. One of them, a middle-aged woman carrying a basket, shook her head sadly and walked away.
Great. My first act as baron was eating dirt in front of my subjects.
This was going to be harder than I thought.
I finally managed to get upright, brushed the worst of the dirt off my robes, and looked back at the crumbling wall. At the decaying town. At the people who were counting on a nineteen-year-old boy who'd never held a sword in his life.
The Developer's Eye flickered again.
[New Quest Available]
[Survive the First Wave]
- Reward: Continue Existing
- Failure: Death
[Accept Quest? Y/N]
As if I had a choice.
I selected yes and watched the text fade away.
Twenty-nine days. Forty-seven militia. Three copper coins.
The tutorial was about to begin.
And this time, I was playing on the hardest difficulty.