Chapter 16 – Nine Months of Fire
Nine months.
That's how long it had been since Alex forged his first rifle in the primitive heat of a monster's corpse. A crude iron barrel. A hammer-trigger system scavenged from memory. A weapon born from desperation, shaped by intellect.
Nine months ago, he was a survivor wielding a stick and a dream.
Now, he was something else entirely.
The clack-clack-clack of brass casings echoed in the clearing as he fed fresh rounds into the latest version of his design — the AR-7 Phoenix, a gas-operated automatic rifle with adjustable recoil dampening, custom-forged rifling, and a six-position collapsible stock.
The gun was light. Balanced. Lethal.
Alex stood atop a high ridge in the wilds, looking down at a corrupted gorge where monsters swarmed — twisted lizards, bone-hounds, and chimeric apes dragging rusted weapons. Dozens of them.
In the past, a scene like this would've meant retreat. Caution. Strategy.
Now?
He adjusted his scope, exhaled through his nose—
And opened fire.
BRRRRRRT.
The rifle barked fire, and bodies dropped. Heads snapped back. Limbs tore free. The air filled with black blood and scorched dust. Alex moved like a phantom, his AGI 185 allowing him to reload mid-dodge, slide down embankments without breaking stride, and close distance before any beast could react.
By the time the last monster twitched on the earth, he had fired 112 rounds.
And he hadn't been touched.
Back at the forge — his fortress — the smell of oil, steel, and woodsmoke filled the air.
What had once been a pit of scorched rock was now a multi-tiered laboratory, a living machine of gears, pulleys, belts, and heat. A waterwheel churned outside, powering mechanical arms and rotary tools. Pneumatic lifts transported ingots between levels. Racks of blueprints lined the wall — hundreds of them, etched in coal or ink, each representing a test, an improvement, a failure that had been overcome.
Alex stripped off his armor, sat at his workbench, and began reassembling the test rifle from earlier — this time with a spring-tensioned feed port to prevent misfires from unbalanced rounds.
Each part fit perfectly.
He didn't even need to measure anymore.
INT: 216 turned every bolt and wire into an instinctual response.
His mind simulated fluid dynamics, stress distributions, and chemical burn rates without effort. He could hear the pitch of thermal expansion just by striking heated steel. When he worked now, he wasn't thinking.
He was flowing.
He leaned back, stretching his arms.
The forge hissed quietly. Outside, a wind blew ash from the previous night's smelting across the dry stones.
Alex pulled up his status screen:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 137
HP: 1400
MP: 1080
STR: 140
AGI: 185
END: 140
INT: 216
WILL: 2
MP: 1080.
Still untouched.
He stared at the number for a moment.
Magic.
He'd read the stat description before — "Increases magic power, mana, and the speed of mental calculations."
And while the last part had transformed him into a genius beyond human limits, the actual magic portion remained... irrelevant.
He hadn't cast a single spell.
Not for lack of trying.
He'd searched the real world for magical theory, dissected monsters in hopes of discovering magical cores — but nothing ever pointed him toward an answer. No scrolls. No tomes. No teachers.
Even the system said nothing.
In the end, magic remained what it had always been — a whisper in the dark.
And while it sparked curiosity, Alex didn't care much for it. Not now.
Magic was unreliable. Hidden. Theoretical.
Engineering was not.
His forge answered to fire. His bullets flew straight. His machines worked or didn't — and if they didn't, he rebuilt them.
Power didn't need mystery.
It just needed calculation.
As the sun dipped toward the mountains, Alex stood in the doorway of his compound, rifle slung across his back, a new prototype handgun in his palm. It was smaller than his usual models — semi-automatic, quick-draw capable, built with close-quarters in mind.
A beast's roar echoed in the distance.
Alex smiled faintly.
He holstered the sidearm and stepped into the trees.
Magic could wait.
For now?
He had steel, speed, and a mind sharper than any spell.
And that was more than enough.
Chapter 17 – Echoes of Intelligence
The VR helmet clicked as it powered down.
Alex sat motionless in his chair, the familiar weight of real-world gravity pulling at his limbs again. The hum of the ceiling fan. The distant sound of traffic. The low glow of his desk lamp.
He blinked.
Then looked at the clock.
02:37 PM.
Thirteen hours had passed since he logged in that morning. But inside the game, he had lived through a year and a half — forging weapons, testing firearms, refining machinery, and surviving in a world that showed no mercy.
His stomach growled violently, dragging him from the trance.
"Right," he muttered, standing up. "Food."
In the kitchen, he moved like muscle memory — rice in the pot, eggs cracked into the pan, miso paste stirred into hot broth. The sound of sizzling oil and the sharp scent of green onion grounded him.
As the rice finished cooking, he plated everything neatly, then sat down and began eating.
Halfway through his second bowl of rice, something… shifted.
At first, it was subtle — a flicker of clarity, like cleaning dust from a lens.
Then sharper.
Brighter.
Faster.
Numbers raced through his mind.
He glanced at the microwave clock — 14:55. Then, without intending to, he calculated exactly how many seconds had passed since noon. Then recalculated how long it would take to digest each part of the meal based on metabolic rates and caloric density.
His chopsticks slowed.
His eyes narrowed.
He tested it.
"What's the square root of 9216?"
The answer hit his brain before he finished the thought.
96.
He blinked.
What…?
He stood up, walked to his room, sat back at his desk, and pulled a notepad from the drawer. No formulas. No calculators. Just pen and paper.
He wrote down a multi-step physics problem he remembered from school — something about projectile motion and fluid drag.
He didn't even need the paper.
The moment the question formed in his mind, he saw the answer — not just the number, but the entire equation in motion. Moving diagrams. Rotating variables. Like having a simulation running behind his eyes.
Just like in the game.
Just like when he had INT: 216.
He slowly set the pen down, hands trembling.
"…It carried over."
His breath hitched.
In World Frontier, Intelligence didn't just increase mana — it enhanced cognitive processing speed. With 216 points, his mind became a supercomputer. And now… in this moment… he still had that speed.
His thoughts moved faster than human.
He could feel his brain sorting information into branches, calculating outcomes, forming mental blueprints for inventions he hadn't even designed yet.
It was real.
It was real.
He leaned back in the chair, stunned.
But then came the next question — the logical one.
What about the others?
Strength. Endurance. Agility.
He stood up and tested them. Jumped once. Flexed. Ran a short burst down the hall.
No change.
His body was still average — maybe above average thanks to good health, but nowhere near the Alex of World Frontier who could dodge claws at 100 mph and lift hundreds of pounds of steel.
He confirmed it with a sigh.
Only his mind had changed.
Strangely, he wasn't disappointed.
In fact, he saw it as a blessing.
If this was the only thing that came through — this enhanced cognition — then it was the best possible outcome.
Muscle fades. Strength ages.
But this?
This was knowledge. Precision. Insight. And it made him better at everything.
Faster learning.
Faster building.
Faster thinking.
He could study real-world technologies at record speed now. Electrical engineering. Ballistics. Robotics. Chemistry.
And all of it could be used to push the boundaries of his forge in World Frontier.
He grinned slowly, heart still thumping with disbelief and excitement.
"Okay," he whispered, "this changes everything."
He glanced at the helmet resting on his desk.
Still cool. Still silent.
And waiting.
He didn't put it on yet.
Not this time.
Not before he made the most of what had come back with him.
Because now, Alex Elwood had the mind of a machine.
And the real world… had just become another sandbox to master.
He glanced again at the helmet resting on his desk — quiet, waiting, tempting.
But this time, he didn't put it on.
Instead, he opened his laptop.
He had a different battlefield in mind.
Without hesitation, Alex opened a browser and began searching:
"Basic electrical circuits," "Combustion engine diagrams," "Hydraulic power systems," "Electromagnetic propulsion."
His fingers moved with calm precision, but his eyes — now backed by an intelligence score no human had ever known — devoured information at a speed that made time feel irrelevant.
Text. Diagrams. Formulas. Animations.
Each page loaded slowly compared to his thoughts — an actual bottleneck. He found himself waiting on the progress bar, tapping the table with controlled impatience. The moment the page finished loading, he watched the entire screen scroll rapidly downward, skimming like a blur to any outside observer.
But Alex wasn't skimming.
He was reading everything — word for word, diagram by diagram — in the blink of an eye.
To anyone else, it would look like he was just scrolling past without paying attention.
But in reality, his mind had already categorized the information, broken it into concepts, and begun cross-referencing it with prior knowledge before the scroll bar even reached the bottom.
Circuits became systems. Gears became patterns. Energy flows mapped themselves in his head with intuitive elegance.
Every second spent online was like downloading an entire textbook into his skull.
And he wasn't just learning.
He was planning.
Because the next time he entered World Frontier, he wouldn't just be a gunsmith or a warrior.
He would be something far more dangerous.
A technologist.
A man from the modern world with the mind of a supercomputer and the tools to bend a fantasy realm to his will.
Chapter 18 – Distant Skies
The airport was buzzing with activity — flight calls echoing through the terminal, children tugging on luggage straps, and long streams of travelers making their way toward steel gates and glass walls. The scent of coffee and jet fuel mingled faintly in the air.
Alice Elwood sat near Gate 12, hoodie drawn up loosely over her head, earbuds dangling around her neck. Her travel bag rested at her feet, one strap still looped around her boot. Around her, a cluster of friends sat in a loose circle, their eyes glued to their phones, flicking between social media and the latest news.
"Guys, look at this," one of them said, tilting her screen toward the group. "It's been seven days since World Frontier launched. Only 57 people have passed all three trials and got the headset."
"No way," another girl murmured, leaning closer. "I thought there were millions of applicants."
"There were. Two million. That's less than one in thirty-five thousand. This game's a death trap."
Alice didn't look up. She pulled one earbud in but left the music paused. Her curiosity was piqued.
"Check this part out," a third girl added. "Of those 57? 48 have already quit. Most of them had to see therapists. Some of them were—" she lowered her voice dramatically, "—mentally shattered. Like, diagnosed trauma-level shattered."
"They said it felt like real pain," the first girl said. "And not just in battle — cold, hunger, exhaustion. Some guy said he starved to death and woke up screaming."
Alice raised an eyebrow slightly, finally glancing at the glowing screen as her friend kept scrolling.
Another article flashed past:
"Players Describe World Frontier as 'Worse Than War' – No Skills, No Help, Just You and the Dirt"
"They spawn you in the middle of nowhere with nothing but pants," someone quoted, laughing. "No sword. No food. No menu. Like you're dropped into the Stone Age."
"One survivor said it felt like being hunted for months — and when he checked the real-world clock, only a few seconds had passed."
Alice exhaled, leaning back in her seat as the others kept talking.
"Would you guys ever try it?" one of them asked.
"Nope," someone shot back immediately. "I like games where I can, y'know, pause."
"Or where dying doesn't mean feeling your ribs break," another added.
"It's like… who even survives something like that?"
Alice said nothing.
She'd seen the commercials. Read the headlines. She knew it was the next step in virtual reality — full neural sync, no controller, no HUD. Just your mind and your instincts.
But she hadn't paid it much attention.
Not until now.
Only nine players were still active after one week. That was terrifying.
And strangely… fascinating.
The boarding announcement rang through the terminal:
"Flight QZ712 to Sydney now boarding. Group A, please proceed to Gate 12."
Alice stood with her friends and began walking toward the line. One of the girls nudged her with a grin. "Can you imagine if someone from our school actually passed the trials?"
Alice gave a dry laugh. "They'd never shut up about it."
"Right?" the other said. "I mean, seriously — who signs up for pain?"
They laughed, moved through the line, and made their way toward the plane.
Alice didn't think much of it.
As far as she knew, no one she cared about was insane enough to try that game.
Least of all her quiet, responsible brother, who spent more time cooking than playing anything more intense than chess.
Far from the airport — in the quiet of a small, dimly lit bedroom — Alex Elwood sat alone at his desk, eyes fixed on his laptop screen. The air was still. The only sound was the rhythmic click-click of his keyboard and the occasional hum of his computer's fan struggling to keep up.
He had been reading nonstop for nearly three hours.
Not out of obsession — but because he could.
Page after page. Book after book. Engineering databases, open-source schematics, military archives, outdated patents, university papers. With a brain accelerated by the lingering effects of 216 INT, he had already devoured the equivalent of a decade of human study in the time it took others to finish lunch.
He didn't just memorize information.
He understood it.
Circuits. Power grids. Engines. Microcontrollers. Kinetic energy transfers. Railgun theory. Optical sensors. Chemical propulsion. Every concept flowed into his mind, layered and sorted like files in a perfect, dynamic archive.
But even with this mental speed — this clarity — there were walls.
He felt them.
In certain areas, the search results thinned.
Classified pages.
Redacted diagrams.
Blocked domains.
"Access Denied."
"Page Unavailable."
"403 – Restricted by Government Authority."
Topics like:
Nuclear fission reactor designBallistic missile control systemsSatellite-linked targeting arraysDirected-energy weapons
The doors were locked — not because he couldn't understand them, but because the information simply did not exist online.
Not publicly.
Even his advanced cognition couldn't simulate systems he'd never seen before.
"Some things," he muttered, "are still chained behind real-world power."
He leaned back in his chair, exhaling quietly.
It wasn't frustration.
It was reality.
He had just crossed the boundary of human knowledge… and bumped into secrecy.
National secrets. Military-grade intelligence. Dangerous technologies too tightly controlled to leak into open forums or university articles.
For now, those were beyond him.
But everything else?
He had it.
Energy. Chemistry. Ballistics. Robotics. Turbine physics. High-pressure ignition. Control systems.
He had enough to change the game.
And in World Frontier, that meant more than survival.
It meant revolution.
The mouth of the cave yawned open before him like the hollow jaw of a buried titan.
Jagged stone teeth jutted from the entrance, and the air that drifted out was damp, cold, and strangely metallic. The kind of air that clung to your skin. The kind that carried age.
Alex adjusted the strap of his rifle and stepped inside.
Each footfall echoed softly, boots crunching on old rock and ancient sediment. The torchlight from his belt flickered across walls laced with streaks of black iron, dull red sediment, and something else — faint green veins running through the stone like fossilized roots.
Unknown composition, he noted silently.
It shimmered faintly, unlike anything he'd seen. Not hematite. Not copper. Not magnetite. Something new.
He went deeper.
The passage narrowed, curved, opened into a hollowed chamber where bioluminescent moss glowed faintly along the ceiling — casting eerie green reflections on the cave floor.
Then… he heard it.
A low growl.
Wet. Guttural. Echoing from the shadows ahead.
Alex froze.
His body lowered instinctively, fingers curling around the rifle grip.
From the far end of the chamber, it emerged — a hulking creature hunched low with plated skin like volcanic rock. Its eyes were wide and luminescent, its mouth split with rows of uneven, translucent fangs. It moved like a predator used to silence — fluid, deliberate, hungry.
This one's different.
The moment its gaze locked on him, it charged.
Alex didn't blink.
BRRRT—
The first shot hit the monster's left eye, bursting it in a spray of violet fluid.
It roared in pain, twisted to the side.
Second shot — right eye.
The beast staggered, blinded.
Third shot — dead center of the skull.
Crack. Bone split.
It collapsed mid-charge, skidding across the stone floor.
Dead.
The whole exchange had lasted two seconds.
Alex stood motionless, barrel still raised, smoke curling from the muzzle.
Even with AGI 185 and INT 216, he could feel it — the pressure. The weight of the encounter. This wasn't like the surface beasts. The thing he'd just killed was tougher, faster, and more intelligent.
He approached the corpse, inspecting it carefully.
Thick hide. Internal bone armor. Dense core.
Definitely stronger than surface-level predators.
He knelt beside the body and examined the scattered rock beneath its feet.
And there it was again — that same green mineral.
But deeper now. Brighter. Denser. Embedded in the ground like veins of living ore.
He dug a fragment loose with his dagger and held it up to the torchlight.
It glimmered — not like any element he knew.
No oxidation. No magnetism. Slight warmth to the touch.
It pulsed faintly.
Alex narrowed his eyes.
Not from Earth. No known analog.
If this world obeyed the rules of realism, then this mineral's properties could be… extraordinary.
Conductive? Explosive? Reactive?
Maybe even… mystical?
He didn't know yet.
But what he did know was clear:
The monsters were getting stronger.
And the minerals were getting stranger.
The deeper he went… the more alien this world became.
He stood, slipping the shard into his collection pouch and scanning the cave ahead.
Whatever this place held — whatever secrets waited in the rock and blood — he would uncover them.
And if it was something that didn't exist on Earth?
Even better.
He wasn't just an inventor anymore.
He was an explorer of the impossible.
Chapter 20 – Beneath the Veins of Titans
The tunnel sloped downward in a spiral, tighter with every turn. The walls grew slick with condensation, the air dense and heavy, like the breath of something ancient pressed into the stone.
Alex moved quietly.
Rifle at the ready.
His boots made no sound on the damp floor. Every motion was fluid — efficient. He wasn't here to wander. He was here to harvest and survive.
Deeper than he'd ever been.
The torchlight from his belt flickered along the walls, revealing veins of strange ore that shimmered with hues Earth had never birthed — dull reds with black marbling, translucent greens that pulsed faintly, and deep blue metals that reflected no light at all.
He took mental note of each one, but he didn't stop.
Not yet.
The monsters down here were different.
It started with a rumble.
Then a thud.
Then the sound of clawed limbs scraping stone.
Alex raised the rifle, took a defensive step back — and from the far shadows, it emerged.
A beast the size of a warhorse, hunched and plated with mineralized bone. Its face was malformed — more armor than flesh — with only a small slit of an eye, glowing faintly beneath a layered brow of solid black rock.
He didn't hesitate.
BRRT—
The first shot hit dead center between the eyes.
The creature staggered — but didn't fall.
Second shot. Same spot.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
Only after the fifth shot, the bone split, and the creature collapsed with a gurgled hiss.
Alex exhaled sharply, lowering the rifle.
That one was tougher. A lot tougher.
And it confirmed his suspicion:
Down here, five bullets to the head is the minimum.
Not the chest.
Not the limbs.
Only the head. Only precision.
His AGI and INT carried the rhythm. Each shot had been fired in sequence — calculated, mechanical — all within a narrow target window smaller than a playing card.
He stepped forward, inspecting the creature's body. The skull fragment cracked apart like cooled lava. Beneath it…
Metal.
Actual metal plating fused into the bone.
He scraped a shard free, pocketed it, and turned his eyes to the stone around them.
There — in the aftermath of the battle — more minerals revealed themselves, exposed by the impact:
One thread hummed faintly when touched.Another was so light he could barely feel it in his palm, yet resisted every attempt to chip or bend it.A third had the texture of silk but reflected light like polished aluminum.
He couldn't classify them.
He didn't know what they were.
But he knew what they weren't: copper, iron, gold, silver. These were new. Wild. Untouched by modern industry.
Alex leaned close, studying the patterns without harvesting yet. Something in his instinct — not fear, but strategy — told him he would need proper tools later. Deeper drills. Specialized extractors.
Still, he marked each find mentally.
He had discovered:
A conductor more efficient than copperA structural metal harder than titanium and possibly denser than diamondA flexible, weightless alloy more versatile than aluminum
He didn't know the limits.
And that excited him.
Hours passed.
He kept descending, fighting, extracting. Every monster fought harder. Every mineral glimmered brighter. His ammo cache was running low, and his arms were heavy from recoil and weight.
But he smiled.
This wasn't suffering.
This was discovery.
He reached a ridge overlooking a vast underground chasm, where a subterranean river split through jagged black rock and illuminated the chamber in a strange bluish mist.
And along the edges?
More veins. More light. More monsters.
Alex crouched at the edge and stared down with calm determination.
He didn't need the names of these minerals.
Not yet.
But he'd remember every one of them.
And when the time came…
He'd forge them into the future.
He had lost track of how many caverns he'd passed.
27 days.
That's how long he'd been down here.
Not a week. Not two.
Nearly a month of endless caves, dead monsters, glowing minerals, and silence. He had gathered enough exotic ore to fill a forge for years — strange metals that didn't exist on Earth, sharp stones that hummed with latent energy, weightless alloys that shimmered like liquid glass.
And the monsters…
They were different here.
Smarter. Stronger. Built for darkness.
His kill count had long passed a hundred — beasts that screamed without lungs, armored serpents with bone-forged coils, hulking creatures that didn't even bleed.
But now, as he knelt in the latest chamber, checking his gear, he felt the tension build.
Click. Click.
Only three magazines left.
His ammo was nearly gone.
He rose, brushing ash from his cloak, and began ascending the narrow tunnel path he had marked before.
Time to go back.
Time to process. Smelt. Build.
He glanced at his status menu:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 167
HP: 1400
MP: 1080
STR: 140
AGI: 185
END: 140
INT: 216
WILL: 2
Unused Stat Points: 150
Thirty levels.
He hadn't even noticed.
But it made sense.
The deeper he went, the more EXP these creatures gave. They weren't just animals — they were biomechanical nightmares. Some had cores inside their bones. Others were fused with mineral growths, like living weapons.
He smirked faintly.
"Thirty levels in less than a month," he murmured. "And I'm still breathing."
But his senses suddenly screamed.
A flicker of movement — too fast, too quiet.
Without thinking, Alex rolled to the side just as something tore through the air where he had been standing. Stone exploded in shards. The impact was sharp and high-pitched, like a blade striking iron.
He spun mid-roll and fired three shots.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Nothing hit.
Whatever it was — it was fast.
It darted along the walls, its body a blur of black and red, like something not entirely human. Limbs too long, a torso segmented like an insect, and a face hidden behind a chitin mask with too many eyes.
Alex narrowed his gaze.
"Humanoid… insectoid?"
It lunged again. He fired.
CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—
Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss.
He emptied the entire clip, but the thing dodged with inhuman grace. Twisting. Warping. Darting through the air like a mantis made of smoke.
Last mag.
He fired again.
Miss.
Click.
Out.
He dropped the rifle and pulled a dagger from his belt — one forged from volcanic fang and tempered with mineral-hard edge.
His breathing stayed calm.
His heart didn't spike.
Because this was just another equation.
And he had the solution.
Status Menu.
He opened it again mid-motion and made the decision instantly.
All 150 stat points into Agility.
New Stats:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 167
HP: 1400
MP: 1080
STR: 140
AGI: 335
END: 140
INT: 216
WILL: 2
The change was instant.
His vision sharpened.
Time didn't slow — he sped up.
His fingers moved like coiled wires snapping into motion. His footwork adjusted mid-step, his balance corrected in micro-movements, and his anticipation of the enemy's movement refined down to half-second windows.
The creature lunged again.
And this time?
Alex was already behind it.
Chapter 21 – Ten Seconds of Death
The creature's lunge was a blur.
But Alex was faster.
His feet shifted — a half-step back, weight low, eyes narrowed. The dagger in his hand glinted faintly, its edge sharp enough to split breath. The enemy twisted mid-air, insectile legs extending, claws scything forward in a blur of bone and carapace.
CLANG—
The dagger met claw, deflecting the strike with a resonant spark.
Alex slid to the side and countered instantly, slicing along the creature's arm joint. A shallow cut. A warning.
It hissed — high and wet.
Then darted away into the dark.
They danced through the cavern.
Claw and blade. Twitch and step. Every movement honed, every feint anticipated.
This wasn't brute combat. This was dueling at lightspeed.
Alex's AGI 335 pushed his body beyond natural limits — pivoting, lunging, recovering mid-slip. His eyes tracked every twitch in the creature's movement. The mandible shift. The shift of weight on its leg joints. The tilt of its head before it struck.
Parry.
Deflect.
Counter.
The dagger sang against bone and chitin, leaving slashes across its limbs and torso.
Time passed.
His muscles didn't burn — not yet. His endurance was too high. But even so, the tension built. The longer it fought, the more erratic it became — and the more perfectly Alex adapted.
Until at last—
A pause.
Just a split-second.
A subtle delay in its rebound stance — a leg slipping slightly on the slick stone. Barely a mistake.
But for Alex, it was enough.
He struck.
SHUNK—
The dagger pierced straight through the top of its head, angling downward toward the brain. The creature jolted, claws twitching wildly, body spasming as if something short-circuited.
He expected it to drop.
It didn't.
Instead, it screeched — an unearthly shriek that bounced off the cave walls — and swung wildly.
Alex ripped the blade free, ducked beneath the flailing limbs, and rolled behind it.
Still alive?
He watched its staggering movements — limbs faltering, head twitching, but not collapsing.
It wasn't enough.
He narrowed his eyes.
"Do I need to take the head?"
The creature turned sharply and attacked again.
This time, it was wild — fast but unbalanced. It was reacting on instinct now, not strategy.
Alex weaved past its claws, spun behind it, and with two precise slashes, he severed the neck at the base.
The head hit the ground with a wet snap.
The body kept moving.
Blindly.
Violently.
It thrashed — arms slashing the air, legs twitching, torso spasming like a puppet with tangled strings.
Alex stepped back, knife still raised, watching it carefully.
One second. Two. Three.
The creature stumbled into a stone wall, cracked it, clawed at the floor.
Six seconds. Seven. Eight.
He waited. Silent. Focused.
Ten.
The body collapsed with a final, shuddering jerk.
Then — stillness.
Alex didn't move immediately.
He stood there, chest rising slowly, adrenaline fading like the echoes in the chamber.
He gained EXP and is now leveled up to 168. He used the 5 free points from leveling up to upgrade his strength, and his current stats are:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 168
HP: 1400
MP: 1080
STR: 145
AGI: 335
END: 140
INT: 216
WILL: 2
Return
He turned and began the long ascent through the cavern tunnels.
Step by step, the distant light of the upper levels guided him home. The minerals in his pack clinked faintly. His clothes were torn. His body was scratched. But he was alive.
As he emerged into the fresh air of the surface world — where wind swept across the trees and the distant hum of his forge whispered through the valley — he felt something new settle in his chest.
Not pride.
Not relief.
But purpose.
The depths had tested him.
And he'd come back sharpened.
The forge was quiet.
Only the rhythmic click of cooling metal and the distant hum of the waterwheel echoed through the compound. Alex stood in the central chamber, arms crossed, staring at three mineral clusters spread across his reinforced worktable.
They were unlike anything he'd ever seen.
One gleamed like tempered onyx, its surface too dense to chip with steel. Another shimmered faintly with internal pulses of electrical energy, almost like it wanted to spark. The last one was lighter than air, yet somehow didn't float — it bent subtly, coiled like thread, and shimmered in soft silver-blue hues.
He had brought them up in bulk — sacks of ore and crystal veins bundled with leather cords — and now, under proper light and precision instruments, they felt even stranger.
Then—
A soft chime.
The system.
For the first time in months, it spoke.
[Material Identified: Adamantite]
An ultra-dense, indestructible alloy harder than any terrestrial metal.
[Material Identified: Sparksteel]
An energy-reactive metal capable of conducting electricity with near-zero resistance.
[Material Identified: Skyrite]
A weightless, flexible alloy ideal for adaptive construction and motion-based systems.
Alex stared at the notifications.
They hovered in the air, clean white text on dark background — a system prompt he hadn't seen since the earliest days of his survival.
"…It spoke," he whispered.
He hadn't received a material prompt since iron. Not even for complex structures like his rifles or pressure chambers. He had outgrown the system, surpassed the point where it felt the need to tell him anything.
But now, it did.
And not just once — three separate times, for three different materials.
His eyes narrowed.
Why now?
He circled the table slowly, inspecting each cluster again.
Adamantite. Sparksteel. Skyrite.
Each one bore characteristics far beyond what Earth's periodic table could accommodate. No molecular irregularities. No known melting points. No standard grain behavior. They were… alien. Not just rare — unmapped.
The system had said nothing when he learned to forge iron, or when he mastered chemistry, or when he built a rifle from scratch. But this?
This triggered a response.
Alex leaned on the table, hands resting near the minerals.
"…You're not from Earth, are you?"
It wasn't a question.
It was a realization.
These weren't just fantasy upgrades. They were the beginning of something bigger — a tier of material existence that Earth never knew.
And if the system was acknowledging them?
Then they weren't just rare.
They were frontier-breaking.
He opened his logbook and began sketching samples, detailing their weight, structure, and initial tests.
But something inside him stirred.
A thought.
A truth.
If these materials aren't from Earth…
Then maybe this world isn't just a simulation.
Maybe it's something more.
Chapter 22 – The Engine and the Gun
The waterwheel turned slowly, its rhythm deep and steady.
Wood creaked under pressure. Gears churned in sync. The channel he had carved weeks ago now fed a controlled stream from the mountain river, spinning the reinforced axle with measured torque.
Alex stood beside it in silence, eyes fixed on the generator housing he'd just finished assembling.
Inside, Sparksteel coils gleamed like living wire — threaded through the core like veins, pulsing faintly with latent charge. He had replaced every segment of copper, every screw, every contact point, with refined Sparksteel strips hammered to razor-thin threads.
At first, the generator's hum was faint.
Then it surged.
Whum—WHUM—WHUMMM.
The vibration changed pitch. The output dial snapped upward.
Alex checked the readings on his analog gauge — one of the few things still built with traditional materials.
Then he stared at the numbers again.
"…This is insane."
Sparksteel was conducting energy at a rate tens of times greater than copper.
The generator wasn't just running — it was overflowing.
He quickly fed the output into a containment grid made of tempered glass and stone — a crude battery by modern standards, but stable enough. Lightbulbs flickered to life along the wall, brighter than any before.
Steam rose from the heat vents. The waterwheel groaned under strain — not from inefficiency, but from pure output.
Alex grinned.
"This changes everything."
The forge glowed like a second sun that afternoon.
Alex stood at the main table, now bathed in clean, electric light. Tools lay scattered across the surface: alloy clamps, drill heads, armature molds, and a sleek black barrel glistening with fresh polish.
He had already decided on the design.
Not a prototype.
Not a test unit.
This would be a weapon of permanence.
He used Adamantite for the frame — hammering it slowly, patiently, under a forge temperature powered by Sparksteel heat coils. Even the edges of his best tools cracked during shaping. He had to reinforce them with steel linings and Skyrite tension wires just to hold.
The final form was heavy, sleek, and perfectly balanced. A hand cannon in form, but smoother — a fusion of modern firearm design and raw frontier engineering. The recoil dampener built into the rear handle used Skyrite's flexibility, allowing it to absorb shock without weight.
But the real power wasn't in the gun itself.
It was in the bullet.
A solid Adamantite core, polished to a perfect slug, lined with sharpened grooves for rifled spin.
Alex loaded the chamber.
Snapped the housing shut.
Held it in both hands.
And for the first time in his forge's long silence, he whispered aloud:
"Let's see what you can do."
He stood before a reinforced wall of iron and basalt — scavenged from older monster dens and the upper cliffs of the valley. It had resisted explosives. It had cracked blades.
He raised the weapon.
Aimed.
BOOM.
The gun roared like thunder. No recoil. Just a deep pulse that echoed across the entire compound.
The round hit the wall with a sharp, singular flash — not a dent, not a chip.
A hole.
Clean. Circular. Glowing at the edges.
The bullet had pierced straight through.
Alex lowered the weapon slowly.
Even with all his calculations, he hadn't expected that.
This wasn't just a stronger gun.
He sat later by the firepit outside his compound, the gun beside him, the generator humming quietly in the background, feeding soft blue power into the forge's storage cells.
Night had fallen.
But his mind didn't rest.
He looked at the minerals again: Sparksteel, Adamantite, Skyrite.
Together, they formed a triangle of potential — energy, power, and motion. If these were the world's building blocks, then he had just forged its first spark of industrial ascension.
And this was only the beginning.
Chapter 23 – The Engine of a New Age
Time passed differently in World Frontier.
One hour in the real world.
One month in this one.
For Alex, eighteen months of creation, conquest, and construction had unfolded in a silent blaze beneath the twin moons of a world that had never seen a machine before.
And now, it had a railway.
The Spark of Revolution
It began with the generator.
Sparksteel—threaded into precise coils, polished, wound, and socketed into turbine-fed dynamos—powered everything. The waterwheels that once turned modestly now roared with mechanical hunger, feeding Sparksteel conduits that reached every corner of the valley.
Electricity lit the forge like a living heart.
At night, the walls of his compound shimmered with lines of blue light—no magic, no trickery—just a new physics, channeled through alien metal.
The Gun That Broke the Earth
The Adamantite rifle he had forged during his first return from the caves was now ancient by his standards.
In its place stood Vanguard Mk. VII — a modular, pressure-sealed long rifle with zero recoil, internal stabilizers made of Skyrite, and an Adamantite barrel that could fire explosive-tipped bullets without bending a micron.
The bullets?
Solid-core Adamantite slugs, smaller than a thumb, faster than sound, and sharp enough to pierce mountains.
Each one could tear through two meters of reinforced iron.
He tested it on the cliffs outside the valley.
The shot echoed for miles.
The hole went straight through.
The Rails of Steel
But Alex had no time to celebrate.
The forges were hungry. The base was growing. The materials from the depths—Adamantite, Sparksteel, and Skyrite—needed to move faster than his feet.
So he built a railway.
Not crude tracks. Not coal-fed engines.
Magnetic rail propulsion.
The system ran on Sparksteel-fed rail channels, each lined with directional electromagnets. Skyrite dampeners wrapped beneath the cars ensured zero vibration. Adamantite rails handled the force of propulsion without bending, cracking, or warping.
The train—The Courier—was a sleek, bullet-shaped machine made of Skyrite frame and Adamantite plating.
It ran so fast it outran sound.
From forge to mine, it could complete a round trip in under 40 seconds.
Each trip delivered over a ton of raw ore.
And Alex didn't even need to pilot it.
He'd programmed its course himself, using rotary-code plates, pressure readers, and reactive route-tracking sensors all built from scratch.
Autonomous. Relentless. Unstoppable.
The Compound Reborn
His base had become a city of metal and steam.
Forge towers powered by Sparksteel dynamos rose like watchtowers, belching clean light into the night sky.Storage bunkers lined with Adamantite shielded his most precious minerals.Electric elevators, hoist lines, and conveyor belts stitched the whole operation together.
Work that once took him days now took minutes.
He had crafted a system.
And the system worked for him.
Reflections at Dusk
One evening—exactly a year and a half after it all began—Alex stood atop the observation tower, the wind brushing his coat, his hands resting on a steel railing.
Beneath him, the railway sparked as The Courier flew past, loaded with ore. The forge behind him pulsed like a sleeping engine. Gears turned. Lights flickered. Drones hummed in the distance, following his designs.
He wasn't just a survivor anymore.
He was an engineer.
A builder.
And World Frontier—a world built to break people—had bent to his will.
Alex stood atop the rail platform, watching sparks arc along the overhead coils as The Courier roared past. Crates of refined ore and tool-packed carts rolled behind it, the sound of machinery blending with the wind.
But his work over the past year and a half wasn't limited to construction and invention.
He had also been hunting.
Most of the monsters he faced now weren't on the surface.
They lived below — deep in the mines, where Sparksteel veins glowed faintly and Adamantite embedded itself like fossilized armor in the stone. It was a world of tunnels, echoing shrieks, and lightless ambushes. And the deeper he mined, the stronger the monsters became.
Beasts fused with minerals. Creatures of stone and bone. Insectoids with Sparksteel-bent limbs and eyes like molten glass.
But stronger monsters meant greater EXP — and richer veins of the three legendary resources.
He didn't retreat.
He cleansed.
He fought with bullets, blades, and precision.
He hunted with calculation.
And over time, those kills added up.
In the past 1.5 in-game years, his level had risen steadily from 168 to 212.
His body had changed. His mind had already ascended. Now, his stats followed.
Status – Then and Now
One and a half years ago:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 168
HP: 1400
MP: 1080
STR: 145
AGI: 335
END: 140
INT: 216
WILL: 2
Now:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 212
HP: 1400
MP: 1080
STR: 205
AGI: 335
END: 200
INT: 216
WILL: 102
He hadn't just focused on strength.
He increased endurance to sustain long-range fights and underground ambushes. And more importantly, he had begun investing heavily in something he had once ignored: Willpower.
He rarely encountered magic. Mental debuffs were almost nonexistent.
But Alex didn't like unknowns.
Willpower was insurance.
If he was ever caught off guard — by psychic pressure, illusion, fear, or worse — he wanted to be immune.
So he built immunity into his soul.
He holstered his rifle and descended from the rail platform.
The forge was burning. The drills were running.
And the deeper the mines went, the more something called to him beneath the stone.
He wasn't done yet.
Chapter 25 – The World That No Longer Fit
The morning light filtered through the classroom windows, casting long rectangles across the polished floor. The bell rang. Chairs scraped. Students filtered in, laughing, talking, dragging their backpacks behind them.
Alex sat near the back, silent.
The teacher walked in a few minutes later, adjusting their glasses, and began the lecture.
Math.
Equations. Graphs. Variables.
To the others, it was challenging.
To Alex, it was noise.
He solved each problem mentally before the teacher finished explaining the first line. He could visualize the equation not just as numbers — but as shapes, fields, and interactions in space.
His INT: 216 brain processed it all within milliseconds.
He didn't even bother to take notes.
He wasn't arrogant about it. He simply didn't need to try anymore.
By the time second period started, he had already made up his mind.
University?
What for?
He had knowledge beyond graduate students, engineers, even doctors. What school could offer him something his mind didn't already simulate faster than real-time?
He would finish high school for appearances.
But he no longer belonged here.
Not mentally. Not emotionally.
Not even physically.
During lunch, he sat on a bench under the shade of a tree, eating in silence. His rice was perfectly portioned, his side dishes measured with precision. Even his chopsticks moved with calculated economy — not a wasted motion.
A few feet away, a group of students gathered, voices rising in bursts of excitement and nervous laughter.
At first, he ignored them.
Then he heard the words.
"World Frontier."
He tilted his head slightly, just enough to catch the conversation.
"I swear, the pain was real," one boy said, pulling out his phone. "At first I thought it was a media stunt, right? Like, just marketing. But I tried it myself…"
"No way. You actually passed the first trial?"
"Barely," he replied, grimacing. "The goblin stabbed me in the arm. I felt it. Not like haptic feedback — I mean, really felt it. It was cold. Sharp. I bled in there. I screamed."
A girl leaned in, eyes wide. "But isn't that just an illusion?"
"I thought so too," the boy replied. "Until I couldn't move from the chair for ten minutes after logging out. My body was shaking like I'd just escaped a car crash."
Another chimed in, scrolling through the news on his screen.
"It's been eight days since the game launched. You know how many people passed the test and got the headset?"
"Like, hundreds?"
"Seventy-six."
The group fell silent.
"Out of millions," the boy added. "And of those seventy-six? Almost ninety percent quit. Most of them are seeing therapists now. Some say they're hallucinating. Others get panic attacks just thinking about logging back in."
Someone whispered, "That's insane."
"Families tried to sue Gen7Tech," the girl said, pulling up a headline. "But the contract everyone signs before entering makes it impossible. It waives everything. You're basically agreeing to risk trauma."
"They warned us," the first boy muttered, "but no one took it seriously. Everyone thought it was hype."
Alex chewed slowly, his expression unchanged.
He said nothing.
He didn't need to.
He had passed all three trials before the news broke. He had been living in that world — surviving in it — while these people were still doubting if pain was real.
They were only now discovering what he already mastered.
They couldn't see it, but there was a chasm between them and him.
A world they would never survive.
A world he now ruled.
The final bell rang.
Backpacks rustled. Chairs scraped. The low murmur of voices filled the hallways as students began pouring out of classrooms and into the corridors of early freedom.
Alex moved with the flow — silent, unhurried, a shadow slipping through noise.
No one called his name.
No one stopped to talk.
As he passed a pair of students leaning against a locker, one of them glanced at him and muttered to the other, just loud enough to hear:
"Hey, isn't that Alex?"
"Yeah. He's in our year, I think."
"He's always so quiet. Never really talks to anyone."
The other shrugged. "Still, I heard he takes care of his sister. Does all the cooking and stuff at home. Responsible guy."
"Yeah. Just... kinda blends in, you know?"
They moved on.
Alex didn't react.
He kept walking.
To most of them, he was just a quiet student.
Not worth noticing.
Not worth questioning.
Just another kid with good grades, decent manners, and nothing that stood out.
They had no idea.
He exited the school gate without a word and turned down the familiar path toward home.