The acrid stench of ozone and something else… something metallic and visceral… slammed into my senses before the sound. A roar, deep and guttural, vibrated through the very cobblestones beneath me, shaking loose dust that probably hadn't moved in centuries. My eyes snapped open.
This wasn't my cluttered apartment. Gone were the dual monitors displaying lines of code, the half-eaten pizza box, the comforting glow of the server rack humming in the corner.
Instead? Crushing, impossible reality.
Towering, gothic architecture scraped a sky painted in bruised twilight hues I'd only ever rendered digitally. Intricate carvings of mythical beasts leered down from impossible heights. The air, thick with the aforementioned ozone and blood, was also tinged with the faint, sweet scent of Lumina blossoms – a flower I designed to bloom only under Aethelgard's twin moons.
Aethelgard.
The name echoed in my mind, not as a project title, but as a place. My magnum opus. The MMORPG that had consumed the last decade of my life. "Aethelgard: Echoes of the Ancients."
Panic, cold and sharp, tried to claw its way up my throat, but years of debugging complex systems under pressure had forged a strange sort of calm in me. Analyze. Assess. Adapt.
Another roar, closer this time. People screamed. Not the canned sound effects I'd meticulously curated, but raw, terrified shrieks that scraped against my nerves. I wasn't dreaming. This wasn't some hyper-realistic VR test. This was… different.
I glanced down at myself. Gone were my worn jeans and favourite band t-shirt. Instead, I wore the 'Midnight Vestments of the Void Weaver' – endgame gear, ridiculously hard to craft, imbued with stats that would make most players weep with envy. Dark, flowing fabric that seemed to drink the ambient light, stitched with shimmering, obsidian threads that pulsed faintly. On my hands, the 'Gloves of Arcane Supremacy', crackling with barely contained energy.
My avatar. Kaelen Vorlag. Level 999 Void Weaver. The character I poured countless hours into perfecting, not just playing, but balancing from the developer side.
Okay. Transported into my own game world. As my max-level character. Standard light novel trope. Check. Now, what fresh hell was causing the screaming?
I turned towards the source of the commotion, my movements fluid and unnaturally fast – a perk of the high Agility stat on the Vestments. What I saw made my carefully constructed calm waver.
A Gravefang Behemoth.
Oh, hell no.
This wasn't some mid-level zone trash mob. This was a World Boss. A raid-tier monstrosity I'd designed to require a coordinated effort of at least forty high-level players employing precise tactics. Its hulking frame, easily thirty feet tall, was a grotesque fusion of obsidian-like carapace, pulsating crimson veins, and far too many razor-sharp claws. Its maw, split open in that earth-shattering roar, revealed rows upon rows of teeth dripping corrosive saliva that sizzled as it hit the ancient stones.
And it was currently swatting aside city guards like flies. Their gleaming plate armour, meticulously designed by my art team, crumpled like tinfoil under its blows. Their enchanted blades sparked uselessly against its hide.
Code Red. This shouldn't be happening. Gravefang Behemoths were coded to spawn only within the 'Necrotic Chasm' raid instance, miles away from Aeridor, the capital city. Its presence here? A catastrophic bug. Or… something else entirely.
Civilians scrambled, their faces masks of terror. One figure caught my eye – a young woman with hair the colour of spun moonlight, trapped behind an overturned merchant cart, her academy-style uniform torn. Her eyes, wide with fear, locked onto the Behemoth as it raised a claw the size of a small car, ready to crush her.
Right. My world. My rules. Or at least, they damn well should be.
A familiar interface flickered into existence in my peripheral vision – not projected, but seemingly imprinted directly onto my consciousness. HP, MP, status buffs… all maxed out, pristine. My skill bar shimmered below, every icon glowing with latent power. It felt… intuitive. Natural. Like flexing a muscle I never knew I had.
The Behemoth swung its claw down. Time seemed to slow, the terrified gasp of the girl echoing in the sudden, preternatural silence that enveloped me.
Internal monologue? Check. Overpowered protagonist moment? Loading.
"Oi. Big, ugly, and ridiculously out of bounds," I called out, my voice deeper, resonant – Kaelen's voice, laced with an authority I didn't possess five minutes ago in my apartment.
The Behemoth paused, its multiple glowing red eyes swiveling towards me. Its primitive intelligence registered a new target. Good.
The girl behind the cart stared, her fear momentarily replaced by confusion. The surviving guards lowered their broken swords, watching.
Showtime.
My fingers, clad in the Gloves of Arcane Supremacy, twitched. I didn't need to click icons or shout incantations like some clumsy player. The knowledge was inherent. The connection, instantaneous. I was the Void Weaver.
"[Void Tendrils]," I subvocalized, the command echoing not in the air, but in the fabric of reality itself.
Shadows coalesced around the Behemoth's legs. Not normal shadows, but tendrils of pure, solidified void energy, erupting from the cobblestones. They wrapped around its thick limbs, tightening with crushing force. The Behemoth roared, struggling, but these weren't physical restraints; they were anchors to absolute nothingness, leeching its strength.
Pathetic attack pattern, I thought, recalling the boss mechanics document I wrote myself. Phase 1: High physical damage, low magic resistance. Vulnerable to crowd control.
It thrashed, trying to break free, focusing its rage entirely on me now. Perfect.
"You're making a mess of my city," I stated, taking a casual step forward. The air around me crackled, purple sparks dancing at my fingertips. "And frankly, your spawn timer is way off."
It unleashed a torrent of corrosive acid from its maw, a stream of bubbling green death that could melt steel. The guards yelled warnings. The girl squeezed her eyes shut.
I merely raised a hand, palm outward. "[Null Barrier]."
A translucent shield of pure anti-magic shimmered into existence before me. The acid struck it and simply… ceased to exist. Not deflected, not absorbed. Unmade. Annihilated on contact. The fundamental forces refusing to interact.
Yeah, Null Barrier. Costly MP-wise for players, but my mana pool is… excessive. A small smirk touched my lips. This was exhilarating. Terrifying, yes, but the power… It felt like stepping into the god-mode I usually reserved for debugging sessions.
The Behemoth roared again, frustration evident in its primal cry. It reared back, its carapace glowing brighter as it prepared its signature move – [Necrotic Pulse], an area-of-effect attack designed to wipe unprepared raid groups.
Too slow.
My eyes glowed with purple intensity. I focused, pulling on the vast reservoir of void energy now at my command. This world responded to my will in a way the game engine never truly could. It felt… alive. Malleable.
"[Singularity Collapse]," I commanded, the words resonating with cosmic weight.
Above the Behemoth, the air itself began to twist. Space warped. A point of absolute darkness appeared, no bigger than a fist, yet radiating an impossible gravitational pull. The twilight sky seemed to bend around it.
The Behemoth instinctively recognized the danger. It struggled violently against the Void Tendrils, letting out a panicked bellow. The Necrotic Pulse fizzled, its energy drawn towards the nascent singularity.
Dust, debris, loose cobblestones – everything began to spiral inwards. The pull intensified exponentially. The Behemoth was lifted off its feet, roaring in agony as its obsidian hide cracked under the unnatural forces.
"Game over," I whispered, closing my fist.
The singularity imploded.
There was no loud explosion, just a sudden, violent crunch as reality snapped back into place. The Gravefang Behemoth, the World Boss that had terrorized countless players and required intricate strategies, was simply… gone. Crushed into non-existence at a single point, leaving behind nothing but a faint gravitational echo and the lingering smell of ozone.
Silence descended. Utter, stunned silence.
The surviving guards stared, jaws slack, eyes wide with disbelief and terror. The girl behind the cart slowly lowered her hands from her face, her silver eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn't quite decipher – awe, fear, and something else… intense curiosity.
I let the power flooding my veins recede slightly, the purple glow in my eyes dimming. My breathing was even, my heart rate barely elevated. Killing a raid boss solo, with two spells, without breaking a sweat? Definitely OP.
I turned towards the girl, my dark robes swirling around me. "You alright?" My voice, Kaelen's voice, sounded cool, perhaps a little detached. Years of dealing with player drama might have bled into the persona.
She scrambled out from behind the cart, hastily brushing dust off her torn uniform. It bore the crest of the prestigious Aeridor Royal Magic Academy – the premier institution in Aethelgard, and a place I'd spent months designing questlines for. "Y-yes! Thank you! That was… incredible! Who… what are you?"
Good question. "Just a traveler," I deflected smoothly. "Seems I arrived at an opportune moment." I glanced at the guards, who were now cautiously approaching, their expressions a mixture of awe and suspicion. "Or a messy one."
One guard, apparently the captain judging by the slightly less battered state of his armour, stepped forward, hand resting on the hilt of his sword (a standard-issue 'Knight's Oathblade', +15 Strength, mediocre durability). "In the name of the Royal Guard! Identify yourself, sorcerer! That creature… how did you…?"
I gave him a look that could freeze hellfire, channeling the sheer intimidation factor I'd always imagined Kaelen possessing. "That 'creature'," I said, my voice dropping slightly, laced with an edge of cold power, "was a bug. Consider it patched."
The captain flinched, visibly unnerved. He clearly wasn't used to someone talking down to him, especially someone who had just disintegrated a monster that had decimated his men.
"A… bug?" he stammered.
"An anomaly. An error in the system," I elaborated cryptically, enjoying his confusion just a little. "It won't be bothering anyone again." I gestured vaguely towards the spot where the Behemoth had been. "You might want to clean this area. Residual void energy can have… unpredictable side effects on local fauna." I had no idea if that was true in this real version, but it sounded ominous and authoritative. It was something Kaelen would say.
The girl with the moonlight hair stepped closer, her earlier fear replaced by a determined spark. "But the power you wielded… that wasn't any recognized school of magic! Void magic is forbidden lore, whispered only in fragmented texts!"
Ah. Right. The lore I wrote. Void Weavers were supposed to be myths, shadowy figures manipulating events from behind the scenes, their magic deemed heretical by the established magical orders. My avatar existing, let alone using his full power so blatantly, was lore-breaking in the extreme.
"Forbidden?" A genuine laugh escaped me, startling myself. It sounded darker, more cynical than my own. "Knowledge is only forbidden by those who fear it." I gave her a pointed look. "Perhaps the Academy teaches less than it claims."
Her eyes narrowed slightly, a challenge flickering within them. "The Aeridor Royal Magic Academy is the pinnacle of arcane learning in the known world!"
"Is it?" I tilted my head, a faint smile playing on my lips. "We'll see."
I needed information. I needed to understand how I got here, why this world felt so real, and if there was any way back. And more importantly, if the creator was now in the creation… what other rules had changed? Could I access the dev console? Could I rewrite reality on a whim? The thought sent a shiver down my spine – half thrill, half dread.
The Academy seemed like the logical first step. It was the center of magical knowledge, political power, and contained more plot hooks than I could count. Plus, if I remembered correctly, the cafeteria served surprisingly decent digital steak. Might as well check if the real thing lives up to the code.
Ignoring the sputtering guard captain and the intensely curious stare of the academy girl, I turned and began to walk away, my Midnight Vestments billowing behind me.
"Wait! Where are you going?" the girl called out.
I paused, glancing back over my shoulder, letting the twilight catch the faint purple lingering in my eyes.
"To enroll," I said, the smirk returning. "Seems I need a refresher course on 'recognized magic'."
Let them wonder. Let them fear. Let them gossip. Kaelen Vorlag, the myth, the Void Weaver, had just logged into Aethelgard. And this time? There was no logging out.
The game had just begun. And I, its creator, was now the most overpowered, unknown variable in the system. This was going to be interesting. Goosebumps prickled my arms, not from fear, but from the sheer, terrifying, exhilarating potential of it all.
Let's see what bugs this old world has left for me to squash.