A/N: Enjoy the chapter, throw some stones and leave a review!
-
A cloud of dust exhaled straight into my face, almost like the room had been holding its breath for years and finally got permission to let go.
I coughed, blinking hard. The dust tasted like stale flour and old wood. As the dust cleared, I saw the room ahead. Not small. Not huge. A student's living space. A place that had once been used, then abandoned so completely that its floor was covered in layers of dust.
"Right," I muttered. "My new home."
I forced the door open further and took a half step inside. As my eyes settled into the darkness of the room, I saw a bed sat aligned with the wall, a thin mattress still in place. An old table was placed in the centre, piled with random stationery that had never been packed away. At the very edge of the room were two bookshelves, each of their rows intertwined with cobwebs woven akin to ribbons.
Dust lined the floor in soft grey streaks that showed where air had moved and where it hadn't. A few dead spiders lay like tiny husks in the corners.
Marin's grandson's room.
'If even the spiders ended up dead, guess he really never opened this place up.'
I couldn't blame him. If my only family ran away to fight a war, I might've reacted the same way.
I let out a slow breath through my nose.
"Alright," I said, voice quiet in the stale air. "Can't really live in a dump. Let's start."
The first sweep of my boot across the floor kicked up another haze of dust that made me swear under my breath. Then I got to work.
The cleaning wasn't elegant or even sensible. At best, I could describe it as war.
I stripped the bed first, shaking the blanket and sheets until dust snowed down like I'd brought winter indoors. My eyes watered. My throat scratched. I kept going. I grabbed an old broom from the corner and started carving lines into the grime.
The table was next. The stationery was scattered in chaos. Half-used pencils. A couple of notebooks with curled edges. A stack of paper that had yellowed at the corners. I moved it all into a neat pile, wiped the table down with a damp rag, then wiped it again when the rag came away black.
The bookshelf took longer.
It was the kind of shelf that held someone's habits. Empty spots where books had been pulled out and never returned. A couple of dog-eared manuals were still wedged in the back. A cracked mug with a faint stain ring on the wood beside it.
I paused, fingertips resting on the spine of one of the books.
For a moment, it felt like I was reliving a memory. A teenager with flour on his hands, dropping onto the bed after a tough shift upstairs. Half asleep, still smelling of bread, reading by weak light and pretending the war was far away.
Then my thoughts spiralled. What was my life like at his age?
Surely by his standards, I had lived a life of luxury.
"Nevertheless, now I'm also stuck with the same circumstances as him."
Then the image slipped away and left behind only dust and the quiet weight of a room that had been waiting for its owner to return.
I exhaled, sharper this time, and scrubbed harder.
Hours passed in chunks. The kind of time that only exists when you are busy enough not to think too much.
By the time my arms started shaking from effort, the room looked different. Not new. Not pretty. But used.
The floor was swept clean. The table was clear except for a single notebook and a pencil placed neatly at the centre. The bed was remade with the least dusty linens I could salvage. I had even made an effort to wipe down the bookshelves and at least try to make them look presentable.
Looking at it now, at least the books weren't glued together with spider silk.
I stood in the middle of it and let myself breathe.
The stairs creaked above me.
I turned as a familiar grumble drifted down.
"What the hell are you doing down here?" Marin's voice called out. "So much noise."
A moment later, his silhouette filled the doorway at the top of the stairs. He held a loaf of bread in one hand and a bowl of soup in the other.
He shuffled towards me muttering the whole way, and then stopped halfway when he got a proper look at the room.
His eyes moved. Marin paused.
For a second, he didn't say anything.
Then his mouth twitched.
Not a full smile. But I could tell something softened in the lines around his eyes, as if for an instant, he'd relived years of memory in a matter of seconds.
I caught him staring, and my first instinct was to pretend I hadn't noticed. My eyes naturally drifted to the bowl and the bread.
"Hey," I said instead. "You brought food."
My stomach answered for me with a loud, humiliating noise.
Marin snapped out of his trance. He continued down the last few steps and shoved the bread and the bowl onto the clean table with a sharp thump.
"Thank you," I said, already reaching.
His hand snapped out and smacked the top of my head with two fingers.
"Ow!"
"Wash," he said.
"What?"
"Your hands," Marin repeated, voice dry. "You have been rolling in dust for hours. You think bread is immune to filth because it smells nice? Go. Wash."
I gritted my teeth. "Fine," I muttered. "Fine."
Before he could nag me any further, I rushed up the stairs. I knew I had to act fast, because I couldn't afford the bread getting cold. There was no way in hell Marin was gonna bake me another fresh loaf.
-
Marin stood by the bookshelf with his hands behind his back, his eyes drifted across the books neatly lined along its ribs. He hummed and heaved in a sigh.
Marin turned.
His eyes travelled over the room again.
His grandson's room.
What it had been. What it was now.
A small smile finally curled at the corner of his mouth. He grunted, the sound halfway between approval and irritation at himself for feeling it. Then a second later, whatever emotion he was feeling had vanished. His face scrunched up, and his eyes dropped low, wandering till they strayed towards the various nooks and crannies of the room.
He sighed, haunted by his memories.
The next second, the sound of a bell snapped him out of his thoughts. A customer had likely arrived. Marin took one last glance at the room and walked back up without another word.
-
"Damn." I ran down the stairs, hastily wiping my hands on my trousers as I grabbed the loaf. Thankfully, it was still warm.
Without further ado. I tore into the bread.
The inside was soft, dense, with that faint sweetness that only fresh bread had. I took a bite, and my brain short-circuited for a second. It was ridiculous. Bread was bread. I had eaten worse food without complaint for years.
'Was bread ever this delicious?' I took a moment to think. Maybe. Or perhaps I'd come to appreciate the small things in life after spending three weeks in an aid camp.
Eitherway, I ate more slowly after that, letting the warmth settle in my stomach. Occasionally, I dipped it in the hot soup. Even took a sip from the bowl here and there. As the cold in my fingers finally eased, the ache in my arms became bearable.
An hour later, I had devoured everything in front of me. Heck, I'd even licked the bowl clean.
"Well. Now that that's done." I wiped my hands and dragged a chair to sitdown at the centre table. "There's only one thing left to do."
I pulled the notebook and pencil towards me. It was time for a crucial task. A task I should've done weeks ago. Unfortunately, the world was harsher than I'd expected. I was struggling to barely survive. But now that I'd gotten a place to stay and a source of food, I could safely assume that at the minimum, I wouldn't die starving in an alleyway.
My eyes drifted back to the notebook, and I flipped it open.
The paper was clean. Slightly rough. The pencil felt familiar in my grip.
'I need to align my thoughts'
First, I wrote my name at the top.
Noah Reed.
I set the pencil down and forced myself to think plainly.
'First, let's get the facts straight.' I nodded to myself.
I was in Advent.
Not in the game. But in the world.
A world that, in my old life, lore-wise had ended with humanity losing.
Suffice to say, if nothing changed, it would still end that way. Why wouldn't it?
My pencil hovered again, and I started listing what I remembered. There were definitely a few key events that I recalled.
First, the Academy. Sooner or later, humanity would lose the Academy in the South. A blow that they'd find impossible to recover from. The Academy was an overarching organisation that had multiple schools in each region, but its core, a place for the top awakened to study, was in the South.
Eventually, the lower number of awakened would lead to Demon infiltration. It'd start slow. Quiet. But then it would be rampant.
A Great War would start in the North. Naturally fragmented and divided, Humanity would lose.
Finally, total war.
The Human coalition fractures. Territories start to fend for themselves.
Then, everything collapses.
'Wait'
I paused.
My eyes widened slightly as something clicked into place, sharp and cold.
The story had gone that far because the players were there.
Players had been the miracle glue in the seams of the world. The grinders who farmed demons until the streets were safe. The raid leaders who took suicidal objectives because the reward title was shiny.
They did not exist here.
I swallowed.
What happens to Advent with no players?
The answer felt obvious in the worst way.
It dies faster.
The danger of the world ending was not just greater. It was absurdly high.
I pressed my knuckles against my mouth and stared at the notes.
Then the next thought hit, heavier.
In Advent, the Hero trait belonged to players.
Not NPCs. Not civilians. Not random soldiers.
Players.
Which meant only one thing.
Right now, in this world, there was a very real chance that only I had it.
I lowered my hand slowly and looked at the pencil as if it could confirm reality for me.
The Hero trait had never looked impressive on paper. It wasn't some legendary spell that made you invincible.
But against demons, it was everything.
It was the cheat code that let you hunt them without being eaten from the inside out. The thing that kept their corruption from twisting your nature. The difference between "fighting a demon" and "becoming one."
I had it.
It was dormant.
But it was there.
I leaned back in the chair, the old wood creaking.
"This...has become difficult."
My eyes lingered on the paper I had just jotted down everything on. There were simply too many things I didn't know.
What I did know was this.
If the world were already on a path to collapse, with players present.
Then, without them, it would only crumble faster.
And if I really was the only one carrying the Hero trait.
Then this wasn't just my problem.
It was everyone's.
I picked up the pencil again.
"Alright," I whispered to the empty room. "We do this properly."
I needed a plan. Naturally, I was planning to join the academy. But to make use of everything I could, it was important I lay out all my cards. And so I began to write down the story I remembered.
Letter by letter.