The celebration at the Dragon's Fury Guild Hall raged well into the night. Tables were crowded with adventurers exchanging stories and raising tankards in Kaelus's name. The air was thick with the smell of roasted meat and cheap ale, and the sounds of laughter and singing echoed off the high ceiling.
Kaelus, seated at a central table with The Verdant Vandals and Guild Master Aethon Ironheart, watched the revelry with a quiet, profound contentment. The booming laughter of Gron and Aethon, while recounting the absurd tale of Kaelus claiming the subjugation quest by "accident," was a warm wave of sound.
He realized this simple, bustling environment was everything his past life had lacked. The energy of the guild hall was a complete negation of the silence that had defined his existence as Kai Nakamura.
The lights were always off.
Kai Nakamura was eighteen, technically an adult in his world, but his world was a single, dim room in a small, cramped apartment in Kyoto. This room was a hermetically sealed box, dedicated entirely to the virtual life that consumed him. The only illumination came from the triple monitors casting a sickly, flickering white and blue glow onto his pale face, illuminating the perpetual exhaustion around his eyes. The constant, mechanical hum of the aging air conditioning unit provided the only ambient noise, a sound that masked the shallow, heavy breathing of its sole occupant.
He was a ghost in his own home. He was completely alone in the apartment; his mother and father had moved to Fujisawa years ago, essentially abandoning him to his fate. They sent enough money for the apartment's rent and food—delivered in sealed containers left at the door—but that was the extent of their involvement in his life. The physical ties to his family had frayed into nothing more than automated banking transfers.
For Kai, time was measured not by the sun, which he rarely saw, but by server reset timers, the critical release of patch notes, and the endless, obsessive progression of leveling up his avatar. The outside world—school, work, the future—had slipped away so completely that it felt like a distant, irrelevant planet. He had become a dedicated hikkikomori, a social recluse who never left his room, the door secured against the world he had rejected.
There were no shouts, no arguments, and no dramatic final split with his parents, just a deep, mutual indifference that was far colder and more painful than hatred. He had convinced himself that the virtual world, where his rankings were high, his digital skills were legendary, and his avatar commanded respect, was the only place he had worth. His physical body was merely a vessel, kept alive by minimal effort, fuelled by instant ramen and caffeine. The silence of that tiny apartment was suffocating, a vacuum where love, responsibility, and warmth should have been, replaced only by the whirring of cooling fans and the electronic chatter of a fabricated reality.
The physical strain of his existence—the endless hours seated in the same spot, the poor diet, the ignored warning signs—finally caught up to him. When the heart attack took him, it was swift and brutal. His last conscious thought was a flicker of intense annoyance that his physical body was failing him during a crucial, high-stakes raid against a world boss, ruining his team's run and damaging his reputation. The blue light of the monitor was the last thing he saw before the screen of his consciousness went dark.
Kaelus blinked, pulling himself back to the present. He was smiling faintly, but the slight furrow in his brow was enough for Faelar to notice. The elf, already quite drunk and leaning back on the bench, nudged him.
"Hey, hero," Faelar slurred, her beautiful, sculpted features slightly blurred by the wine. "What's wrong? You're thinking too much."
"It's nothing," Kaelus replied, shaking his head.
Faelar pressed on, her eyes, though glazed with alcohol, fixed on his lean, heroic face. Faelar, an elf in her early thirties, possessed an alluring, matured body, with a large, enviable bust—the kind of seductive elven beauty often depicted in the fantasy novels Kaelus read in his past life. "Tell me, an outstanding man like you... do you have a wife already?"
Kaelus paused. He looked like he was in his late twenties, but he was mentally still a teenager who viewed marriage as a distant, adult concept. "No, I don't," he answered honestly.
Before Kaelus could process the suddenness of her flirtation, a new voice cut in from the side.
"You really shouldn't be bothering Kaelus, you old hag," said Seraphina Dale, the guild receptionist. Seraphina, a human woman in her mid-twenties with brown hair and a trim, curvy figure—but certainly less voluminous than the elf—approached the table, a clear challenge in her gaze.
Faelar glared, slamming her glass down. "Old hag?! You little human sprout! I have a century of youth left! You're calling me an old hag, you flat-chested twig?!" Faelar, whose elven metabolism and figure provided her with impressive natural curves, was clearly boasting.
Seraphina's cheeks flushed pink. She sharply puffed out her chest, a clear signal that she was not flat, though she was still outmatched. "Better to be fresh and fully human than an "ancient artifact" whose best years are behind her!"
The surrounding adventurers roared with laughter, fanning the flames of the argument and urging the two women on.
Kaelus blushed furiously, sinking slightly in his seat. The unexpected and public fight between two attractive women over him made him deeply embarrassed and uneasy.
Before the argument could escalate into a physical altercation, Gron quickly wrapped a thick arm around Faelar, pulling her back from the table. At the same time, Guild Master Aethon, laughing heartily, grabbed Seraphina and lifted her away.
"That's enough excitement for one night, ladies!" Aethon bellowed over the cheering crowd. "There's plenty of hero to go around... hypothetically speaking!"
Kaelus let out a silent breath of relief, recalling his past memory. He swore that he would never let himself be consumed by that kind of lonely darkness again. He raised his glass of juice in a silent toast to his new, vibrant life.
The night eventually wound down, leaving the Dragon's Fury Guild Hall in a contented, exhausted mess.