The Nightmare World did not welcome anyone.
Rain fell without rhythm or mercy, soaking everything until the ground itself seemed to rot. Darkness pressed in from every direction, heavy and patient, and death lingered close enough to smell—old blood, wet iron, sickness that never fully left.
What remained of humanity huddled beneath it.
At the heart of the clearing, ragged tents sagged under the weight of rain and exhaustion. Fires burned low beneath crude awnings, more smoke than heat, their flames too tired to fight the damp. Around them, women sat with children pulled tight against their chests, sharing thin bowls of gray soup that smelled of roots, bone, and desperation. Some ate. Some pretended to. Some simply stared.
Coughs cut through the rain—deep, wet, persistent. A child cried until a hand pressed gently over their mouth. No one raised their voice. No one wasted breath.
The men who still lived stood watch at the camp's edge, gripping spears and axes with numb hands, eyes hollow from too many nights without sleep. The "walls" were nothing more than sharpened stakes and scavenged boards lashed together—symbols, not defenses. Everyone knew it.
Hope was a fragile thing here.
So they didn't pray loudly.
They whispered instead—into the rain, into the dark—hoping that somewhere, somehow, a hero still existed. Someone strong enough to survive this world. Someone cruel enough to kill what needed killing. Someone kind enough to do it for others.
The rain answered.
At the far edge of the encampment—where churned mud surrendered to twisted roots and fog-choked trees—the air warped.
A small, circular portal tore open a meter above the ground.
Perfectly round.
Brilliant white.
Too clean.
Too wrong.
It hovered in silence—a wound cut into reality.
Then it spat something out.
A scream ripped through the rain.
A small figure burst from the light and slammed headfirst into the mud. The impact was wet and brutal, knocking the breath from her as filth exploded around her. The scream cut off instantly, swallowed by earth and water.
She didn't move.
She lay face-down, rain hammering her back, pale hair spread like weeds in a flooded ditch.
She was young—too young for this place. Her skin was smooth, unscarred, almost luminous beneath the grime. An offense in a world shaped by injury. Long blonde strands clung to her neck and shoulders, heavy with rain.
She wore no silk. No armor.
Only primitive leather and barbarian wrappings—crude, minimal, never meant for warmth or dignity. Narrow straps crossed her torso and hips just tightly enough to stay in place. Her midsection lay bare to the storm, muscle faintly visible beneath pale skin. The outfit felt ceremonial, impractical—made for survival only because survival was never expected to last.
Her body was compact and feminine. Small—but not weak.
Strength showed in her legs, in the tension of her back, in the quiet definition beneath smooth skin. Not bulky. Not heroic.
Just… capable.
Still, she looked fragile.
She did not resemble the savior this world had begged for.
The rain kept falling.
A heartbeat later, two more shapes dropped from the portal.
A one-handed axe struck the mud beside her—rusted, heavy, honest.
A battered round shield followed, bounced once, and sank halfway into a puddle.
The portal shuddered.
Contracted.
And vanished.
The light died as if it had never existed.
Only rain remained.
From beneath the tents, eyes watched.
No one spoke.
Then the girl groaned.
She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, coughing mud and water, hair hanging in her face. Her breath came fast, annoyed more than afraid.
"Ugh—are you kidding me…?"
She blinked rain from her eyes and froze.
In the muddy water beneath her, a reflection stared back.
Her face—heart-shaped, pale, smeared with dirt. A small nose. Sharp brows that could frown fiercely, if she tried. Big blue eyes—almost violet in this light—wide with shock.
She looked… different.
Still cute. Still small.
But fuller somehow.
She looked down at herself, pressing a hand against her stomach.
"…What?"
Her fingers traced muscle.
Actual muscle.
Defined abs where there had been none. Her arms felt heavier, denser. Her chest—she swallowed—bigger. Not exaggerated. Just… more than before.
She stared.
Then muttered, stunned, "Did I… get a stat increase?"
The word stat hadn't finished forming before something answered.
Inside her head.
> Status.
No glowing window appeared.
No fanfare.
The information simply unfolded—cold, immediate—like knowledge she had always possessed and only just remembered how to access.
Player: Aleria Pendragon
Class: Barbarian
Level: 1
Experience: 0 / 500
Strength: 30
Dexterity: 20
Vitality: 20
Energy: 10
Attack Power: 3–7
Attack Rating: 102
Defense: 11
Stamina: 92
Life: 45
Mana: 10
Fire Resistance: 0
Cold Resistance: 0
Lightning Resistance: 0
Poison Resistance: 0
Aleria stared into the rain like the world had personally insulted her.
Then she groaned—long, offended, and deeply betrayed.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
So this was real.
She wasn't dreaming.
She wasn't hallucinating.
She was a level-one barbarian.
A female barbarian.
Short. Mud-covered. Half-naked in the rain.
Aleria dragged a hand down her face, smearing dirt across her cheek and nose.
"Why," she muttered bitterly, "couldn't I pick a guy?"
The axe lay at her feet, ugly and functional. The shield leaned in the puddle beside it. Beyond the sharpened stakes of the encampment, the forest waited—black, silent, and patient.
The Nightmare World had accepted her.
Whether she liked it or not.
And somewhere out there, something was already moving.
She flexed her fingers.
They felt… powerful. Not bulky or clumsy—just solid. As if her hands suddenly carried weight behind them. She had the strange, intrusive certainty that if she slapped someone right now, it would hurt. Probably more than she intended.
Her entire body felt warm. Almost feverish.
Rain soaked her hair and ran down her bare skin, yet she didn't shiver. The cold didn't bite. The mud didn't bother her. She stood there in nothing but primitive leather like some feral wild woman, and her body simply… accepted it.
That alone was unsettling.
She glanced down.
Her chest rose and fell steadily beneath the leather bindings, breath calm, unpanicked. Familiar—and yet not. Everything felt subtly fuller, firmer, as though her body had quietly decided to re-allocate resources without asking permission.
Below that, her stomach caught her attention.
Flat. Tight.
She stared.
"…No way."
She touched her abdomen, half-expecting the illusion to vanish under her fingers.
It didn't.
Muscle answered her touch—real, defined muscle. Clean lines where softness had been before. Her waist curved inward sharply before flaring into her hips, her balance perfect, effortless. Strength flowed through her frame like it belonged there, like it always had.
She swallowed.
"This isn't just numbers," she murmured.
It wasn't a menu trick. Not some abstract stat boost hidden behind glowing text.
This was flesh.
Strength you could feel in your shoulders. Endurance woven into your spine. Weight behind every movement. If she leveled up, she wouldn't just improve.
She would change.
The thought sent a chill down her back—her first one since arriving.
A dangerous idea crept in next, uninvited and unwelcome. If this world could change her body this much… what else did it make real? The people? The pain? The consequences?
Could you live here?
Could you die here?
Her mind took one horrifying step too far—and recoiled immediately as she wondered if she as a woman could have a child now.
"Oh hell no," she muttered, shaking her head. "Absolutely not."
That line of thinking was kicked aside, stomped flat, and buried.
Because this wasn't a casual game world.
From everything she could tell, this felt disturbingly close to Diablo II.
And Diablo—especially on Hardcore—was not something you casually cleared.
There were no reloads here. No second chances. No helpful autosaves.
Aleria exhaled slowly.
Her mind latched onto the only coping mechanism it had left.
Complaining.
Of all possible classes—
"Why," she sighed to the uncaring rain, "did it have to be barbarian?"
A great pick in Hardcore on a screen. In real life? Probably the worst possible option.
"No, no, no," she raged silently. "I want range. I want distance. I want minions. I want something that lets me stand over there while monsters die over here. Hell, I'd even take a paladin. Anything that isn't 'run at the nightmare and hope your abs are enough to absorb the damage."
Her imagination betrayed her for half a second—flashing an image of a sorceress in impractical robes—before her mind slammed the door shut.
Absolutely not.
The last thing she needed was to wake up as some fragile mage with borrowed power and a lifespan measured in bad positioning. Not in a world where the monsters looked like they'd enjoy killing you.
No thank you, barbarian would do for now.
And she did wonder, what if she managed to beat this game, then would she become a millionaire. Now that would be quite the price for victory.
Aleria forced her attention back to reality—the gray treeline ahead, the rain-churned earth beneath her boots, the encampment pressing in behind her like a lie pretending to be safety.
Then a voice spoke from her left.
A real voice.
Human. Flat. Ordinary in a way that made her skin crawl.
"Ah. Another one. Greetings, stranger."
Aleria snapped her head around, axe lifting an inch on instinct. For a stupid, panicked moment, she half-expected a floating icon. A quest marker. Something to confirm this was still a game.
There was nothing.
Just rain. Mud. And a man walking toward her like this was routine.
He moved without haste, but not lazily—carefully. Layered blue travel robes hung from his frame, hems dark with wet earth. A scarf was pulled up against the rain. A short blade rested at his hip in a plain sheath. His hands were scarred, knuckles thick, the hands of someone who'd worked hard and fought harder.
His face was weathered in the specific way of someone who had survived a lifetime of bad decisions.
But his eyes—
They weren't mad. Or mystical.
They were tired.
Tired of beginnings.
Tired of watching people never reach the middle.
He stopped a few paces away and looked her over—the axe, the shield, the bare skin in the rain, the posture of someone pretending she wasn't completely lost.
Then he spoke again.
And Aleria's stomach dropped.
The cadence.
The rhythm.
It hit her memory like a hammer.
This was dialogue.
Dialogue she had once heard through speakers in a safe, warm room.
Now it came from a real mouth.
"Honestly, I'm not surprised to see your kind here anymore," the man said evenly. "Many adventurers have traveled this way since the troubles began. No doubt you've heard about the tragedy that befell the town of Tristram."
Aleria swallowed.
This was… the same.
Just not exactly.
"It is said that Diablo—the Lord of Terror—now walks the world," the man continued. "I don't know if I believe that." A pause. Something grim flickered behind his eyes. "But a Dark Wanderer passed this way not long ago. Headed east. Toward the mountain pass near the Monastery."
Rain whispered against cloth. Somewhere behind them, a campfire crackled weakly.
"Perhaps it means nothing," he went on, though his voice suggested he'd learned better than to lie to himself. "Yet evil follows in his wake. After he passed, the Monastery closed its gates. Strange creatures began ravaging the countryside. The kind that don't leave tracks like animals."
His gaze dipped briefly to her hands—how she held the axe, how the shield sat ready—then returned to her face, already weighing chances.
"Until the path beyond this camp is safe, we remain here," he said. "I plan to leave for the eastern desert before the shadow over Tristram consumes us all." He exhaled slowly. "I cannot offer much. Only this—be careful. Many have gone to fight the evil of this world. Most never returned."
"Our camp grows smaller every day."
Then, almost as an afterthought—
"If you succeed," he added, "and you're still alive, I'll take you with me. It's the least I can offer."
Aleria spoke before she could stop herself.
"…Warriv."
The man blinked, then nodded.
"That's what they call me."
Not my name is.
Just that's what they call me.
As if names—like lives—didn't last long here.
Aleria stared harder.
No idle animations. No looping script.
Rain beaded on Warriv's lashes. His breath fogged faintly. He shifted his weight to keep his boots from sinking too deep. A real man, in a real camp, performing a grim little duty.
Her last line of defense cracked.
She needed to test it.
"If you don't mind me asking," she said, "what's your mother's maiden name?"
Warriv didn't glitch.
His expression tightened—just slightly.
"Strange question," he said. "You've been here five minutes and want family histories?"
Aleria swallowed. "Where do you live?"
Warriv glanced toward the tents, the mud, the inadequate palisade.
"Here," he said. "For now."
She pressed once more, desperate for a seam in the world.
"How many wagons are in your caravan? How many people—"
Warriv raised a hand gently, but firmly.
"Listen," he said. "I've given you what matters."
There was no cruelty in it. Just the exhausted patience of a man who had tried hope too many times.
His gaze shifted toward the largest tent at the camp's center, charms and jars hanging from its frame.
"You should speak to Akara," he said. "She leads this camp. If anyone can tell you more… it's her."
He hesitated—just long enough for the truth to surface.
"None of you have come back from beyond this camp," he said quietly. "If you do… you'll be the first."
That wasn't from the script.
That was Warriv.
Then he turned and walked away, boots squelching into the rain, disappearing between tents like a man returning to a routine he no longer believed in.
Aleria stood there, axe heavy in her hand, shield cold on her arm.
The camp felt colder.
Not because of the rain.
But because of what his eyes had said without words:
I'm greeting you because the last one is dead.
She stared after him.
"…Okay," she thought slowly. "So either other heroes existed and died… or this world remembers them."
Neither option felt safe.
But one rule survived every world she'd ever known:
When you wake up in a nightmare—
—you find the quest-giver.
She tightened her grip on the axe and started toward the largest tent.
Toward Akara.
The encampment closed around Aleria as she walked.
Up close, it was worse than it had looked from the edge.
A woman in scarred leather crouched by a fire, sharpening arrows with the dead precision of habit. Her hands moved automatically; her eyes never lifted. Nearby, a man with his arm bound in filthy linen stared into the flames as if watching his own life burn down to embers. A child clung to a tent pole and watched Aleria with wide, silent eyes—
eyes that asked the only question anyone here ever asked newcomers:
How long will you last?
Aleria followed the smell of bitter herbs and old smoke, the kind that came from more than burning wood.
She found the tent.
It was modest, but deliberate. Jars sealed with wax lined the edges. Bundles of dried plants hung from the frame. Charms and markers were set into the mud at careful intervals—not decoration.
Protection.
The air stung her nose with medicine, incense, and something older. Something that made her instincts itch.
Akara stood at the entrance.
She was taller than Aleria by nearly a head, a lot older also, wrapped in deep violet robes worn with intention, not carelessness. The body beneath them was strong and grounded, weight carried with quiet confidence. A green gem rested against her chest, catching the firelight with a dull, watchful gleam.
Akara's eyes met Aleria's.
And immediately, Aleria felt it.
Calm. Authority. The kind that didn't need to raise its voice.
This was a woman who had buried hope one adventurer at a time—and learned how to stand anyway.
Akara looked her over once. Axe. Shield. Rain-soaked barbarian leathers.
Then, without ceremony—
"I am Akara," she said. "High Priestess of the Sisterhood."
The words tightened something in Aleria's chest.
Proof.
The script was here. Worn thin by reality—but intact.
Akara spoke of corruption in the wilderness. Of evil festering in the Blood Moor. Of survivors clinging to this camp because there was nowhere else to go.
When she finished, the world answered.
Not with a sound.
But with pressure.
A faint red shimmer bled into the edges of Aleria's vision, pulsing slowly.
QUEST RECEIVED:
Cleanse the Den in the Blood Moor.
No accept.
No decline.
Just the objective sitting there like a sentence already passed.
Aleria exhaled. "Right. Of course."
Up close, Akara felt real in a way that made Aleria's skin prickle. Not like an illusion. Not like a scripted prop. She needed to be sure.
So she did the simplest thing she could think of.
She lifted her hand for a handshake.
Akara's response was instant.
Her hand snapped out and struck Aleria's wrist aside.
Not hard.
Clean. Efficient. Almost bored.
"No," Akara said.
One word.
Flat. Absolute.
That was it.
Aleria froze, then slowly let her hand fall back to her side.
"…Okay," she said quietly. "Message received."
"Cleanse the Den," Akara said. "Return alive."
Then she turned away, already finished with her.
No dismissal.
No encouragement.
Just expectation.
Aleria stood there in the rain, mud on her boots, axe heavy in one hand, shield awkward on the other.
So that was it.
She turned from the tent and headed for the camp's gate.
Up close, the encampment looked worse.
The people were pale—too pale—as if the sun had become a rumor they no longer trusted. Hunger hung over the place like a second fog. Not sharp. Not loud. The slow kind that hollowed faces and thinned bodies until everyone looked like a draft of themselves.
Women wrapped in patched cloaks warmed empty hands over weak fires. Men—few of them—were old or broken, leaning on spears they could no longer use. Children watched from doorflaps and poles with eyes that didn't blink much anymore, already trained not to waste energy.
Too few children.
As Aleria passed, eyes followed her.
Some with pity.
Some with concern.
A few with something like hope—dangerous, desperate, and already half-regretted.
She was small. Petite. Mud-streaked. Carrying an axe that looked too big for her arm and a shield that threatened to tip her sideways if she relaxed her grip. To them, she didn't look like a hero.
She looked like the next one to die.
Aleria felt it. The weight of it. Not admiration—expectation.
How long will you last?
She kept walking.
The camp thinned near the gate. The palisade rose slick and black with rain. Beyond it, a narrow wooden bridge stretched out into open darkness—wet planks, no rails, no comfort—leading straight into the moor.
The Blood Moor waited on the other side like an unpaid debt.
Three figures stood guard at the opening.
Two men in battered armor flanked the gap, spears planted like fence posts. Both of them were huge—not just tall, but broad in the shoulders, heavy through the arms, the kind of men who looked like they could pick Aleria up by her collar and use her as a warning sign.
Between them lounged a woman.
Rogue.
She leaned against the gatepost like it belonged to her. Dark hair tied back tight. Light armor built for speed. Knives at her hips. A bow resting in one hand as casually as a walking stick. She wasn't tall, but she had that older, sharper stillness—like a blade that didn't need to be swung to be dangerous.
Her blue eyes locked onto Aleria immediately.
Not curiosity.
Assessment.
Aleria approached anyway, lifting her chin as if she'd just come from winning a war instead of face-planting out of a portal ten minutes ago. She tried to make the axe look natural in her hand. It mostly worked, if you ignored the part where her wrist screamed please don't drop this in front of them.
One of the guards looked her up and down—slowly—then glanced at the axe.
"…You're going out there?" he asked, as if Aleria had announced she planned to swim to the moon.
Aleria forced a confident nod. "Yep."
The other guard leaned closer to his friend and muttered, loud enough to be heard, "She's the smallest one we've had this week."
Aleria smiled without showing teeth. "I'm… compact. Efficient. Like a—like a weapon."
The rogue's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like she was trying not to laugh at a funeral.
"I haven't seen a female barbarian before," the rogue said. Calm. Dry. "Most of the barbarians we get are men with more muscle than sense."
Aleria pointed her thumb at herself. "Well. Good news. I'm not a man."
"Bad news," the rogue added, "that doesn't improve your odds."
One of the guards sighed, the tired sigh of someone who had repeated the same conversation with too many corpses still unburied.
"Good luck," he said, and it sounded like a ritual. A habit. A word people used when they didn't have anything else left to give.
The other guard nodded. "Try to last longer than the last one."
Aleria blinked. "How long did the last one last?"
The guard thought about it.
"…A couple of hours. Long enough to scream."
The rogue stepped aside first, opening the way with a lazy tilt of her shoulder. "If you come back," she said, "I'll be impressed."
Aleria hesitated at the threshold, rain dripping from her hair, boots slick on the planks. She glanced back.
Dozens of eyes met hers.
Hope. Fear. Pity. Prayer.
Expectation.
Aleria adjusted her grip on the axe, squared her shoulders—small as they were—and tried to look like someone who absolutely had this handled.
"Alright," she said, voice steady through sheer stubbornness. "Den. Blood Moor. Evil. Easy."
The bridge creaked as she stepped onto it, immediately betraying her with a wet, ominous groan.
Behind her, the rogue called out, almost kindly:
"Don't slip. It's an embarrassing way to die."
Aleria did not look back.
The air beyond the gate felt colder. Thinner. Like the world itself didn't care whether she crossed or not.
The Blood Moor waited.
And Aleria walked toward it anyway.