The motorcycle engine roared, slicing through the campus murmur. My hands gripped the handlebars so hard that my knuckles turned white under my gloves.
I didn't look back. I didn't say goodbye. Only one thing existed in my mind—a countdown: twelve minutes until the servers opened.
I released the clutch, ready to bolt, but a figure blocked my path.
"Move it, Yui," I warned. My voice was muffled by the helmet, but it carried a very real threat. "I have no patience today."
My best friend didn't flinch. Instead of stepping aside, she held up a white envelope with exasperating calm.
"Aren't you even going to ask about this?" Her tone wasn't melodious; it was sharp. "It's your letter of recommendation, Ichika. You left it behind. Again."
The engine roared once more—an impatient beast between my legs.
"If you don't get out of the way in three seconds, I'm going to run you over."
"And if you do, you'll never get into your internship," she countered, stepping toward the front wheel instead of backing away. An ironic smile curled her lips. "You have strange priorities for a genius, you know?"
I snorted, flipped up my visor, and snatched the envelope from her hand, crumpling it as I stuffed it into my jacket.
"Thanks. Now, get out of the way."
"Don't let your virtual addiction rot your brain before graduation," Yui said, finally stepping aside with a mocking bow.
"No promises."
I flipped down my visor. The real world, with its recommendation letters and gray responsibilities, vanished. I floored it, leaving behind the smell of burnt asphalt and my only friend, as the speedometer needle climbed as fast as my anxiety.
The ride home was a blur of lights and pavement. I don't remember parking or climbing the stairs. My consciousness only returned when the metallic sound of the key turning in the lock broke the trance.
I stepped inside and double-locked the door. The silence of the hallway welcomed me.
No one was home. Mom was likely still out, and my sister, as usual, was probably wasting time with her boyfriend. It was better that way. I didn't have the energy for lectures or for saving her from her own disasters. I had emptied my bank account for this moment, not to play happy family.
I locked myself in my room—a sanctuary that smelled of stale air and synthetic jasmine. I stripped off my uniform with the urgency of someone shedding a skin that no longer fit, changing into light athletic wear. My physical body had to be invisible; comfort wasn't a luxury, it was a technical requirement.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"Initiate Nexus System."
Physical reality was overlaid with a layer of augmented reality. A translucent menu floated before my retinas, and with a mental blink, I selected the golden icon I had been waiting for for years: Aetheria.
I waited.
Ten seconds passed. An entire minute.
I frowned. Loading screens on a full-immersion console? It was absurd. The neural connection was supposed to be instantaneous.
As the progress bar crawled agonizingly slow, I closed my eyes. I didn't want to be myself in there. I was sick of the curious stares, of being the "exotic" one. None of my light hair or those eyes that screamed "foreigner" from miles away.
In Aetheria, I would be different. I had spent hours designing my new face: black hair, dark eyes, soft features—beautiful. This time, I would be my 100% Japanese version. Common. Indistinguishable. Perfect.
Suddenly, the game logo flickered—a red flash that lasted a fraction of a second before stabilizing.
[WARNING: Synchronization successful. Assume resting position.]
I let myself fall back onto the mattress, obeying the machine. The world went dark. Gravity, the feel of the sheets, and the beat of my own heart vanished in an instant.
Floating in the darkness, my mind began to build expectations: the sun of the starting village, the NPCs, forming a guild...
Then, reality fractured.
There was no epic music. There was an impact. A sharp, brutal pain exploded in the back of my head, as if someone had struck me with an iron bar.
"Shit!"
The scream rasped in my throat. I clutched my head by instinct. Real pain? The sensory limiters had to be failing.
I forced my eyes open.
The world was a blur of shadows and stroboscopic flashes. I tried to sit up, but my body weighed a ton.
"Something's wrong..." I muttered. My voice sounded thick. "Exit. Emergency logout."
I made the hand gesture to summon the menu. The interface appeared, floating in the stale air, but the logout option had been erased. I opened and closed the menu three times, my fingers trembling over the holograms. Nothing.
A chill that was anything but virtual ran down my spine. My vision finally focused, and horror set in. I wasn't in a medieval inn. I was lying on a metal gurney in a room that reeked of rust and dried blood. Around me, dead machines and broken jars littered the floor like a technological graveyard.
"Stay calm, Ichika," I told myself, forcing logic. "It's just a rendering bug."
I summoned the menu again. This time, a sidebar slid out, displaying my name, level, and critical health.
I swiped the interface away and crawled toward a cracked mirror in the corner, desperate to see my new avatar's face.
"This can't be..."
The figure in the reflection stared back with a terrified but painfully familiar gaze.
There was no black hair or dark eyes.
There was the blonde hair, dirty and tangled. There were the mint-green eyes I hated so much. And beneath a tattered white gown that barely covered my voluptuous frame, my real skin prickled from the cold.
The game hadn't given me a new body. It had dragged me, exactly as I was, into this hell. I pinched my cheek hard, praying to wake up.
A sharp, hot sting pierced my skin. The pain brought back a cruel certainty: this was real.
A scream shattered the deathly silence, making the laboratory walls vibrate.
My chest tightened painfully.
It wasn't an ambient sound effect. It was pure terror.
"Exit... I want out..."
I summoned the menu frantically, my fingers clawing at the empty air. Nothing. Another scream, closer this time. Then a third, deafening.
"Please, let me out!"
My voice cracked. I crawled toward the door and peered into the hallway, where flickering lights illuminated a nightmare.
A humanoid figure advanced slowly. It wore no clothes—nor skin. It was a grotesque mass of raw muscle and exposed bone, an anatomical map of pain dyed in deep crimson. Its dark, tangled hair floated around a face that defied sanity: a single eye glowed with a feverish, hateful orange light, while the lower half of its face simply didn't exist.
In its place, a massive maw, filled with multiple rows of jagged teeth, stretched from ear to ear like an eternal wound.
Above its head, my death sentence floated in red letters:
[Level 60. ?????]
I froze. Its single eye rolled in its socket and locked onto me, relentless.
Suddenly, a noise to my right broke the tension. A girl came running out of an adjacent room, tripping over her own feet.
The monster turned into a red blur. It lunged at her with terrifying speed, sinking those impossible jaws into her shoulder. Blood splattered across the metal floor, accompanied by a wet, sickening crunch.
"Help me, please!"
Her screams were unbearable. My logical brain screamed for me to run, but my body reacted on instinct. My fingers closed around a heavy glass jar on the floor, and I threw it with all my might.
The glass shattered against the beast's exposed skull.
The monster let go of the girl and slowly turned its flayed body toward me.
"Shit..." I whispered, terror turning my blood to ice. "I shouldn't have done that."
I tried to back away, but it was too late. An invisible impact shoved me with brutal force. The cold floor met me, and an instant later, the monster's dead weight pinned me down.
Its face—that nightmare of teeth and tendons—was inches from mine, dripping fluids onto my gown.
"Get away!"
I screamed, my tears mixing with cold sweat. I pushed against its wet, slippery flesh in desperation, but it was useless. The creature tilted its head, its orange eye drilling into my soul, and opened its jaws right for my throat.
Then, time broke.
The creature's jaws stopped millimeters from my skin. It didn't pull away; it simply froze in mid-air, like a paused recording, while its orange eye continued to drill into me without blinking.
A bright blue rectangle overlaid the nightmare vision.
[SERVER UNDER MAINTENANCE. INITIATING FORCED REBOOT.]
A sob escaped my throat—a pathetic mixture of laughter and tears.
"Thank God..." I gasped, feeling my muscles melt onto the cold floor. "It's over."
Adrenaline gave way to fury. I was going to get out of there. I was going to demand a full refund, compensation for psychological damages, and then I was going to burn the console in the yard. I would never touch this damn game again in my life.
But my relief lasted only as long as the blink of an eye.
The darkness didn't return me to my room. It enveloped my vision like a shroud of liquid asphalt—suffocating and absolute. I tried to move, to scream, to manually disconnect, but my limbs didn't exist. I was trapped in a data limbo, where fear continued to throb in my real chest with the force of a war drum.
Seconds stretched, turning into eternal minutes.
Just when despair threatened to fracture my sanity, a new message broke the void, shining with surgical clarity:
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT]
"We deeply regret that your initial experience has been compromised. A Critical Seed Anomaly has been detected: a future expansion event has erroneously merged with the starting zone.
After analyzing security protocols, we have determined that a mass logout is unfeasible without causing permanent neural damage to users. Therefore, the server will remain active in its current state.
As compensation for the inconvenience, an enemy stat readjustment has been applied, and a Premium Support Package has been deposited into your inventory.
Our final recommendation is simple: give it your best, players. And when you wake up..."
A chill ran through my soul as I read the last line, which flickered in an ominous red:
"...run for your lives."