Kael glanced up at the kid waving real money in his face.
Level 6 Warrior. Gamertag: Voss.
Something clicked into place, and his expression cooled a degree.
He knew that name from the other side of a lifetime already lived. Voss ran with a guild that would go on to make itself infamous the second the merge hit reality kidnapping rival players, forcing them into gold-farming labor, strong-arming boss spawns away from anyone weaker.
It ended exactly how stories like that end.
every major guild on the server eventually banding together just to put them down.
Kael tapped the sign on his stall without looking up.
"Gold only. No real-world currency."
Once the merge landed, actual money was going to lose its meaning fast every serious player already knew it, or would soon enough.
In-game gold was about to become the only currency that mattered. Sure, there was a short window right now where trading real cash for gold could turn a quick profit but that meant leaving a paper trail straight back to his real identity, and Kael wasn’t interested in being findable.
Not yet. Not until he could actually defend himself if it came to that.No deal was worth that risk.
Voss’s face soured. "What’s the actual difference? The server’s four hours old, where am I supposed to get gold this fast? And gold’s not even stable it’s worth ten grand right now, might be five grand by tonight."
"Gold only," Kael repeated, unbothered. He glanced at his stall timer. "Five minutes left."
"Fine twelve thousand a coin. That work?"
"Four minutes fifty."
Voss’s jaw tightened. He shot Kael a look that could’ve curdled milk, spun on his heel, and shoved back through the crowd without another word.
Kael didn’t so much as blink. He kept arranging the stall.Two minutes later, a mage in a red robe elbowed her way to the front, pointing at a stack of Iron-tier gear and the Firestorm skill book.
"I want all of this. Any chance of a discount?"Kael looked up.
Her gamertag read GummyBearBabe, and the name fit round-cheeked, doe-eyed, the kind of face built for sympathy plays. She batted her eyelashes at him like she’d rehearsed it in a mirror.
He grinned. Not fooled, not remotely annoyed either."Discount, sure. Buy a few more pieces and I’ll make it worth your while." He nudged three cheap white-grade items toward her.
"These three ring up separately at fifty, sixty, and forty silver. Bundle everything together two gold flat."Her whole face lit up.
"Oh my god, you’re actually so sweet!"
She paid without a second thought and bounced off into the crowd, thoroughly delighted with herself.
My guild captain was right works every time, she thought smugly, replaying the interaction in her head.
Nearby, someone did the math out loud.
"...A gold coin’s worth a hundred silver. She just paid fifty silver over what those white items were worth on top of everything else."
"And she left happy about it."
"Absolute scam artist, robbing a girl blind with a smile on his face."
Kael let the commentary wash past him without reaction. A few more sales trickled in over the next several minutes a couple more white-grade pieces, nothing worth remembering and when the ten-minute timer hit zero, he packed up and moved on.
Across every starter zone on the server, the same race was underway thousands of players grinding flat-out, all chasing the same prize: first to hit level 10, first to trigger the reincarnation milestone reward.
Kael himself sat at a modest level 7. Every scrap of experience he’d earned kept flowing straight into the Husk instead, exactly as planned but that math was about to shift. If he wanted any shot at that first-to-10 title, the clock was already running.
He picked up the pace east, toward Graystone Ridge.
Elsewhere, a forum post was climbing the front page fast.
"SUSPECTED SUPER BOSS SPOTTED Massive Creature Roaming "Haven’s Rest Ashwood Outpost
The attached clip was shaky, distant, badly lit but unmistakable.
A hulking, dark-purple mass moved between the trees, bone spurs catching what little light there was, each footstep heavy enough to shudder the underbrush.
Somewhere off-camera, it let out a sound that didn’t belong to anything the commenters recognized.The replies stacked up fast.
"What IS that thing."
"There’s something like that just wandering around a newbie zone?!"
"Whoever filmed this needs to get a spine, get closer next time."
"Has to be Bronze-tier minimum based on the size alone."
"Wait I passed through that exact zone earlier and saw a whole pack of Voss’s people combing the area. This is what they were hunting."
Speculation snowballed within the hour. A few players from neighboring zones reached out to the original poster directly, angling for coordinates, already making plans to chase the thing down themselves.
Someone floated the idea of a bounty for the first confirmed clear.Whatever it was, half the server suddenly wanted a piece of it.
On the road east, Kael’s expression shifted subtle, barely there.He didn’t turn around. Didn’t slow his pace.
Just let his eyes drift sideways for half a second, tracking the tree line behind him.
Someone’s following me.