Gun Seren dragged himself through the front door and let his backpack fall onto the floor with a dull thud.
Another school day done. Another day of lectures, homework, and people pretending algebra mattered more than survival.
He didn't even bother changing out of his uniform right away. He just kicked off his shoes, rolled his shoulders, and walked straight to his desk like a man returning to war.
His PC sat there waiting for him.
That was the real reason he got through the day.
Gun sat down, cracked his knuckles, and stared at the monitor with the kind of focus most people reserved for final exams or life-or-death decisions.
For him, it was both.
"Alright," he muttered. "Time to farm."
He powered on the machine. The fan whirred. The screen lit up. A familiar menu appeared, and with it came the only thing that ever really made sense to him anymore.
Deepwoken.
His fingers moved fast across the keyboard. Muscle memory. Instinct. The kind of speed that came from doing the same thing thousands of times until thought itself became unnecessary.
The character loaded.
Drake Eshet.
Vantablack drip. Godseeker build. A name that carried weight in every place he had ever played. Not because it was flashy, but because it had earned that respect through pure brutality.
Gun leaned back in his chair with a satisfied grin.
"Still perfect."
Drake Eshet stood there on the screen like a living omen. Dark armor, dark aura, dark blade. Everything about the build was tuned for one thing: killing before the enemy understood they were in danger.
Gun had poured two years into this character.
Five thousand hours.
Memories of victories. Memorable deaths. Trial and error. Failed builds. Clutch escapes. Repeated wipes. Hundreds of fights in the Depths that had sharpened his hands into something almost inhuman.
He wasn't just good.
He was a no-lifer in the most literal sense of the word.
And tonight, he was in the Depths again.
The ocean below the world stretched on in black silence, broken only by ruined stone, distant screams, and the occasional shimmer of hostile movement in the dark. The Depths always had a smell to them, even through the screen, like wet stone, rust, and death.
Gun's eyes narrowed as he moved through the broken ruins.
"Freshies," he said quietly.
A figure appeared near a shattered pillar. Weak movement. Poor spacing. Panic written all over the way they shifted their camera.
Easy prey.
Gun smiled.
This was why he came here.
Not for loot. Not for honor. Not for mercy.
For the thrill of controlling the fight from the first frame to the last.
He closed the distance instantly.
The enemy turned late.
Too late.
Gun's blade met theirs with a clean metallic snap.
Parry.
The impact jolted through the screen. The freshie staggered.
Gun laughed under his breath. "You really thought you had a chance?"
The enemy swung again, desperate and wild.
Gun barely moved.
Another parry.
Perfect timing.
No hesitation. No wasted motion. Just clean, brutal precision.
The freshie tried to roll away, but Gun was already there, reading the movement before it happened. He stepped forward, cut the angle off, and punished the escape route like he had done a thousand times before.
"You always panic roll," he said. "Always."
Another hit landed.
The opponent's health was dropping fast now. Their posture was shattered. Their camera movement was frantic, sloppy, and full of fear.
Gun's grin widened.
That was the best part.
Not the kill itself.
The moment when the other player realized they were outclassed by someone who had already seen every trick they knew.
He moved in for the finish.
Then everything froze.
Gun blinked.
The enemy stopped mid-motion.
The water stopped rippling.
The sounds around him died instantly, as if the world had been muted by a giant invisible hand.
Gun frowned.
"...What?"
He glanced at the corner of the screen.
His connection icon flashed once.
Then again.
Then everything went red.
Disconnected.
For a second, he just stared.
"No. No, no, no."
He slapped the desk once and leaned closer to the monitor.
"Not now."
The music stopped.
The screen flickered.
A black box swallowed the image, and pale text began to appear across the center of the monitor.
The Towers Have Appeared.
Gun stared at the words without understanding them.
"What kind of update is that?"
Another line of text appeared below it.
Humanity will now begin its ascent.
Nexuses will awaken.
Classes will be granted.
Survive. Climb. Evolve.
Gun scoffed.
He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and gave the monitor a look of complete disrespect.
"Tch. Those towers don't matter to me."
He clicked back into Deepwoken on reflex, already annoyed enough to ignore whatever weird global event this was. Probably some nonsense. Maybe a server issue. Maybe some stupid in-game pop-up after a bad connection.
The game loaded.
Then the menu appeared.
Gun moved the cursor to his character slot.
And froze.
The slot was empty.
He blinked once.
Then again.
His eyes narrowed.
"...What?"
He clicked refresh.
Nothing.
He reloaded the screen.
Nothing.
He opened another menu.
Nothing.
Drake Eshet was gone.
Gone.
Gun didn't move for a full second.
The room was silent except for the low hum of the PC fans.
His face slowly changed from confusion to disbelief.
"No," he said, too quietly at first.
He clicked around faster.
"No, no, no."
His heart started to pound.
He opened every tab. Every save. Every option. Every backup menu he could find.
Nothing.
His character.
His build.
His hours.
His memories.
All of it.
Wiped.
The realization hit him like a punch in the gut.
Gun stood up so fast his chair scraped hard against the floor.
"No way."
His voice rose.
"No way they just wiped me."
He grabbed the mouse and slammed it into the desk. The plastic cracked with a sharp snap.
"Five thousand hours," he hissed. "You wiped five thousand hours?"
He slammed his hand against the desk again.
The monitor flickered.
Drake Eshet was still gone.
Something inside him snapped.
Gun yanked the keyboard toward him and hurled it across the room. It smashed against the wall and exploded into a spray of keys.
"ARE YOU SERIOUS?!"
He punched the monitor.
The screen cracked instantly, black lines spidering across the display.
"THAT WAS MY GODSEEKER!"
Another hit.
The monitor collapsed sideways with a burst of static.
"THOUSANDS OF MEMORIES!"
He stood there breathing hard, chest rising and falling, face lit by the dim glow of the ruined screen. His room was wrecked. Plastic pieces were scattered on the carpet. The desk was shaking slightly from the force of his own anger.
Then he went still.
Outside, somewhere in the city, sirens began to rise.
Gun turned slowly toward the window.
At first he thought the towers had to be some stupid local event.
Then he saw it.
A black shape had risen above the skyline.
Not a building.
A tower.
Gigantic. Impossible. Its top vanished into clouds that hadn't been there a minute ago. It stood over the world like something that had always existed, waiting for people to notice it.
Gun stared at it in silence.
The anger in his chest didn't disappear.
It sharpened.
"…So that's you," he muttered.
He picked up the remains of his shattered headset, dropped them, then grabbed his jacket from the chair.
His jaw tightened.
He had lost Drake Eshet.
He had lost his build.
He had lost two years of work to whatever nightmare had just crawled out of the sky.
And now there was a tower sitting over his continent like it owned the place.
Gun stepped toward the door, then paused with his hand on the knob.
The memory of the text flashed in his head again.
The Towers Have Appeared.
He let out a slow breath.
Then he smiled.
It was not a happy smile.
It was the kind of smile that meant somebody was going to die.
"Alright," he said.
His voice was calm again now. Cold. Focused.
"You wiped Drake Eshet."
He opened the door.
The hallway outside was dim, and the distant glow of the tower painted the world in a strange shadow.
Gun stepped out without hesitation.
"Now I'm wiping you."
The door shut behind him.
Above the city, the tower loomed silently over America, dark and endless and full of whatever monsters had decided to steal his life.
Gun Seren looked up at it like it had personally insulted him.
And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, beyond the rage, beyond the grief, beyond the loss of a character that had become more real to him than most people ever were—
a new kind of hunger began to form.
Not just revenge.
Ascension.
He would get stronger.
He would get his nexus.
He would get his class.
And then he would climb those towers floor by floor until everything that had taken Drake Eshet from him was reduced to nothing.
The towers had appeared.
Fine.
Then Gun Seren would appear too.
And this time, he was not logging off.