The sun in this stupid canyon was finally doing something other than just being bright.
It was actually hot.
Two weeks.
Two weeks of yelling myself hoarse trying to turn the King's rejects into something that wouldn't wipe on trash mobs.
I stood on my favorite rock—my personal command post—and watched the circus.
They weren't pretty.
They definitely weren't elite.
But hey, at least they weren't crying anymore.
I guess that's progress.
"AGAIN!" I roared, my voice echoing like a GM announcement.
"The glowing circle on the ground is an AOE!"
"It means DEATH!"
"Why are you still standing in it, Kelan?!"
That lanky elf tripped over his own feet and took a practice boulder to the face.
Good.
He groaned and started his push-ups.
Pathetic.
A month ago he would've just stood there and died.
(My old Raid Leader's voice: At least he's repair-bill-conscious now.)
Lianna moved through the ranks like a living parser, correcting stances and shield angles.
"Lower your center of gravity," she'd murmur.
"You're telegraphing your main attack rotation."
She never raised her voice.
She didn't have to.
They listened to her with a mix of fear and awe.
She was their hero.
The outcast with better stats than any of the royal guard clowns.
Over in the sparring circle, Yael was a silver-haired whirlwind of pure griefing.
"Too slow," she sighed, sidestepping a clumsy swing and bopping an elf on the head.
"You call that a feint?"
"My grandma could feint better and she doesn't even play."
"Your build is trash."
She was having the time of her life.
All that rage from being stuck in this new body was getting channeled into one long, beautiful session of pwning the noobs.
They hated her guts.
And their K/D ratios were slowly improving because of it.
We had a rhythm.
We had a purpose.
For the first time since I'd woken up in this world, things felt… stable.
It was the quiet calm before a server-wide event kicks off and all hell breaks loose.
Then it happened.
THUMP... THUMP... THUMP.
It wasn't a sound.
It was a feeling.
Like the server was lagging right before a world boss spawn.
A low vibration started in my feet and buzzed up my spine.
The ground didn't shake, it thrummed.
A steady, rhythmic pulse, like a giant subwoofer was buried under the canyon.
This felt deeply, fundamentally wrong.
Down below, the whole training ground froze.
Noobs mid-swing.
Kelan stopped his push-ups with his face in the dirt.
"What was that?" someone whispered.
My gamer brain kicked in instantly.
Earthquake?
Nope.
Too regular.
This was programmed.
This was the bass-heavy intro music for a raid we were way, way under-geared for.
Yael had gone rigid, her hand on her dagger.
"The air," she muttered.
"Feels like a debuff."
Lianna was already running the numbers.
Her sharp eyes scanned the northern horizon.
"It lasted exactly fifteen seconds," she said, calm as ever.
"Uniform frequency."
"Not a quake."
The thrumming faded, leaving this awful, dead silence.
Like the servers just crashed.
I took a deep breath.
Panic is a useless debuff.
"Alright, you heard the lady!" I yelled, forcing the raid leader voice back on.
"The ground got a little laggy, who cares!"
"The drill's not over!"
"Get back in formation!"
They hesitated.
But two weeks of my yelling was hard-coded into their muscle memory.
Slowly, they picked up their wooden swords and got back into position.
The unease lingered, though.
We tried to get through the day, but everything felt off.
Every shadow was longer.
Every gust of wind sounded like a whisper.
A few hours later, it came back.
THUMP!... THUMP!... THUMP!
Stronger.
The subwoofer was now a full-on growl.
The ground vibrated hard enough to knock over a stack of crates in the armory tent.
Okay, this wasn't a glitch.
It was a feature.
A really, really bad one.
The noobs cried out, huddled together.
Yael drew her dagger, knuckles white.
"Quinn," she said, her eyes locked on the north.
"Something is coming."
"I know," I said.
My own heart was hammering.
This felt like end-game content, and we were still in the tutorial zone.
Just as the second lag spike ended, we heard it.
Hoofbeats.
A single player—no, an NPC—was tearing across the plains.
Royal Guard colors.
A quest-giver.
He galloped into camp, practically fell off his horse, and gasped, "Commander Quinn!"
"A proclamation!"
"From His Majesty!"
He handed me a scroll.
I broke the seal.
Lianna and Yael crowded around as I read the patch notes—I mean, the proclamation—aloud.
It was a whole lot of PR bullshit.
The King called the tremors "minor, natural earthshakes."
He urged for calm.
He ordered all outposts to maintain their regular duties.
It was a big, stupid, politically convenient lie.
"He's lying," Yael spat, her voice dripping with contempt.
"He's either a total noob or he's trying to stop a server-wide panic."
"Classic admin move," I muttered.
"Telling everyone the bug is a feature."
The messenger NPC recited some more scripted lines about "geological surveys" and galloped off, leaving us with a useless quest item and a growing sense of doom.
The King's denial didn't make anyone feel better.
It just meant we were on our own.
The rest of the day was a wash.
Training was pointless.
Everyone just kept staring north, waiting for the next lag spike.
It didn't come.
The silence was worse.
That night, we were sitting around a fire, looking at a map.
"It has to be coming from the Dragon's Tooth mountains," Lianna said, tracing a line with her finger.
"It's the only place big enough to hide something that makes them."
Suddenly, more hoofbeats.
Not one rider.
A full patrol.
A grim-faced lieutenant rode up to our fire.
He didn't have a scroll this time.
He just looked tired.
And scared.
"The King's hand has been forced," he said, his voice rough.
"The tremors hit the capital this afternoon."
"Stronger."
"He can't ignore it anymore."
He looked past us, towards the dark mountains on the horizon.
"He's dispatching the Vanguard."
My eyebrows shot up.
The Vanguard?
That's the server-first guild.
The guys with all the epic gear.
The King's personal raid team.
"Captain Reynolds is leading a company himself," the lieutenant continued.
"They ride north at dawn."
"Their mission is to find the source of these tremors and report back."
He looked at me with a strange expression, like he was begging for a carry.
"Pray they find something," he said quietly.
"Because everyone in the capital is terrified of what happens if they don't."
He mounted up and rode off, leaving us in the cold silence.
The King's denial had lasted less than a day.
Now he was sending his best players into the unknown.
The next morning, from the highest ridge, we watched.
Far in the distance, a column of riders moved across the plains.
A line of tiny, determined figures.
They rode towards the northern mountains, which were now shrouded in a thick, unnatural mist.
It looked like an un-rendered zone.
We watched them reach the edge of the fog bank.
One by one, they rode into it.
Gandalf.
His army.
The best scouts in the kingdom.
They vanished into the gray, silent wall of lag, swallowed by the unknown.
And they didn't come out.