The clinking of wooden mugs clashed loudly, spilling frothy golden beer that evaporated into particles of light without leaving a single wet stain on the tavern floor.
Hoarse laughter and cheers filled the room, blending harmoniously with the strumming of a lute from the 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 in the middle of the round wooden table. Hovering right above his head was a line of bluish holographic text:
[IGN: Kenjiro - Brawler Lv 40]
Kenji was merely a mid-tier player.
On Earth, he was an accountant at a firm in Tokyo—a twenty-eight-year-old man whose eyes were constantly rimmed with dark circles from mountains of financial reports. Orion Online was his escape, a second home where he could discard his worker identity and become a formidable vanguard fighter.
But tonight, that escape had to end.
"You're crazy, Kenjiro! You're really giving these Crimson Iron Gauntlets to me?!" exclaimed his friend, a burly Warrior.
The man stared at the pair of blazing red iron gauntlets in his hands with disbelief. Kenji chuckled softly.
A sincere smile bloomed on his avatar's face.
"Take them, Taro. The lifesteal ability of those gauntlets will be far more useful to you on the New Continent," Kenji said. "And you, Elara, take this Wyvern Scale Vest. You are far too fragile for a healer in the backline."
One by one, accompanied by the familiar clinking sounds of the interface, Kenji emptied his Inventory.
Hard chest plates, steel knee guards, dozens of potion bottles and antidotes, to stacks of gold coins from months of hunting... he gave everything away, leaving nothing behind.
His friends looked at him with a mix of emotion, awe, and a sense of loss.
"You're truly quitting, huh?" Elara asked, her voice trembling slightly, clutching the dragon scale vest to her chest.
Kenji leaned back in his wooden chair, rubbing the back of his neck with an awkward gesture. "Yeah. Tomorrow morning... I'm getting married."
"Yuna has been patient far too long watching me spend my weekends inside a gaming pod. Starting tomorrow, I need to be a good husband-to-be, not just a Level 40 Brawler," he continued, his eyes sparkling.
Cheers erupted once more, far warmer this time. His friends teased him about his wedding night, slapped him hard on the back, and raised their wooden mugs high for the accountant's new life.
Kenji smiled warmly. His heart felt light. The burden of today's overtime no longer tortured him, for he knew that tomorrow morning, Yuna would be standing at the altar in the white wedding dress she had prepared for months.
[SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT: NEW ERA UPDATE COMMENCING]
[TIME REMAINING: 00:03:00]
"Time's up, my friends," Kenji said.
He looked down, staring at his avatar's form. Because he had given away all his gear, the system automatically equipped him with the default [Tier Common - Beginner's Cloth].
It was merely 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 cheered, raising his beer mug wide.
He waved his hand, stroked the silver cosmetic ring on his ring finger, and muttered softly, "Goodbye, Orion."
[00:00:03]
[00:00:02]
He closed his eyes, awaiting the gentle pull that would return his consciousness into the gaming pod in his apartment, ready to welcome the dawn of his wedding.
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 an incredibly foul stench.
The musty odor of an ancient cave pierced his nose—a nauseating mix of wet mud, rotting moss, bat guano, and rust-scented water vapor.
The air temperature plummeted instantly. The damp humidity seeped through the thin fibers of his Beginner's Cloth, making him shiver.
Kenji jolted awake. His eyes snapped wide open, blinking rapidly, trying to find the glow of Tokyo's neon streetlights that usually peeked through the gaps in his window curtains.
Void. He was surrounded by darkness.
"Yuna?" he called out. His voice was hoarse and trembling, cleaving the silence.
Only the echoing reflections from the wet stone walls answered.
His right hand frantically groped the surface beneath him. It was not a white cotton bedsheet. His fingers felt cold stone floor.
Panic exploded in his chest. His heart beat wildly, pumping blood rapidly. He began to hyperventilate. Cold sweat poured from every pore on his face.
A system glitch? his brain thought, clinging desperately to rationality. Did my gaming pod short-circuit?
"Menu!" he yelled into the empty air. "Log out! Open Interface Panel!"
Nothingness. There were no transparent blue holographic windows. There was no circular compass in the corner of his eye. No HP bar, no mini-map, and no digital clock.
In hysterics, both of Kenji's hands grabbed the back of the base of his neck.
In the real world, the manual emergency release lever of every gaming pod was located right at the intersection of the spine and the neck. His fingers scratched frantically through the collar of his shirt, searching for the metal hook or protective plastic button.
He scratched the skin of his own neck, so hard that his fingernails tore the outer layer of skin. A stinging pain spread instantly, followed by drops of fresh blood trickling down his collar.
He found no cables. He only felt thick flesh, pulsing veins, and the texture of his own skin.
The man had been thrown into a rocky cave, wearing beginner's clothes, separated from his friends, and completely blind to his surroundings.
"NO! NO, NO, NO!"
Kenji stood up. His legs trembled. He staggered through the darkness, groping the cave walls in search of an exit.
In despair, Kenji clenched his right fist tightly, then punched the stone wall before him hard.
SMASH!
He winced, feeling a jolt of pain in his hand as he saw his fist redden.
"GM! GAME MASTER! GET ME OUT OF THIS PLACE!" Kenji screamed. His terror-filled voice shattered the air.
"I have to go home! I have a schedule tomorrow morning... I have a... wedding I must attend..."
Those angry shouts slowly faded, replaced by heartbreaking sobs.
As a grown man whose hobby was reading Isekai fantasy novels, the concept of being thrown into a magical world was highly familiar to him. Within the lines of heroic fiction paragraphs, the main character would usually excitedly accept their new fate with a divine system in hand.
But now, standing nearly naked in a cave reeking of feces, Kenji's stomach churned with terror. What pulsed through his veins was solely the despair of an ordinary human.
Tomorrow was his sacred day. In the darkness of the cave, his mind pictured Yuna's face. Yuna, who had prepared her dream wedding dress. Yuna, who tomorrow morning would be beautifully adorned, waiting at the wedding altar for a groom who would never arrive. He was going to leave the woman he loved most all alone, becoming the object of pity for the invited guests, while he was trapped in this place.
"Help me..." the accountant sobbed softly. He rested his forehead against the cave wall, letting his body drop to his 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 was heard.
Click-click-click-click... A rapid rhythm of movement resembling the tips of nails scraping against stone.
That eerie clicking sound made the hairs on the back of Kenji's neck stand up instantly. A nauseatingly sour smell suddenly wafted down.
Kenji stopped sobbing and looked up in horror. His eyes caught the appearance of points of pure terror. Eight glowing red eyes, clustered in a horrifying arrangement.
A giant spider monster crawled down the cave ceiling.
Kenji instantly recognized it from the game. [Venomous Cave Spider].
Its size was that of a horse carriage. Its carapace consisted of thick, purplish-black plates. A pair of giant pincers, as thick as a human thigh, dripped with dense green venom.
The moment the liquid dropped and touched the ground, a hissing sound was heard, accompanied by white smoke.
In the game, this monster was Level 35.
The spider monster leaped from the ceiling, lunging at the man below. Its mandibles opened wide, ready to separate the accountant's head from his neck in a single bite.
Kenji's brain froze. Yet, his body possessed an instinct that moved on its own.
A split second before the mandibles pierced his neck, Kenji's posture mechanically ducked to the side with an agility impossible for his body on Earth to perform.
[Tier D - Evasive Step]
BAM!
The giant monster lunged into empty space, crashing into the cave wall behind where Kenji had been.
The combat instincts of the Brawler took command. Kenji's consciousness seemed split in two. Kenji the office worker was still screaming in horror, but Kenjiro the Brawler rotated his hips with a perfect foundation stance.
He channeled all his power from his shoulders down to his right arm muscles, and launched a straight punch toward the monster's abdomen.
[Tier C - Heavy Blow]
Inside the game, this punch would deplete the monster's entire HP bar instantly.
However, Kenji forgot that this was only possible due to the massive stat boosts provided by his gear. He had given all of his equipment away to his friends.
His fist moved at lethal speed, striking a shell as hard as steel with his bare hands.
CRACK!
SQUELCH!
"AAARRRGHH!!" Kenji screamed, howling in agony.
Kenji's punch slammed into the monster's shell. The impact was accompanied by a double cracking sound. The venomous spider shrieked as its armor cracked, spurting green blood from its abdomen.
But in the real world, without the protection of a gauntlet to absorb the kinetic recoil, Kenji's fist was completely shattered upon colliding with the monster's carapace. The skin on the back of his hand tore open, revealing a horrifying sight of his entire knuckle bone structure crushed into splinters piercing outward.
"It hurts... it hurts..." Kenji shrieked, pressing his mangled hand to his chest.
The agonizing shriek of the dying spider became the trigger for doom.
It was a call to its swarm.
From the ceiling and tunnels, the sound of click-click-click began to echo from every corner of the cave. More than a dozen [Venomous Cave Spiders] crawled out of their nests. Dozens of red eyes glowed brightly.
Kenji's breathing turned ragged. The pain from his hand transformed his fear into pure survival instinct.
With one crippled hand, he forced his leg muscles to run, evading the pincers of the monster swarm. Kenji fought with all his might. He executed a forward sweeping kick.
[Tier C - Low Sweep]
Without steel knee guards, Kenji's shin collided directly with the joints of a spider's carapace, which was as hard as iron. The monster's joint snapped, but in exchange, Kenji felt his own shinbone fracture.
He stumbled and fell with a groan of pain.
He twisted his body, using his left elbow to parry the mandibles of another spider aiming for his face. However, the pain in his leg caused his movements to slow down by half a second.
Protected only by the Beginner's Cloth, which tore easily under the slash of a pincer, a spider managed to crawl up from behind Kenji. Dagger-sharp fangs sank deep into the man's calf.
The sensation of venom pumping forcefully into his bloodstream paralyzed Kenji.
Within three breaths, Kenji felt his veins burning beneath his thigh. His Level 40 muscles instantly convulsed.
With a roar of despair, Kenji raised his left knee, crushing the head of the biting spider. Then he tore through the encirclement of the dozen monsters before him, dragging his stiff leg.
He crawled, navigating the tunnel at the edge of the cave.
He lunged forward, pushing through the sharp thorny bushes at the cave's mouth. Kenji fell, rolling helplessly onto the expanse of the night forest soil, bathed in the moonlight of Planet Orion.
Kenji could not rise again. His knees had completely frozen numb. The venom had crept up, reaching his lungs.
Kenji was now choking with every breath. Blackish blood slowly began to trickle from the corner of his mouth as he coughed.
He had not a single antidote potion. He had given away those dozens of healing bottles to his friend.
Kenji gasped for air. His field of vision began to blur.
From the cave's mouth, the sound of dozens of legs signaled the rest of the spider swarm had caught up, surrounding the dying young man.
Squeezing the remaining strength in his left wrist, Kenji slowly raised his fingers to his face.
On his blood-soaked ring finger, a plain silver metal ring encircled it. This item possessed absolutely no stat-enhancing attributes.
It was purely a cosmetic item, a trinket he never took off because it was a reminder ring for him not to play the game for too long, and to log out quickly for his wedding the next day.
Tears now spilled over, mixing with the bloodstains on his temples. His tears fell softly onto the silver ring. Realizing that he would never be able to return home to the embrace of the person he loved.
"Forgive me... Yuna," he sobbed heartbreakingly.
Kenji bent his left arm, pressing the ring tightly to the center of his chest.
He closed his eyes, desperately searching for the memory of a woman's warmth in Tokyo, who the next day would stand alone staring at the wooden doors of a church, clutching a bouquet of flowers waiting for her lover who would never arrive.
His vision went dark right as a pair of fangs pierced his neck.
With the moonlight as his witness, this poor accountant and Brawler met his end. He had come to understand that in this world, death could feel far more painful and lonely than a Game Over screen.