Kade lay still, the cold stone beneath him soaking through his clothes. His arms and legs felt like lead. He was sore—more sore than he'd ever been in his life. Each breath scraped against his ribs, and he wasn't even sure if that last hit cracked something.
He stared up at the ceiling, silent.
No glowing HUD. No game music. No cheery NPC voice welcoming him to a tutorial zone.
Just the chill. The dark. The slow, gnawing realization.
This wasn't just a fantasy world.
This was MythBreaker.
He blinked slowly, brain catching up.
Not just any part of MythBreaker—he recognized this from the community forums. A rare class. One that only triggered under certain conditions. A class people farmed hours for, sometimes dying repeatedly just to get one step closer.
Undead.
Kade didn't know whether to scream or laugh.
There were only two ways to obtain the Undead class. One was through a necromancer NPC. A friendly one. The kind that offered you tea and explained how to channel the powers of undeath without immediately rotting.
That was rare, even in regular MythOnline.
In MythBreaker, where NPCs were far more hostile, where they followed scripts only loosely based on their original code, that method was practically impossible.
The second method?
Infection.
A brutal, slow-burning transformation.
There were six stages. Each one offered new perks: damage resistance, strength, healing through decay, immunity to pain. But it came at a cost. The further in you went, the harder it was to hold onto your humanity.
Get to Stage 6, and you were locked in—full Undead class. All the power. All the consequences.
Screw it up anywhere before then? Death. Real, no-reset death.
Kade coughed, groaning as he sat up. The aches flared like alarms all over his body.
This place… this world—it wasn't giving him a choice.
His body was already marked. He could feel it—something unnatural pulsing through his veins, something cold and deep. His blood had felt sluggish ever since he fought the first undead.
This wasn't just fatigue.
He was infected.
"Great," Kade muttered. "Just what I needed. Zombie flu."
He looked at the corpse beside him. The undead creature he'd managed to kill—it had sunk its claws into him, torn his shoulder, scraped bone. Infection would be inevitable.
Was this how the game intended it? Lure you into a brutal fight right away, infect you, and then leave you to decide?
It felt like a trap. A sick joke.
But also... an opportunity.
Kade clenched his jaw.
If this was MythBreaker, and if his memories of those forum threads were right, infection could be the only way to survive long-term.
Undead didn't need sleep. Didn't bleed out. Didn't feel pain the same way. They could take hits that would drop other classes instantly.
If he embraced it, leaned into the transformation, he might make it through whatever this place was.
Or he'd lose himself.
His thoughts were interrupted by a chill breeze. The cold dug in deeper than before, biting at his skin. His clothes—just flimsy pajamas—offered little protection. They were torn and stained from the fight.
Kade wrapped his arms around himself, shivering.
Fantastic.
He was bruised, bloodied, infected, and freezing.
"No mana. No spells. No gear. And now I'm dying of hypothermia," he muttered. "At least the game's realistic."
His phone's flashlight flickered in his hand. The battery was holding, for now, but he couldn't risk using it too much. He scanned the area.
Stone pillars. Cracked floors. Moss creeping along the edges of the walls. No cloth. No torches. No fire.
Just a ruin forgotten by time—and apparently infested by undead.
He stood slowly, grimacing with each movement. His side throbbed. His legs were stiff. The cold made everything worse.
But standing still was worse than moving. He had to keep going. Sitting in this chamber, waiting to die, wasn't an option.
He limped forward, each step echoing faintly.
The floor sloped downward. Water pooled in uneven dips. The stone was slick beneath his feet. One slipper was half torn, and the other was soaked.
"I swear," he grumbled, slipping slightly. "If I die of trench foot before a skeleton kills me, I'm haunting whoever coded this."
He muttered a steady stream of complaints with each step, more to keep himself sane than anything else.
Then he froze.
Bones.
Dozens of them. Scattered ahead across the floor.
At first, he thought they were just remains. Debris. Old corpses, picked clean.
But then his light caught something that made his blood run colder than the wind ever could.
A foot.
Attached to a leg.
Standing. Upright.
Not fallen. Not shattered.
Kade's breath caught in his throat.
He slowly tilted the flashlight up.
The skeleton was intact—perfectly so. And worse, it was looking at him.
Its empty sockets stared back, hollow and lifeless… but somehow aware.
Then the light changed.
The sockets began to glow. A faint red flicker, like dying embers reigniting.
Kade took a step back.
"Nonononono—"
The skeleton's jaw moved. Not to speak, but to creak open like it was grinning.
The sound of bones grinding together echoed through the hall.
Then came the others.
From the floor, the walls, the dark corners—bones shifted. Skeletons began to rise, joints cracking as they pieced themselves together.
Some were whole. Others dragged themselves on shattered limbs.
All of them moved.
All of them looked at him.
Kade stared.
"Cool," he said flatly. "Skeleton rave party. And I'm the main event."
He backed up until his heel hit the broken base of a statue. Probably once a knight or something noble, now just rubble.
The skeletons stepped forward in eerie unison.
Kade's phone light flickered again.
No shield. No spells.
Just a rusted sword with a chipped edge and a handle wrapped in half-rotted cloth.
He gripped it anyway.
"This is fine," he muttered. "Totally fine. I always wanted to duel a skeleton with a tetanus stick."
The first one lunged.
Kade ducked.
Then he screamed.