The fluorescent lights of the conference room at Nexus Interactive Studio buzzed with a sound that Aamon Maverick would forever associate with the death of his career. You see, it started with a game. He was a lead-bester of their company. Games were something he enjoyed so why not make money out of it?
Last year, they have a new project that was submitted by a rising developer. However, that developer suddenly had an accident and was in comatose state. Given the sheer size of the game, adding the fact that other developers still had projects on their hands and he was supposed to be the partner of the developer when it comes to making the game, the responsibility of handling it fell onto his lap.
So not only was he a beta-tester but also a pseudo-developer. But well, he really not have to redevelop the game at all. Because for Aamon, that game, Arcane Frontier was a huge masterpiece. He hardly had to note down any changes that needed to be done.
Arcane Frontier is an RPG based on the demand that players nowadays like those games with the concepts of hunters, dungeons, leveling up and clearing monsters. Only the difference is the world-building of the Arcane Frontier.
But Aamon doesn't have a problem with it. In fact, he even loved it. Maybe it's because of how fleshed out every playable character is especially the one he picked. He even found comfort with it. He spent two years playing this game with dedication and laser-beam focus. Maybe that's why he was the only one that was able to top the leaderboards and was the only one close to clearing the game. One could say that it was his only success despite the constant failures he had encounter in his life. That's why Aamon was unwilling to let go of his opinion.
Life on the other hand, seems to have other opinions. Something he considered his first success is about to turn into another one of his failure, as if mocking him that no matter what he do, he will always be a failure.
"It's about the metrics, Aamon," the lead executive had said, adjusting his glasses while looking at a chart that resembled a steep ski slope. "Player retention for Arcane Frontier is down forty-two percent this quarter alone. The reviews are tanking. And do you know what the primary complaint is?"
Aamon had sat there, his arms crossed defensively over his faded hoodie. "That they don't have the patience to read the lore?"
"That the game is impossibly hard and bogged down by useless text!" the executive sitting across the table snapped. "You were our lead beta-tester. Your sole job—your one responsibility in this department—was to simulate the average player experience. To check for bugs, glitches, and to gauge the difficulty and replayability of the game. You were supposed to tell us if it was efficient and accessible for the masses."
"It is efficient," Aamon had argued, his voice tightening with frustration. "If they actually paid attention. The game isn't just about mashing buttons and throwing fireballs. Every single boss mechanic, every spatial rift puzzle, is hidden in the lore. The history of the arcanists, the nature of the arcane energy—it all contains hints on how to survive. If they just took two minutes to read the environmental storytelling—"
"Gamers don't want to read a textbook, Aamon! They want to feel powerful!" The lead executive sighed, rubbing his temples. "Because of your negligence—because you insisted the difficulty was 'perfectly balanced' based on your own obsessive, purist playstyle—we pushed a product that alienated our casual base. Sales are plummeting. The board is furious. We need a scapegoat, and frankly, you haven't been doing the job we paid you to do."
And just like that, he was out.
They were greedy corporate assholes who didn't know how to appreciate art. Aamon scoffed in his mind. Arcane Frontier was a masterpiece of world-building and interwoven mechanics. To strip it down to a mindless hack-and-slash was a tragedy.
A week later, that tragedy was the least of his problems.
His savings were rapidly draining, his rent was due, and his diet had been reduced to instant ramen that tasted vaguely of cardboard. Yet, instead of browsing job boards, Aamon sat in the glow of his monitor in his dimly lit apartment, his fingers dancing across his keyboard.
He was playing Arcane Frontier. On his closed-beta account. In which the company still hasn't closed yet or that they forgot that he have the priveleges of being a beta player with this hidden account.
On his screen was the main playable character—a fiercely designed seventeen-year-old boy, wielding a massive blade. The character was a Warrior class, blessed with the Epic-grade talent Otherworldly Swordsman. Aamon knew the protagonist's stats by heart. He had spent hundreds of hours testing this exact build. The guy was a walking natural disaster, a beautiful amalgamation of raw power and fluid mechanics.
"Come on," Aamon muttered, his eyes bloodshot, reflecting the chaotic flashes of arcane energy on the screen. "Just a little more."
He was pushing through the final, un-nerfed version of the endgame spatial rift. He wanted to see the true ending, the one the developers were about to patch out of existence. His fingers moved with practiced, surgical precision, dodging, parrying, and unleashing devastating combos.
With a final, earth-shattering roar that shook his cheap desktop speakers, the final boss—a mythical Rift Sovereign—dissolved into a shower of crystalline pixels.
Aamon exhaled a breath he felt like he'd been holding for an hour. He leaned back, a triumphant smirk playing on his lips. He had done it. He was about to witness the culmination of the game's massive, 2,000-year narrative. The screen faded to black, the epic orchestral score swelling to a crescendo.
Then, the music abruptly cut off.
A stark, plain-text box popped up in the center of the pitch-black screen.
[ Note: You do not have the right class to be able to continue on the next level. ]
Aamon stared at it. The triumphant smirk slowly melted into a scowl of pure, unadulterated annoyance.
"What?" he hissed, leaning closer to the monitor. "What do you mean, 'right class'? It's a single-player campaign! My character is a Warrior!"
He clicked the mouse. Nothing. He hammered the escape key. Nothing. The game had hard-locked.
"Are you kidding me?" Aamon groaned, running a hand through his unkempt blonde hair.
Out of sheer frustration and exhaustion, he didn't even bother trying to open the task manager. He just reached down and held the power button on his PC until the fans whirred to a halt. The room plunged into silence and darkness.
"Whatever," he muttered, throwing himself onto his unmade bed. "I don't even know what class I'd choose if I had to start a new save file anyway."
Within minutes, the exhaustion of the past week pulled him under into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The first thing that registered was the smell. It was a thick, suffocating stench of rotting vegetation, damp earth, and a metallic tang that made his stomach churn.
The second thing was the pain. His lungs felt like they were lined with broken glass, burning with every ragged inhale. His legs were heavy, screaming with lactic acid, and his heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Why am I running?
Aamon forced his eyes open, but the world was a blur of motion and shadows. Branches whipped against his face, scratching his cheeks. His feet slipped on wet, mossy roots. He was in a forest. A massive, ancient forest where the canopy above was so thick it completely blocked out the sky, plunging the world into a claustrophobic, emerald twilight.
He stumbled, nearly face-planting into the mud, but adrenaline forced him to keep his footing.
This is a nightmare, he thought, his mind struggling to pierce through the fog of sleep and panic. A really, really gruesome nightmare.
But then, he heard the roars.
They were guttural, vibrating sounds that seemed to resonate in the marrow of his bones. He hazarded a desperate glance over his shoulder, and his breath hitched.
Bursting through the thick underbrush behind him were three towering figures. They were at least eight feet tall, their bodies a grotesque parody of humanoid anatomy made entirely of knotted, dark wood and coarse vines. Their eyes burned with a sickly, luminescent green light, and their maws hung open, dripping a viscous, sap-like saliva.
Aamon's brain, trained by thousands of hours of gameplay, identified them instantly.
Wood Trolls.
Uncommon grade monsters, often F-rank and E-rank. Highly aggressive. Known for their brutal physical strength and tracking abilities using their single trait, Jungle Hunt, in which once a living they considered as a prey step into their territory, they will coninue to hunt them down.
"What the fuck?" Aamon wheezed, his voice sounding weirdly high, weirdly young to his own ears.
If this was a dream, why was he getting so tired? Why did the scratches on his face sting with such agonizing clarity? Why could he feel the cold mud seeping into his sneakers?
A horrifying realization dawned on him, hitting harder than a physical blow. The sensory input was too perfect. The fear was too visceral. He wasn't asleep. He had reincarnated. He had transmigrated. He was in the game.
His mind reeled, trying to process the impossible. How could this be? And if it was true, where was he?
In the lore of Arcane Frontier, the world had changed completely 2,000 years ago. Without warning, the fabric of reality had torn open, giving birth to spatial rifts. From these dimensional wounds, monsters poured out, wreaking absolute chaos upon a helpless, modern human civilization. Humanity had been pushed to the brink of extinction.
But evolution, or perhaps the universe itself, had thrown them a lifeline. The rifts didn't just bring monsters; they brought a strange, volatile energy that permeated the Earth. Arcane energy. People began to mutate. They began to awaken. They became Arcanists—superhuman individuals capable of wielding magic, summoning beasts, and pushing the limits of physics to fight back against the apocalypse.
By the modern era of the game, civilization had adapted. Research dictated that at the age of 18 is the appropriate age that individuals can awaken using Arcana Stone. It was because at this age that humans are fully developed to resist and host arcane energy in their bodies. But Aamon knew the lore better than anyone. He knew there were exceptions. Individuals could awaken early, without a stone, under special circumstances—usually high exposure to arcane energy, or extreme, life-threatening danger.
Like being hunted by Wood Trolls in what had to be an Unstable Spatial Rift.
There were two types of rifts. Fixed rifts were stable, anchored dungeons with predictable entrances, exits, and monster ecosystems. They were farmed for resources. Unstable rifts, however, were nightmares. They appeared randomly, swallowing people whole, their internal logic completely fractured.
Sometimes the arcane density didn't match the monster strength. Sometimes the exit just vanished. If you were pulled into an unstable rift, there was a very high chance you would never see the sun again.
Just like what he is in now. Although he didn't know how, he could feel the arcane energy teeming the land. It was abundant so it was a wonder why an uncommon monster like Wood Trolls when logically it should be a rare monster occupying the land. The only meaning for it would be because the territory of those rare monsters have more arcane energy than usual. So the possibility of this spatial rift being classified as unstable one is even more likely.
Aamon was dragged back in reality as his foot caught on an exposed root. He pitched forward, crashing hard into the damp earth. The impact knocked the wind out of him, leaving him gasping like a beached fish.
He scrambled to turn over, scrambling backward on his hands and crabs. The Wood Trolls were closing the distance, their heavy, thudding footsteps shaking the ground.
I need to awaken, Aamon thought desperately, staring at the approaching monsters. If I'm in this world, if I'm a person here, I need to awaken right now.
He didn't know who he was in this body. He didn't know if he was 18, 17, or 15. He didn't care. He just closed his eyes for a split second, feeling his ragged breathing, feeling the absolute terror of impending death, and prayed to whatever cruel god had dropped him into his own beta-test.
Awaken. Give me a skill. Just one skill to hide. Fuck!
Suddenly, the ambient temperature plummeted. A strange, vibrating warmth ignited in the center of his chest, spreading through his veins like liquid fire. It wasn't painful; it was exhilarating. It felt like a circuit had finally been connected, flooding his exhausted muscles with a sudden, sharp clarity.
Ding.
A sound, crisp and synthesized, chimed in his mind.
Directly in front of his eyes, cutting through the gloom of the forest, a translucent blue interface materialized. It was beautiful, minimalist, and terrifyingly familiar.
[ Name: Aamon Maverick (Awakened) Talent: Hidden Player (Epic Grade)
Class: ◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽
Traits: System Interface, Map Sensitivity, Clutch, Gaming Sense
Skills: Frame Lag, Technical Glitch, Spectator Mode, Replay Value, Exclusive Avatar, ◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽,
◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽, ◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽ ]
Aamon's eyes widened, completely forgetting the approaching trolls for a fraction of a second.
His name was the same. Aamon Maverick. But everything else?
Epic Grade talent? he thought, his analytical mind immediately kicking into overdrive despite the panic. Talents were the foundation of an Arcanist, determining their growth limit, their arcane energy capacity, and the quality of their traits and skills. The grades went from Common, Uncommon, Rare, Unique, Epic, Legendary, to the mythical, extinct Mythic.
But as he scanned the sheer volume of traits and skills, a shockwave of disbelief hit him. Epic grade? This is absurd. With four traits and eight skills at base level, this borders on Legendary. Legendary was considered the absolute ceiling of human potential, nuclear deterrents for nations.
But his confusion only deepened as his eyes drifted to his Class.
There were exactly nine Arcanist classes in the world: Warrior, Magician, Guardian, Marksman, Assassin, Beastmaster, Summoner, Healer, and Artificer. Every single awakened individual fell into one of those nine categories.
His class was an eight-letter blank block. [◽◽◽◽◽◽◽◽]. A hidden class.
Aamon rapidly cross-referenced his skills with the nine standard classes. Magician? No, these aren't elemental spells. Summoner? 'Exclusive Avatar' sounds like it, but the rest don't fit. Assassin? 'Spectator Mode' is stealth-adjacent, but 'Technical Glitch'? What even is that?
There was no time to ponder the anomaly of his hidden class. He needed to survive. He skimmed his skills, his beta-tester brain instantly translating the esoteric names into game mechanics.
Frame Lag: Slows down enemy perception and movement. A powerful debuff, probably single-target.
Technical Glitch: Disrupts skill casting, making them miss. An interrupt or silence mechanic.
Spectator Mode: Reduces one's presence and lets them enter spectator mode. No one can perceive you, but you cannot move. It was an absolute aggro-drop. A perfect stealth skill, balanced by total immobility.
Replay Value: Allows one skill that the user has witnessed to be copied. The better understood, the better used. One slot per rank. The ultimate mimicry skill. Good thing it does have some restrictions otherwise it would be too overpowered.
Exclusive Avatar: Condenses an avatar to take damage and use skills, but locks those skills for the user. A combination of decoy and clone skill huh.
And then there were the three censored skills at the bottom. Aamon gazed at those skills.
He couldn't read them. As a former tester, he knew what that meant. The prerequisite conditions to unlock or even view them hadn't been met yet. The only conditions for that would be too upgrade his talent to legendary.
In the Arcane Frontier, talents can be upgraded. But doing so isn't an easy feat. If you want to upgrade your talent, you have to achieve an almost impossible achievement, one that surpasses one's current rank and skills such as if you kill and A-rank Boss while being a B-rank Arcanist. But doing so requires immense luck ,careful planning and favorable conditions.
A heavy, guttural roar snapped Aamon back to reality. The lead Wood Troll was less than fifty meters away, its glowing green eyes locked onto him.
Aamon scrambled to his feet, but his legs nearly buckled. The surge of the awakening had given him a momentary rush, but he immediately felt the crushing reality of his rank.
He was only F-Rank. The absolute bottom of the barrel. When an Arcanist awakened, they started at F-Rank. To upgrade, they had to train their body, master their skills, expand their arcane energy pool to its absolute limit, and then absorb arcana fragments—the crystallized energy found in spatial rifts—to break through to the next rank.
Right now, as a newly minted F-Rank, his arcane energy was practically a puddle. Epic-grade talent or not, he did not have the arcane reserves to fight off three E-rank Wood Trolls. Frame Lag might slow one down, but the other two would tear him apart. Exclusive Avatar might take a hit, but then what? He had zero physical combat training in this body.
There was only one viable option for survival.
His skill Spectator Mode.
It might hide him for a while. But even if he stayed hidden, he would eventually run out of arcane energy and be exposed again. Unstable rifts were massive; he couldn't just walk out. He needed rescue.
Mind working, Aamon immediately thought of a plan. If he timed his skill right the moment the trolls neared him, he can stay hidden for a while and wait for them to leave. According to the game, the trait Jungle Hunt of Wood Trolls will not work if you are not within their pursuit anymore for 1 minute. As long as he can hide for that long and the trolls stayed away, he will survive this hellish difficulty that he was thrust in.
Still, that's not enough. Possibility of fainting when he used up his arcane reserves could occur. Given his status as an F-rank, such an event has a high possiblity of happening.
The game mechanics sometimes shows a text of the character being out of commission every time arcane reserves run out when fighting against monsters. During those times in game, Aamon had no choice but to restart fighting monsters again and fight wisely so he never runs out of arcane reserves.
So if he really transmigrated, he can't do that as there are no restart option if he went out of commission because of his arcane reserves running out. He might as well met his end just as he will just start of what could have possibly his second life. Of course, in the game there's a potion specifically for restoring arcane reserves but he jas no such item on him right now. That's why requesting for rescue is paramount so atleast he will have a back up.
Aamon patted down his pockets frantically, his hands brushing against something hard and rectangular in his jeans. He pulled it out. It was a smartphone. The screen was cracked, and the casing was different from his old one, but it was a phone.
He pressed the power button. The screen illuminated. A lock screen appeared. Without thinking, muscle memory took over, and his thumb traced his old passcode.
Click. It unlocked.
"Thank god," Aamon breathed.
He had no idea if cell towers worked inside Unstable Rifts, but in the game's lore, the organization responsible for rift disasters like this one had deployed special arcane-frequency relays across the country precisely for this reason. Even through space barriers, they can use spatial skills and items to locate the place of signal should an individual fall into an unstable rift. Such the results of thousand years of research.
He brought up the dialer and punched in the three-digit Arcanist Emergency Hotline he remembered from the game's background lore logs. He hit call.
To his absolute shock, it began to ring.
"ARIES Bureau, state your situation and location," a crisp, professional female voice answered over the static.
"Unstable Rift!" Aamon hissed, keeping his voice as low as possible as the thundering footsteps of the trolls closed in to thirty meters. "Forest biome. Three Wood Trolls pursuing. I am an unranked civilian, just awakened. I don't know my coordinates. Please, track my signal!"
"Signal locked. We are deploying an extraction team to your approximate spatial coordinates. Hide and survive. Do not engage. I repeat, do not—"
Aamon didn't wait to hear the rest. He shoved the phone deep into his pocket. The lead troll burst through a thicket of ferns, its massive, clawed hands reaching out, mere yards away.
"Spectator Mode!" Aamon thought, triggering the skill with a mental command.
Instantly, the world shifted. The colors of the forest washed out, turning into a muted, grayscale filter. The ambient noise of the rustling leaves and the trolls' roars dulled, sounding as if he were underwater.
He looked down at his hands. They were translucent, shimmering like a heat mirage. He tried to take a step backward, but his feet felt as though they were cemented to the very fabric of space. He was completely, utterly paralyzed.
The lead Wood Troll lunged, its massive wooden fist swinging directly for Aamon's head.
Aamon squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the impact that would scatter his brains across the forest floor.
The fist passed right through him.
There was no impact. No pain. Just a bizarre, chilling breeze as the monster's momentum carried it forward, causing it to stumble past Aamon's ethereal form.
The troll caught its balance and spun around, its glowing green eyes darting wildly. The other two trolls arrived seconds later, crashing into the clearing. They stopped, their heavy chests heaving as they looked around.
Aamon stood frozen, barely daring to breathe, even though he rationally knew they couldn't hear him. He watched, horrified, as one of the trolls lumbered right up to him. It was so close he could see the intricate patterns of moss growing on its bark-like skin. The creature lowered its massive head, its lack of a nose replaced by deep slits on its face, and sniffed the air aggressively.
It was standing exactly where Aamon was. Its body was clipping through his translucent shoulder.
Aamon felt a cold sweat break out across his real, physical body underneath the skill's illusion. His arcane energy was draining. He could feel it slipping away, a slow, steady leak that made him feel lightheaded and nauseous. Spectator Mode was incredibly potent, but sustaining it against the sheer physical proximity of three higher-level monsters was taxing his F-Rank core to its absolute limits.
Leave, Aamon prayed, staring into the troll's glowing eyes from mere inches away. Just leave. There's nothing here.
The trolls grunted, communicating in low, vibrating rumbles. They paced the small clearing, smashing a few bushes in frustration, searching for the prey that had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Thirty seconds passed. Aamon's vision began to blur at the edges, a harsh throbbing starting at his temples. His mana pool was hitting the bottom. If it ran dry, the skill would break automatically. He would solidify right in the middle of them.
Forty-five seconds. One of the trolls let out a frustrated bellow, turning away and lumbering back in the direction they came from.
Fifty seconds. The second troll followed.
The lead troll, the one standing inside Aamon's personal space, lingered. It sniffed the air one last time, a low growl rumbling in its chest. Aamon's heart hammered a frantic rhythm. His energy was roughly at two percent. One percent.
Finally, the creature turned and trudged after its companions, its heavy footsteps fading into the grayscale woods.
Aamon held the skill for another ten agonizing seconds, just to be sure. When his arcane energy finally hit absolute zero, the skill shattered like fragile glass.
Color slammed back into the world. The sounds of the forest rushed into his ears, deafeningly loud. The feeling of his physical body returned, bringing with it a tidal wave of exhaustion so profound it felt like gravity had been multiplied by ten.
He collapsed, his knees hitting the damp earth with a thud. He couldn't even catch his fall, his upper body slumping forward into the mud. He was panting uncontrollably, his lungs desperately trying to pull in oxygen. Every single muscle fiber in his body was screaming in protest.
His vision swam, dark spots dancing across his field of view. The adrenaline that had been keeping him conscious was rapidly evaporating, leaving nothing but an empty, aching shell.
Through the haze of his fading consciousness, he managed to roll onto his back, staring up at the slivers of twilight piercing the thick canopy above. He had survived. He had actually survived the first ten minutes in a world designed to kill its inhabitants.
But as the darkness began to completely overtake his vision, a single, lucid thought echoed in the emptiness of his mind.
Fuck. I'm going to die in this shitty forest.