Let's hope it doesn't break. Honestly. I debugged this code more times than I care to count, patched it for testers until the word "update" lost meaning. Deadlines broken, deadlines reborn, each pushed back as far as one man working alone could push them. Impossible timeframes.
He glanced at the counter. Three million waiting, and still the room was silent. A solitude more crowded than any square.
All right… entering.
Nameless lowered the visor, its black curve swallowing the last light of the room. The helmet locked with a muted click, sealing vision, hearing, even breath into its chambered hush. Wires coiled from it like veins, binding head to chair, flesh to circuit.
The process was slow. Pulse measured, breath regulated, the faint hum of conduits threading through the frame. The system did not open with a switch. It opened only when the body gave way, when consciousness yielded.
Minutes stretched. Nameless lay in the harness of his own invention, waiting for sleep to come. The world outside dwindled to the rhythm of breath and the muted echo of his heart.
And then, at last, his eyelids sank, heavy beneath the visor.The technology demanded it: entry was not by waking, but by sleep.
The screen did not open at once.
First came the suspension: a black field, unbroken, as if no signal reached the mind. Then, slowly, a haze emerged — deep and shifting, without horizon. Clouds swelled and thinned, their surfaces pulsing faintly as though breathing.
The mist shifted hue. At moments it shone blue, cool as ice echoing across a void. At others it thickened into red, dense and fevered, as if the air itself had heated with intent. No rhythm, no pattern — only a weighing, as though the system tested his presence before granting passage.
Time itself dissolved. Seconds or hours, it did not matter. Only the flux remained: blue into red, red into blue, a breath that was not his own.
Nameless hung in the centre, thought suspended like a cursor over a world not yet born.And then he spoke, as if the mist itself carried the words.
Well… if I came in at seven and launch is at ten, that leaves me some room. Who would have thought dreams would move faster than life? One hour of sleep outside, twenty hours lived inside. More than a full day to walk the world before anyone else sets foot here. A strange advantage… solitude stretched to the scale of a kingdom. This is the final frontier.
He exhaled, though there was no body to exhale, only thought cutting through the vapour.
His voice carried like a thought unfinished.
Who needs immortality when you can bargain with arithmetic?
The mist swirled again, unhurried.
Three million waiting… and I get the early access pass.
He laughed once, short and dry.
Some perks to being the janitor of your own code.
The haze broke at last.
Nameless found himself standing on a rise of earth, the ground uneven beneath his feet. Around him stretched a quiet land: rolling slopes cut by narrow streams, their waters glinting with the last embers of sun. The fields were rough, scattered with stone and thistle, the soil dark where the furrows had been left untended.
Farther off, ridges rose in broken lines, their crests half-shadowed, their rocks pale in the dusk. A copse of trees stood to the north, their branches twisted, dark against the copper light. The air was still, save for the faint stirring of grass in the wind, and the silence carried the weight of something concealed rather than absent.
Nameless stood on a rise above the fields, the spawn of man, the ordinary entry point. But there was nothing ordinary in the weight of the land. It was a place designed for concealment — not a beginning, but the first shadow of one.
Nameless drew a long breath, the dusk pressing against his face.
So this is Montanum, he murmured, half in irony, half in awe.
The system of Primum Devir had been written so: each race bound to its soil, each birth marked by the land of its kind. The Humani could appear in three places only — the ridges of Montanum, the coasts of the old Imperium, or the desert shrines of Al Quds. The Ratioli were tied to the austere realm of Foedeus Ratzielus; the Petrosi to the stone fastness of Altum Petram; and the Sylvie to the veiled canopies of Magna Res Publica.
All others — the scaled, the crowned, the scarlet-maned, and the broken-winged — were fated to awaken in Dominium Valtus. The draconic strains belonged to the dominion of water and storm, a land of ceaseless monsoon, where the beast-born had their first breath.
Nameless glanced around the empty rise, the wind tugging faintly at the grass.
Well… first thing is figuring out where exactly I've landed.
He smirked under his breath.
That part of the system was at least well thought out. Once the flood begins, nobody will pile on top of anyone else. Each player will be scattered into a different corner of their homeland — random points, always far from the nearest city.
His eyes narrowed toward the horizon, half-shadowed ridges fading into copper dusk.
No shortcuts.
A flicker cut across his vision. The mist of dusk paused, as if the land itself waited for a word. Then came the prompt, not in text or menu, but in the rhythm of the world: a slight introversion within oneself, to access the game system, the player's internal system.
He bowed his head, breathing the word aloud, the silence binding itself around it.
Emperor.
Tilting his head, a grin curled as the word burned faintly in the air. He let out a sharp, unrestrained laugh.
Magnificent. Heh…
Only the developer could claim it first. Let the John12345s fight for scraps when they wake. This one's already mine.
His laughter echoed over the empty fields, out of place in the hush of Montanum.
He let the laughter fade, then spoke louder, as if the empty fields were an audience.
So what does that make me, then? Pre-alpha tester? Alpha tester? Pre-beta, beta… and now first to log in.
He paused, shaking his head as if amused by the obvious.
Truth is, I picked it years ago. First build, first login — when this game was nothing but broken textures and crash reports. While everyone else was still waiting for release dates, I was already running around here as "Emperor." Tonight's just me checking the tag again.
His voice echoed, dry and amused.
Three million waiting in line, thinking they'll be pioneers. And me? I'm already a veteran. Veteran of every bug, every exploit, every sleepless night.
As always, silence was the only one listening to him.
That's the only real perk of being the creator. I was here before anyone — and I'll be here after half of them rage-quit.