Gravel crunched beneath Leon's boots as he navigated the winding paths of the city cemetery, the weight of the floral bouquet pulling at his shoulder. He stopped before three identical headstones standing side by side. Tracing the engraved lettering of his sister's name with a thumb, he stared at the freshly turned earth. His parents' graves flanked hers, completing the set he had drained his life savings and sanity trying to prevent.
A car accident took his parents, leaving his sister severely injured, while he was completely unharmed with not even a scratch. His fingers lingered on the dates that marked the end of his world, the grey granite stained with the grime of years he had spent working himself to the core. He knelt in the dirt and remained there while the heavy silence of the graveyard pressed against him.
The midday sun vanished behind a sudden, unnatural shroud of black clouds. Shadows swallowed the headstones in seconds, turning the afternoon into a midnight void. Leon stood up, his knees popping from the damp ground, and turned to find a figure standing by his sister's burial plot.
A woman in a layered gothic dress held a black lace umbrella over her head. The intricate ruffles of her skirts brushed against the fresh soil as she stared down at the grave.
'I didn't hear her arrive' Leon thought to himself.
"Did you know her?" Leon asked, his voice cracking from disuse.
The woman didn't respond with words. She raised a heavy, ornate pistol from beneath the folds of her dress and leveled the barrel at his heart. Three thunderous cracks ripped through the silence. Leon felt the lead slugs tear into his chest, the force throwing him backward. He landed hard between the graves of his mother and father, his back hitting the muddy earth. Blood pooled around his torso, soaking into his shirt and the dirt beneath him.
The shooter stepped closer, her face obscured by a thick black veil that caught the flickering light of the darkened sky. Rain began to fall in heavy drops, washing the blood from his skin and mixing it with the rising mud. Leon tried to draw a breath, but his lungs felt heavy and useless.
"You will thank me for this," the woman muttered.
She turned and walked into the gloom, her umbrella disappearing into the rain. A strange heat radiated from the bullet wounds, warring with the freezing sensation spreading through his limbs. Everything he cared about was already buried right next to him. Dying alongside them felt infinitely better than returning to an empty apartment.
"This feels… nice…."
He closed his eyes and let his head sink into the mud. Everything vanished into a singular, crushing darkness.
Suddenly, Leon's eyes snapped open.
The sensation of wet mud and freezing rain was gone, replaced by the feeling of expensive fabric against his skin. He lay on a massive Victorian-style bed, the mattress sinking under his weight. He sat up and looked around the room, taking in the dark wood paneling, the velvet curtains, and the flickering candlelight that danced across the gold-leafed furniture.
Leon pushed himself upright and planted his bare feet on the polished hardwood floor. He dragged a hand across his chest, expecting his fingers to catch on torn flesh and shattered bone, but he found only smooth skin. He scanned the massive bedchamber, taking in the intricate mahogany furniture and heavy velvet curtains bordering the bay windows.
"If this is hell, they really upgraded the upholstery," he muttered, his voice sounding entirely unfamiliar to his own ears. "And with the things I have done, I surely will never end up in heaven."
Hell looked entirely too comfortable. He spotted a tall vanity glass in the corner of the room and crossed the distance to inspect his reflection. The person staring back possessed striking white hair and piercing blue eyes. He recognized the character design instantly from a folder of concept art saved on his desktop.
He was standing inside the world of "Project Hero."
A persistent viewer had flooded his live-stream chat for weeks, throwing massive donations to beg him into playing the notoriously punishing title. Leon normally stuck to extreme challenge runs in mainstream games to keep the money flowing for his sister's medical bills.
He survived the car crash that took his parents without a single physical scratch, leaving him with a trauma and severe selective memory disorder instead.
He compensated by obsessively researching and documenting every single detail of a game before ever touching a controller. He had read the entire Project Hero lore wiki from top to bottom.
He spent hours absorbing the lore of the game before ever downloading the client.
The fictional universe suffered through a mana apocalypse where people constantly awakened and died. Explorers cleared new floors of the tower and raided dungeons, ensuring there was never a need or shortage of awakeners.
The narrative unfolded through massive chapter updates that introduced new characters and interconnected storylines.
A single developer had created the entire masterpiece. From handling the coding, art, story, music, and mechanics entirely alone. The creator released the project as a free-to-play experience without a single microtransaction, driven entirely by a desire to share his passion with the world.
That developer passed away ten years ago. The narrative remained permanently unfinished until a massive corporate studio acquired the intellectual property rights.
They scheduled the highly anticipated continuation update to launch on the exact day Leon caught three bullets in the chest in the cemetery.
He leaned closer to the glass and traced the jawline of his new face. He was trapped inside the body of Vance Von Frost. The wiki pages had explicitly outlined this character's background and purpose.
This new identity belonged to a game character who was seemingly used as an introduction to one of the main villains. The developers designed Vance to suffer a pathetic, doomed fate.
Vance scanned the mahogany vanity and spotted a sleek smartphone resting beside a silver grooming brush. He picked the device up and tapped the dark screen. A green light flashed across his features, instantly unlocking the phone to display the home interface.
The glaring digital numbers read March 7th. He tossed the phone onto the mattress. Today was the exact day he was kicked out of the estate and left to survive on his own.
A knock tapped against the heavy oak door before the brass handle turned. A young girl in a black and white uniform stepped into the room, keeping her gaze pinned directly to the floorboards.
She had long blonde hair woven into a tight braid resting over her shoulder. Vance recognized her from the background lore. Her name was Elara, his personal maid. She was exactly his age. And in the future, she would become one of the strongest heroes.
Elara gripped the edges of a silver serving tray, her knuckles straining white against the metal. She walked over to the bedside table and set down a glass of water without raising her head.
"Good morning, Young Master Vance," she whispered to the floor.
Vance grabbed the glass and took a drink. He needed to map out his exit strategy before the narrative forced his hand.
"Vance!"
'Here we go…' Vance let out a sigh.
The booming shout rattled the crystal chandelier hanging above the bed. The voice belonged to Magnus Von Frost, the Patriarch of a family that sat at the very top of the hierarchy with flawless S-rank cores.
Magnus had just returned from the national S-rank hero conference. Vance knew the game's storyline surrounding this exact moment. Magnus had played a crucial role in clearing the twentieth floor of the tower, expecting national praise and endless rewards upon his return.
However, the other elites brought up his unawakened son instead. They mocked the Patriarch on a live broadcast, humiliating him over the fact that his child was born without a shred of mana inside him.
Magnus had come home to purge the stain on his legacy.
Vance set the glass back on the silver tray. He knew exactly what awaited him downstairs, yet a small smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. Playing along seemed like the most entertaining option available. He walked past Elara and stepped out into the sprawling corridor.
He descended the sweeping marble staircase. The grand hallroom opened up at the bottom, entirely occupied by the rest of his family.
Magnus threw a crystal goblet against the stone wall. The glass shattered into a hundred pieces across the grand hall.
"I slaughtered the boss of the twentieth floor! I handed this nation a miracle." The Patriarch marched across the marble, his face flushed deep purple. "And what do the elites at the conference discuss on a live national broadcast? My unawakened failure of a son."
Vance reached the bottom of the sweeping staircase.
Every face in the grand hall shared the exact same striking white hair and piercing blue eyes. Isolde, his mother, stood near the massive stone fireplace with her arms tightly crossed. His oldest brother, twenty-six-year-old Kaelen, leaned against a marble pillar alongside twenty-four-year-old Seraphina and twenty-year-old Orion.
His twin sister, Vesper, stood closest to the Patriarch, refusing to even look in Vance's direction.
"Centuries ago, the Goddess blessed our founder." Magnus's voice boomed off the vaulted ceiling. "She swore every descendant of the Von Frost bloodline would rule the awakeners. We considered throwing your mother to the streets for infidelity when you failed to manifest a core."
Vance broke that divine absolute.
Vance kept his gaze locked on the floorboards. The elders had relentlessly accused Isolde of infidelity during his childhood. Those rumors died only because Vance possessed the exact same facial structure as Magnus and shared a womb with Vesper, a prodigy who awakened her core at age five.
"No matter how many beasts I kill, the world only sees the man who sired a crippled defect." Magnus stepped over the broken glass and pointed a thick finger at the massive iron front doors. "You are stripped of the family name. Get out of my sight and bleed out in an alley."
'Ah fuck, I guess now it's time for my dialogue…'
Vance let a sob tear from his throat and threw himself forward. He dropped heavily onto his knees, forcing tears to well in his eyes. He scrambled across the floor and grabbed Magnus's boots.
"Father, please!" Vance stared up with wide eyes. "I will awaken soon! I just need more time!"
Magnus drove his boot into Vance's chest. The impact sent him sprawling backward across the marble.
He immediately flipped over and crawled toward the fireplace. He clutched the hem of Isolde's velvet gown. "Mother, don't let him do this. I won't survive a single night out there."
Isolde yanked the fabric from his grip and turned her back to the flames.
Vance dragged himself toward the pillars. Kaelen and Orion looked down at him with matching smirks. Seraphina inspected her manicured fingernails, ignoring his presence completely. He reached a trembling hand toward his twin.
"Vesper, tell them." Vance grasped at the empty air between them. "We belong together."
Vesper sneered. She drove the heel of her boot directly into his reaching fingers. "Keep your filthy hands off me, trash."
'Whoa, what the fuck? That's not how sisters should act with their brothers!'
Vance cradled his bruised hand against his chest and let the tears fall freely. The performance hit every required mark. If someone was watching Vance's performance, they would shed a tear.
And someone did.
In the far corner of the grand hall, Elara clutched her silver serving tray. Tears streamed down the maid's cheeks, her shoulders shaking violently as she watched the display. She would eventually evolve into a dominant hero in the upcoming chapters, but right now she was just a trembling teenager hiding in the shadows.
Magnus snapped his fingers.
Two armored estate guards stepped from the corridors. They grabbed Vance by the shoulders and dragged him toward the exit. He thrashed and screamed for mercy the entire way out.
The guards hurled him down the front steps and slammed the massive iron gates shut. Vance hit the cobblestone street without a single coin or weapon to his name.
"Man…" Vance let out a sigh. "They should have at least given me a few hundred bucks or something. What the hell am I supposed to do out here?"
Vance pushed himself off the hard cobblestone and dusted the dirt from his trousers. The massive iron gates of the Von Frost estate slammed shut behind him with a final, echoing clang. He stood alone on the street, craning his neck upward to take in the sprawling metropolis.
"Concept art really doesn't do this place justice," he muttered, swiping a streak of dirt from his cheek.
Above him, Awakened heroes streaked between towering glass skyscrapers, leaving bright trails of blue mana in their wake. Sleek hovering vehicles zipped through multi-layered transit lanes, their engines running entirely on the magical energy integrated into the city's infrastructure.
Vance dragged a hand through his white hair and exhaled a long breath. A few hours ago, he took three bullets to the chest in a muddy graveyard. Now, he was standing in the middle of a futuristic fantasy world without a single coin in his pocket.
"What the fuck is actually happening?" he whispered. He pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing his racing thoughts to align. "I died. I definitely died. And now I'm the tutorial trash of Project Hero."
His gaze drifted past the glowing neon billboards and locked onto a colossal obsidian spire dominating the distant skyline.
"The Tower..."
These massive structures existed in every major country and state across the globe, serving as the ultimate testing grounds for humanity. The internal dimensions were completely interconnected. The tower had different entry points spread throughout almost every city.
An Awakener entering the fifth floor from a gate in Spain would cross paths with a party who stepped through a portal in Japan.
The spatial magic maintained strict boundaries regarding exits, ensuring that anyone stepping out of the tower would return exactly to their original entry point.
Vance recalled one of the main taglines of the game while it booted up.
"One hundred days," Vance said, staring up at the black monolith. "They are given one hundred days to make progress in the tower flower by either defeating one boss or completing the floor's main quests."
Failing to defeat the floor boss within the time limit triggered catastrophic dimensional rifts across the globe, allowing hordes of nightmarish monsters to spill directly into populated cities. Clearing the floors remained the absolute highest priority for every government and guild on the planet.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked a loose pebble across the pavement. The developers designed this exact moment to be the start of his miserable downward spiral. The lore explicitly dictated his unavoidable death at the hands of a boss.
Players constantly argued over the specifics on the message boards. Some claimed the boss slaughtered Vance inside the lower levels of the tower. Others posted screenshots of the monster breaching the real world and tearing him apart right here in the city streets. The game engine always railroaded him into an early grave.
"I didn't even get the chance to play this game even once. I only know the lore and some specifics. What the hell am I supposed to do?"
Vance clenched his fists inside his pockets until his joints ached. He refused to let a pre-programmed monster dictate his execution.
Vance navigated the crowded pedestrian walkways of Sector Four, keeping his head tucked down as armored Awakeners shoved past him.
Hovering transports zoomed along the elevated transit lines above the sprawling market district. Massive holographic billboards projected images of S-rank heroes advertising energy supplements and guild recruitment drives.
An explosion shattered the storefront window of a nearby potion dispensary. Glass rained down across the walkway in a glittering shower. Two rival guild members tumbled out into the street, their fists glowing with volatile magical energy.
One of the men roared and twisted his wrist outward, unleashing a volatile arc of crimson fire.
'Let's get the fuck out of here!'
Vance ducked under a tipped-over fruit cart and rolled into a narrow alleyway just as the fireball scorched the pavement where he had stood seconds prior.
"Vance? Is that really you?"
He brushed the debris from his trousers and turned toward the voice. A stocky young man with dirt-smudged cheeks and a heavy canvas backpack stepped out from the shadows of the alley.
Vance recalled the name of the character and called him out, "Jaxon?"
They had attended the same basic academy years ago before Vance's lack of mana became a public spectacle. Jaxon's father ran the Ironhide Porters, a reputable logistics guild that handled loot retrieval and supply in the tower.
Jaxon shifted the thick leather straps of his heavy pack and looked Vance up and down. "I saw the national broadcast. Your old man really threw you to the wolves today. You look awful, man. Do you even have a place to sleep tonight?"
"I am currently accepting donations," Vance said, leaning against the brick wall.
Jaxon pulled a dented steel canteen from his belt and offered it forward. "My father is always looking for extra hands. The work is brutal, and the pay is absolute garbage. But the Ironhide Guild will give you a cot in the barracks, three daily meals, and ten bronze coins per shift. It keeps you off the streets."
Vance stared at the offered canteen. The world actively wanted him dead. The narrative engine of this universe would never wait for him to find his footing. If he just curled up in an alley, a random monster or a stray spell would finish the job by nightfall.
Accepting the porter job meant throwing himself right into the jaws of the dungeons, but he vastly preferred dying with a fighting chance over bleeding out on the pavement. He snatched the canteen and took a long drink.
"Lead the way," Vance said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.