Kage was back to being a ghost. Perfection.

  Before taking a single step, he froze. One operation was complete. Now came the audit. His gaze flicked to the corner of his vision, his entire user interface expanding into a semi-transparent overlay.

  [Character Sheet: Kage]

  Level: 2

  Experience 0/400

  Class: Warrior

  Physical Damage: 29

  HP: 120/120

  MP: 70/70

  [Attributes]

  Strength (STR): 21

  Agility (AGI): 21

  Stamina (STA): 10

  Intellect (INT): 5

  Artistry (ART): 5

  His stats were a pittance. The numbers stared back at him, mocking the memory of the fifty gold coins that had passed through his hands moments ago. He was poor.

  His eyes scanned further, past the pathetic mana pool, landing on his equipment screen. One icon pulsed with insistent crimson.

  [Novice’s Rusted Sword]

  Durability: 5/20 (CRITICAL)

  The metal was practically vapor. Six, maybe seven solid parries, and the asset would liquidate itself into digital dust. He had run the weapon to the absolute breaking point.

  Kage closed the menu. The Legendary quest in his log beckoned with promises of world-altering secrets. The Mythic quest hinted at rewriting history.

  But the Operator’s voice cut through the grandeur.

  You cannot rewrite history with a broken sword. A Legendary quest is irrelevant if the primary tool fails.

  He had traded literal gold for a breadcrumb trail. A fascinating trail, yes, but one that didn’t pay the bills. The money from Founder’s Justice could have covered his mother’s care for months. It was gone. Wired to the real world. He was back at zero. A low-level player with a dying sword and a mountain to climb.

  Regret began to pool in his gut. He crushed it instantly. Regret was an inefficient emotional state. It was a net loss.

  He opened his map. The path back towards the starting town was a winding route through the lower-tiered section of the Whispering Woods. A beginner’s path. For him, it was merely a factory floor.

  The objective was simple: farm enough liquidation value to afford a new tool. And a spare. He needed redundancy.

  The forest on the return journey was a different beast. The system populated areas based on player density, and with thousands now flooding the start zones, the ecosystem was hyper-active.

  His first target, a [Sly Elven Fox - Level 4], appeared as a blur of russet fur.

  It was a warm-up. A transaction. Kage didn't even break stride.

  He side-stepped a lunge that would have disoriented a casual player, his rusted blade snapping out in two economical arcs. A stagger. A crit. The fox dissolved into code before it could calculate a second attack.

  [Loot Acquired]

  - [Coarse Fox Fur] x 1

  - 6 copper

  Six copper. He needed sixty-five for a sword. Ten foxes to buy one blade. The math was hideous.

  He moved on. The real test—and the real expense—crashed through the thicket a moment later.

  [Orcish Boar - Lvl 3]

  HP: 150/150

  Two of them. Muscle, tusk, and bad leverage with simple logic: point head towards the player, charge.

  The first boar lowered its head, engaging a charge animation that broadcast its intent like a neon sign. Kage stood his ground.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  As the tusks swept up, he parried.

  Clang.

  The vibration that rattled up his arm signified expense. That parry cost 1 durability. Metal shrieked against enamel, peeling away the weapon's lifespan. It was the sound of a ledger bleeding red ink.

  [Novice’s Rusted Sword] Durability: 4/20

  He didn't slash wildly. He couldn't afford the wear and tear of glancing blows. He waited for the recovery frame, the split second the AI paused to reset, and thrust into the boar's flank.

  [Critical Hit! -58 HP]

  The second boar hit him from the blindside. Kage twisted, taking the hit on his shoulder rather than the weapon.

  [-27 HP]

  Health regenerates. Durability costs money to fix. It was a willing exchange of biological assets for financial preservation.

  He pivoted, lining the beasts up to clip them both with a single swing.

  [Novice’s Rusted Sword] Durability: 3/20

  The warning light in his peripheral vision was blinking faster now. A countdown to bankruptcy.

  The first boar dissolved. The second roared, rearing back for a heavy smash. Kage had the timing. He had the angle. He thrust forward to interrupt the animation with a [Power Strike].

  The blade connected.

  [Critical Hit! -81 HP]

  And then, with a sound like a coin dropping into a sewer grate, the sword snapped.

  [Weapon Destroyed]

  The hilt in his hand was weightless. Useless. The boar, critically wounded but very much alive, recovered from the stagger, its beady eyes burning with hate.

  Kage didn’t panic. He felt a surge of cold annoyance. A logistical failure.

  He tossed the broken hilt aside. Fists were free.

  He sidestepped the gore capability of the beast, stepping into its guard. He drove a fist into its snout, then another into its ribs.

  [-8 HP]

  [-7 HP]

  Pitiful damage. It took four more seconds to whittle the last pixels of health away. The boar finally collapsed, squealing as it shattered into light.

  [You have defeated Orcish Boar!]

  [EXP Gained: 18]

  [You have reached Level 3!]

  He ignored the level-up fanfare. He looked at the loot orb hovering over the grass.

  He reached out. For a nanosecond—a glitch in his own exhausted synapses—the loot interface flashed Gold. He saw the 50 Gold icon from the Founder's Quest. The wealth that had briefly made him a king.

  He blinked. The hallucination vanished.

  [You have looted: 3 Copper]

  Three copper. The ghost of his poverty laughed at him.

  He stood over the fading corpse, flexing his bruised knuckles. He was three levels in, weaponless, and fighting for scraps. This was a shift in the coal mines.

  [Loot Acquired]

  - [Novice's Leather Boots (Common)] x 1

  An item drop?

  [Novice's Leather Boots]

  Quality: Common

  Type: Boots

  Weight: 0,5

  Armor: +1

  Durability: 20 / 20

  Requires Level: 1

  Bind Type: No Bind

  Description: Boots that make you wonder if you would be better without them.

  +1 to flat damage reduction. A marginal increase in survivability. He equipped them. The boots were ugly, stitched-together scraps of hide that looked like they smelled of wet dog. They fit perfectly with his current financial standing.

  In the distance, laughter drifted through the trees. A full party—Warrior, Archer, Mage, Priest—was grinding efficiently at the edge of the clearing. Kage watched them for a moment. The Warrior had a polished axe. The Archer’s bow was reinforced yew. They were playing the game correctly: investing time, sharing resources, scaling together.

  He was alone, hoarding copper like a dragon with a hoard of pennies.

  A howl cut through the air, deep and primal, coming from the high-level zones he had skirted earlier. A warning. The world was getting bigger, and his margin for error was shrinking.

  He turned away. He had a town to reach.

  The sleepy village of the tutorial had metastasized into Oakhaven, a chaotic, multicultural hub of commerce and noise.

  The forge district was a sensory assault. Hammers rang like frantic bells. A human player with a thick, affected accent screamed at a merchant about leather prices. A Rogue in full-face concealment leaned against a wall, desperate to look mysterious, likely unaware he looked like every other edge-lord in the server.

  It was a perfect cross-section of inefficiencies. Kage navigated the crush of bodies like a stream of cold water cutting through warm mud. He was just another Level 3 nobody, invisible in his gray starter tunic.

  He found the anchor in the storm. [Grak, The Smith].

  The massive Orc was pounding a piece of glowing steel with rhythmic, brutal violence. Sparks flew, ignoring the safety of the crowd. Kage waited. He stood in stoic silence, respecting the workflow.

  Grak plunged the steel into a trough of water. Steam hissed, smelling of sulfur and iron.

  "What you want?" Grak grunted, not looking up.

  Kage opened a trade window silently. He dumped the [Coarse Fox Fur], the [Tough Hide], and the [Boar Tusk] onto the slate. It was the sum total of his labor in the woods.

  Grak inspected the trash loot, grunted, and deposited 67 copper.

  Kage stared at the total. Combined with his previous earnings, he had just enough. He switched to the vendor tab. He scrolled past the armors he couldn't afford to the weapons he hated relying on.

  [Novice’s Rusted Sword] – 65 Copper

  He tapped the quantity selector. Something in his chest tightened. He was about to spend nearly everything he had.

  Click. Two swords.

  "Two?"

  Grak finally looked up, one bushy eyebrow raising like a drawbridge. "Most whelps can barely afford the air they breathe."

  Kage nodded. He equipped one sword, the familiar, terrible balance settling into his hand. The second went into his inventory.

  Grak let out a short, throaty chuckle that sounded like rocks grinding in a mixer. "Hmph. One to use, one to lose. Smart."

  The Orc wiped a soot-stained hand on his apron, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Kage properly for the first time. "Reminds me of the Bloodfang Legion. You carried your main axe, your backup axe, and a knife for when the axes broke. Anything less was an invitation to the ancestors."

  Kage’s mind processed the lore drop automatically. Bloodfang Legion. Military history. Potential quest hook.

  But quests required time, and right now, he was operating on a deficit.

  "Smart," Kage said, his voice dry.

  He could have asked more. He could have milked the NPC for favor. But the signal-to-noise ratio was too low. He closed the window.

  He turned to leave. The Orc seemed satisfied with the terse interaction, simply grunting and turning back to his fire. Connection averted. Efficiency maintained.

  As Kage stepped back, the chaos of the players swallowed him again.

  "Crimson Lion is recruiting! Top ten projection!"

  "Why can't I play a Selkie? The devs are trash!"

  "It’s for balance. You gotta unlock them through special world quests or something."

  The chatter washed over him. They were here to play a hero simulator.

  He melted into the crowd, his gray tunic blending with the stone walls. He was a null value in their vibrant equation.