The wooden mugs clinked harshly against one another, spilling golden, frothy beer that evaporated into particles of light without leaving a single wet stain on the tavern floor.
Hoarse laughter and roaring cheers filled the room, blending harmoniously with the strumming of a lute from an NPC bard by the hearth. In one of the most bustling taverns in the Lamdal Capital, a group of Players was celebrating a happy ending.
Kenji sat relaxed at the center of the round wooden table. Hovering just above his head was a line of bluish holographic text:
[IGN: Kenjiro - Brawler Lv 40]
Kenji was merely a mid-tier player.
Back on Earth, he was an accountant at a firm in Tokyo—a twenty-eight-year-old man whose eyes were permanently circled with dark bags due to endless stacks of financial reports. Orion Online was his escape, a second home where he could shed his corporate identity and become a resilient frontline fighter.
But tonight, that escape had to come to an end.
"You're crazy, Kenjiro! Are you really giving me these Crimson Iron Gauntlets?!" exclaimed his friend, a burly Warrior.
The man stared at the glowing red iron gauntlets in his hands with sheer disbelief. Kenji chuckled softly. A genuine smile bloomed across his avatar's face.
"Take them, Taro. The lifesteal effect on those gauntlets will be far more useful to you on the New Continent," Kenji said. "And you, Elara, take this Wyvern Scale Vest. You're far too fragile for a backline healer."
One by one, accompanied by the familiar chimes of the system interface, Kenji emptied his entire Inventory.
Hardened chest plates, steel knee guards, dozens of Health Potions and Antidotes, and piles of gold coins amassed from months of hunting... he gave it all away without leaving a single scrap for himself.
His friends looked at him with a mixture of profound emotion, awe, and a sense of loss.
"You're really quitting, huh?" Elara asked, her voice trembling slightly as she clutched the dragon scale vest to her chest.
Kenji leaned back in his wooden chair, rubbing the back of his neck in an awkward gesture. "Yeah, I am. Tomorrow morning... I'm getting married."
"Yuna has been far too patient watching me spend every weekend locked inside a gaming pod. Starting tomorrow, I have to be a proper husband-to-be, not just a Level 40 Brawler," he continued, his eyes sparkling.
The cheers erupted once more, feeling far warmer this time. His friends teased him about his wedding night, slapped his back hard, and raised their wooden mugs high to toast the accountant's new life.
Kenji smiled warmly. His heart felt light. The burden of today's overtime no longer tormented him because he knew that tomorrow morning, Yuna would be standing at the altar in the white wedding dress she had been preparing for months.
[SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT: THE NEW ERA UPDATE WILL COMMENCE]
[TIME REMAINING: 00:03:00]
"Time's up, everyone," Kenji announced.
He looked down, inspecting his avatar's body. Because he had given away all his equipment, the system had automatically equipped him with the default starter gear: [Tier Common - Beginner's Cloth].
It was nothing more than a set of dull brown woven fabric that provided absolutely zero defensive stats. His Inventory was now completely empty.
"Good luck conquering the monsters on the New Continent!" Kenji shouted, raising his beer mug wide.
He waved his hand, gently brushing the cosmetic silver ring on his ring finger, and muttered softly, "Goodbye, Orion."
[00:00:03]
[00:00:02]
He closed his eyes, waiting for the gentle pull that would return his consciousness to the gaming pod in his apartment, ready to welcome the dawn of his wedding day.
However, that gentle pull never came.
Instead of waking up with his back resting on a soft foam mattress, Kenji's olfactory senses were assaulted by a horrifying stench.
The musty odor of an ancient cave pierced his nose—a nauseating concoction of damp mud, rotting moss, bat guano, and moisture that smelled distinctly of rust.
The temperature plummeted instantly. The damp chill seeped through the thin fibers of his Beginner's Cloth, causing him to shiver violently.
Kenji jolted awake. His eyes snapped wide open, blinking rapidly as he desperately searched for the neon glow of Tokyo's streetlights that usually peeked through his window blinds.
Nothing. He was enveloped in absolute darkness.
"Yuna?" he called out. It was his first, fear-driven reflex.
His voice broke, hoarse and trembling, cutting through the silence. Only the echoing reflection from the damp stone walls answered him.
His right hand frantically groped the surface beneath him. It wasn't a white cotton bedsheet. His fingers grazed cold, hard stone.
Panic exploded within his chest. His heart hammered wildly, pumping blood at an erratic pace. He began to hyperventilate. Cold sweat poured from every pore on his face.
System glitch? his brain reasoned, desperately clinging to rationality. Did my gaming pod short-circuit?
"Menu!" he screamed into the empty air. "Log out! Open Interface Panel!"
Void. There was no transparent blue holographic window. No circular compass in the corner of his eye. No HP bar, no minimap, and no digital clock.
In sheer hysteria, Kenji's hands reached around to the nape of his neck.
In the real world, the manual emergency release lever for every gaming pod was located exactly at the intersection of the spine and the neck. His fingers scratched frantically through his collar, searching for the metal latch or the protective plastic button.
He clawed at his own skin so viciously that his fingernails tore through his epidermis. A sharp sting flared up instantly, followed by drops of fresh blood trickling down to his collar.
He found no wires. He only felt thick flesh, a pulsing vein, and the texture of his own skin.
The man had been thrown into a rocky cavern with no geographical coordinates, wearing only beginner's clothes, separated from his comrades, and entirely blind to his surroundings.
"NO! NO, NO, NO!"
Kenji scrambled to his feet. His legs quivered. He stumbled blindly through the darkness, groping the cave walls in search of an exit.
In a fit of utter despair, Kenji clenched his right fist tightly and punched the stone wall before him with all his might.
THUD!
He winced at the pain shooting through his hand, watching as his knuckles turned a raw red.
"GM! GAME MASTER! GET ME OUT OF HERE!" Kenji shrieked. The sheer terror in his voice shattered the damp air.
"I have to go home! I have a schedule tomorrow morning... I have a... a wedding I need to attend..."
The screams of anger slowly dissolved, replaced by heart-wrenching sobs.
As a grown man who enjoyed reading Isekai fantasy novels, the concept of being thrown into a magical world was incredibly familiar to him. Within the paragraphs of heroic fiction, the protagonist would usually embrace their new destiny with a god-like system in hand.
Yet now, standing nearly naked inside a cave reeking of bat excrement, Kenji's stomach churned with absolute terror. What pulsed through his veins was solely the despair of an ordinary human being.
Tomorrow was his sacred day. Within the darkness of the cave, his mind conjured Yuna's face. Yuna, who had prepared the wedding dress of her dreams. Yuna, who would be beautifully made up tomorrow morning, waiting at the altar for a groom who would never arrive.
He was going to leave the woman he loved most all alone, abandoning her to become an object of pity for the guests, while he remained trapped in this godforsaken place.
"Please, help me..." the accountant sobbed quietly. He rested his forehead against the cave wall, letting his body drop to its knees. "Please... send me back. Let me go home to Yuna..."
From the depths of the shadows on the cave ceiling, a sharp scraping sound echoed.
Click-clack-click-clack... The rapid rhythm resembled the tips of iron nails grinding against stone. The unnatural clicking caused the hair on the back of Kenji's neck to stand up instantly.
A nauseatingly acidic odor suddenly wafted through the air.
Kenji ceased his sobbing and looked up in horror. His eyes caught the emergence of glowing dots. Eight burning red eyes, clustered together in a terrifying arrangement.
A giant spider descended from the cave ceiling. Kenji recognized it instantly from the game. A Venomous Cave Spider.
It was the size of a horse-drawn carriage. Its carapace was forged of thick, dark purple plating. A pair of massive pincers, as thick as a man's thigh, dripped with a dense, acidic green venom.
The moment the liquid hit the ground, a loud hiss erupted, accompanied by rising white smoke.
In the game, this monster was Level 35.
The arachnid lunged from the ceiling directly at the man below. Its jaws opened wide, fully prepared to separate the accountant's head from his neck in a single bite.
Kenji's brain froze. However, his body possessed an instinct that moved on its own accord.
A fraction of a second before those jaws could pierce his neck, Kenji's posture mechanically ducked sideways with a fluidity that was physically impossible for his Earthly body to execute.
[Tier D - Evasive Step]
SMASH!
The massive monster hit empty air, slamming violently into the cave wall right where Kenji had just been.
The combat instincts of a Brawler took command. Kenji's consciousness felt split in two. Kenji the office worker was still screaming in terror, but Kenjiro the Brawler rotated his hips, shifting his weight into a perfect martial stance.
He channeled all his power from his shoulder down to his right arm muscles, and launched a straight punch directly into the monster's abdomen.
[Tier C - Heavy Blow]
In the game, this punch would have depleted the monster's entire HP bar instantly.
However, Kenji had forgotten that such a feat was only possible due to the massive stat boosts provided by his gear. Now, all his equipment had been given away to his friends.
His fist moved with lethal speed, slamming into the steel-hard shell with a bare hand.
CRACK!
SPLAT!
"AAARRRGHH!!" Kenji howled in agony.
Kenji's punch collided with the monster's shell. The impact was accompanied by a dual cracking sound. The venomous spider shrieked as its armor fractured, spraying green blood from its abdomen.
But in reality, without the protection of the gauntlet to absorb the kinetic shockwave, Kenji's fist was utterly pulverized upon impacting the monster's carapace. The skin on the back of his hand tore open, revealing the horrific sight of his knuckles and bone structure shattered into jagged fragments piercing through his flesh.
"It hurts... it hurts..." Kenji screamed, clutching his mangled hand to his chest.
The agonizing shriek of the dying spider acted as a trigger for catastrophe. It was a summons for the hive.
From the ceiling and the tunnels deep within, the click-clack-click-clack sound began to echo from every corner of the cave. More than a dozen Venomous Cave Spiders crawled out of their nests. Dozens of glowing red eyes lit up the dark.
Kenji's breathing grew frantic. The agonizing pain from his hand mutated his terror into a primal instinct for survival.
With one paralyzed hand, he forced his leg muscles to sprint, desperately dodging the snapping pincers of the encroaching swarm. Kenji fought with everything he had.
He executed a forward sweeping kick.
[Tier C - Low Sweep]
Without steel knee guards, Kenji's shin collided directly with the iron-hard joint of a spider's carapace. The monster's joint snapped, but in exchange, Kenji felt his own shin bone crack under the immense pressure.
He stumbled and fell with a groan of pure agony.
He twisted his body, using his left elbow to parry the jaws of another spider aiming for his face. But the excruciating pain in his leg slowed his reaction by half a second.
Armed with only the protection of the Beginner's Cloth, which tore as easily as paper against the pincers, a spider managed to crawl up behind Kenji. Fangs as sharp as daggers sank deep into the man's calf.
The sensation of the venom pumping furiously into his bloodstream paralyzed Kenji instantly.
In just three breaths, Kenji felt the veins burning beneath his thigh. His Level 40 muscles seized up violently.
With a roar of sheer desperation, Kenji brought up his left knee, crushing the head of the biting spider. He then tore through the encirclement of the dozen monsters before him, dragging his stiffening leg.
He crawled, navigating the tunnel toward the end of the cave.
He lunged forward, bursting through the sharp, thorny bushes at the cave's mouth. Kenji tumbled helplessly onto the forest floor, bathed in the twin moonlight of Planet Orion.
Kenji could no longer stand. His leg had completely frozen over, dead and numb. The venom had already crept its way up to his lungs.
He was now choking on every breath. Dark, tainted blood began to trickle slowly from the corner of his mouth as he coughed violently.
He didn't possess a single Antidote. He had given away dozens of those healing vials to his friends.
Kenji gasped for air. His field of vision began to blur.
From the mouth of the cave, the scuttling of dozens of legs signaled that the rest of the spider pack had caught up, completely encircling the dying young man.
Squeezing the last remnants of strength into his left wrist, Kenji slowly raised his fingers in front of his face.
On his blood-soaked ring finger rested a plain silver ring. This item possessed absolutely zero stat-boosting attributes.
It was purely a cosmetic accessory, a trinket he never took off because it served as a physical reminder not to play the game for too long, a promise to log out early for his wedding the next day.
Tears spilled over, mixing with the bloodstains on his temples. His tears dripped slowly onto the silver ring, as the crushing realization set in that he would never be able to return to the embrace of the person he loved.
"I'm sorry... Yuna," he sobbed heartbreakingly.
Kenji bent his left arm, pressing the ring tightly against the center of his chest.
He closed his eyes, desperately searching for the memory of the warmth of a woman in Tokyo, who tomorrow morning would stand alone staring at the wooden doors of a church, clutching her bouquet, waiting for a lover who would never arrive.
His vision faded to black just as a pair of fangs pierced his neck.
With the twin moons as his witness, the unfortunate accountant and Brawler met his end. He had finally learned that in this world, death was far more agonizing and lonely than a simple 'Game Over' screen.