## 1. The Awakening: The Bonfire and the Uselessness
The first sense to return was smell, a strong odor of smoke and burnt earth that assaulted his nostrils. Then, the heat. An intense, almost physical heat that seemed to cook his skin. Hiroshi opened his eyes, blinking against the brutal light of a sun that seemed to be just a few feet away. He was lying next to a dying bonfire, reduced to white ashes and red embers that pulsed faintly.
The landscape stretching before him was one of savage and oppressive beauty. A vibrant, almost aggressive green covered hills and valleys, contrasting with the deep, immaculate blue of the sky. It was vast, overwhelming, and the feeling of being in an unknown place was a cold weight in his stomach. He felt the fabric beneath his body: high-quality silk and linen, the outer tunic he wore before... before what? Memory was a blur.
Hiroshi was an archaeologist. His life was dedicated to unearthing and deciphering the secrets of dead civilizations, to reading history between the lines of broken pottery and forgotten hieroglyphs. He was a man of books and dust, not of fire and blazing sun.
> "What good is the history of a world that is not mine?", he thought, his inner voice sounding strangely distant.
The realization hit him with the force of a blow: he was not in his world. His knowledge, his life, everything he was, had suddenly become useless. He was a man without tools in a world that demanded brute force. The feeling of helplessness was the first layer of his new and complex identity.
## 2. The First Observation: The Village and the Absence
With an effort, Hiroshi stood up. He felt his body strangely light, a sensation he ignored for a moment. He observed the fauna. A deer with branched antlers grazed peacefully, familiar. But, a few feet away, a creature with the body of a badger and multiple shining eyes stared at him before disappearing into the vegetation. The world was a mixture of familiarity and terror.
He spotted the village. A cluster of mud and straw houses, nestled in a valley. The atmosphere was one of oppressive silence, without the cheerful buzz one would expect from a settlement under such a bright sun. As he approached, he noticed the composition of the population: women, many with tired and hard looks; thin children; and elderly men or those with visible physical disabilities – a lame man, a blind man, one with a withered arm. The absence of men of fighting age was glaring, a hole in the social structure that screamed the story of a recent and devastating war.
## 3. The Rescue and the Suspicion: The Magic Bow
As he watched, a quick movement in the tall grass caught his attention. An animal, with long fangs and gray fur, leaped towards him. Hiroshi's instinct, trained for caution and not for combat, failed. He simply froze, his mind screaming in panic.
A ray of green energy, hissing like a giant insect, struck the creature in the flank, knocking it down with a moan.
A figure emerged from the vegetation. It was a woman, small, with straight black hair and slanted eyes that stared at him with intense suspicion. She wore simple leather clothes, but held a bow that glowed with a faint, emerald light. Magic.
"Who are you?", she asked, her voice low and rough, without lowering the bow. "Where did those clothes come from? Are you royalty?"
Her suspicion was palpable. Hiroshi's clothes, made of expensive, fine fabrics, marked him as a stranger, perhaps an enemy. He tried to explain his amnesia, the awakening by the bonfire, but the words seemed hollow.
## 4. The Sacrifice and the Trust: The Price of Help
Desperate to prove his innocence and gain the trust of the only person who had saved him, Hiroshi made an impulsive decision. He stripped off his outer silk tunic, remaining only in a simple shirt.
"I don't know who I am, but I know the value of this," he said, holding out the garment. "Take it. Trade it for food, for medicine. The fabric is expensive, it must be worth a lot."
Bella hesitated, her eyes fixed on the silk. Necessity overcame suspicion. She accepted the tunic and, with her guard down, revealed her name.
"Bella," she said. "My name is Bella."
She then told the story of the village: the war that took the men and the stone plague, cast by the king who dominated the continent.
> "The skin hardens, turns to stone. The only way to stop it is to cut off the limb, but the evil spreads through the blood. There is no cure. It is a slow and inhumane death."
The somber tone of the revelation made Hiroshi's stomach churn. This was a fantasy world, but a cruel and relentless one.
Bella stared at him, her expression serious. "You have a magic bow, I saw it. You are not from here. What is your **Class**? What is your **Power**?"
The question hit him with the force of a revelation. Class? Power? He was an archaeologist. He had nothing. He was powerless.
"I... I don't know," he replied, his voice failing.
The silence that followed was the confirmation of his new reality: he was a zero in a world where only power mattered.
## 5. The Cruel Reality: Passivity and the Golden Tree
Bella took him to the village. The atmosphere of oppressive silence became a palpable reality. Hiroshi saw a child, perhaps five years old, sitting alone by the edge of a hut. His left hand was gray, the skin already hard and scaly. The child cried silently, ignored by the few adults who passed by. The stone plague was not just a disease; it was a death sentence that led to abandonment. There was no point in feeding someone who would soon die.
The horror reached its peak when four soldiers entered the central square. They wore polished silver armor, gleaming under the sun, and the symbol of the Royal House — a stylized golden tree — was engraved on their breastplates. They were the personification of oppression.
The soldiers acted with casual arrogance. One of them slapped an elderly man who was trying to protect his vegetable cart. Another grabbed a woman by the arm, pulling her into an alley with a cruel smile. What shocked Hiroshi most was not the violence, but the **passivity** of the population. The men, the few who remained, looked away. The women cried in silence. No one intervened.
Fury rose to Hiroshi's head, the idealistic archaeologist who believed in justice and order. He clenched his fists, but Bella held him back with surprising strength.
> "Don't do anything. You will die," she hissed.
Hiroshi's internal monologue was a scream. The war had not only killed the men; it had destroyed the people's will. They accepted cruelty as part of life. That was the true horror of *Dark Fantasy*: the acceptance of misery.
The day ended with Bella taking him to her house, a small, silent mud refuge.
## 6. The Night Questioning: Tension and the Promise
At night, under the faint light of an oil lamp, the silence was heavy. Hiroshi couldn't sleep.
"Why didn't you attack them?", he confronted Bella, who was sitting, sharpening an arrow. "You have magic! Why do they accept this? Why don't the men defend their wives and children?"
Bella stopped sharpening, the tension in her shoulders visible. She was not a coward; Hiroshi knew that. She had saved him from a wild animal.
"You don't understand," she replied, her voice low and hoarse. "You are new here. You still have hope."
"Hope? That's not hope, that's cowardice! It's accepting to be trampled!"
She stood up, her slanted eyes fixed on his, full of an ancient pain. She didn't answer directly, but the promise in her voice was heavier than any explanation.
"You want to know why? Come with me tomorrow. I will show you what happens to those who don't accept. I will show you what the King does to break hope."
## 7. The Hill of Cruelty: The Price of Rebellion
They walked 3 km before the sun fully rose, climbing an arid hill. The smell of blood and death, carried by the cold morning wind, hit Hiroshi before he saw the scene.
The top of the hill was a stage of terror. People were hanging on makeshift crosses, made of tree trunks. They were not polished wooden crosses, but rustic posts, stained with dried blood. Some were dead, others alive, moaning and begging for water.
Below, the scene was even more shocking. Wives, children, and relatives were kneeling, praying in silence. They looked at their crucified loved ones, but did nothing. There were no cries of revolt, only silent prayers and tears. The punishment was public, the terror was shared, and intervention was impossible.
Bella spoke in a hoarse whisper, breaking the morbid silence.
"This is what the King does. He doesn't need armies to control us. He broke our hope. He taught us that rebellion is not worth the pain we cause to those we love."
Hiroshi looked at the face of a hanging man, who was still breathing, and at the wife kneeling below, who was only praying. He understood. Passivity was not cowardice; it was despair. It was the only way to ensure their children didn't end up on the cross.
## 8. The Impossible Mission: The Karius Sword
Bella pointed into the distance, to a valley where a lake of dark, still waters reflected the gray sky. The Black Lake.
"There is a legend," she said, her voice now filled with a spark of desperate hope. "Beyond that lake, there is a cave. Inside it, a monster guards the **Karius Sword**."
She turned to Hiroshi, determination in her eyes.
"They say it can increase the user's current Level by a hundred times. The stronger you are, the stronger it will make you. It is the only thing that can save us. Not even the King dares to enter that cave."
Hiroshi, the powerless archaeologist, looked at the hill, at the Black Lake, and at Bella. He understood that the only way to survive in this world, and to make his sense of justice count, was to become strong. His knowledge of dead civilizations was useless, but perhaps his determination not to accept cruelty could be his new "Class."
He looked at Bella, the idealist forced to seek power.
"What do I need to get to the Black Lake?"