Eloy read the floating options in his peripheral vision without moving his head.
[POLL: WHAT NOW?]
[A) Threaten the Director. Establish dominance.]
[B) Throw yourself out the window behind him.]
[TIMER: 5 SECONDS]
He evaluated Option B first. A speedrunner always checks every alternate route before committing to a hard lock.
The stained-glass window behind the desk was massive. The stone courtyard was two stories down. The body he currently inhabited belonged to an eighteen-year-old commoner with zero status, zero levels, and absolutely no defensive modifiers. The game's protagonist, Arthur Gildhart, would survive that fall due to inherent hero stat-scaling. Eloy would turn into a red smear on the paving stones.
Option B was out.
Option A offered awful odds. Director Caldwell already had his hand wrapped around the velvet security cord. One wrong syllable, one stutter, and the academy guards would breach the doors. Eloy would spend the rest of this run rotting in a lightless dungeon, locked out of the main questline, with zero chance of beating the world record.
The chat voted with disturbing enthusiasm.
[dudefromfloripa]: man just jump
The timer ticked down. In the final two seconds, the progress bar violently shifted. Option A locked in at sixty-three percent.
[ CHAT SUPPORT ACTIVATED ]
Eloy closed his eyes for half a second. He cataloged the game's lore database in his head, isolating Caldwell's specific file.
Caldwell's hand pulled the velvet cord.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Crisis," Eloy said.
The name dropped into the quiet chamber like a lead weight.
Caldwell stopped pulling.
He didn't flinch. He didn't gasp. He executed the precise, controlled freeze of a predator that suddenly spots a bigger predator in the brush. His hand remained wrapped around the cord, knuckles white, completely immobilized.
Three seconds ticked by. Four.
"Canceled," Caldwell said. He kept his eyes locked on Eloy. "False alarm. Return to posts."
Heavy armored boots stopped just outside the locked oak doors. The metallic clanking shifted, receded, and finally faded down the corridor.
The air in the room stalled. The administrative annoyance on Caldwell's face dissolved, leaving behind a cold, blank slate.
"What do you want, boy."
Eloy stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coarse tunic. He had explained game mechanics and hidden lore to live audiences thousands of times. He knew the exact rhythm of a lore-drop. You never dumped the whole paragraph at once. You delivered one piece of data, let the target process it, and then dropped the hammer.
"The full name was Caldwell Crisis Hargrove," Eloy said. He kept his voice flat, stripping away any trace of intimidation. "Domain General. Head of logistics for the Dark Lord's expansion campaigns between the years eight-forty and eight-sixty-two. Six cities."
Caldwell did not blink.
"You didn't lead the vanguard," Eloy continued. "You didn't burn the walls. You handled the supply lines. You ensured those six cities starved for two months, completely cut off from kingdom reinforcements, before the actual sieges began."
A muscle in Caldwell's jaw twitched.
"You were the only high-ranking officer to survive the war with a spotless identity." Eloy tilted his head. "The official historians thought it was luck."
"It was," Caldwell said.
"You handed the complete invasion blueprints for the Northern Front to Orin Goldenshield four weeks before the final battle," Eloy said. "The terms of your immunity deal were specific. A new identity. A new position of power. An ironclad guarantee that your real name would never appear on a tribunal ledger."
Eloy took one step forward.
"Meanwhile, conscripted slaves were executed for treason. The Dark Lord's daughter still faces daily reprisals for a last name she didn't choose." Eloy held Caldwell's gaze. "And you teach ethics and responsibility to the children of nobles."
The grandfather clock in the corner of the office ticked twice.
"You don't know what you are talking about," Caldwell said.
"I study a lot."
The chat scrolled rapidly, the text a blinding white blur in the corner of Eloy's vision.
[PraiseTheSun]: HE ACTUALLY STUDIED
[IsoldeSimp47]: HE DID IT FOR ISOLDE
[LMAO_cat]: bro just cited war crimes from memory
[gamerman12345]: OWN THAT FRAUD
Caldwell released the velvet cord. He sat back in his heavy leather chair. He looked at Eloy, his eyes tracking over the dirt stains on the tunic, the scuffed boots, and the complete lack of a weapon. He was recalculating the threat level of the room.
"I assume you want something for your silence," Caldwell said.
"The Phase One quest scroll," Eloy said. "I want to skip orientation."
Caldwell stared. "What."
"The scroll."
"You breached a solid wall," Caldwell said slowly. "You named my classified war record. You threatened the headmaster of the Royal Academy with treason. And your demand is to skip the campus tour."
"I don't like crowds," Eloy said. "And the process takes too long."
[TrollKing99]: SPEEDRUNNER BEHAVIOR
[LMAO_cat]: this guy is clinically insane
Caldwell opened the center drawer of his desk. He reached inside.
Eloy's muscles coiled. If the director pulled a flintlock or a spell-tag, the run was over.
Caldwell pulled out a rolled parchment sealed with red wax. He tossed it across the desk with a tired, sharp flick of his wrist.
The heavy parchment hit Eloy squarely in the chest. He caught it.
"I doubt this will be the end of your demands," Caldwell said.
"It is for now."
Eloy turned his back on the most dangerous man in the North Wing and walked toward the massive oak doors. He reached for the heavy iron handles. The locks clicked open automatically from the inside.
Eloy's hand was already on the iron handle.
He didn't turn around. Turning around was the wrong input here: it invited a response, and a response gave Caldwell a conversational opening he absolutely did not want to hand this man.
"You will not walk away from this clean, boy."
The voice hadn't risen. That was the problem. People who shouted were managing their fear. Caldwell wasn't managing anything.
"For your own sake. Never speak of this to anyone else."
Eloy pushed through the doors.
[ ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: First Quest — Here We Go! ]
Eloy stood in the empty corridor. He waited three seconds. He checked the sightlines of the hallway, ensuring no guards or students were watching.
He let his shoulders drop. His knees shook. He leaned his back against the cold stone wall and exhaled a long, ragged breath. He had been terrified since the moment his boots hit the office floor.
[MayaBestGirl98]: DUDE YOU WERE SHAKING
[PraiseTheSun]: i was shaking too i understand bro
Eloy broke the red wax seal on the parchment with his thumb.
The first quest. Rank F. Rescue the stray cats in the lower district. It was the mandatory introductory mission for every single playthrough. It served as a safe, low-stakes open-world segment designed to teach the player basic tracking mechanics and party synergy. Simple. Manageable. Exactly what he needed to test his combat inputs without risking a game over.
[ PRIMARY QUEST: Rescue hostage from criminal organization. ]
[ RANK: A — EXTREME DANGER. ]
[ NOT RECOMMENDED FOR RANK (E) STUDENTS. ]
In the game, the mathematical gap between those two ranks was the gap between a tutorial dummy and a final boss encounter. Level-forty casters. Area denial spells. The kind of opposition that resets your run back to title screen.
Then the hostage line.
[ HOSTAGE: Arthur Gildhart. ]
The corridor went very quiet.
Arthur Gildhart. Golden hair, sometimes red depending on the art style and the light. Dual-element mastery. The protagonist of the entire franchise. The designated hero destined to save Aethelgard from the encroaching darkness and establish a new era of peace.
Kidnapped.
The game's protagonist was kidnapped on day one.
Eloy read the third line of text.
[ ASSIGNED PARTY MEMBERS: Isolde Reichenbach. Eloy Vance. ]
The parchment stopped shaking in his hands. He gripped the edges so hard the paper crumpled.
Eloy had been on a solo run and deactivated a route. Now Caldwell had written Isolde into the same file.
A Rank A mission. Two Rank E liabilities. No witnesses required.
He knows, some cold part of Eloy's brain concluded. He doesn't know about the stream or the system. But he knows we're both problems. And he just solved both of us with one scroll.
"Arthur Gildhart," Eloy said aloud. His voice echoed faintly off the stone walls. "The protagonist of the game is currently a hostage."
The chat feed stopped. For two full seconds, not a single line of text scrolled upward. For this specific audience, two seconds of silence was geological.
[IsoldeSimp47]: HE KIDNAPPED THE PROTAGONIST TO KILL YOU BOTH
[PraiseTheSun]: CALDWELL JUST SENT YOU TO DIE
[TrollKing99]: the cat quest was better ngl
Eloy looked at the parchment. He looked at the two names at the bottom: his, and hers.
He had never taken Isolde's route before, of course. It never happened in any capacity. He had no guide, no recorded data, no historical strategies.
He also had no choice but to go tell her about the mission.
Today.