Asterius stared at the open cockpit of the Battle Online pod.
The soft, pulsing blue neon light cast long shadows across the small bedroom, reflecting off the sleek crimson hull like a beacon from a world he didn’t understand.
To a former God of Destruction, this capsule looked less like a entertainment rig and more like a high-tech sarcophagus.
“A borrowed body, a borrowed life, and now…
a simulated world,” he muttered, stepping up onto the raised platform.
His bare feet slipped into the cockpit.
The material was cold, but the moment his weight settled into the molded seat, the biometric sensors beneath the fabric hummed to life.
The chair autonomously shifted, adjusting to the contours of his spine.
Synthetic leather wrapped firmly around his forearms and thighs, anchoring him in place.
“Biometric scan initialized,” a smooth, synthetic voice chimed from the headrest.
“Welcome back, User: Ceres.
Synchronizing neural matrix.”
The heavy capsule hatch hissed closed, sealing with a pressurized click that plunged the room into absolute silence.
Dark velvet darkness enveloped him for a fraction of a second before a blinding flash of golden light pierced his vision.
He didn’t blink.
A God of Destruction did not flinch from light.
When the glare receded, the cramped bedroom was gone.
Asterius found himself standing in a vast, sterile white void.
Floating directly in front of him were holographic rows of text, spinning diagnostic rings, and a wireframe model of Ceres’s thin, seventeen-year-old body.
A sharp chime rang through the void.
“Warning: Neural synchronicity anomaly detected.
Brainwave variance exceeds established baselines by 400%.
Synaptic load matches high-tier combat reflex patterns.
NSR set at 100%!
Re-calibrating user profile…”
Asterius smirked.
The machine was advanced, but it couldn’t comprehend that a primordial soul was currently steering this fragile mortal vessel.
“Calibration complete.
Standard human limits bypassed.
Welcome to Battle Online, Fighter.
Prepare for drop.”
The white void around Asterius shattered like glass, revealing a monolithic chamber constructed of dark, polished obsidian.
Towering pillars of floating data surged from the floor to an unseen ceiling, casting a cold, electric-blue glow over the expanse.
In the center of this digital pantheon stood a single pane of floor-to-ceiling mirror glass.
“Biometric avatar baseline loaded,” the synthetic voice chimed.
“Fighter Ceres, you are entering the Reforging Chamber.
To comply with the Federation Martial Integrity Act, physical alterations are restricted to a maximum fifteen-percent variance from your real-world biometric data to ensure realistic motor-translation.
Please finalize your visual configuration.”
Asterius stepped forward, his bare feet making no sound against the digital stone.
He looked into the glass.
The reflection staring back was painfully underwhelming.
It was Ceres.
The boy was seventeen, but his frame looked younger, stunted by a diet of cheap convenience food and endless hours spent huddled in the dark glow of a monitor.
His shoulders were narrow and slightly slouched—a teenager who preferred to hide from the world rather than face it.
His skin possessed the pale translucence common to deep-zone city dwellers, marred by faint dark circles beneath his eyes.
His head was a chaotic nest of unruly black hair
To an ordinary observer, he looked like a forgettable civilian.
To Asterius, who had once commanded a true form forged from starlight and raw destruction, this body felt like a fragile cage of glass.
“Structural scan complete,” the system announced, a blue laser lattice sweeping down the reflection.
“Adjustments to hair, minor facial symmetry, and posture permitted.
Height modification locked within a three-centimeter boundary.”
“Maximize the height variance,” Asterius commanded.
His voice, routed through the neural interface, carried an unintentional, deep resonance that caused the floating UI to flicker.
“Adjusting…
Height increased by three centimeters.
Current stature: 1.76 meters.”
The reflection shifted.
The slight slouch vanished as Asterius forced the avatar into perfect, military posture.
The narrow shoulders squared, driven by a soul that knew exactly how to carry the weight of a battlefield.
He kept Ceres’s natural jawline and nose, but he used the visual options to strip away the signs of weakness.
The dark circles under the eyes were wiped clean.
The chaotic black hair was systematically re-rendered into a clean, sharp undercut fade that kept the strands entirely out of his line of sight.
The most profound change, however, was one the system couldn’t explicitly measure: the eyes.
Ceres’s original eyes were a dull, passive dark blue.
Asterius couldn’t change the color, but the soul within rearranged the internal focus of the digital irises.
When the avatar looked into the mirror now, those dark blue eyes held the cold, terrifying depth of a deep space vacuum.
They were the eyes of an apex predator trapped in the skin of a child.
After that he changed his hair color to a fierce red hue and equipped a black gold rimmed Venetian masquerade mask.
He surely didn’t want everyone to know his identity or else it would bring unnecessary trouble.
“Avatar aesthetics finalized,” the system droned.
“Saving profile: User ‘Ceres’.
The obsidian mirror dissolved into dark particles, and the floor split open.
A massive, circular weapon rack rose from the depths, turning with the heavy, rhythmic clanking of gears.
Dozens of standard, physical weapons hovered within the rack, categorized by historical and modern martial archetypes: longswords, spears, polearms, twin daggers, rapiers, and quarterstaffs.
“New account detected.
Initial weapon allocation: One standard steel weapon,” the system explained.
“Notice: In Battle Online, weapons carry real-world mass, density, and center-of-gravity profiles.
They possess no magical attributes, passive skill buffs, or target-tracking assistance.
Victory depends entirely on physical leverage, edge alignment, and martial discipline.
Choose wisely.”
Asterius walked slowly around the rotating carousel.
He extended a hand, his fingers brushing past balanced spears and lightweight daggers.
The physical specifications—weight, length, balance point—flashed into his mind via the neural link.
He passed over the lighter, high-speed weapons designed for fast-paced skirmishing.
His hand stopped in front of a fundamental, unpretentious martial weapon: a simple iron arming sword.
Hovering in the digital light was a straight, double-edged blade with a plain crossguard and a round pommel.
It possessed no glowing runes, no energy edges, and no balance-assist modules.
It was a cold slab of forged steel built for standard martial forms.
Asterius gripped the hilt.
“Selection confirmed: Standard Iron Arming Sword.”
The holographic weapon solidified into absolute reality.
The weight of the weapon fitted into Asterius’s virtual palm, the pod’s kinetic feedback loops perfectly mimicking the gravitational drag and inertia of three pounds of forged steel.
“`
====================================================================
[WEAPON PROFILE: STANDARD IRON ARMING SWORD]
====================================================================
– Overall Length: 95 cm
– Total Weight: 1.35 kg
– Balance Point: 8 cm from Crossguard
– Material: High-Carbon Steel Alloy
– Mechanics: Physical Friction & Kinetic Collision Engine Active
====================================================================
“`
Asterius hoisted the sword off the rack.
To an average teenager with low physical baseline conditioning, managing a blade’s inertia, recovery windows, and edge alignment without system assistance was a daunting task.
Most beginners favored short daggers or thrusting rapiers that required less biomechanical torque.
Asterius didn’t rely on system assistance to move.
He relied on perfect skeletal alignment, weight distribution, and the absolute mastery of momentum.
With a fluid, breathtakingly precise motion, he executed a silent diagonal slash through the air.
The tip tore through the void, creating a sharp *swish* that echoed off the obsidian walls.
He brought the blade to a dead stop an inch from the stone floor, completely arresting its momentum without losing his balance for a single millisecond.
The system’s tracking software stuttered.
A small text prompt flickered in the corner of his vision:
> [System Note: User executed a full-force kinetic swing without triggering posture recovery delay.
Physical motor accuracy: 99.8%.]
>
“Honest weight, clean edge,” Asterius whispered, resting the flat of the blade lightly against his forearm.
It didn’t try to auto-correct his swings or aim for him.
It would cut where he commanded it to cut, and fail where he commanded it to fail.
“Deploying starter equipment,” the voice declared as the weapon rack sank back into the floor.
“Select your preferred physical armor profile.
Note: Heavy armor offers genuine kinetic dampening against blunt trauma, but adds physical fatigue and restricts joint mobility.”
“Give me simple cloth,” Asterius said smoothly.
“No plating.
No padding.”
“Request processed.
Deploying: Standard Initiate’s Training Attire.”
A stream of light wrapped around his avatar, replacing the baseline skin with basic martial arts ring gear.
“`
====================================================================
[ARMOR PROFILE: INITIATE’S TRAINING ATTIRE]
====================================================================
– Total Mass: 1.8 kg
– Impact Protection: Minimal (Fabric Only)
– Mobility Restriction: 0.0%
– Environmental Resistance: Standard
====================================================================
“`
The gear was intentionally minimal: dark, reinforced canvas trousers, light combat boots that laced tightly to his shins, and a short-sleeved charcoal tunic made of breathable, synthetic fabric.
Wrapped around his forearms were simple cloth wraps to absorb sweat and secure his grip.
There was no body armor.
There was no helmet to protect his head, no pauldrons to absorb a downward chop, and no gauntlets to shield his fingers.
In a game governed by realistic trauma physics—where a cleanly severed artery or a cracked sternum meant an immediate defeat—wearing cloth made him completely vulnerable. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Asterius rolled his shoulders, testing the flexibility of the fabric.
It was light, tight, and didn’t restrict his joints in the slightest.
Armor was a safety net for those who intended to get struck.
In his eyes, complete freedom of movement was the only defense a true martial artist needed.
With his avatar finalized, his weapon chosen, and his gear equipped, a crisp holographic diagnostic screen projected itself in front of him.
This was the raw, unvarnished profile of the physical vessel he now inhabited in the Federation’s competitive digital arena.
“`
====================================================================
[BATTLE ONLINE – CHARACTER DIAGNOSTIC PROFILE]
====================================================================
User Registered Name: Ceres
Federation Combat Rank: Unranked (0 ELO)
Account Balance: -4,500 Federation Credits (Hardware Debt)
[NEURAL PROFILE]
-> NEURAL SYNC RATE (NSR): 100%
[CRITICAL ERROR: ABSOLUTE SYNC DETECTED]
* System Note: Zero artificial input latency detected.
Physical reaction translating to digital matrix at a 1:1 kinetic ratio.
[PHYSICAL BASELINE PROFILE (BIOMETRIC REALISM)]
– KINETIC OUTPUT (Strength): D-Rank (Average Muscle Mass / Torque)
– VELOCITY SYNC (Speed): D-Rank (Average Cardiovascular Baseline)
– NEURAL REFLEX (Agility): D-Rank (Unconditioned Reflexes)
– STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY (Durability): D-Rank (Average Bone Density)
– SYNAPTIC STAMINA (Energy): D-Rank
[EQUIPPED GEAR]
– MAIN HAND: Standard Iron Arming Sword (Steel)
– BODY: Initiate’s Training Attire (Cloth)
– MARTIAL TECHNIQUES: None Registered (Manual Execution Only)
[SYSTEM EVALUATION]
Combat Effectiveness Rating: D-Minus.
Warning: average baseline strength and cardiovascular endurance will lead to rapid physical exhaustion during prolonged exchanges.
High-risk loadout detected due to lack of armor protection.
====================================================================
“`
Asterius studied the blue text.
The simulator evaluated him based on the physical limits of Ceres’s body.
System evaluation, however, couldn’t measure the engine driving the machine.
His eyes locked onto the Neural Sync Rate: **100%**.
In Battle Online, even the most elite, genetically augmented combatants in the Federation capped their NSR around 90% to 95%.
The human brain possessed natural dampeners to protect the mind from cognitive overload when processing physical stress and speed in virtual space.
Asterius had no such limiters.
At one hundred percent sync, the digital arena was no longer a computer program; it was a physical environment completely open to his domain.
He didn’t need high physical strength stats to shatter an opponent’s guard—he knew how to target weak structure joints, redirect kinetic energy, and capitalize on fractions of a second that normal fighters couldn’t even perceive.
“Character generation complete,” the system announced, the dark obsidian chamber beginning to dissolve into pixelated streams of light.
“Fighter Ceres, entering the Standard Beginner Arena: The Trial of Iron.
Prepare for deployment in five seconds.”
Asterius let the iron arming sword rest easily at his side, his thumb flicking against the crossguard.
The dark blue eyes of the seventeen-year-old avatar gleamed with ancient, terrifying focus.
The citizens of the Federation thought this platform was just a competitive sport.
They were about to find out what happens when an ancient master of warfare enters their arena.
“Begin,” Asterius whispered.
The world went black.
The transition from the pitch-black load screen was instantaneous.
The void vanished, replaced by the roar of a simulated crowd and the blinding glare of artificial floodlights.
Asterius stood in the center of a circular, dirt-floored ring enclosed by towering stone wall elevated audience stands like an ancient coliseum —the **Beginner Ranked Coliseum**.
Across the ring, twenty paces away, his first opponent materialized in a flash of blue light.
The man was broad-shouldered, wearing mid-tier leather-and-steel composite armor, and wielding a heavy two-handed broadsword.
Above his head, his system display glowed brightly:
“`
====================================================================
[MATCHMAKING INITIALIZED – RANKED PLACEMENT]
OPPONENT: Ironclad_Vip3r (Bronze III | 14 Wins / 2 Losses)
====================================================================
“Ironclad_Vip3r rolled his shoulders, resting his broadsword lazily over his shoulder.
He glanced across the ring to inspect his opponent, expecting a fellow struggling novice.
Instead, his eyes scanned Ceres’s profile, and his expression instantly twisted from mild boredom to disgust.