Daniel was yanked out of his immersion pod by his mother for the second time.
"Look at yourself, spending every day buried in that iron coffin!"
His mother stood with her hands on her hips, the displeasure on her face entirely genuine.
"Thirty-six hours straight since Friday night! If the life-support system hadn't shown your vitals were normal, I'd have called an ambulance!"
"Mom, I was just..." Daniel rubbed his temples, which had started to throb, and tried to explain.
"Don't explain!" She cut him off.
"No matter how good a virtual game is, it's still virtual. Look at your complexion, white as a sheet. Get yourself out of there right now and breathe some real-world air!"
Daniel climbed out of the pod with little choice in the matter. He did feel a mild wave of dizziness, the kind that came from consecutive hours of high-intensity command over the Imperial Guard's forces. The mental exhaustion far outweighed anything physical.
"Go on, change into your exercise clothes." His mother tossed him a set of gear. "It's the weekend. You're not touching that game today. Get outside and move for at least two hours."
"Fine, fine, fine." Daniel knew arguing was useless.
"Don't brush me off! I'm watching the data on your fitness tracker. Two hours of actual movement, and your heart rate had better hit 140 or above!"
Face drooping, Daniel changed and was duly escorted out the front door by his mother.
---
The morning streets were cool and quiet. The urban planning in this Singularity society was close to immaculate: green belts, small parks, and public exercise facilities dotted every corner.
Daniel had no interest in any of it right now.
He wandered without direction, scrolling through the feed on his personal terminal.
The first major event of "Waaagh!!! Is Here!" had just wrapped up, a celebration marking the official free launch of "Battlefield: Warhammer 40k," and the related topics were swamping eighty percent of the entertainment section.
Analysis threads, tactical breakdowns, highlight reels, and faction interviews were everywhere.
He saw himself, the player named (I Am Not God), in a clipped segment from the final moments at Alacastar, signing the Imperial Honor Covenant.
Someone had edited it into an inspirational video called "A Mortal Frame, Yet Standing Shoulder to Shoulder with Gods." View count already past one hundred million.
He saw Scorchwind piloting a World Eater through the chaos to cut down two Astartes in brutal, rage-fueled footage.
He saw See You Tomorrow playing a Chaos sorcerer, using treachery to turn an entire squad of regular soldiers against each other in a sequence that was equal parts cold and mesmerizing.
The game's reach was spreading at a frightening pace.
Daniel scrolled through the comment sections and forums, his feelings hard to name. Some were passionately devoted to the Emperor's spirit of sacrifice. Some were drawn to the aesthetic power of Chaos.
Some were stunned by the Orks' sheer vitality, and others were plainly disturbed by the darkness at the heart of this universe.
But most ordinary players had a simpler verdict: "This game is insanely fun."
He closed his terminal and exhaled. He genuinely needed to shift his focus. After prolonged immersion in that atmosphere of total war and sacrifice, even he had begun to feel a kind of mental drag.
Where to go?
He thought for a moment, and his feet carried him, almost of their own accord, toward school.
---
City No. 3 Senior High School didn't shut down entirely on weekends. The track, gym, library, and other facilities stayed open for students, and many came in to train or study.
When Daniel walked through the school gates, the sports field was already lively. Figures sprinting and jumping on the basketball courts, shouts drifting from the football pitch, students jogging the track.
It was all full of energy, but it gave him a strange sense of distance, as though it were all a little too normal, normal to the point of feeling unreal.
He drifted through the grounds, crossed the field, and made his way into the gymnasium.
It was quieter inside, though still well occupied. There were students at the weight stations, on the badminton courts, working on the gymnastics mats.
Daniel had no particular interest in any of it and was turning to leave when he heard the sound: clear, sharp, metallic, carrying a rhythm all its own.
He followed it.
Through a glass wall, he could see the fencing hall. Two figures in white protective gear and wire-mesh masks were moving swiftly along a narrow strip, trading attacks.
Their footwork was quick and precise, their bodies controlled, and the slender blades caught the light as they sliced through the air in bright, silver arcs.
Daniel stopped and stood watching.
Fencing was enormously popular in Singularity society: elegant, steeped in ritual, demanding both technique and strategy, and not without its edge. The school had a dedicated team and had produced several nationally ranked competitors over the years.
The two on the floor were clearly skilled.
One was tall, attacking with sharp, relentless force. Thrusts, cuts, flicks, each movement carrying a clear intent to dominate, the footwork nimble, constantly pushing the opponent back and compressing their space.
The other was slightly shorter, but the defense was steady, the footwork grounded. Against the taller fighter's barrage, this one consistently deflected or slipped away with minimum motion, threading narrow windows to land precise counterattacks.
The ring of metal on metal was unbroken, punctuated by clipped breathing and the occasional short grunt.
Daniel watched, absorbed. There was something about this kind of contest, purely one-on-one, nothing but skill and will, that was entirely unlike the million-person battlefields he'd been inhabiting, yet it held the same kind of tension, the same pull.
Then, in the space of a blink, the match shifted.
The tall fencer's fast, clean thrust was parried, but instead of stepping back, the attacker pressed forward, riding the contact.
A flick of the wrist sent the blade along a tight, unexpected arc, curling around the defender's guard.
The tip came to rest, precisely, at the scoring zone just in front of the opponent's throat.
It held there, barely trembling, and did not advance.
The bout was decided.
Both fighters stepped back and saluted.
The shorter one was first to remove the mask, revealing a sweat-flushed face and a good-natured shake of the head. "Still can't beat you."
The tall fencer lifted the mask.
Daniel blinked.
The face was clean-featured and sharp, with a short-haired look, damp strands pressed against the temple, a straight nose, and bright eyes. It was Miranda, a classmate.
Miranda was the sports representative for their class, a key player on the school fencing team, and held her own academically too.
She was, in a word, the kind of student other parents held up as the standard. Daniel had never had much to do with her beyond polite acknowledgment, though he knew she trained hard.
"Oh, Daniel?" Miranda spotted him through the glass and waved with mild surprise.
Daniel pushed the door open and walked in. "Hey, Miranda."
"What brings you to the gym?" She dried off with a towel and settled onto a bench along the wall, gesturing for him to sit as well. "I've never seen you show much interest in sports."
Daniel dropped onto the bench beside her, his expression immediately deflating. "Don't ask. I got completely sucked into a game, and my mom physically pulled me out of the pod and ordered me to go exercise."
Miranda laughed at that, her eyes curving.
"She's not wrong, you know. The pod has life support and muscle stimulation, but staying in one of those for too long still lets your cardio, coordination, and actual fitness decline. Every serious competitive player still has mandatory real-world physical training. Ask any pro."
"I know, I know..." Daniel scratched his head. "But this game is just, genuinely unlike anything else."
"Oh?" Miranda tilted her head, curious. "What game has you this hooked? I remember you never cared much about games before."
"Battlefield: Warhammer 40k. Have you heard of it?" His eyes lit up as he said the name. "Full immersion. The world is enormous and also deeply, fundamentally dark. Eternal war, sacrifice, faith, despair, and then this, this light that breaks through in the worst moments, and you can't really describe it."
He was leaning forward now, hands moving with the words. "You like fencing, right? That one-on-one thing, technique against technique. This is the complete opposite end of the spectrum: battlefields of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, tanks, artillery, warships, psykers, daemons.
You might be a common trooper fighting monsters in a muddy trench, or you might be commanding an entire regiment, holding a planet that was already lost before the battle started, down to the last soldier.
It's not just playing a game. It's experiencing a completely different philosophy of what it means to be alive."
Miranda listened with genuine attention, her expression shifting from curiosity to something more focused.
"Warhammer 40k... I think I saw something about it in the news." She was trying to place it. "Wasn't it the winning entry in that Dawn Initiative competition a while back? There was apparently a lot of controversy because the content was so... dark?"
"Yes, exactly that one!" Daniel nodded with conviction. "But the darkness isn't gratuitous. It has weight.
Honestly, no amount of me talking about it will do it justice. You have to experience it yourself."
He looked at her, and an idea surfaced. "Actually, do you want to try it? It's free now. I'll take you in."
Miranda considered this briefly, glancing at the time. "The team doesn't have group training tonight. I was going to put in two hours of solo practice..."
She paused, then looked up at him, a corner of her mouth rising into something that read like a challenge.
"All right. Take me in and show me this world of yours."
"But I'm setting one condition in advance." She picked up her foil and executed a textbook lunge. "If I go in and it turns out to be less interesting than you've made it sound..."
"You'll stab me with that?"
"No." She lowered the foil and said it plainly. "I'll decide that real fencing is more interesting after all. And you'll owe me two full hours as my sparring partner, as compensation for my time."
Daniel smiled. "Deal."
They agreed on nine o'clock that evening.
Walking out of the gymnasium, Daniel looked up. The sunlight was just right. The breeze was soft without being warm.
He found himself genuinely looking forward to it: what would happen when someone who had spent years pursuing victory through precision, elegance, and control in the real world stepped into the chaos, the darkness, the vastness of the Warhammer universe?
Would Miranda enjoy it?
Which faction would she choose?