Noen's eyes snapped wide as he stared at the crimson text on the screen. He squeezed them shut again, his head falling back. "This is it. Me? On the deadliest island in the world? Alone?"
He let out a long, ragged breath and forced himself upright. "Well... maybe my system just wants to send me there just to send me back or something." He shook his head immediately. "Who am I kidding? I'm not that much of an optimist."
The system flickered again, glitching even more violently than before. The text danced between legible words and a mess of meaningless question marks. Noen squinted, trying to catch the words before they vanished.
[Blade: Duskfang required. Spawning now]
Suddenly, a sharp blue light crackled in the palm of his hand. The light solidified, gaining weight and texture until it formed into a sleek, black-and-blue blade.
[Duskfang]
[Traits: +15% Poison Damage]
Noen flipped the knife around its axis with a practiced flick and sighed again. "I guess I don't have a choice. It's either 100% death or 99% death," he muttered. Without another word, he leaped from the wreckage and into the water, swimming toward the dark silhouette of the island.
As he swam, figures continued to appear and vanish in the periphery of his vision. But the giant Beast was nowhere to be seen. Maybe they actually defeated it, Noen thought, a small, grim smile forming as he moved through the water. At least there's that.
After a few minutes of battling the tide, Noen dragged himself onto the dark, jagged shore of the island.
[Destination reached.]
[Achievement: Achieving Quests. Complete!]
[Click here to see reward.]
Gasping for air, his lungs burning from the swim, Noen reached out and tapped the screen.
[Reward loading...]
A loading bar appeared, but the progress was agonizingly slow, barely moving an inch. "Seems like this is going to take a while..." Noen thought.
As if on cue, another window popped up to the right of the loading bar, glowing with a sinister aura.
[Obligation Quest: Defeat the Bloodcrown Rider.]
"That sounds like nothing but trouble," Noen whispered. He tightened his grip on the hilt of Duskfang, the cool metal grounding him against the terror rising in his chest. "I have no choice... I'll find this Rider... and I'll kill him."
Noen pushed deeper into the woods, the sleek metal of Duskfang easily slicing through the thick vines and oversized leaves blocking his path.
"Nothing out of the ordinary so far..." he muttered, trying to steady his breathing. He flicked his wrist to open the system interface. The loading bar was still there, glowing a pale, mocking blue.
"It hasn't moved a single millimeter," Noen sighed, hacking through a low-hanging branch. He closed the window with a sharp swipe. "What kind of reward takes this long to load anyway? A whole new body? A nuke?"
He was still grumbling to himself when a sound cut through the rustling of the leaves.
Noen froze. He whipped Duskfang up, gripping the hilt with both hands as sweat began to sting his eyes. "Is someone there? Hello?"
The forest offered no reply.
"That has to be him," Noen whispered. He took a hesitant step toward the noise, but then he stopped. A thought flickered in his mind. He pulled up the quest log one more time:
[Obligation Quest: Defeat the Bloodcrown Rider.]
He studied the text intensely. "Wait a minute... it says 'Obligation,' but it doesn't actually mention 'Death' in the failure conditions for this specific one." A spark of rebellious hope lit up his face. He closed the system with a smirk. "What if I just... don't?"
Noen spun on his heel and started sprinting back the way he came. "YOU CAN'T MAKE ME RUN TO MY DEATH! HAHA!"
He grinned, retracing his steps through the path he had just carved, feeling like he had finally outsmarted the machine. He was gaining speed, almost back to the shore, when—SLAM.
His nose collided with something hard and cold. The impact sent him flying backward, landing hard on his backside. "Ow, ow, ow..." Noen groaned, clutching his face. "A wall? Here?"
He crawled forward to take a closer look. His eyes rolled back in frustration. The "wall" wasn't stone or wood; it was a translucent, shimmering barrier made of hexagonal tiles, glowing with the exact same UI design as his system.
"Great. Fantastic. I'm literally boxed in," Noen snapped, grabbing his head. He looked up at the sky, screaming at the invisible force controlling his life. "YOU WANT ME TO RUN TO MY DEATH, YOU STUPID SYSTEM?! FINE! YOU WIN!"
He scrambled to his feet with sudden, manic energy. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he sprinted back toward the noise, his grip on Duskfang tightening until his knuckles turned white. He leaped over rotting logs, ducked under jagged branches, and tore through the foliage.
Noen burst through the final layer of brush and skidded to a halt, his breath hitching in his throat.
There it was: the Bloodcrown Rider.
The creature was a nightmare of red muscle and fur, perched atop a majestic horse that shimmered with an unnatural, blinding gold. Atop the rider's head sat a crown fashioned from liquid, pulsating blood that seemed to hover just above its brow. It gripped a gargantuan blue staff, and as its eyes locked onto Noen, its mouth split into a wide, predatory grin.
The pressure in the air was suffocating. Even with his stats, Noen felt the "Aura" radiating off the creature—a heavy, crushing weight that made his skin crawl and his lungs feel tight.
"Damn... that's a lot of aura," Noen whispered, his legs trembling.
Then, the Rider charged.
But it didn't move like a normal living thing. It glitched.
The golden horse would leap forward, then suddenly snap back a few inches. The sound of its hooves hitting the dirt was hollow and delayed, echoing from the trees behind Noen instead of the path in front of him. The entire image of the rider flickered in and out of existence, stuttering through the air like a corrupted video file. It moved in a "tripping," jerky motion, yet it was closing the distance with terrifying speed.
Noen didn't have time to wonder why it did that though.
He dug his heels into the dirt, holding Duskfang out in front of him with both hands. His heart was screaming run, but the system's wall was behind him. There was only one way through.
"COME AT ME IF YOU DARE!"