Thanks to the golden-haired boy, the twins now had clothes on their backs. At least now they wouldn't have to deal with their parents asking what had happened to them—why they'd come home half-naked, bruised, and late.
When the twins finally reached their residence, they slowed to a stop, both of them unconsciously looking up before going inside.
The sky above the Dawn Walls was dark—unnaturally so.
Toxins drifted from the countless factories built directly into the walls themselves. Every wall had a factory. Every factory served its faction alone. There were four major factions in the world, each owning at least three walls, and each wall housed hundreds of thousands of people. These walls weren't just barriers—they were cities.
Cities that stretched outward like steel mountains.
The factories produced everything the faction needed—food supplements, materials, weapons, technology—but the cost was visible in the sky. Thick clouds of pollution swallowed the sun, turning daylight into a permanent gray haze. It was rare to ever see clear blue overhead, and when it happened, people stopped just to stare.
It put things into perspective—how far the toxins spread, how massive the walls truly were.
Despite their size, each wall only had one school. That was Dawn's design. One shared education. One shared system. Almost every student knew each other, and that familiarity made bonding easier—especially when it came time to leave the walls and face the real world beyond them.
Jordan opened the door to their house.
Inside, their parents were in the living room. The TV played softly. Their mother was asleep on the couch, head tilted to the side, while their father watched the screen with half-lidded eyes.
"Well," their father said without looking away, "you've been gone for quite a while."
"School ended a long time ago. Where have you two been?"
Riven answered first.
"We were just out with some friends."
It was a lie—but one told gently. He didn't want to worry them more than they already were, buried under work and side jobs.
Their father snorted.
"You don't have any friends."
Riven clutched his chest dramatically, stumbling back a step.
"I have—no, we have—a lot of friends."
Jordan shot him a look that clearly said Are you stupid?
"Name one," their father challenged.
"Joey."
Jordan stared at his brother. They barely knew the kid. Sure, Joey had help them once—but that didn't make them friends.
"Joey?" their father repeated.
"Yeah," Riven said quickly. "Yellow hair. Nice guy."
The man hummed skeptically.
"Okay," he said in a tone that made it clear he didn't believe a word of it.
"I'm never gonna be a grandfather, am I?"
Jordan stiffened.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, nothing," their father replied, waving it off.
The twins headed to their room after checking the fridge. Empty. Nothing but old containers and expired rations.
Their house wasn't big—no upstairs, no extra rooms. The two of them shared a single bedroom. If you could even call it that.
Two mats lay on the floor, separated by a narrow strip of space. That was it. With four people working in the household, this was all they could afford.
Still… one thing eased their minds.
Once they went to the academy, their parents wouldn't have to worry about paying for them anymore. No food costs. No supplies. No schooling fees. For the first time, their parents could focus on themselves.
Jordan dropped onto his mat, staring at the ceiling, clearly lost in thought.
Riven crossed the room and pulled a headset from the closet.
"That thing still hasn't died yet?" Jordan asked, glancing over.
"Nope," Riven said proudly. "I've been saving the battery. Been looking forward to this too much."
Jordan smirked.
"Still can't believe you pulled that from the Pile."
The Pile.
That was what people called it when Beyonders—also known as Adventurers—dumped their discarded gear. Not trash like food or clothes, but items they no longer had use for. Technology. Equipment. Tools.
Every three months, massive transport trucks dropped loads of salvaged items into each section of the Dawn Walls.
Sections A, B, C, and D.
The twins lived in Section A.
Since there was only one school, students from Sections C and D had to take buses—or cars, if their parents were lucky enough to own one. Cars were rare, which was why the streets were always empty and people mostly walked along the sides of the road.
When Riven first found the headset, it was damaged—obviously broken enough that whoever owned it before had tossed it aside. But Riven still took it home.
At first, he only wanted to fix it and sell it. A working VR headset could fetch a massive price.
It took him a year.
A full year of scavenged parts, trial and error, and quiet work late at night.
Before telling his parents, he decided to test it.
The headset already had a few VR games installed.
The moment he put it on, he fell in love.
He had never played anything like it before. All the games he'd known were old—two-dimensional, retro, decades out of date. But this?
He could move. He could be inside the world.
For the first time, Riven felt like someone else entirely.
Even then, he stuck to his original plan. Sell it. Help his family.
When he finally told his parents, they agreed at first. Selling it made sense.
But they saw how much he loved it.
So they told him to keep it.
Riven hesitated—he wanted to see them smile even more than he wanted the game.
But they were smiling.
They smiled because their son was happy. Because he had something they never could afford, something that let him escape—even just a little.
So Riven kept the headset.
The boy would visit the video game store daily to see if they had any VR games in store, but he found almost none that interested him. And when he did find one, he would be very picky about what he chose, mainly because he didn't have a charger for it. The VR headset—once it went dead, it went dead. There was no charging it or replenishing it. So he needed to be picky.
Until he found a game: Legend of the Evolver.
He knew the game wasn't going to be in store until two years later—one year for the game's actual release to Beyonders, and another year because of the delay that Wallborn had. So he decided to get a job. He hated asking his parents; they already weren't doing well financially, so he thought this would be the smartest idea.
When the game finally released for Wallborn, there was a line, which almost surprised Riven—until he realized most of these people most likely didn't even have a VR headset. Instead, they would most likely sell the game for a cheap price. But how they would do that, Riven didn't know. Maybe in some not-so-legal ways. But he didn't want to think about that, nor get involved in it.
Riven laid on his mat that he called a bed, with the headset on his head and the play card of the game inside it. He could see the thing loading.
One thing the Dawn faction did give was free WiFi for all, but the problem with that was almost no one had a phone, and there was no phone store in the Walls. Meaning one would have to exit the Walls, buy one, and come back into the Walls—and that would cost way more than what a phone was worth, since there was a payment that needed to be made when entering and exiting the Walls.
"See you in a bit," Riven said before his eyelids closed.
"Yeah, see you in a bit," Jordan said, laying still, thinking.
When Riven reopened his eyes, he didn't see a dirty and tattered ceiling. Instead, he saw a bright blue sky—something that he rarely saw in his fifteen years of life. When the boy got up and looked around, all he saw was grass that went on for miles on end. Riven didn't know what it was, but he felt warm, and the air smelled like roses being freshly bloomed. The smell, the sight, the feeling—it felt so foreign to Riven that it brought a tear to his face.
Any normal person would just look through the system and do their first quest, but Riven knew he didn't have enough time. And even though he would love to slash at some monster, he wanted to enjoy this feeling to its fullest.
After laying in the grass for a few more minutes, the boy jumped up. He immediately noticed something.
His body was much, much lighter.
When he looked down, instead of seeing his stomach sticking out a bit, he saw a body that seemed well-toned. He turned his body a bit as he was getting ready to run in a random direction when a ping was heard, and a gray envelope appeared in front of him.
Riven didn't know what it was or what to do, so he just tried to tap it with his hand—but it faded right through. He tried a couple more times. After his fifth attempt, a second screen popped up next to the envelope.
[To access the system, user must say "open" to, well, open the system. I thought this would be known already and this didn't need to be added, but I guess I was wrong, and you, my sir, are an idiot.]
The second screen then disappeared and was replaced with something else.
[System: New title unlocked — The Idiot
When this title is worn, the user gets a Dunce Hat]
"They didn't have to be such a jerk about it," the boy thought to himself.
"Open system."
When he said these words, the envelope opened up, where he could see an entirely new page.
[System Quest: Kill 15 wolves
Reward: 100 EXP and 5 copper coins]
"Copper coins? Must be this place's version of currency."
A big red arrow appeared in Riven's eyesight, showing where the wolves would be. He contemplated for a little bit if he should go down that way, but after a big breeze blew past him, he knew what to do.
Instead of trying to fight something, he should enjoy the peace that he had at this moment.
Jordan was looking around their room for two reasons. One, to see if Joey had stolen any items—not like there was much here to be stolen. And two, to see if Joey had planted anything—cameras or microphones.
After a few minutes, Jordan found that everything seemed to be where they had left it, and there were no microphones or cameras. When he sat back down on his mat, he realized the sun had gone down.
"Let's see what I can make for dinner. Hey, Riven, you want anything?"
But Jordan knew this wasn't going to get to the boy, since when Riven put the headset on, it was like his entire body went to sleep, and only he could wake himself from inside whatever game he was playing.
Jordan found this to be a chance to play around a bit. He went downstairs and came back with a black marker in hand.
"This is the only marker we have in the house, but this is so worth it."
The brown-haired boy then started drawing on his brother's face, making mustaches and drawing things to say on his forehead. After he was done, the boy started to laugh.
But before he could go downstairs, he realized something.
Riven's face seemed different—not in the context that he literally just drew all over his face, but in the context of his facial expression. When his brother slept, Jordan could always tell. There was always a face of discomfort every time they would sleep. Knowing him, he probably had the same face even if someone were to see him sleeping normally.
But right now, Riven had no groans or frown on his face. He just seemed calm. Jordan could even see Riven cracking a slight smile.
"What is he doing in there?" the brown-haired boy wondered as he tapped his twin's head.
⸻
In a forest full of trees, attacking monsters dealt damage to them while also having to defend and dodge. A party of five had just killed a giant green creature with red tattoos coming up over its body, reaching its face, with two tusks coming out of its mouth.
A man with bright orange hair stood there, wiping sweat from his forehead, while two girls and one guy started celebrating in the back.
[System: You have defeated 20 high-end orcs
Reward: 10,000 XP and five gold coins]
"All right!" the only other man in the party yelled out. "I finally got to level 50!"
"Oh, that's so cool! Doesn't this mean you could learn another evolution?" one of the female party members asked. The man replied by shaking his head up and down.
"My current evolution is fire. I'm thinking about going with something that can work well with fire, like wind or smoke. I'll figure something out when we get back to the village. All I know is that we couldn't have done this without you, Cass."
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I know," Cass said. The orange-haired man wasn't really paying attention, as he was looking at his own system, trying to sort things out.
"Do you mind telling us where you found it again?" the other girl asked, walking right up into his face, which caught him off guard.
"Like I told you, I was adventuring throughout the land when I found a mythical chest. Luckily, no boss or people were nearby, so I was about to just put it in my system inventory before leaving. After I reached one of the safe zones, I opened the chest, where it gave me the ability to increase all my evolution ability levels by two. Since I was already an evolver, I have to get to level 70 to get another ability, so I was stuck between waiting or just using it. That's what I did, making my evolution ability level seven. It's most likely going to take me maybe five to six months of constantly grinding to get it to level eight."
In the game Legend of the Evolver, there were two types of players: players who had an ability before joining the game, and players who didn't.
When a player joined the game and didn't have an ability, it allowed them to pick one basic ability—fire, ice, earth, lightning, air, or water—and allowed them to gain another ability after reaching a certain level. When they reached level 50, they had the chance to learn another ability, either one of the basic abilities they'd seen at the start or an ability they had seen from another player.
Those who came into the game already having an ability had a different process. When they joined the game, they kept their original ability. Somehow, the VR headset would know what their original ability was and copy it as best as it could into the game. Those who didn't evolve could also learn another ability, but they had to be level 70 to do so. To try to even the playing field between both types of players, those who already had an ability were given a small XP buff—a 1.50x XP boost—so they could try to reach their second ability as fast as the others.
After closing his system, the orange-haired man sighed.
"Not to be greedy, but I know I used up all of my luck finding that mythical chest. Still, I really wish I had found a system chest."
"Dude, if you found a system chest, you wouldn't be here. Hell, if a chest like that was easy to find, no one would play this game. Instead, they'd be enjoying their newly acquired power in the real world."
A System Chest was unlike anything the world had ever known.
It was the reason Legend of the Evolver remained at the very top of the VR leaderboards—even after nearly two years. No other game had ever come close to matching its realism, its danger, or the strange rumors that surrounded it.
What players didn't know—what Riven certainly didn't know—was that not all VR headsets were the same.
When someone powered one on, two tiny needles slid from the inner lining and pierced the scalp. One acted as a receiver, reading movement and thought. The other transmitted sensation—sight, sound, touch, smell, even pain—directly into the brain. It didn't simulate reality.
It replaced it.
The world the player experienced wasn't rendered on a screen. It was implanted as an illusion inside their mind, making everything feel real in a way no game ever had before.
And then there was the System Chest itself.
No one knew how it worked. Some theorized that there was a third needle, hidden deep within the headset—one that implanted something far more dangerous. The System Chest allowed a player to bring something back into the real world.
An item.
An NPC.
Even an ability.
Most people didn't even know the System Chest existed. Only those in powerful guilds, elite factions, or top-ranked adventurers had ever heard the whispers—and fewer still had actually seen one.
⸻
A sudden BOOM echoed through the forest.
The Four players instantly turned toward the sound.
A figure stood where the explosion had torn through the undergrowth—a boy with short, pitch-black hair, clad in plain armor.
"Who's that?" one of the girls asked, frowning.
"Probably some high-level screwing around," another replied.
"No way," a third cut in. "Look at his gear. That's beginner equipment—the stuff you get when you first wake up in the starter field."
"That doesn't make sense," the first girl said slowly. "This area's for level 100 and above. Some of us almost died getting this far the only way you're able to kill these NPC Is by using items to trick them. How did he even survive long enough to reach here?"
Above them, hidden among the branches, Riven pulled himself free from the tree and dropped lightly to the ground. He glanced around, disoriented.
He'd been running blindly for a while now—no sense of direction, no sense of time. He'd told himself he'd log out once the battery hit five hours.
The display still read seven hours remaining.
Two more hours, he thought. Enough time to let Jordan have a turn. Enough time for him to feel this.
When he finally noticed the group of four staring at him, Riven lifted a hand and waved awkwardly.
"Sorry," he called out. "Did I interrupt something? I'll just—uh—get out of your way."
He turned and jogged off in a random direction.
"Lock on," Cass said calmly.
His eye glowed faintly green as data flickered across his vision. Riven's status appeared instantly.
Cass blinked.
"…Yeah. That confirms it," he muttered. "Level one. He's probably just exploring. Maybe item hunting."
The girls looked back at him, noticing his expression.
"Something wrong?" one of them asked.
Cass hesitated, then shook his head.
"No," he said slowly. "It's just… he didn't pick an ability."
That earned him a few confused looks.
"…That's weird."
Riven sprinted through the forest, breath steady despite the chaos behind him.
He'd already died ten times.
After the first death, he'd turned off the pain receiver. The sensation of being gutted by an orc had been too much—sharp, vivid, real in a way that threatened to ruin the experience entirely. Dying without pain didn't make it easy, but it made it bearable.
The orcs were the reason. Again and again, they caught him off guard, chased him down, tore him apart.
Still, through trial and error—and a lot of reckless running—he'd managed to push this far.
Riven leapt onto a thick branch just as movement caught his eye below. An orc stomped through the underbrush, unaware of him. From his vantage point, Riven froze—not from fear, but awe.
The sun was setting.
Golden light spilled through the trees, painting the forest in deep oranges and fading reds. Riven rarely stopped long enough to notice things like this. He let himself breathe, just for a moment, and opened his system.
"I picked up a few items on the trip… hey. I'm missing some of them."
A message immediately appeared.
[System: The user loses items and EXP upon death. I thought you would've known this. Did you even read the manual on the back of the box?]
"…Okay," Riven muttered. "That explains it."
He checked what remained.
Two potions—both pulled from common chests he'd found along the way. Somehow, these had survived his deaths.
[System: Common Item — Lucky Potion]
Increases drop rates from quests and chests.
[System: Uncommon Item — Super Lucky Potion]
Same effect as Lucky Potion, multiplied by 1.75.
[System: Rare Item — Double EXP Potion]
Doubles EXP gained from quests.
[System: Rare Item — Double Coin Potion]
Doubles coin gained from quests and chests.
Riven shrugged.
Luck had never been his strong suit. If there was ever a time to fix that, it was now.
He drank both lucky potions.
The warmth spread through him almost instantly, subtle but noticeable. With that done, he moved again, tracking the direction the orc had come from.
That's when he saw it.
A crude fort—wooden spikes, uneven walls, torches flickering between stacks of logs and bone.
"Woah…" Riven whispered. "A camp. There's gotta be items in there."
He slowed as several orcs emerged from inside, laughing in rough, guttural voices. Riven dropped into the bushes, holding his breath.
"I wonder why no one comes over here," he murmured to himself. "This doesn't seem that hard to sneak into…"
His eyes scanned the perimeter, searching for an opening.
Then he saw it—a thick branch stretching out over the camp.
Riven climbed.
At first, climbing had been miserable. For the first three hours, his arms burned, his grip slipped, and every mistake sent him tumbling. But this body—this athletic body—was starting to feel natural now.
He eased himself along the branch until he was directly above the camp of wood and sticks, looking down at his target.
"Okay," he whispered.
"How am I going to do this?"