The houses were warped and slanted, their walls corroded as if gnawed upon by decades of war. A wan, red sky cast bizarre, elongated shadows across the walls. Even Leet, the peasant he had first summoned, was there… or a chilling likeness of him.
"Leet?" Shaun approached cautiously.
The peasant turned toward him, his eyes now two hollow, black pits. A cold smile split his face, and he spoke in a voice devoid of all life.
"My Lord… are you hungry?"
Shaun recoiled in shock. "What?!"
In an instant, Leet lunged at him with unnatural speed, brandishing his wooden axe, which now looked as if it were carved from burnt bone.
"I am hungry!" he shrieked.
He raised the axe high and swung down. Shaun barely dodged the blow. The blade struck the earth, carving a deep fissure that glowed with a faint, red light.
"This isn't real… It's just a simulation!"
But the blood that splattered across his cheek was no simulation. The scent of rusted iron was terrifyingly real.
Shaun scrambled toward one of the dilapidated huts, trying to catch his breath. The system was flashing a cascade of warnings before his eyes.
[Damage: -12 Health]
[Health: 38/100]
[Poison is seeping into your system]
[-3 Health]
[Vital signs are dropping]
"Damn it!"
He quickly opened his inventory window, searching for anything—food, a potion, even a stick—but it was utterly empty.
Then, as if someone were whispering inside his head, he heard a faint voice:
"If you wish to survive, sit upon the throne."
"A throne?"
He looked up toward the center of the dark village and saw it—a structure that resembled his own Village Center, but coated in a petrified blackness. Atop it sat a throne of black stone, gleaming as if slick with oil.
He broke into a run, shadows leaping behind him—their faces shifting between human and bestial forms. The faster he ran, the louder the voices in his head grew. They could feel him. They were feeding on his fear.
When he reached the throne, he extended his hand to touch it—but the ground beneath him suddenly split open, and the slender creature rose once more. The air grew heavy, as if something was pressing down on his chest.
"To sit on the throne, you must give up a part of yourself."
"What do you mean?!"
"Your soul. Your memory. Or your body. Choose one."
Shaun froze, unable to answer. But before he could make his choice, the shadows began to swirl around him in a vortex, their voices merging into a choir of terror.
He slowly reached for the throne, his voice a choked whisper.
"Take… my memory."
The moment he said it, tendrils of grey light erupted from his chest, snaking toward the sky. He watched his memories boil away before his eyes—his mother, his siblings, even his own face in the mirror. Everything began to fade until all that remained was the burning desire for money.
But in return, he felt an immense power flood his being. His hands became steady, his gaze sharp, and a strange hum resonated from the depths of the earth.
[The Hollow Council's Test – Stage One: Passed]
[Result: Partially Accepted]
[Reward: Authority of the Shadows – Level 1]
The darkness vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. The world returned to its original state. The grass, the blue sky, the birds.
But the village… everything was too still.
Leet was standing in his old spot, a strange smile plastered on his face.
"My Lord… you have returned."
Shaun stared at him for a long moment, his heart hammering in his chest. "What just happened? Did you… damn it… get away from me, you monster!"
Leet did not reply. Instead, he bowed slightly.
"The Council is temporarily satisfied, my Lord."
Then he turned and went back to his work, as if nothing had ever happened. Shaun collapsed to the ground, panting, trying to make sense of it all. All he found was a new window that had appeared before him, flashing with a faint red light:
[Warning: A mysterious signature has been detected in your territory. System protection has been activated for 7 days only.]
[After this period expires, the Council will return to evaluate you.]
[Time until the second test: Unknown!]
"Evaluate?!"
He looked up at the sky and noticed something that wasn't there before—a small, black halo, like a wisp of smoke, slowly circling above his village. It grew darker with every passing minute.
He let out a soft laugh, half sarcasm, half terror. "Fantastic… Just seven days. Seven days to become a creature worthy of living."
He raised his hand, staring at his fingers, which still bore a trace of the grey light. He could feel something moving within him—a new energy, but it wasn't pure.
Shaun slowly closed the system window. Then he rose to his feet, his eyes filled with a strange mixture of fear and cunning. He understood at least one thing: this game was not just a way to earn money.
It was an ordeal that literally consumed the souls of its players.
And from now on… he didn't have the luxury of escape. He had only seven days to build a village, raise an army, and uncover the secret of the Hollow Council before it returned to claim another price.
But amidst all the horror, Shaun managed a faint smile and whispered, "At least… I'm not dead yet."
**
On the twenty-fourth floor of the company's headquarters in Silicon Valley, the monitoring department for Sovereignty Online was in complete chaos.
On the colossal wall stretching before the employees, monitoring screens displayed thousands of green data points—each representing a connected player around the world. But now, one of those points was flashing a deep, convulsive red, twitching on the virtual map as if trying to escape its own location.
"What in the hell is this?" one of the monitors exclaimed, ripping off his headset. "Point 47-B isn't following any programming logic! Its data is multiplying and splitting on its own!"
The shift supervisor, Jessica Reed—a stern-looking woman in her thirties specializing in AI system security—turned to him. "Is it a problem with the beta servers? We moved all accounts to the stable servers this morning!"
The monitor shook his head nervously. "No, the server itself is stable. This data is coming from inside the game… as if someone created a parallel system within our own."
At that moment, faint alarm sirens echoed through the hall, and a red message flashed across their screens:
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED ENTITY DETECTED IN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT – SUB-DESIGNATION: THE HOLLOW COUNCIL]
Silence fell. Jessica rapidly typed on her keyboard, pulling up the event log. "The Hollow Council? There's no unit with that name in the core code!"
A young programmer behind her replied, "I wrote the initial talent code myself, I swear! We never programmed any feature with that name!"
The head of security, John Levy, who had been observing silently from the back, stepped forward. He was a bald man wearing smart glasses that projected data directly before his eyes. "Open the temporal log for the affected account. Player number?"
"Player ID 1-9034-α," the monitor said quickly. "Name: Shaun Evander. Country of residence: United States, Ohio."
"Ohio…" John muttered, then added, "Contact the field support unit immediately. I want his capsule under surveillance."
Before anyone could respond, the other screens began to flicker. Unfamiliar symbols started appearing within the system interface—runes resembling an ancient alphabet, jumping between lines of code as if trying to communicate.
Someone shouted, "The symbols are rewriting themselves to evade tracking!"
"Cut the connection!" Jessica yelled.
But the system's automated voice responded instantly:
[COMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTED. CONNECTED SOURCE IS INTEGRATED WITH THE KERNEL.]
Her voice trembled. "The kernel?! Impossible… That means the virus is connected directly to the main engine!"
It all happened in a flash. The screens showed internal footage from the game world—a view of Shaun's village, which was supposed to be a simple virtual environment. But what appeared was anything but. The houses looked terrifyingly real, the sky seemed to breathe smoke, and the very ground moved like a living organism.
Then, in the middle of the scene, the slender creature with the burning eyes appeared—the same entity Shaun had faced just minutes before.
The creature advanced toward the camera—that is, toward them.
It was looking directly into the eyes of the observers.