**Chapter 7: Login: The Astral Realm**
Pain.
It was a sharp, stinging sensation that radiated from my left forearm. I looked down. A thin line of crimson welled up from a scratch, beading on the dirty skin before trickling down to my wrist.
I stared at the blood. It was mesmerizing.
For three years, I had walked through lava flows without blistering. I had caught tank shells that shattered against my palm. My nervous system had been dampened by the sheer density of my own invulnerability, turning the world into a dull, muted film.
But here, in the mud of the Weeping Woods, a glorified bramble bush had cut me.
I brought my arm closer to my face. I could smell the iron in the blood. I could feel the throb of inflammation starting.
"Marvelous," I whispered.
I sat back against the rough bark of a Twisted Oak. My avatar—*Nameless*, the Level 1 Beggar—was panting. My stamina bar was flashing red in the periphery of my vision, a persistent reminder of a frailty I had all but forgotten.
This wasn't just a VR simulation. I knew the code. I had built the architecture. But the substance of Aethelgard, the texture of the moss under my boots and the humidity hanging in the air, was woven from my own *Prana*. This was a pocket dimension, a bubble of reality stabilized by the excess radiation of my physical body sleeping in the Atacama.
To log in was to inhabit my own power, filtered through a lens of limitation.
A rustle in the underbrush to my right made me flinch. Not a calculated assessment of threat vectors, but a genuine, biological startle response.
I gripped the rusted iron knife I had spawned with. My knuckles turned white.
"Come on," I hissed into the gloom. "Try me."
A rabbit hopped out. It had three eyes and antlers made of crystal, but it was just a rabbit. It sniffed the air, looked at me with a mixture of boredom and pity, and hopped away.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I was vulnerable. I was weak. I was alive.
***
**The Real World: Tokyo General Hospital, Ward 4**
The air smelled of antiseptic and wilting lilies. It was the smell of long waits and bad news.
Ren stared at the ceiling tiles. He had counted the dots on the tile directly above his bed four thousand times. There were 342 dots.
At seventeen, Ren should have been worrying about exams, or girls, or which university to apply to. Instead, he worried about bedsores and the terrifying, creeping numbness that had started in his toes three years ago and had now claimed everything below his ribcage.
Idiopathic lush-nerve degeneration. That was the doctor's fancy way of saying, *"Your wiring is rotting, and we don't know why."*
Ren couldn't move his legs. He could barely twitch his fingers on bad days. He was a prisoner in a flesh cage that was slowly shrinking.
*Thump.*
The sound came from his bedside table.
Ren turned his head slowly. It was an effort. His neck muscles were stiff.
There, sitting amidst the get-well cards and the bottles of pills, was a black box. It absorbed the sterile fluorescent light of the hospital room, a void of matte metal.
There was no note. No shipping label. Just the box, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic violet light that seemed to sync with his own heartbeat.
Ren frowned. He hadn't heard a nurse come in. He hadn't heard a drone.
He reached out with his left hand—his good hand. His fingers trembled as they brushed the cold metal.
As soon as he touched it, the box hissed. The lid retracted, revealing a heavy, dark metal band. It looked less like a gaming headset and more like a crown forged in a black hole.
*Put it on,* a voice seemed to whisper. Not in his ears, but in the back of his mind.
Ren looked at the nurse call button. He should press it. He should ask where this came from.
But then he looked at his legs. The useless, withered things hidden under the thin hospital sheet.
*What do I have to lose?*
With a groan of exertion, Ren dragged the headset from the velvet casing. It was heavy, but as he lifted it over his head, it felt weightless, as if gravity had decided to grant him a favor.
He slid it onto his temples.
The world of white tiles and antiseptic abruptly turned off.
***
**Aethelgard: The Sanctum of Echoes**
There was no loading screen. There was no "Log In" button.
One moment, Ren was in a bed. The next, he was falling.
He hit water. It was cold, shocking, and incredibly real. He thrashed, panic flaring in his chest, bubbles escaping his lips. He clawed for the surface, breaking through into gasping, sweet air.
He scrambled toward a shore of black sand, coughing, spitting out water that tasted of salt and ozone. He dragged himself up the beach, his fingers digging into the grit.
He lay there for a moment, shivering. The sensory overload was total. The wind bit at his wet skin. The sound of crashing waves was deafening.
Then, he realized something.
He had kicked.
Ren froze. He was lying on his stomach in the sand. Slowly, terrified that it was a phantom sensation, he sent a command to his legs.
*Move.*
His right knee bent. His toes dug into the sand.
A sob ripped from his throat. It wasn't a pretty sound. It was a raw, guttural noise of disbelief.
He pushed himself up. His arms were strong—stronger than they had been in years. He got his knees under him. He wobbled, his equilibrium adjusting to a body that worked.
He stood up.
He looked down at his hands. They weren't the pale, needle-track-scarred hands of a patient. They were wrapped in leather bindings. He wore a tunic of rough grey cloth.
He looked at his feet. Boots. Sturdy, worn leather boots.
Ren took a step. Then another.
He began to run.
He didn't know where he was running to. He didn't care. He sprinted down the black sand beach, the wind tearing through his hair. He laughed, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the sea spray. He jumped, feeling the muscles in his calves fire like pistons.
He tripped over a piece of driftwood and went sprawling, face-planting into the sand.
He lay there, spitting out grit, laughing hysterically.
"It's real," he whispered, clutching a handful of the digital earth. "It's all real."
**[Welcome, Player: Ren.]**
**[Class Assigned: Strider.]**
**[Unique Trait: Unbound.]**
The blue text hovered in his vision, unobtrusive, anchoring him.
Ren sat up and wiped his face. He looked around.
He wasn't on a beach anymore. The environment had shifted while he ran. The black sand had given way to a forest of towering, crystalline trees that glowed with an internal bioluminescence. The sky above wasn't blue or black; it was a swirling nebula of purples and golds, an astral tapestry that looked like a bruised galaxy.
This place... it felt *heavy*. Not in a bad way, but in a way that implied substance. The air had a charge to it, like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm.
"Hello?" Ren called out. His voice echoed strangely, rippling the air.
***
**Location: The Weeping Woods (Edge of Zone 1)**
I heard the laughter before I saw him.
I was still sitting by the Twisted Oak, whittling a sharper point onto a stick I had found. My "Beggar" class gave me no starting weapon skills, but it gave me **[Scavenger's Eye]**, which allowed me to see the durability of trash items.
The laughter was manic. It was the sound of a man who had just cheated death.
I stood up, my knees creaking in simulation of stiffness. I peered through the glowing foliage.
A boy stumbled into the clearing. He looked to be about my physical age in the real world—maybe late teens or early twenties in his avatar. He was wearing the starting gear of a Scout or Strider. Leather, light cloth.
But it was the way he moved that caught my attention.
Most gamers, when they log into VR, move with a certain hesitation. They are used to the disconnect between their inner ear and their eyes. They walk like they're on a boat.
This boy moved like he was trying to devour the ground. He stomped. He spun. He touched the trees. He was drinking in the sensory data as if he were dying of thirst.
He saw me.
He froze. His hand instinctively went to the dagger at his belt—a reflexive motion programmed into the class, but executed with surprising speed.
"Who are you?" he asked. His voice cracked.
I leaned on my makeshift spear, adopting the posture of a weary traveler. "A beggar," I said. "Waiting for the sun to go down."
Ren looked at me, his eyes wide. He was scanning me, looking for a quest marker, a floating nameplate. But the Black Box users didn't get the UI crutches. To him, I was just a man in rags standing in a glowing forest.
"Is this... is this an NPC?" he muttered to himself.
"I'm as real as you are," I said, spitting on the ground. The spittle landed on a glowing mushroom. "Probably hungrier, though."
Ren lowered his hand from the dagger. He took a tentative step forward. "You're a player?"
"Player implies this is a game," I replied, keeping my voice gravelly. "Feels more like a penal colony to me. Everything hurts here."
Ren smiled. It was a bright, blinding thing. "I know," he said. "Isn't it beautiful?"
I blinked.
I had expected confusion. I had expected the standard "How do I open the menu?" questions. But this kid... he was grateful for the pain.
I looked closer at him. I activated my **[Game Master]** vision for a microsecond—just a flicker of my true self peeking through the mask of the Beggar.
**[Subject: Ren. Real World Status: Critical Spinal Degeneration. Paralysis Level: 90%.]**
Ah.
The realization hit me harder than the Thorn-Wolf.
I had built Aethelgard to cure my boredom. I had invited the Alpha Cohort to accelerate my power growth through the bio-feedback loop. I was using them.
But looking at Ren, vibrating with the sheer joy of standing on two legs, the transaction felt suddenly complex.
"You're one of the new ones," I said, dropping the grumpy persona slightly. "The Black Box users."
Ren nodded enthusiastically. "I found it in my room. I put it on and... I'm here. I can walk. I can feel my toes." He looked down at his boots, wiggling them again. "Do you know how long it's been since I felt cold toes?"
"I can imagine," I lied. I couldn't imagine. I hadn't felt cold in three years.
"I'm Ren," he said, extending a hand.
I looked at his hand. Then I looked at my own—dirty, calloused, wrapped in rags.
I took it.
The moment our skin touched, a shockwave rippled through the invisible architecture of the server.
**[System Alert: Bio-Feedback Resonance Detected.]**
**[Subject Ren is channeling excess Prana.]**
I felt it. It wasn't just a handshake. It was a circuit closing. Ren wasn't just playing the game; his desperate, starving nervous system was latching onto the energy I was broadcasting. He was pulling power from the Aethelgard construct to repair his physical body in Tokyo, and in return, the sheer force of his will was feeding a refined, purified energy back to me.
It was symbiotic.
"I'm Nameless," I said.
"Nameless?" Ren raised an eyebrow. "Edgy."
I snorted. "The system glitched when I tried to type 'Shigu'. I decided to roll with it."
A howl cut through the air.
This wasn't the pathetic yip of the solitary Thorn-Wolf I had fought earlier. This was a chorus. Deep, resonating howls that vibrated in the chest cavity.
The trees around us seemed to dim, the bioluminescence retreating as if afraid.
"Night is coming," I said, my tone sharpening. "And in the Weeping Woods, night has teeth."
Ren looked around, the joy on his face replaced by a primal alertness. "What do we do?"
"We survive," I said. "Do you know how to use that dagger, Ren?"
Ren pulled the blade from his belt. He held it awkwardly, like a kitchen utensil. "Not really."
"Learn fast," I advised. "Because the Iron Legion spawns at sunset."
As if on cue, the ground beneath us trembled.
The mossy earth ten yards away burst upward. A hand emerged. It wasn't made of bone or flesh. It was made of rusted metal and dark gears, glowing with a malevolent red light.
A Construct. One of the mobs I had designed for the "Hard Mode" update.
The creature pulled itself from the earth. It looked like a skeleton made of industrial scrap, standing seven feet tall. Its eyes were burning coals.
Ren took a step back, fear flashing in his eyes. "That looks... high level."
"Level 5," I assessed, gripping my sharpened stick. "We are Level 1."
"That seems unfair," Ren squeaked.
"I told you," I grinned, feeling the adrenaline spike, feeling the beautiful, mortal fear wash over me. "It's not a game."
The Construct lunged.
It moved with a jerky, terrifying speed. It swung a rusted metal arm at Ren's head.
Ren didn't think. He didn't calculate hit boxes. He just reacted.
He dropped.
It was a move born of pure instinct. His legs, so new and precious to him, folded perfectly. He slid under the swinging arm, the wind of the blow ruffling his hair.
"Strike the knee!" I shouted, lunging forward.
I thrust my spear. It impacted the Construct's metal joint. Wood splintered. My hands jarred with the impact, pain shooting up my arms. I barely chipped the rust paint.
*Too weak,* I thought. *My avatar is too weak.*
But Ren was there. He scrambled up from his slide, behind the monster now. He drove his dagger into the gap behind the Construct's knee—the exact spot where the hydraulics were exposed.
Sparks flew. Black oil sprayed.
The Construct screeched—a sound of grinding metal—and buckled.
"Move!" I yelled.
We scrambled back as the Construct flailed, its leg compromised. It swiped blindly, shattering a crystal tree trunk as if it were glass.
Ren was breathing hard, his chest heaving. He looked at the oil on his dagger. He looked at the monster.
He wasn't smiling anymore. But he wasn't cowering, either. He looked... focused.
"We can kill it," Ren said. It wasn't a question.
"If we work together," I agreed. "I'll draw its attention. You hamstring the other leg."
"You're going to draw its attention with a stick?" Ren asked incredulously.
"I have a very annoying face," I said.
I stepped forward, shouting, banging my broken spear against a rock. The Construct turned its burning gaze toward me.
For a second, staring into those red optical sensors, I felt a strange sense of pride. I had built this monster. I had coded its aggression. And now, it was trying to kill me.
It was perfect.
"Come on, you pile of scrap!" I roared.
The Construct charged.
As I braced for the impact, trusting a crippled boy I had met three minutes ago to save my life, I realized something profound.
I wasn't the Game Master anymore. I wasn't the bored god in the desert.
I was Nameless. And for the first time in years, I didn't know if I was going to survive the next ten seconds.
The exhilaration was better than any drug.
"Now, Ren!" I screamed as the metal fist descended.
A shadow blurred past me. The glint of steel. The spray of oil.
The Chapter of the Order had begun.