The door clicked shut, the sound of Selene's retreating footsteps muffled by the thick carpet of the hallway.
Tristan sat on the edge of the bed, the silence of the room pressing in on him.
He was dressed now, his white linen shirt buttoned up—though his fingers still felt a bit clumsy—and his dark trousers buckled.
He felt… different.
It wasn't just the lingering warmth in his chest or the fact that his ribs no longer felt like they were being gnawed on by a stray dog.
It was a clarity, a subtle shifting of the tectonic plates of his own soul.
"Okay," he whispered, his voice steadying. "System. Bring it up."
The blue screen flickered into life, hovering in the dim evening light of the room.
[ CURRENT UNALLOCATED POINTS: 50 ]
[ WOULD YOU LIKE TO ALLOCATE NOW? Y/N ]
Tristan didn't hesitate.
He tapped 'Y' with a trembling finger.
This was the moment.
The "Level Up." The dopamine hit he had spent his previous life chasing through loot boxes and achievement pings.
He looked at his stats, the row of pathetic '1s' staring back at him like a bad report card.
He began to distribute the points, his gamer brain calculating the most balanced build for a survivalist.
[ STRENGTH: 1 + 9 = 10 ]
[ MANA: 1 + 9 = 10 ]
[ IQ: 1 + 14 = 15 ]
[ DURABILITY: 1 + 9 = 10 ]
[ ESCHATON LEVEL: 1 + 9 = 10 ]
As the final point was spent, a sudden, violent shiver racked his frame.
It wasn't painful, but it was intense—a rush of heat that started at the base of his spine and radiated outward like a ripple in a pond.
He felt his muscles tighten and define; the slight lingering softness of his new body vanished, replaced by a dense, wiry power.
His mind felt as if a layer of thick, grey wool had been peeled away from his frontal lobe.
He stood up, testing his weight.
He felt light. Agile.
When he closed his fist, he could feel the raw strength of a man who actually trained, rather than a man who just looked like he did.
But then, he looked at the bottom of the screen.
[ CURRENT RANK: 1ST CIRCLE MAGE ]
Tristan frowned. "Wait. Fifty points. I increased every stat tenfold. Why am I still at the bottom of the barrel?"
He noticed a small, flickering 'i' icon next to the Circle rank.
He tapped it, and the screen expanded into a massive, daunting flowchart of power.
[ CIRCLE PROGRESSION SCALE ]
1st Circle: 0 – 249 Total Points Allocated
2nd Circle: 250 – 399 Total Points Allocated
3rd Circle: 400 – 499 Total Points Allocated (Current Rank of: Selene Brightwood)
4th Circle: 500 – 749 Total Points Allocated
5th Circle: 750 – 999 Total Points Allocated (Current Rank of: Rosalind Emberfall)
6th Circle: 1,000 – 1,399 Total Points Allocated
7th Circle: 1,400 – 1,899 Total Points Allocated (Current Rank of: Sylvara Starbloom)
8th Circle: 1,900 – 2,499 Total Points Allocated
9th Circle: 2,500 – 4,999 Total Points Allocated
10th Circle: 5,000+ Total Points Allocated (MAX)
Tristan stared at the numbers. He did the math.
He did the math again, hoping his new IQ of 15 had made him miscalculate. It hadn't.
"Five thousand?" he choked out, his voice cracking. "I'm at… fifty. I'm at one percent. One. Percent."
He sat back down on the bed, the weight of the realization hitting him like a physical blow.
To reach the 10th Circle—to become the legend the Silverbrooks were supposed to be—he needed five thousand points.
If every 'encounter' yielded fifty points, that meant he needed to… to talk to a hundred women.
A hundred.
The 28-year-old Masaru inside him began to hyperventilate. One woman had nearly caused him to have a nervous breakdown.
One woman had required a level of social courage that had left him trembling.
The idea of repeating that process ninety-nine more times wasn't a power fantasy; it was a marathon of social torture.
"I can't do it," he whispered, burying his face in his hands. "I'm a gooner. I'm a shut-in. I'm the guy who apologized to a princess for his browser history. I can't be a… a casanova. I don't have the RAM for it."
He thought of Sylvara, the 7th Circle Vice Captain.
To even reach her level, he needed 1,400 points. That was twenty-eight unique encounters.
Twenty-eight separate conversations, twenty-eight times he had to navigate the terrifying waters of 3D female interaction.
The social anxiety was a black pit, yawning open in front of him. But then, his gaze drifted to the desk.
He walked over and pulled out the drawer, looking at the complex mana diagrams he had failed to understand only an hour ago.
Before, they had looked like a chaotic mess of gold ink and geometry—deforming and shifting whenever he tried to focus.
Now, they stayed still.
With his IQ raised to 15, the "fog" had thinned. He could see the logic now. He could see that the circles weren't just shapes; they were reservoirs.
The flowing script wasn't just decoration; it was a set of instructions for the movement of energy.
He still couldn't "read" it—it was like looking at advanced calculus when you've only just learned algebra—but he understood the syntax.
He could see where the mana was supposed to enter and where it was supposed to be compressed.
A small spark of hope flickered in his chest. I'm getting smarter. I'm getting stronger.
If he could just survive the anxiety… if he could just force himself to play the game… he might actually become the man everyone thought he was.
The Royal Palace of Valdoria
The atmosphere in the palace was a world away from the gritty, bustling halls of the Moonveil Guild.
Here, the air was cool and smelled of expensive beeswax and imported lilies.
Gas-fed chandeliers hissed softly behind frosted glass shades, casting a warm, steady light over the marble floors and velvet-lined walls.
Princess Rosalind Emberfall sat at her mahogany desk, her spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose.
She was reviewing a series of trade requisitions for mana-conduction crystals, her quill scratching rhythmically against the parchment.
A soft knock came at the door.
"Enter," she said, not looking up.
Her personal attendant, a slender man in a sharp, high-collared livery, stepped into the room.
He bowed deeply, holding a small silver tray with a single, sealed missive.
"Your Highness. A report from the Ministry of Arcane Oversight. They've received word from the Moonveil Guild."
Rosalind paused, her quill hovering over the paper.
"Moonveil? What could those glorified mercenaries possibly have to report that requires my attention?"
"They claim to have found a Silverbrook, Your Highness," the attendant said, his voice hesitant.
"A young man. Found in the Low Ring, reportedly with silver hair and the family's distinctive features."
Rosalind let out a sharp, mocking chuckle. She set her quill down and leaned back, crossing her arms.
"A Silverbrook? Honestly, the Guilds are becoming as superstitious as the peasantry. Every time a stray cat with grey fur wanders into an alley, they start whispering about the 'Prophecy of the Final Hour.' It's pathetic. The Silverbrooks are extinct, Julian. They've been gone for a century. Whoever they found is likely just a commoner with a touch of albinism or a very clever con artist."
The attendant bowed his head. "My apologies, Your Highness. I thought it pertinent, given the ancient laws regarding the Silverbrook lineage."
"It's fine," Rosalind sighed, waving her hand.
"Tell the Ministry to keep an eye on it, but don't waste any resources. If the Moonveil wants to play foster-home to a 'prophesied hero,' let them. It will give them something to do besides brawling in taverns. You may leave."
"Yes, Your Highness."
The attendant backed out of the room, closing the heavy doors with a soft thud.
The moment the room was silent, the smile vanished from Rosalind's face.
She stood up, walking toward the tall, arched window that looked out over the city.
Below, the gaslights of Valdoria twinkled like fallen stars, but her mind was miles away.
Her memory drifted back to twenty-four hours ago. The cold interrogation room. The man tied to the chair.
He had been a mess. A rambling, sobbing lunatic who had apologized for things that made no sense—"browser history," "bottles," "living inside."
He had looked at her as if she were a deity descending from the heavens to strike him down.
She had dismissed him as a madman, a fool who had hit his head too hard on a garden wall.
But then, she remembered his hair.
It hadn't been grey. It hadn't been white.
In the flickering light of the gas-burners, it had possessed a strange, metallic shimmer.
A deep, crystalline silver that seemed to catch the light even in the shadows.
She remembered his eyes, too.
They had been wide and terrified, but they were the color of molten tin.
Rosalind gripped the window sill, her knuckles turning white.
"A Silverbrook will only appear when Valdoria is in absolute need of one."
The words of the old legend echoed in her mind, unbidden and unwelcome.
For years, the kingdom had been stable.
The 10-Circle system kept the peace, and the Emberfall bloodline sat securely on the throne.
But beneath the surface, there were whispers. The mana-crystals were depleting.
The borders were seeing strange, shadowed incursions.
Was it possible?
Could that bumbling, tearful idiot she had thrown out of her castle really be the "Blade of the Final Hour"?
"No," she whispered to her reflection in the dark glass. "It's a coincidence. A trick of the light. He was a peasant. A madman."
She looked out at the city, specifically toward the spires of the Moonveil Guild in the distance.
If he was a Silverbrook… if the prophecy was actually coming true… then the world she knew was about to end.
And the fact that she had kicked the savior of the world into the dirt and called him "filth" was a mistake that could haunt her for the rest of her life.
Her memory flashed to the way he had looked at her—with that pathetic, wide-eyed devotion.
"I need to know," she murmered, her blue eyes narrowing behind her spectacles. "I need to know what he really is."ure
[ TARGET 01: ROSALIND EMBERFALL ]
[ RELATIONSHIP STATUS SHIFT: HOSTILE -> SUSPICIOUS / INTRIGUED ]