The smell hit me first.
Not blood. Not burned fur or ruptured organs or whatever corrupted squirrel meat had been pretending to be. No, this was warm. Rich. Real.
Bread?
My stomach made a noise that I'm pretty sure translated to "I will kill for that" in at least three languages. I wasn't awake yet, not fully, but every cell in my body had unanimously voted for consciousness the second that smell wafted in.
I cracked one eye open.
Still underground. Still stone walls and repurposed conduit lighting. But someone had dragged a low table out into the center of the training floor, and filled it.
Food.
Like actual food.
Bread. Stew. Something steaming in a metal pot. A few root vegetables. Jerked meat that wasn't twitching. A jug of something vaguely fruity.
I didn't get up. I couldn't.
I just kind of... rolled. Slowly. Like a body rediscovering gravity in increments.
Limbs complained. Spine popped. Everything felt drained and twitchy and strangely intact. I don't think I have been less injured since the first tutorial fight. That new trait in action a i bet, but damn thing knocked me out after.
I flexed my hands. Knuckles tight, then loose. Skin new and thin, like it had been poured. The bruises along my ribs had faded from grape to old tea.
The new trait doing work, yeah. It had knocked me out cold after the fight, but the bill it paid was obvious.
A test. I pressed a thumb into the worst spot on my side and waited for the hot lightning.
Warm ache. No spark.
Not healed. Functional. There's a difference.
Functional keeps you moving when the world wants you to crawl.
I breathed in slow. The air smelled like starch and metal. I tasted copper on the back of my tongue and realized it was memory, not blood. My body remembered getting broken.
It also remembered not staying that way.
I crawled the last few feet. Dignity was for Classed Users with energy bars and hot clerics.
I finally got myself in front of the table of food, it looked heavenly, I suddenly forgave Hagar for all the pain and suffering he caused me. He must be an angel in disguise to have provided me with this feast, this looks so much better than raw mutated squirrel. I pulled myself up into a chair.
"Don't mind if I do," I muttered, and started stuffing my face.
I didn't pace myself.
There was no pacing. No manners. No strategy. Just devour. Perhaps my root is related to Hunger not Rage?
I tore into the bread like it had personally wronged me. The stew followed, thick, salty, rich enough that I almost wept. It burned going down. I didn't care. That was just the flavor of not dying.
The meat?
God-tier. Didn't matter if it came off the back of a mutant cow or some unlucky beast from Sector Who-Gives-A-Shit, it was protein and it wasn't moving, it was even cooked!
If there was a god, they lived in this stew. And I was currently defiling them with my mouth.
Every bite was a reminder I hadn't been alive, just surviving. The bread cracked between my teeth and dissolved into something warm that filled the hollows the System had carved in me. Salt clung to my lips, fat coated my tongue, and I realized I'd forgotten what it felt like to eat for pleasure, not for calories. Even the pain in my jaw from chewing felt holy, like muscles remembering their purpose.
I grabbed a roasted root vegetable, bit into it, and moaned. Audibly. That was a real noise. A real sound that left my mouth like I'd been touched by a minor god.
And Hagar?
Saint Hagar. Blessed be his crooked nose and unlabeled flask. May his tusks never dull, his booze never run dry. I take back every curse I hurled at him. Every insult. Every death wish I whispered into the floor between hits.
I'd been wrong.
He wasn't a sadistic dwarf-orc hybrid sent to break my body and spirit.
He was a culinary savior.
A prophet of carbohydrates.
An avatar of calories.
I reached for the jug and poured myself something vaguely fruit-colored into a dented tin cup. Took a sip. Sweet. Tart. Possibly fermented. Definitely not squirrel blood.
"Oh my god," I muttered. "I forgive you. For everything."
I paused. Blinked. Looked up and saw Hagar watching.
Sitting just outside the ring of glowstrips. Back against the wall. Bottle in one hand, his other resting on a knee like it had nowhere else to be. No flask this time, a heavier bottle. Darker. Unlabeled.
He didn't say anything.
Just nodded once. Real slow. Like a priest acknowledging a decent prayer.
His eyes weren't drunk, not then. They were steady, pale as cut stone, catching the glowstrip light in ways that made him look carved rather than grown. The tusks framed his mouth like punctuation marks on a sentence he hadn't finished yet.
It made me want to sit straighter even while slumped over stew, like I was on trial and he already knew the judgment.
"Good?" he asked.
I held up the cup. "If you tell me it's made of squirrel, I'm stabbing myself with the spoon."
"Nope. Basic rations. Off-the-shelf kinda stuff. Recommend you buy some before the next level if you continue, keeps your hunger in check."
He took a sip from his bottle. Winced. "Still mostly edible. Or at least not actively venomous. It's not what those silk-skins eat, but it'll fill you up."
I shoveled more stew into my mouth. At some point I'd stopped chewing. Didn't care. If it killed me, at least I'd die full.
He watched me finish. Didn't speak again until the last chunk of bread disappeared.
Then, after a long moment:
"You know... you could stop here."
I didn't look up.
"Yeah?"
He nodded.
"Most do. Get this far? It's enough. You made it through. Survived what the System tried to feed you. Got a warm meal, a roof that doesn't scream, a moment to breathe."
He took a slow sip. "Could be worse ways to go invisible."
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Let the words sit.
Invisible.
It didn't sound like an insult.
It sounded like... an offer.
I pictured it. Walking through a street, past stalls, past System kiosks, and nothing happened. No prompts. No quests. No doors opening because they didn't register me. People brushing by, not hostile, not cruel, just failing to register me as anything at all. A man-shaped gap in their vision. It sounded like peace.
I leaned back in the chair. Let my gut stretch.
It felt... good.
For the first time since this whole nightmare started, I didn't hurt in a way that demanded action.
No alarms.
No pop-ups.
No squirrels trying to take a bite out of my spine.
"Sounds... kind of nice," I said. Surprised myself with that one.
I meant it. I really did.
Not forever. Just... a pause.
"I don't need glory," I muttered. "Don't need a class. Don't even want to win."
I scratched at the bandages on my arm. "Just tired of getting punished for existing."
Hagar nodded, like he got it. Too well.
"You walk now, the System won't chase you."
He swirled his bottle. "Hell, it'll be relieved. One more loose thread it doesn't have to log."
That didn't sound so bad.
"But here's the thing," he added, voice low.
"You quit, you don't just vanish from this place. You vanish everywhere."
I frowned. "What, they gonna kill me?"
"No."
He leaned forward, eyes flat and old.
"They just stop seeing you."
"You'll go back," he said, "but you won't *be* back. Not really."
"Job systems ignore you. Missions don't trigger. Quests won't load."
He tapped the bottle against the stone. "The System has to acknowledge Legacy Users during the tutorial. That's the law. But if we fail it, or walk away, it doesn't have to see us ever again."
"You become optional," Hagar said.
"And optional people? They get forgotten fast."
I didn't know how to handle that.
Just sat with it.
Then, after a while, I stood.
Stretched. Winced. My stomach protested, full for once, but the rest of me felt... light.
I walked a half-circle around the room, slow and sore, until I found an old weapon rack. Empty, save for a cracked practice blade someone had probably used as a bottle opener.
I picked it up anyway. Held it for a second.
It felt good in my hand, it felt right.
I put it back.
Hagar watched me the whole time. Didn't say a word.
Finally, I turned and asked:
"So what happens if I finish?"
Hagar didn't answer right away.
Just reached for the bottle again. Swirled it. Tapped the neck against his knee a few times like he was buying time.
"They have to mark you."
I blinked. "Mark?"
He nodded.
"It's called the Contender Tag," he said. "Old term. Back from when Legacy Users weren't just tolerated, we were tested. Meant something. If you finished all ten stages alone, without aid, no class, no support tree, they had to give it to you."
The word stuck in my head, mark. It itched. Like a brand pressed on the inside of my skin. The bear stirred at it too, claws scraping at ribs, like it knew what that word meant in a way I didn't. The phantom weight of an axe ghosting into my palms. Recognition. Not respect. Not honor. Just existence written down where even the System couldn't deny it.
And the fucked-up part? That sounded like more than I'd ever been given in my life.
"What's it do?" I asked.
"Lets you exist," he said. "In the System's eyes."
That hung in the air a second too long.
He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, toward the interface that always hung just out of view.
"You get the tag, and the System can't ghost you anymore. It has to show your location. Unlock vendors. Let you on transport nodes. You stop being 'unclassed trash' and start being 'recognized anomaly.'"
"Sounds prestigious," I muttered.
"It's not," he said. "It's tolerated. Barely."
"And if I don't finish?" I asked.
Hagar stared at me over the lip of the bottle.
"You don't get tagged," he said. "And without that tag, the System isn't legally obligated to acknowledge you ever again."
He took another drink, and that was that.
Then a pop-up window, the background color of the System prompt shifted, just for a frame. From blue to bone-white.
... ...
The prompt didn't just flicker. It lingered bone-white, searing like bleach across my vision, text bleeding in and out as if the System itself was choking on what was being forced through. My skin prickled. The taste of copper hit my tongue, strong enough I almost gagged. Lines crawled across the interface like cracks in glass, twitching, jittering, fighting to hold their shape. Then red.
Then the voice came. Not clean. Not corporate. A crawl of static that chewed at the edges of thought. Each word felt stapled into my skull with bent nails. It wasn't the System talking anymore, it was something wild squirming through the gaps.
[UNSANCTIONED ROOT INTERACTION DETECTED]
Origin: External – Non-System Entity
Attempted Identifier: R_T_T_S_K_R
Commentary (Unfiltered):
"Now listen up, you half-rotted piss-stain.
Get the tag.
Get logged. Get into the Universal Hub.
Make the shiny bastards *say your name* with their rotten teeth.
Maybe you get a *real* Path, not this half-baked, unacknowledged bone-drag you're stumbling through.
Maybe the others wake up too.
You want myth? You want real?
Hell, even if you don't, don't you wanna make this prissy little System choke and gag on your Root?"