**Chapter 8: The First Quest**
The rusted fist of the Construct descended like a falling safe.
In my previous life—the one three minutes ago where I was a bored god in a lead suit—I would have caught it. I would have let it crumple against my skin and yawned. But here, in the mud of Aethelgard, inside the avatar of *Nameless*, catching that fist would turn me into a red smear of polygon paste.
"Roll!" I screamed, throwing myself to the left.
I hit the dirt hard. My shoulder slammed into a root, and a jolt of pain—sharp, localized, and wonderfully vivid—shot up my neck.
The metal fist impacted the ground where I had been standing a microsecond before. The earth erupted. Mud and stone shrapnel sprayed the clearing. The shockwave rattled my teeth.
"Ren! The other leg!" I bellowed, scrambling to my feet.
Ren was already moving. The boy was a blur of leather and desperation. He didn't move like a trained fighter; he moved like a man escaping a fire. There was no economy of motion, only frantic, explosive energy.
He slid across the wet leaves, driving his starter dagger into the back of the Construct's remaining functional knee.
*Crunch.*
The dagger was garbage—rusted iron with low durability—but Ren's momentum provided the force. The blade wedged into the hydraulic piston. He wrenched it sideways.
The Construct let out a sound that was half-shriek, half-grinding gears. It tried to turn, to swat the gnat biting its ankles, but its structural integrity failed. It toppled sideways, crashing into the trunk of a glowing crystalline tree.
The tree shuddered, dropping leaves of pure light.
"It's down!" Ren yelled, his voice cracking with adrenaline. "Is it dead?"
"It's stunned," I panted, my chest heaving. My stamina bar was flashing red. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. "We have to pierce the core. The chest plate."
I looked at my weapon: a sharpened stick.
"Useless," I muttered.
I dropped the stick and scanned the ground. The Construct was thrashing, trying to reboot its motor functions. Its red optical sensors were flickering, locking onto us.
I saw a rock. A jagged piece of obsidian, heavy and sharp.
I grabbed it with both hands. It was heavy. My avatar's Strength stat was a pitiful 5. I grunted, feeling the muscles in my back strain as I hefted the stone above my head.
I leaped onto the chest of the fallen machine.
Heat radiated from the chassis. It smelled of burning oil and ozone. The red eye glared up at me.
"Game over," I whispered.
I brought the rock down.
*CLANG.*
The chest plate dented.
I lifted it again. *CLANG.*
The metal groaned.
"Ren! Help me!"
Ren scrambled onto the chassis beside me. He grabbed the rock with me. Together, four hands—two of a god pretending to be a man, two of a cripple pretending to be a hero—heaved the stone.
"On three!" Ren shouted. "One! Two! Three!"
We slammed it down.
*CRUNCH.*
The metal gave way. The rock smashed through the protective casing and crushed the glowing red core beneath.
A blast of heat washed over us. The red light in the Construct's eyes faded to black. The thrashing limbs fell still.
Silence returned to the Weeping Woods, broken only by our ragged breathing.
**[Enemy Defeated: Iron Legion Scout (Level 5)]**
**[Experience Gained: 500]**
**[Contribution: Ren (60%), Nameless (40%)]**
**[LEVEL UP!]**
A golden light washed over me. The ache in my shoulder vanished. My stamina bar refilled instantly.
I sat back on the cooling metal of the dead machine, wiping sweat—actual, salty sweat—from my forehead.
"We did it," Ren whispered. He was staring at his hands, which were shaking violently. "We actually killed it."
I looked at him. In the real world, inside his hospital room, his heart rate would be spiking to 150. His brain was flooded with dopamine and norepinephrine.
"Not bad for a beginner," I said, keeping my voice gruff. "You have terrible form, though. You run like a drunk duck."
Ren laughed. He threw his head back and howled at the artificial sky, a sound of pure, unadulterated release. "I can run like a duck! I can run!"
He jumped off the carcass and landed in a crouch. He touched his toes. He did a little hop.
I watched him with a clinical eye, overlaying his avatar with the System diagnostics. The bio-feedback was immense. Every movement he made in the game was sending a firing signal to his atrophied spinal cord in reality. The nerves weren't responding yet—not fully—but the signal was banging on the door, demanding to be let in.
"Loot it," I commanded, pointing at the wreckage. "The System rewards the bold."
Ren hesitated, then reached into the shattered chest cavity. He pulled out a glowing blue orb and a handful of scrap metal.
**[Item Acquired: Minor Core (Common)]**
**[Item Acquired: Scrap Iron x3]**
"What is this?" Ren asked, holding up the orb.
"Currency," I explained. "Or fuel. Depends on who you ask."
Suddenly, a chime resonated through the air. A semi-transparent blue window appeared in front of both of us.
**[QUEST ALERT: The Corruption Spreads]**
**[The destruction of the Scout has disturbed the local energy field. Volatile entities are manifesting.]**
**[Objective: Eliminate 10 Flux Slimes.]**
**[Reward: Starter Weapon Box, 200 Gold.]**
Ren's eyes widened. "A quest. A real quest."
I groaned internally. I had programmed the dynamic quest generator to keep players busy, but I hadn't anticipated getting roped into the grind myself.
"Flux Slimes," I muttered. "Messy work."
"Let's go," Ren said, equipping his dagger again. He looked at me, his eyes shining with a fanatic intensity. "I want to level up again."
"Pace yourself, kid," I warned, sliding off the Construct. "The exhaustion in here... it sticks."
***
We didn't have to hunt for them. They found us.
Flux Slimes were not the cute, bouncing blue blobs of traditional RPGs. I had designed Aethelgard to be a horror-fantasy, not a cartoon.
A Flux Slime was a roving anomaly of aggressive energy. It looked like a ball of translucent, gelatinous lightning, roughly the size of a beach ball, rolling through the underbrush and leaving a trail of scorched earth. They didn't bite; they discharged.
Three of them oozed out of the shadows of the crystalline trees, crackling with static.
"They glow," Ren observed. "That makes them easy to hit."
"Don't touch them," I warned, picking up a long, heavy branch to use as a club. "They're basically biological batteries. If you stab them with a conductive metal dagger, you're going to ground the charge through your arm."
Ren paused. "So... how do I kill them?"
"Hit the core," I said, pointing to a dark, solid nucleus floating in the center of the electrical jelly. "And try not to get electrocuted. The Pain Dampener is on, but it still feels like licking a 9-volt battery."
The first slime lunged. It didn't roll; it propelled itself with a burst of static pressure.
Ren dodged, but not fast enough. The edge of the slime grazed his arm.
*ZAP.*
Ren yelped, stumbling back. "Ow! That stung!"
"Focus!" I shouted.
I swung my club. The wood connected with the jelly. It felt like hitting a bag of water. The slime deformed, absorbing the impact, but the force knocked it backward.
"Batter up," I grunted.
The grind began.
It wasn't glorious. It wasn't cinematic. It was work.
Fighting the Iron Legion Scout had been a sprint; fighting the slimes was a marathon. Every swing of my makeshift club drained a sliver of my stamina bar. Every dodge burned energy.
And unlike a normal game, where you just press 'X' until your thumb hurts, here, I had to physically heave the weapon. I had to plant my feet. I had to twist my hips.
By the fourth slime, my avatar's arms were burning. My lungs—digital approximations of lungs—were screaming for air.
Ren was faring worse.
He was fast, but he had no endurance. In the real world, his cardiovascular system was weak from years of being bedridden. The Black Box was compensating, bridging the gap with my energy, but the mental fatigue was hitting him.
He lunged at a slime, missed the core, and stumbled.
"Get up!" I barked, smashing a slime that tried to flank him.
"I'm... tired," Ren gasped, leaning against a tree. His legs—his beautiful, working legs—were trembling. "Why am I so tired? It's a game."
I smashed the core of the slime, watching it dissolve into blue sparks.
"The interface translates mental intent into digital action," I lectured, breathing hard. "Your brain is sending the signals to move muscles you haven't used. Your brain thinks you're running a marathon. The exhaustion is psychosomatic, but the effects are real."
Ren looked at his hands. "It feels heavy. Like... like gravity is turning up."
"That's the Ring of Burden you don't know you're wearing," I thought, but said nothing.
"Two more," I said aloud. "Come on, Strider. Push through the wall."
Ren gritted his teeth. He stood up. He looked at the remaining slimes.
"I'm not going back to the bed," he snarled.
He charged.
This time, he didn't just stab. He threw the dagger.
It was a clumsy throw, but luck—or perhaps the hidden hand of the System—guided it. The blade pierced the jelly and struck the nucleus of the lead slime. The creature destabilized and popped with a wet *thwump*.
Ren drew a second, smaller knife from his boot—a hidden item I hadn't realized he'd found.
He tackled the last slime.
"Ren, don't grapple it!" I shouted.
He ignored me. He drove the knife into the core, ignoring the arcs of blue electricity that danced over his skin. He screamed, a sound of pain and defiance, and twisted the blade.
The slime exploded into a shower of sparks.
**[Quest Complete: The Corruption Spreads]**
**[Reward: Starter Weapon Box x2, 200 Gold]**
**[Ren Status: Exhaustion Level 2 (Action Speed Reduced)]**
Ren rolled onto his back in the dirt. He was twitching slightly from the residual shocks.
I walked over to him, leaning on my club. I looked down.
"You're an idiot," I said. "You took twenty percent damage just to finish it fast."
Ren looked up at me. His avatar's face was smeared with soot and digital grime. But he was grinning.
"Did you see that?" he wheezed. "I felt the shock. It hurt."
"You're happy about pain?"
"It's better than nothing," Ren whispered. "Nothing hurts in the hospital. It's just... static. This is real."
I extended a hand.
He took it. I pulled him up. He swayed, heavy on his feet.
"We're done for now," I said. "You're crashing. Your neural synch is destabilizing."
"No," Ren protested, though his eyelids were drooping. "I want to open the box. I want to see what I got."
I summoned the inventory menu. Two wooden crates materialized in the air and fell to the ground.
"Open it," I said. "Then log out. That's an order."
Ren knelt before the box. He lifted the lid.
A flash of white light.
Inside lay a pair of daggers. They weren't rusted iron. They were steel, sleek and sharp, with handles wrapped in blue leather.
**[Twin Fangs (Uncommon)]**
**[+5 Agility]**
**[Effect: Minor Shock Damage]**
Ren touched them reverently. "They're beautiful."
"They fit you," I said. I opened my box. A simple iron staff. Bland. Perfect for a Beggar.
"Ren," I said, my voice taking on a serious tone. "The Black Box puts a strain on your mind. If you stay in too long, you risk burnout. Log out. Sleep. The world will be here tomorrow."
Ren looked at the daggers, then at the trees, then at me.
"Will you be here?" he asked.
"I live here," I said cryptically.
Ren nodded. He closed his eyes. "System. Log out."
His avatar dissolved into a stream of blue particles, scattering into the virtual wind.
I stood alone in the clearing. The dead Construct lay smoking nearby. Ten scorch marks on the ground marked where the slimes had died.
I dropped the guise of the weary traveler. I stood up straight, my spine cracking.
"System," I said to the empty air. "Show me Subject 042's biometric data during the disconnect."
A window appeared.
**[Subject: Ren.]**
**[Disconnecting...]**
**[Spinal Activity Detected: 12% increase in dormant pathways.]**
**[Muscular response triggered.]**
I smiled.
"It works."
***
**The Real World: Tokyo General Hospital**
The white ceiling tiles returned.
The transition was jarring. One moment, the smell of ozone and wet earth; the next, the sterile stench of disinfectant.
Ren gasped, ripping the heavy black headset off his head. It clattered onto the plastic tray table.
He was drenched in sweat. His hospital gown stuck to his chest. His heart was racing, a frantic drumbeat in the quiet room.
"Water," he croaked.
His hands shook as he reached for the plastic cup. He felt heavy. Impossibly heavy. It felt like gravity had been turned up to eleven. His arms, which had wielded steel daggers moments ago, felt like lead.
*Exhaustion.*
Nameless had been right. It wasn't just mental. His physical body felt like it had run a mile. His muscles ached—a sweet, deep ache he hadn't felt since junior high track and field.
He drank the water, spilling half of it down his chin. He didn't care.
He lay back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling. 342 dots.
But the image of the Weeping Woods burned behind his eyelids. The weight of the dagger. The shock of the slime.
"It wasn't a dream," he whispered.
He looked down at the sheet covering his legs.
Usually, looking at his legs filled him with a cold, hollow dread. They were dead weight. Meat attached to a corpse.
But now...
He remembered the feeling of digging his toes into the sand. He remembered the slide under the Construct's arm.
*Phantom sensations,* the doctor had called them years ago. *Your brain trying to make sense of the disconnect.*
Ren closed his eyes. He focused. Not on moving, just on *feeling*.
He imagined the sand. He imagined the cold mud.
A tingle.
It started at his hip. A faint, microscopic line of fire traveling down his thigh. It hit the knee—the dead, unresponsive knee—and fizzled out.
But then, lower.
His big toe.
Ren's eyes snapped open. He stared at the lump under the sheet.
*Move,* he commanded. *Just once. For Nameless.*
He gritted his teeth. He pushed with his mind, pushed through the fog, pushed through the silence of his nerves.
The sheet rustled.
It was tiny. A fraction of an inch. A twitch.
But it was there.
Ren stared at it. He held his breath, terrified that if he breathed, he would wake up and realize it was a spasm.
He tried again.
*Twitch.*
Tears welled in his eyes. Not tears of sadness, not this time. Hot, scalding tears of hope.
He reached out and grabbed the black headset. The metal was still warm. The violet light pulsed slowly, like a resting heartbeat.
"Thank you," Ren choked out into the empty room.
He didn't know who the Architect was. He didn't know who Nameless was. But he knew one thing.
He wasn't going to die in this bed.
He clutched the Black Box to his chest like a lifeline. The exhaustion dragged him down, pulling him into a deep, dreamless sleep. But for the first time in three years, Ren didn't dream of falling.
He dreamed of hunting.
***
**The Atacama Facility**
I opened my eyes. The gravity seals of the Sarcophagus hummed, pressing down on me with the weight of a mountain.
I was back in the box. Back in the cage of my own power.
But the boredom... the crushing, suffocating boredom... it was gone.
I pulled up the status screen.
**[Day 1,098 Begins.]**
**[Daily Growth Applied: +10%.]**
**[External Source Contribution (Ren): +0.00002%.]**
I looked at the tiny number. It was microscopic. Insignificant to a god.
But to me, it was the most beautiful number in the universe.
"0.00002%," I whispered.
I picked up my nutrient block. It still tasted like sawdust. The room was still cold. I was still a monster trapped in the dark.
But I had a party member now.
"Get strong, Ren," I said to the darkness. "Get strong fast. Because the next boss isn't going to be as easy as a rusted Construct."
I closed my eyes, already planning the next expansion.
The First Quest was over. The real game had just begun.