Eloy read the floating options without moving his head.
[POLL: WHAT NOW?]
[A) Threaten the Director. Establish dominance.]
[B) Throw yourself out the window behind him and falls gracefully into the ground. Estabilish even more dominance.]
[TIMER: 5 SECONDS]
He checked Option B first. A speedrunner always looks at the alternate route before committing to a hard lock.
The stained-glass window behind Caldwell's desk was massive. The stone courtyard sat two stories down. Eloy was an eighteen-year-old commoner with zero status, zero levels, and absolutely no defensive modifiers. Arthur Gildhart would survive that fall on hero stat-scaling alone. Eloy would not.
Option B was out.
Option A had awful odds. Director Caldwell already had his hand wrapped around the velvet security cord. One wrong syllable, one stutter, and the academy guards would breach the doors. Eloy would spend the rest of this run rotting in a lightless dungeon, locked out of the main questline, with zero chance of beating the world record.
The chat voted with disturbing enthusiasm.
[dudefromfloripa]: man just jump
The timer ticked down. In the final two seconds, the progress bar violently shifted. Option A locked in at sixty-three percent.
[ CHAT SUPPORT ACTIVATED ]
Eloy closed his eyes for half a second and pulled up Caldwell's file from memory.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Crisis," he said.
The name hit the quiet chamber like a dropped stone.
Caldwell stopped pulling. He didn't flinch or gasp. He just froze, the precise controlled stillness of something that had spotted a bigger predator. His knuckles stayed white around the cord, completely immobilized.
Four seconds passed.
"Canceled," Caldwell said, eyes still on Eloy. "False alarm. Return to posts."
Heavy armored boots stopped just outside the locked oak doors. The metallic clanking shifted, receded, and finally faded down the corridor.
The administrative annoyance drained from Caldwell's face, leaving something colder underneath.
"What do you want, boy."
Eloy put his hands into the pockets of his coarse tunic. He'd delivered and explained game mechanics and lore-drops to live audiences thousands of times and knew the exact rhythm for the most impact for lore: one piece of data, let it land, then the hammer. Never dump the whole paragraph.
"Full name was Caldwell Crisis Hargrove," he said, keeping his voice flat. "Domain General. Head of logistics for the Dark Lord's expansion campaigns, eight-forty to eight-sixty-two. Six cities."
Caldwell didn't blink.
"You didn't lead the vanguard," Eloy continued. "You handled the supply lines. Cut those six cities off from kingdom reinforcements for two months before the sieges began. Made sure they starved first."
A muscle jumped in Caldwell's jaw.
"You were the only high-ranking officer to walk away with a clean identity." Eloy tilted his head. "The official historians called it luck."
"It was," Caldwell said.
He shook his head. "You handed the complete invasion blueprints for the Northern Front to Orin Goldenshield four weeks before the final battle. Your immunity deal was specific: new name, new posting, guarantee that Crisis Hargrove never appears on a tribunal ledger."
Eloy took one step forward.
"Meanwhile, conscripted slaves were executed for treason. The Dark Lord's daughter still faces daily reprisals for a last name she didn't choose." Eloy held Caldwell's gaze. "And you teach ethics and responsibility to the children of nobles."
The grandfather clock in the corner of the office ticked twice.
"You don't know what you are talking about," Caldwell said.
"I study a lot."
The chat scrolled rapidly, the text a blinding white blur in the corner of Eloy's vision.
[PraiseTheSun]: HE ACTUALLY STUDIED
[IsoldeSimp47]: HE DID IT FOR ISOLDE
[LMAO_cat]: bro just cited war crimes from memory
[gamerman12345]: OWN THAT FRAUD
Caldwell let go of the cord. He sat back in his heavy leather chair. He looked at Eloy, his eyes tracking over the dirt stains on the tunic, the scuffed boots, and the complete lack of a weapon. Recalculating.
"I assume you want something for your silence."
"The Phase One quest scroll," Eloy said. "I want to skip orientation."
Caldwell stared. "What."
"The scroll."
"You breached a solid wall," Caldwell said slowly. "You named my classified war record. You threatened the headmaster of the Royal Academy with treason. And your demand is to skip the campus tour."
"I don't like crowds," Eloy said. "And the process takes too long."
[TrollKing99]: SPEEDRUNNER BEHAVIOR
[LMAO_cat]: this guy is clinically insane
Caldwell opened the center drawer of his desk, reaching inside.
Eloy's muscles coiled. If it was a flintlock or a spell-tag, the run was over.
It was a rolled parchment with a red wax seal. It glowed faintly for a few seconds as Caldwell set his signature into it, then got tossed across the desk with a short, tired flick.
The heavy parchment hit Eloy in the chest. He caught it.
"I doubt this will be the end of your demands," Caldwell said.
"It is for now."
Eloy turned his back on the most dangerous man in the North Wing and walked toward the massive doors. He reached for the heavy iron handles. The locks clicked open automatically from the inside.
Eloy's hand was already on the iron handle.
He didn't turn around. Turning around invited a response, and a response gave Caldwell an opening.
"You will not walk away from this clean, boy."
The voice hadn't risen. That was the problem. People who shouted were managing their fear. Caldwell wasn't managing anything.
"For your own sake. Never speak of this to anyone else."
Eloy pushed through the doors.
[ ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: First Quest — Here We Go! ]
Eloy stood in the empty corridor. He waited three seconds. He checked the sightlines of the hallway, ensuring no guards or students were watching.
Then he let his shoulders drop, put his back against the cold stone wall, and exhaled until his lungs were empty. His knees were shaking. They'd been shaking since his boots hit the office floor.
[MayaBestGirl98]: DUDE YOU WERE SHAKING
[PraiseTheSun]: i was shaking too i understand bro
Eloy broke the red wax seal on the parchment with his thumb.
The first quest was always the same: rescue stray cats in the lower district. Rank F, mandatory across every playthrough, designed to teach basic tracking and party synergy. It served as a safe, low-stakes open-world segment. Simple. Manageable. Exactly what he needed to test his combat inputs before anything serious.
[ PRIMARY QUEST: Rescue hostage from criminal organization. ]
[ RANK: A — EXTREME DANGER. ]
[ NOT RECOMMENDED FOR RANK (E) STUDENTS. ]
Rank A. He was Rank E.
In the game, the gap between those two ranks was the gap between a tutorial dummy and a final boss encounter. Level-forty casters. Area denial spells. The kind of opposition that resets your run back to title screen.
Then he got to the hostage line.
[ HOSTAGE: Arthur Gildhart. ]
Arthur Gildhart. Golden hair, sometimes red depending on the art style and the light. Dual-element mastery. The protagonist of the entire franchise. The designated hero destined to save Aethelgard from the encroaching darkness and establish a new era of peace. The person the whole plot existed to protect.
Kidnapped.
The game's protagonist was kidnapped on day one.
Eloy read the third line of text.
[ ASSIGNED PARTY MEMBERS: Isolde Reichenbach. Eloy Vance. ]
The parchment stopped shaking in his hands. He gripped the edges so hard the paper crumpled.
He'd been running solo, no route, no recorded data, no historical strategies for Isolde's path because it had never existed in any capacity. Caldwell didn't know about the stream or the system, but he'd clearly identified two problems and solved both of them with one scroll. A Rank A mission. Two Rank E liabilities. No witnesses required.
"Arthur Gildhart," Eloy said aloud. His voice echoed off the stone walls. "The protagonist of the game is currently a hostage."
The chat feed stopped. For two full seconds, not a single line of text scrolled upward. For this specific audience, two seconds of silence was absurd.
[IsoldeSimp47]: HE KIDNAPPED THE PROTAGONIST TO KILL YOU BOTH
[PraiseTheSun]: CALDWELL JUST SENT YOU TO DIE
[TrollKing99]: the cat quest was better ngl
Eloy looked at the parchment. He looked at the two names at the bottom once more: his, and hers.
He had to go tell her about the mission.
Today.