The trees creaked.
Mar stood in the open clearing, tense and quiet, half-expecting a HUD overlay to blink in with a "tutorial" or some patronizing welcome message. Nothing came. The UI was minimal—top-left showed his HP and mana bars, both low-level. No map. No minimap. Just the faint shimmer of ambient particle effects floating like ash in the cold air.
He tried blinking through menus.
Menu.
Settings.
Log out.
...Nothing. Just a dead click. The command hung there for a second, then flickered and vanished.
"Fucking fantastic."
The voice that left his mouth wasn't exactly his. It was deeper. Sharper. His tone, his cadence—but run through the filter of his new body. He touched his face, expecting skin. Instead, he felt bone structure unfamiliar to him, sharp edges, pointed ears.
He pulled up the character sheet.
[CHARACTER STATUS – MAR]
Race: Dark Elf
Class: Rogue (Base)
Level: 1
EXP: 0.00%
HP: 140/140
Mana: 95/95
Titles: –
Guild: –
Party: –
Party: Empty.
No Mihan. No Glenda. No Eli. No Bour.
"Alright..." Mar exhaled slowly, eyes scanning the treeline. "This is fine. We've been through worse. Just a game, right?"
He said it like he believed it. He didn't.
Somewhere in the distance, something shrieked—a long, wet, inhuman sound that carried through the fog like it knew his name.
"Nope."
He opened his inventory. Starter gear: two iron daggers, a plain cloak, and leather boots. He equipped everything and turned the daggers in his hands. They were light, responsive. Perfectly balanced.
Too perfectly.
This wasn't normal immersion. The blade didn't clip through anything. It resisted wind. It cut through leaves. His footsteps had depth and friction. His breathing wasn't ambient—it was actual. His lungs felt cold. His muscles ached slightly from the way he crouched, like real weight rested in his joints.
"Okay. So either I'm dreaming in 4K with haptic feedback and my GPU is casting actual shadows... or this shit is real."
He turned slowly and picked a direction. North? East? There was no compass.
He chose what looked like a path.
After twenty minutes of walking, the sky had darkened. Whether it was time passing or just the mood of the zone, he couldn't tell. Everything here felt stretched, like being stuck in a server where the sun forgot its script.
Mar found the first mob just beyond a collapsed shrine. A hunched, twitching thing—half-skeletal, with spines made of cracked obsidian and a red glow beneath its ribs.
A nameplate hovered above its head in jagged font:
[Mourner Drone – Lv. 3]
"Level three? What kind of spawn zone is this?" he muttered. "No warm-up mobs? No rats? No 'press X to loot this berry bush'? Fuck me."
He crouched low behind a broken pillar, tested his stealth mechanic. The UI flickered slightly—Sneak Mode: Active. A passive 10% movement speed penalty, but attacks from stealth dealt 2x damage.
"Alright, tutorial time."
He moved slow. Measured steps. Closed the distance.
Target locked.
Dagger raised.
Backstab.
The hit connected with a satisfying crunch—real weight, real feedback. The creature shrieked and spun, swiping wildly. Mar ducked under the claws, rolled left, slashed the knee joint, pivoted behind again—
[CRIT – 67 DAMAGE]
[EXP Gained: +24]
0.97%
The body fell limp. Not ragdolled—dead. Limp and still, like a puppet whose strings were cut.
Mar stood over it, breathing hard.
"…Holy shit."
He wasn't just playing the rogue.
He was the rogue.
And that terrified him more than anything.
Another shriek in the distance. Then two. Then silence again.
Mar sheathed his blades and kept walking, trying not to think about where his friends were—or if they were still friends when they woke up in whatever part of this cursed world they'd landed in.
He only made it another hundred meters before the fog deepened, and the second mob came into view.
[Rotting Seer – Lv. 4]
It turned to face him before he could engage. Too late for stealth.
"Fine," Mar muttered, and cracked his neck.
This time, he ran straight in.