"Welcome to Aethelgard."
The voice didn't echo. It simply existed inside the minds of ten thousand players, cold, synthetic, and absolute.
Kael stood in the center of the Starting City plaza, surrounded by a sea of confused avatars.
Just moments ago, the sky had been a vibrant, painted blue.
Now, it was shattering.
Like cheap glass struck by a hammer, the heavens cracked, revealing a bleeding, crimson code beneath the illusion of a digital sky.
A massive, cloaked figure materialized above them, its face a void of endless dark.
The Game Master.
"There is no error. This is not a bug. It is a feature."
The entity's voice lacked any trace of humanity.
"The logout button has been permanently removed. Resurrection mechanisms are disabled. If your HP drops to zero here, the neural link helmet will send a microwave pulse directly into your brain."
A heavy silence fell over the plaza.
"Die in the game, and you die in reality. To survive, you must conquer all one hundred floors of Aethelgard. Good luck."
With those final words, the cloaked figure dissolved into red mist, leaving behind a suffocating despair.
For a brief second, nobody moved.
Then, primal chaos erupted.
Screams tore through the air. Players scrambled, grabbing each other, cursing the developers, begging for their mothers.
Right beside Kael, a teenager—who, just ten minutes ago, had been bragging about skipping his math homework to play the launch—dropped to his knees.
"No, no, no! I can't do this! I'm forcing a disconnect!" the boy shrieked, his hands clawing wildly at his own head.
He was trying to overload the neural link by intentionally spiking his sync rate.
"Wait, don't!" Kael reached out, his voice hoarse.
It was too late.
The boy's avatar violently convulsed. His textures stretched and tore, glitching in a horrifying display of digital agony.
Then, with a sickening shatter, he burst into a shower of bright blue polygons.
...
[Player 'xX_ShadowSniper_Xx' has died. Cause of death: Brain Hemorrhage.]
...
The blue system feed floated mercilessly in the air for all to see.
Kael dropped to his hands and knees.
His stomach heaved, and he vomited onto the cold cobblestone. Even the digital sensation of being sick felt entirely too real.
He couldn't breathe. His vision swam.
'He's dead. He's actually dead.'
Kael was just an average guy. An office worker looking for an escape from his mundane life. He didn't have the stomach for heroics. He didn't want to die in a fabricated world.
Across the plaza, charismatic voices began to rise above the panic.
Beta-testers.
They stood on fountain edges and statues, raising their starting weapons, rallying the brave, the foolish, and the desperate.
"We can beat this! We know the first floor! Form parties! We march to the Labyrinth now!"
Thousands of players, driven by adrenaline and the sheer terror of staying still, began to organize. They marched toward the colossal gates of the Floor 1 Labyrinth.
They were going to fight.
Kael watched them go.
His legs trembled as he finally pushed himself up.
He looked toward the Labyrinth, a towering structure of dark stone and ominous shadows. Just looking at it made his skin crawl.
'If I go in there, I will die.'
The thought was absolute. It wasn't a fear; it was a certainty.
Slowly, Kael turned around.
While the heroes marched forward, Kael walked the opposite way.
A passing player, clad in basic leather armor, bumped into his shoulder.
"Hey! The Labyrinth is that way, man!" the player yelled, pointing toward the dark tower.
Kael kept his head down and kept walking.
The player scoffed. "Coward. Stay here and rot, then."
Kael didn't argue. He was a coward. And he was fine with that.
He slipped through the panicked stragglers, walking straight out the rear gates of the Starting City.
The contrast was jarring.
Leaving the suffocating terror of the plaza, he stepped into Lumina Meadows.
Sun-dappled fields of vibrant green grass stretched as far as the eye could see. A gentle digital breeze rustled the leaves of solitary oak trees.
It was peaceful. It was the tutorial zone.
A few meters away, a small creature bounced out of the tall grass.
A Level 1 Horned Rabbit.
Its red eyes glowed faintly, and a tiny, almost comical horn jutted from its forehead.
Kael pulled up his basic interface.
...
[Horned Rabbit]
[Level: 1]
[Attack: 2]
...
He then checked his own stats.
...
[Player: Kael]
[Level: 1]
[HP: 100/100]
...
Even if he stood completely still, it would take the rabbit fifty unbroken hits to kill him. Factoring in his natural HP regeneration, it was mathematically impossible for this creature to end his life.
If the Labyrinth was a meat grinder, Lumina Meadows was a sanctuary.
Kael drew his weapon.
It was a basic iron shortsword, dull and uninspiring.
His hands shook violently. He gripped the hilt so tightly his knuckles turned white.
The rabbit bounded toward him, initiating its aggro state.
Kael didn't use a sword skill. He didn't use footwork.
He just closed his eyes and swung wildly.
Thwack!
A red gash appeared across the rabbit's side before it squeaked and shattered into blue glass fragments.
...
[Horned Rabbit defeated! +1 EXP]
[10 Copper Coins acquired.]
...
Kael opened his eyes, staring at the faint blue prompt.
He survived.
He looked out over the sprawling fields. The meadow was absolutely swarming with thousands of these harmless creatures.
Horned Rabbits and Blue Slimes, aimlessly wandering through the grass.
According to the game manual he had read before launch, a player needed 100 EXP to reach Level 2.
To reach Level 10, he would need tens of thousands.
To reach Level 50, millions.
The EXP scaling was exponential. Grinding Level 1 mobs past Level 5 was considered pure lunacy. The game would penalize your EXP gains the higher your level got compared to the monster.
Eventually, a Level 1 monster would give him 0.0001 EXP.
He didn't care.
He didn't care if it took him a year. He didn't care if it took him a lifetime.
"They can have the Labyrinth," Kael muttered, his voice trembling but resolute. "They can be the heroes."
He tightened his grip on the iron shortsword.
"I'm not risking my life. Not until I'm an absolute, undisputed anomaly."
He took a step forward, his eyes locking onto a Blue Slime jiggling in the distance.
"I'll just stay right here."
...
What Kael didn't know—what none of the brave frontliners, the forum divers, or the beta testers knew—was that Aethelgard harbored a deeply hidden mechanic.
A mechanic designed as an inside joke by a rogue developer, buried beneath thousands of lines of unused code.
The Genocide Modifier.
Every one millionth kill of the exact same species didn't just give experience.
It granted a permanent, compounding stat multiplier.
For now, Kael was just a terrified coward swinging a rusted sword at a slime.
But three years later, while the vanguard bled and died to breach Floor 50...
He wouldn't just be a survivor.
He would be a god wearing starter gear.
Slash.
...
[Blue Slime defeated! +1 EXP]
...
And so, the longest, most pathetic grind in the history of Aethelgard began.