From the day I became truly alone, every waking moment reminded me of my previous life—the life I tried so hard to forget.
My past memories came flooding back in vivid, unwelcoming detail. The nightmarish years I spent as a mercenary during a war I could barely remember the cause of. Days spent in trenches, nights spent listening to distant artillery, the constant weight of a rifle in my hands and the heavier weight of survival on my shoulders.
I didn't want to remember any of it. I buried those memories deep, hoping they'd rot and fade with time.
But now, in this desperate present, that tiresome past became my salvation.
The tactics I had learned. The survival skills I had developed. The cold, pragmatic mindset that allowed me to do what needed to be done to survive at all cost—all of it came rushing back, muscle memory encoded into a young body that had never experienced any of that.
Even though this new body was small, weak, and pathetically slow, I compensated with the vast experiences stored in my head.
I learned to live in the mountains, carving out a miserable existence in territories infested by goblins. The creatures were stupid but vicious, and they didn't take kindly to humans encroaching on their hunting grounds. I fought them with sharpened sticks and knives made from sharp stones, using tactics they couldn't predict because their tiny brains couldn't even comprehend the term, strategy.
At night, I trained myself to sleep lightly, always keeping one ear open for danger, to get ready for fight the moment danger approaches. I built campfires small enough to provide warmth without attracting predators, and I guarded them like my life depended on it—because it did.
I kept moving, always moving, searching for villages and settlements where I might find work.
When I encountered travelers with carriages, I swallowed my pride and begged for rides. Most refused, but some took pity on the dirty, desperate child standing by the roadside. When the roads turned to unpaved trails that carriages couldn't navigate, I walked for days on end, my mind going blank from exhaustion, one foot in front of the other until I couldn't tell the difference between waking and sleeping.
I drifted from village to village like a ghost, taking any work I could find. Odd jobs that paid in copper coins. Dirty work that everyone else turned their noses up at—cleaning chamber pots, hauling refuse, scrubbing blood from butcher's floors.
And when employers tried to avoid payment because I was just a child with no family to back me up? I made sure they regretted it. I didn't let a single one get away with it.
I saved money with a fanaticism that bordered on madness. I ate the cheapest, most nutritionally barren food I could find—sometimes going on for days with nothing but hard bread and water. I slept rough more often than not, curling up in alleys or under bridges, anywhere that kept the rain off.
Copper by copper, silver by silver, I built up a fund. All for a singular purpose that burned in my chest like a coal that never went cold.
When I finally had enough money, I didn't hesitate. Wasting not a single moment.
I left for the city I was planning to reach for months.
Its name was Red Myre city.
The name came from the discovery of a ruby mine several years prior—not top-tier Pigeon Blood rubies that would make noblemen salivate, but quality stones suitable for cutting and selling to merchants. The discovery had transformed Red Myre from an insignificant hamlet into something prosperous, straddling the line between village and city.
More importantly, it was a location that appeared early in both the novel and the game.
Which meant I knew exactly what was hidden in the forest that surrounded the city.
-
I spent weeks wandering through dense undergrowth, crawling on my hands and knees, searching until my eyes burned and my vision blurred. The elixir I was looking for was described in the game as "a small, unremarkable plant easily overlooked."
Yeah, the developers sure weren't kidding.
My knees bled because of the rough ground. My joints ached so badly I could barely stand after hours of searching. Thorns tore at my clothes and skin. Insects bit every exposed inch of flesh.
But perhaps someone—some god, some cosmic force—was watching my pathetic struggle from above and took pity.
Because eventually, impossibly, I found it.
"FUCKKKK!!!"
The word tore from my throat, choked with months of pent-up resentment, relief, and disbelief. My hands shook as I reached for the plant, half-convinced it would disappear the moment I touched it.
It didn't.
I pulled it from the earth, roots and all, and without ceremony or hesitation, I shoved the entire thing into my mouth. The taste was absolutely foul—bitter and acrid, like chewing on decay—but I laughed through it, tears streaming down my dirt-caked face as I chewed and swallowed.
A notification appeared in my mind, words that only I could see:
[ Physical abilities increase. ]
[ Resistance to fire increases. ]
The change was immediate and profound. My body, which had been weak and brittle from malnutrition, surged with newfound vitality. Muscles that had been stringy and pathetic slowly filled in with strength. Bones that had ached constantly stopped hurting. I could breathe properly for the first time in months. I felt like a new man.
Using my rapidly developing body, I took on more physically demanding jobs. Construction work. Loading and unloading cargo. Tasks that paid better because they required actual strength. My earnings increased naturally, and with them, my opportunities.
Whenever I had free time, I searched for more hidden pieces. More elixirs. More artifacts.
The beginning had been good—incredibly good. But life in this world wasn't inclined to stay easy….. unless you are the protagonist, that is.
Finding an elixir or artifact became a grinding test of endurance and patience. If I found even one item after ten expeditions, I considered it a success. Most of the time, I came back empty-handed, covered in scratches and bruises, wondering if I had wasted days and months of my life for nothing.
If I didn't get lucky at the very beginning, if that first elixir hadn't panned out, I probably would have given up. Despair would have drowned me.
The reason so many hidden pieces remained unclaimed, still waiting in their designated locations, was probably because the protagonist have not started their story yet. The world have not begun "activating" the narrative triggers that would guide a player toward these treasures.
But I didn't need triggers. I had meta-knowledge.
Even so, there were bad times. Many times, even after searching for a long long time, I found nothing, doubts crept in like poison.
Still, in a world where strength determined everything—where human rights were measured in how hard you could punch—I never stopped searching.
I couldn't afford to.
-
When I turned fifteen, I made another major decision.
I spent nearly all the money I saved and traveled to the capital city, a sprawling metropolis that made every other settlement I had seen in this world look like a joke. The streets were paved. Buildings rose three and four stories high. The air buzzed with commerce and opportunity and the constant hum of human ambition. One could even feel it in the air that something was different about this city.
My destination was, naturally, the good old place for protagonist's to go, the Adventurer's Guild.
The guild hall was an imposing structure of stone and iron, its doors wide enough to fit an ogre. Inside, the atmosphere was thick with testosterone, alcohol, and barely contained violence. Adventurers of all shapes and sizes lounged around, comparing scars and boasting about kills.
When I stepped up to the registration desk and announced my intention to join, the clerk looked me up and down with barely concealed amusement.
"Another one"
she muttered, stamping my papers without enthusiasm.
"Good luck, kid."
I wasn't alone in my naivety. There were plenty of young fools my age registering that day, all of us driven by desperation or delusion or some combination of the two. Wide-eyed boys and girls who thought becoming an adventurer would solve all their problems.
The veterans lounging around the guild hall scoffed at us openly. Some laughed. Others made bets on how long we'd last.
I didn't react to their mockery. There was no point.
Because they were right. It was laughable.
A month later, every single person who had registered on the same day as me was dead.
Every. Single. One.
Except me.
That's when the invitations started coming. Established adventurers, seeing that I had somehow survived the initial culling, approached me with offers to join their parties.
I refused them all.
My reason for insisting on playing solo was simple and non-negotiable: I wanted to find as many hidden pieces as possible, hoard them for myself, and use them to become stronger on my own terms. Operating in a team would mean sharing information, splitting loot, and constantly watching my back for betrayal.
More importantly, I couldn't control the tempo with other people around. I needed the freedom to pursue objectives that would seem random or insane to anyone who didn't know what I knew.
So I stayed alone.
-
[ Registering inventory. ]
One day, after a particularly brutal quest that left me bleeding from more places than I cared to count, I stumbled across the spatial storage that the protagonist was supposed to claim early in the story.
It was hidden exactly where the game had indicated—buried beneath a fake floor in a ruined temple, protected by traps that had long since deteriorated into uselessness.
I didn't expect much. Most of the hidden pieces I found were useful but not game-changing.
This was different.
The spatial storage was an artifact of incredible rarity, capable of holding an absurd amount of items in an extra-dimensional pocket. No weight. No volume restrictions beyond its capacity. Just… infinite convenience.
It was, without question, the best find of the year.
Possibly the best find of my entire life in this world.