A/N: Throw some stones AND LEAVE A REVIEW!
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I started writing where everything had started for me before.
I wrote a single line and underlined it twice.
PLAYERS STARTED AS THIRD YEARS.
I paused after writing it, frowning.
That had always been strange to me. Most games didn't do that, but Advent was unique. It dropped you into the Academy already at the end. Lore-wise, you were a third year, almost ready to graduate.
You woke up in a third-year dorm, band on your wrist, a schedule in your hand, and a teacher who shoved you some easy intro missions. It would all come to an end with the intro boss fight.
I remembered it too clearly.
A combat trial against an instructor. The final "intro" mission. The boss fight the game used to check if you were ready to be let off the leash. As a VR game, the combat was very immersive. Which was why the first half of the intro was teaching you skills, and the second half was this boss fight.
It wasn't just a test of damage. It was timing. Movement and how well you truly knew the class you picked. Staying calm when you were being beaten in a 1v1 versus a boss with far better skills than you.
I tapped the pencil against the page.
Unfortunately, since I started as a third-year student in the game, I did not know how the Academy here operated at the start. If this entrance test I had heard about was similar to the tutorial.
"Hmmm. It'll be difficult"
It could be anything. A stamina trial, a mock battle? Who knows.
Regardless, in the game, once you beat the boss fight, the next step was mercenary work. Players started going around the open world and doing odd jobs. Subjugation, demon hunting, and the work. Anything and everything was a mission in an open-world game.
After that, there would be the Hunts in the South.
For a while, the game had been a slow burn. Players hunted demons hiding in the south. Quiet nests in basements. Corruption disguised as cults. Strange disappearances that were never really disappearances if you knew where to look.
You found them. You killed them. You got paid. You levelled. You unlocked more of the world.
I clicked my tongue as the memory flashed in my mind.
"Right after that, was the academy blowing up, huh."
I pressed harder with the pencil until the tip squeaked.
I remembered the patch that had come with it. The way the zone changed. The way the music shifted, like the world had stopped pretending it was safe.
By the time players realised what was happening, it had already happened.
The Academy fell, and the game stopped being "adventure" and started being war.
I drew a rough map shape on the page without thinking. Not accurate. Just directions. The war that happened was at almost every front and every region.
But in the end, everything came to settle in the North.
Eventually, no matter what front you ran, the story funnelled you there. Players could pretend they had choices, but the world had been built to funnel them into that frozen wasteland.
I paused, pencil hovering.
The reason had been a twist that made people argue on forums for months. A sudden alliance that was never really an alliance.
Vampires and the other non-humans finally stopped fighting each other long enough to stand against humans.
Which led the Werewolves and some other factions to stand with Humanity.
"I remember that." I sighed, "The war didn't stop anyway. Not like we could overpower the demons."
Eventually, the demons would assassinate our key figures, and Humanity would become fragmented. This would be followed by a gruelling war across the servers. And finally.
"The last raid."
The pencil stopped.
I stared at the page until I couldn't think of anything else.
That was the spine. That was the broad shape. It was ugly, but it was there.
"Wait." I gripped the pencil tighter. My thoughts spiralled.
"In the game, the story had reached that far because players were there to shove it forward."
Players were the absurd, relentless labour force that the world balanced itself around.
Here, there were no players.
Only me sitting in a basement room with a notebook, trying to figure out if the future I remembered was about to happen faster because the world had lost its most convenient miracle.
"Shit. I didn't think of that." I swallowed and flipped to the next page. If I couldn't rely on this chain of events, I needed to instead focus on something else.
If the world were going to fall apart, it would not fall apart randomly.
It would fall apart around people.
Around anchors.
In Advent, there had been seven.
Seven "main" figures that the story kept orbiting, whether you liked them or not. Seven lives that the demons kept trying to snuff out because the world revolved around them.
I wrote the heading:
THE SEVEN.
Then I started listing everything I remembered about them in the lore. These seven individuals were all graduates of the academy. In a sense, they were peers of the players.
1. DARIUS VALE: A Mercenary and an orphan of war. He served as the NPC that led players into missions, which hunted new kinds of demons and figured out their weaknesses. In a sense, players treated him like a journal. All I could really recall about his design was that he used a great axe. Sometimes a Halberd.
2. ADRIAN KADE: A player's favourite NPC. Primarily because he was responsible for giving players bounties. Though the missions were always crazy hard, you always made bank. This NPC was strange as he was among the few to use constructs and spells together.
3. ELIAS ROWAN: The Battle-mage. More so, the elemental magic NPC. Players always hounded this NPC because he gave out skills and missions that helped them get to the next rarity.
4. NICO SELWYN: Didn't know much about him. But he was the "scouting" NPC. The one who could find demons hiding. His missions were always assassinations.
5. MIRA HALSTON: The greatest healer in the game. This NPC was basically the only reason the game was playable. Not only did she sell potions, but she also sold "healing spells" that let players survive the tough boss fights.
6. KAI ASHCROFT: This NPC was crazy. Might as well call him the main character of the story. All magic, even demonic. The only one who could fight demons without needing the Hero trait. He was also among the few who taught "melee" skills to players. His main role was issuing us raids.
7. SARA KEENE: The Northern sentry. This NPC was the strategist for the players. She issued missions to defend, subjugate or abandon areas on the map. Though I wasn't exactly sure what she did beyond that, since she was a key NPC, I didn't want to forget her.
I stopped writing and stared at the list.
Seven names. Seven lives. Seven targets.
In the game, they had been the main NPCs. They had been story anchors. They had been convenient, reliable, always there when you needed to pick up a quest or unlock a new skill.
Here they would be… people. Real people.
Breathing. Bleeding. Maybe even hiding from demons that wanted them dead.
And the worst part was, I had no idea where any of them were.
No idea if they were even alive right now.
No idea what time period I had arrived in.
But one thing was obvious.
The Academy was still standing.
The Academy still existed as a building, as a system, as a place people talked about like it was real.
That meant I was early. But I wasn't sure how early.
I leaned back in the chair and let my head rest against it.
"For all I know, the Academy could fall tomorrow."
My breath fogged faintly in the basement air. My first move was already decided. I needed to get into the Academy.
The Academy was growth. And I needed growth fast.
I flipped to another page and wrote a new heading: ENTRANCE TEST.
I had heard about it in scraps. In soup lines. In murmurs at camp. In Marin's half-jokes that weren't really jokes.
There was a test for those who were not recommended to the academy.
But currently, the problem was simple.
In Advent, players never took it. For now, the only thing I could focus on was what I knew.
"The tutorial probably comes closest to a test from the academy, I guess."
In Advent, the tutorial had been a trap course. A race dressed as training. A way to make sure you could move, react, and coordinate.
Still.
I could not rely on one theory. I had already considered a combat trial.
In my playthrough, my weapon was a spear.
If the entrance test had combat, even limited combat, I needed to train my spear skills.
Properly.
My physique still came first. It was the foundation. I couldn't expect to react or move fast enough for it to matter, since all my stats were in the dump. I activated [Insight]
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[NAME]
NOAH REED
[STATS]
Strength: F
Agility: F
Constitution: F
Intelligence: E
Perception: E
Charisma: F
[VITALS]
Vitality: F
Stamina: F
Mana: F
[GIFTS]
INSIGHT: RANK EX
HERO: RANK F (DORMANT)
[SKILLS]
ENDURANCE: Rank E
Knife Work: Rank E
I sighed, and my voice reverberated.
"Alright," I read through my stats once more. "Feels a bit unreal that I really gotta start again."
I stood up, stretched my shoulders, rolled my neck, and immediately felt the dull ache in my arms from cleaning.
Then my eyes landed on the bookshelf.
It looked cleaner now. I walked over, fingers trailing along the wood. A thought echoed in my mind.
'Marin's grandson had studied down here.'
Marin had said it offhand, but he had said it.
"Could it be.." My eyes narrowed as I slowly looked through the books.
Maybe the entrance test wasn't just physical. I mean, at its heart, the academy was a school.
"There might just be a written component."
A comprehension piece. Geography, history, and basic law. I wasn't sure.
I pulled a book at random and opened it.
I focused, just slightly, and felt the familiar pressure behind my eyes as Insight stirred.
Small text stamped itself onto the book in my mind as clean, simple tags.
[BOOK TAGS: BASIC LINGUISTICS, WRITTEN STANDARD, GRAMMAR][DIFFICULTY: MODERATE]
I blinked once, surprised.
I slid the linguistics book onto the clean table, then reached for another.
[BOOK TAGS: GEOGRAPHY OF THE HUMAN COALITION, FRONTLINES, REGIONAL BORDERS][DIFFICULTY: LOW]
A third.
[BOOK TAGS: HISTORY OF THE HUMAN COALITION, THE TERRITORIES, COALITION FORMATION][DIFFICULTY: MODERATE]
A fourth, thinner, with a battered spine.
[BOOK TAGS: CADET ENTRANCE PREPARATION, ACADEMY REGULATIONS, PRACTICE QUESTIONS][DIFFICULTY: VARIABLE]
My breath caught.
I stared at the thin book with wide eyes.
Of course, why hadn't I thought of looking through the books? There had to have been a guide for some students looking to apply.
I picked it up carefully and flipped it open.
The first page had handwriting on it. Faded. Not elegant. Just a name. Though I couldn't make it out to anything legible.
I closed the book and set it on top of the others.
Geography. History. Language. Entrance preparation.
The basics.
The world was bigger than my memories, and my memories were not enough.
I looked back at my notebook on the table, at the seven names I had written, at the crude outline of the future.
Then I looked at the stack of books.
Knowledge and strength. I need both.
Both.
I exhaled slowly. "Alright. Let's get to studying."