Early in the morning, Ryan was stirred from sleep by the sound of his sister, Molly, reading aloud.
His eyelids felt glued shut, and a heavy drowsiness clung to him like a stubborn fog. For a few seconds, he stayed still, half-hoping to drift back to sleep. Then, with a sigh, he forced himself awake.
"Molly, what time is it?" he mumbled, dragging his feet as he shuffled out of his room in slippers.
"It's already past eight," Molly replied. She was standing out on the balcony, a paperback in her hands, the golden morning sun lighting her up like something out of a painting. Her smile was bright and easy.
"Past eight already? Damn, I must've slept like ten hours," Ryan muttered, stretching his arms high over his head. His joints cracked one after another, loud and satisfying.
Starting early the previous morning, he'd been logged into the game nearly non-stop, only crashing around ten the night before. Twenty straight hours of grinding had left him mentally fried.
"Where's Mia?" he asked, noticing her absence.
"She didn't sleep at all last night," Molly said, turning another page in her book. "She left a little while ago to grab breakfast. But she seemed really happy. The moment she took off that headset, she couldn't stop smiling."
Molly glanced over her shoulder and let out a light laugh. "Speak of the devil—there she is."
Sure enough, Mia came through the door moments later, humming softly as she carried in a bag of breakfast. She stopped short when she saw the two of them watching her, then gave a small, sheepish grin.
"What are you staring at?" she said, flustered. "Hurry up and eat!"
Ryan chuckled and went to wash up. Whatever had happened in-game, it had clearly gone well—Mia was glowing.
Soon, the three of them were gathered around the small dining table. Ryan sat with a bowl of warm oatmeal in hand, slowly spooning it as he glanced over at his sister.
"So," he said casually, "how'd it go yesterday? Did you clear that dungeon?"
"The dungeon was tough," Mia said, grinning as she set down her spoon, "but I cleared it!"
She was practically beaming, clearly waiting for praise. Ryan smirked and ruffled her hair.
He tried to act relaxed, but inside, he was floored.
'No way... that dungeon had stumped players for two whole days in my past life. And she cleared it? Just like that?'
He could already imagine the so-called experts from back then—banging their heads in tears.
"Mia, how'd you do it? Seriously," Ryan asked, leaning forward, his oatmeal forgotten.
"Well…" Mia hesitated, then straightened up, the giddiness in her voice softening. "At first, I tried to run it with a bunch of different teams, but we kept wiping. Over and over.
Usually, it was the tank or Paladin that couldn't hold aggro, or the healer would panic and blow cooldowns too early. Those were the most common problems with casual groups.
And because the frontline always fell apart at the start, the DPS never had a chance to do their jobs—so sometimes their mistakes didn't even get noticed.
But then, this morning, I got lucky. I joined a team of all female players. They were amazing—really skilled, and super polite. Even after wiping a few times, no one raged or blamed each other. We just kept talking through what went wrong.
Then, on the last try, we finally reached the Dreadfang Alpha. It was chaos. We were seconds from wiping again… but I started kiting the boss, and somehow, we pulled it off!"
Mia's face lit up with the pride of someone who'd just saved the world. But Ryan's mind was elsewhere—quietly breaking the whole thing down. Dozens of possible scenarios played through in his head, piecing together the most likely sequence of events.
"Let me guess," Ryan said, grinning. "The wipe started in the boss's final phase, right? Tank got killed first. Then the melee DPS had higher aggro than you, so they went down next. And in the end, it was just you and the healer left?"
Mia blinked in shock, then nodded hard.
Ryan leaned back a little, confidence gleaming in his eyes. "Didn't I tell you before? The monsters in the starting zones move pretty slowly. Even the boss is just slightly faster than a player.
So when the party started falling apart, you must've remembered that and ran for the stone steps—right?"
Mia's eyes widened even further, as if he'd read her mind.
"Once you got up there, you just had to keep running. The boss wouldn't have been able to catch you. Then you probably cast a quick spell on him—just enough to keep aggro—and jumped down."
Mia's mouth dropped open.
"And after that," Ryan continued, clearly enjoying himself, "you stood in the center of the area and blasted him with everything you had. While the boss slowly made his way back down the steps, you finished him off before he even reached you."
Mia stared at her brother, completely speechless. Then she burst out: "That's exactly what happened! You got everything right!"
She muttered it again to herself, as if still in disbelief. Meanwhile, Molly was staring at Ryan like he'd just performed a magic trick. Her eyes sparkled with admiration.
"Alright, enough talk," Ryan said with a chuckle. "Let's eat. Mia, go get some sleep after this. Rest up, then log back in later."
He quickly finished his breakfast, then disappeared into his room. A moment later, he returned holding his bank card.
"Molly," he said, handing it to her, "go to the bank later and withdraw a few hundred dollars. Just grab fast food for lunch from now on—we won't have time to cook or grocery shop. If you want to start playing too, you can try to get a virtual headset, but I'm guessing they're getting hard to find. The game's picking up steam fast."
With that, he gave his sisters a quick nod and headed back to his room, ready to dive into the game again. But just as he was about to put on his headset, he paused.
'Wait a minute... why am I still living here?'
He wasn't short on money anymore. He didn't need to stay in this cramped apartment, sharing space with his sisters. It had made sense before—just scraping by, making excuses. But now? Now it just felt wrong.
The thought lingered. He opened his contacts and found the number of a real estate agent he'd worked with before. Within minutes, he had a viewing scheduled for later that day.
Only after that did Ryan finally sit down, slip on his headset, and log in.
The screen flashed.
In the next moment, his character appeared in the graveyard outside Goldmine Town. Apparently, he'd stayed in the carriage too long after arriving, and the system had auto-flagged it as a death by inactivity—resulting in a forced resurrection.
A notification popped up: all of his equipment had lost 10% durability due to the penalty.
Ryan sighed. Not ideal—but not the end of the world either.
After all, Featherlight—his Paladin, his pride—had made it to Goldmine Town. And now, with two Glorious Achievements under his belt, the real journey was about to begin.