Kael had always been most comfortable beneath the blue-hued glow of his monitor, ruling the digital wastes of Aethelgard: Eternal Dawn from the safety of his apartment. He was a veteran, his character a level 98 Shadow Knight, capable of soloing raid bosses.
Then, he went to sleep.
He awoke to the scent of pine and damp soil, sunlight filtering through a canopy that looked suspiciously high-definition. He lay sprawled on a bed of ferns, clad not in his worn t-shirt, but in the familiar, if slightly low-quality, brown tunic of a starting Aethelgard character.
"Respawn sickness?" he muttered, standing up. He instantly brought up his player status.
A familiar holographic screen shimmered into existence before him, displaying his name—Kael (Lv 1)—and his base stats: Strength 10, Dexterity 10, Vitality 10. Below the stats was the skills panel.
Core Skill:
[ERROR: Unidentified Skill Code (0xDC4F3B)]
Description: Unknown
Kael frowned. A full-on game bug? It looked like the core system couldn't even parse his main ability.
"Great. I'm stuck in a buggy tutorial zone," he sighed.
He'd barely taken three steps when a guttural snarl broke the silence. Three small, green, horribly rendered Goblins (Lv 3), armed with clubs and throwing stones, burst from the underbrush.
Kael froze. This wasn't a game interface anymore; the fear was visceral, the smell of their dirty leather armor overpowering.
The lead goblin shrieked and hurled a stone—a perfect headshot trajectory. Kael, in pure, unadulterated panic, tried to jump left but caught his foot on a root. He fell forward in a clumsy, face-first dive just as the stone whizzed past where his head had been. It struck a dead, brittle branch hanging above, cracking it clean off. The thick, dry wood plummeted directly onto the first goblin's skull, knocking the creature unconscious with a sickening thunk.
— Goblin 1 Defeated! (Overhead Obstacle Drop) —
The second goblin, enraged, charged with its club raised. Kael scrambled backwards, flailing a broken stick he'd grabbed instinctively when he fell. The movement was completely uncoordinated, a wild, wide swing aimed nowhere in particular. The stick snapped against a low-hanging vine, and the jagged, pointed fragment of wood flew off.
It hit the charging goblin.
Directly in its open left eye.
The goblin screamed, clutching its face, and stumbled backward into a thicket of thorny bushes, immobilizing itself.
— Goblin 2 Defeated! (Projectile Splinter Critical Hit) —
The third goblin, larger and clearly the leader, roared, performing a complex, powerful two-handed overhead smash. Kael didn't block or dodge. He was simply too terrified to move, dropping the rest of the stick and covering his face with his arms.
The goblin's momentum, however, was too great for the suddenly empty space. It overextended, its heavy club swinging down in a huge arc that narrowly missed Kael's cowering form. As the goblin's weight shifted, its foot slid, and it pitched forward, arms still wide from the swing.
The goblin landed, chest-first, onto a half-buried, rusting sword fragment that Kael had never noticed. It was impaled instantly, letting out a final, pathetic gurgle before going still.
— Goblin Leader Defeated! (Terrain Hazard Impalement) —
Kael stood, shaking, looking at the three defeated foes. A small, golden window popped up.
Quest Complete: Survive the first encounter.
XP Gained: 500
[DING!]
Kael's status screen flashed, turning a blinding, triumphant gold.
Kael (Lv 2)
He blinked away the afterimage, his heart still hammering. He had done nothing but fall, flail, and panic, and yet he was victorious. He had been carried by the kind of insane, statistical anomaly that should only happen once in a millennium.
He looked back at his skill panel. The error message was still there, but a new line of text had appeared beneath the bug code, almost as if the system was trying to compensate for the corruption:
Affinity:
CRITICAL CHANCE: 100%