Chapter 1: Welcome Back

Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Welcome Back

"Three days of rent if I stuck to rice. No, maybe four if I switched to the cheapest noodles..."

The red numbers on his banking app hadn’t budged in eleven hours, and staring at them wasn’t going to change that.

"Haaa... the world is not a nice place," Allan muttered, lighting a cigarette on the edge of the fire escape.

He pulled the smoke in deep, held it, and let it out as slowly as he could. For a few seconds the numbers on his phone stopped mattering.

The clinic ran on grants, bake sales, and donors who made sure the money never actually reached the people who needed it. Allan had stopped being angry about that a long time ago. Anger didn’t pay rent.

He heard the door behind him before he heard her voice.

"Allan," Dr. Voss said, "are you on break? Lady Amelia’s calling for you again."

"Come on, Doc. I’ve got a whole life waiting for me out here." He said it light, easy, the same forced comfort he used on every patient in the building. He was already stubbing out the cigarette, already covering the smell with a mask.

"Just stay another hour. They love you." A pause, the kind she always left before a lie. "I might have a big donation coming in today. I’ll send some your way. How about that?"

He nodded like he believed her.

He worked in a place for women who’d run out of other places to go, women who’d survived things Allan didn’t ask about anymore, because asking didn’t help either of them.

He’d been the one assigned to Amelia for months now. Mid-thirties, sharp-eyed, in a wheelchair since before he’d met her.

She lit up when she saw him. "I hope you didn’t come just for hugs."

"Would that be so bad?" He smiled the smile he kept for her specifically, warmer than the others, and he hated a little how easy it was to fake.

He crouched to hug her, and for one unguarded second it wasn’t fake at all. He felt it and put it away fast, the way he put away everything that cost him something.

"Ten," she whispered against his ear. "Like you asked."

He pulled back quickly, before the warmth could turn into anything he’d have to think about later.

Everyone has a price, and I just learned mine, it seems, he thought.

"Are you sure, Mrs. Amelia?"

She nodded aggressively.

He wheeled her toward the private room at the end of the hall, checking once over his shoulder. Dr. Voss wasn’t in sight.

Then his phone buzzed against his hip. He didn’t need to check it, that simple vibration confirmed the transfer, and something in his chest loosened that he wasn’t proud of. Relief and disgust arrived together, the way they always did now.

Thank the gods, otherwise it was going to be noodles.

The door shut. Amelia was already smiling in a way that made this easier and worse at the same time.

"You’re staying a while this time," she said.

"However long you paid for," he said, and let the door take care of the rest.

***

Dr. Voss had followed him down the hall to say something, anything, about the smoking, about the hours, about how he looked at Amelia and how Amelia looked at him. Something about the two of them unnerved her in some way.

She saw him take the wheelchair into the private room instead, and the words she’d been planning died in her throat.

Amelia doesn’t need a private exam, she thought. Why did he...

She didn’t say anything. She just watched the door shut. She walked toward the door, hoping, praying that it wouldn’t be what she was thinking.

But the moment she got close, she heard it. She heard her, and she heard him, and the noises their bodies were making.

***

By the time Allan dragged himself home, his legs were running on nothing but habit. He meant to collapse straight into bed, but his hands had other plans, they found the PC’s power switch before his brain caught up, and the VR headset warmed against his temples while his banking app loaded one more time, just so he could look at it.

Ten thousand dollars, sitting there like it had always belonged to him.

"Ten months of asking," he said to no one, "and she finally caved." He said it like a victory. It didn’t feel like guilt yet. That would come later, though he didn’t know it.

He logged into Yggdrasil, ten years of his life poured into a game that was shutting its servers down tonight. He was actually sad about this, more than about his poverty.

"Okay, it’s gaming time."

Knock! Knock!

A soft knock sounded somewhere behind him. He ignored it. Probably the neighbors again, he thought, and entered the game right away.

[Welcome back, Scoundrel of Yggdrasil]

The world assembled around him, a bedchamber sheeted in gold, two sleeping women beside him who existed only to boost his stats and pad his ego, both off-limits by the game’s own rules.

[18+ conduct not allowed]

"Ha, such a waste," he said, and got up to find the mirror instead. Black-and-red hair, half-pointed ears, a body that blurred at the middle, censoring whatever needed to be censored.

Doom!

The room shook.

[The palace is being attacked.]

"Mate, it’s the last day of the game and they’re still fighting for it," he muttered, half amused. Whoever was still down there wasn’t going to matter in a few hours anyway.

"Armor up." Golden light wrapped him, helm, chestplate, gauntlets, a full set forged from a thousand hours he’d never get back.

[SSS-tier Golden Dragon Armor Set Equipped]

"One last flex before the lights go out. Equip title — Seventh God."

[Title equipped: SEVENTH GOD]

[Reserved for the top seven players of Yggdrasil]

[All-attack: 1,000,000% fatality]

[Mortal stats exceeded]

He was one of seven. The other six had money behind them, or talent, or both. Allan had neither. He had one thing —

[Investment Class]

— and it had been enough.

From the castle wall he looked down at the players swarming the gate, chasing the final labyrinth on the server’s last night.

"There he is, the Seventh God!"

"He actually cleared the Dragon Queen’s dome."

Allan almost smiled at the noise. Almost.

"Fools," he said. "You don’t attack the boss. You invest in it." He was already gathering himself to jump—

[WARNING] [WARNING] [WARNING]

—when the screen went red.

[Calling safety authorities]

[Player forcibly logged out]

Huh, what the hell, I haven’t even killed anyone yet.

The thought was still forming when the game vanished and something hot bloomed at the side of his neck. His eyes opened onto his own apartment, his own ragged breathing, his own shirt gone dark and wet.

"What the—"

A scalpel. Buried just above his collarbone.

He coughed, and it came up red.

"You... you deserve it," said a voice he knew.

He turned. "...Doc?"

Dr. Voss stood over him, his phone in her shaking hand, the ten-thousand-dollar confirmation still glowing on the screen. "You betrayed me, Allan. Why? Why would you—" Her voice cracked. "Amelia told me everything. About your affair, about the insurance money, everything."

The room was losing its edges. He wanted to say something, an excuse, an apology, anything, and nothing came out but blood.

Wait, I didn’t even... save the game.

It was the last coherent thought he had before the dark took the rest.

[Worthy soul received]

.

.

.

Cold... so cold.

Where’s my sheets?

No warmth at all.

Did I fall asleep?

No. Doctor Voss. She—

The memory arrived whole and unwelcome: her face, the scalpel, the ten thousand dollars that hadn’t been worth what it cost.

He’d needed it. Another week without the money and he wouldn’t have made rent at all.

And still, she was the one who’d used him for a year, and she’d been the one to decide he deserved to die for it.

Haha...

He remembered her eyes. Red-rimmed, wet, and uncertain. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t have an answer for that despair in her eyes. So he said nothing, floating in whatever this was.

What happens now?

[Transmigrating soul to YGGDRASIL]

Yggdrasil?

[Analyzing soul]

[Searching for compatible class]

[Found: Investment Class]

[Merging soul with Investment Class... complete]

He felt himself falling before he understood what falling meant here. Gravity found him, then weight, then—

"—IIIIIT!" He screamed himself awake, bolting upright on a bed that was very real and very solid beneath him.

[Welcome back, Scoundrel of Yggdrasil]

The panel hung in the air in front of him, sharper than any UI had a right to be, every edge crisp, every letter close enough to touch.

"...Huh."

His hands came up on instinct, and he stopped breathing.

Blood. Dried, flaking, under his fingernails. Maybe his own blood, he checked his body, but there were no wounds.

[Status]

Name: Allan (formerly registered: Scoundrel of Yggdrasil)

Class: Investment Class

Rank: Unranked — undervalued asset

Vitality: ??? / ???

Notable Trait: Return scales with risk taken

[The Investment Class does not fight. It does not farm. It allocates.]

[Your first opportunity has not yet been identified. Patience yields dividends.]

The voice behind the text wasn’t the flat, cheerful chime he remembered from ten years of loading screens. It had an edge to it, dry, faintly amused, like it already knew something about him that he hadn’t figured out yet.

Doom!

Somewhere beyond the walls, something roared. Not a sound effect. Something with lungs.

Allan swallowed and looked around properly for the first time, gold ceiling, heavy drapes, a room built for someone important. His hands were still shaking, still stained with blood that should have washed off in the shower he’d never gotten to take.

He got up slowly, still confused. He walked toward the noise instead of away from it, because some habits, curiosity, greed, the refusal to leave money on the table, apparently survived death.

The balcony doors were already open. Beyond them, he could see it: a whole new world. A world he knew, one he didn’t belong to.

"...Yggdrasil," he said, with a small smile.

It was not a kind smile. It had never been a kind one. It seemed some things, apparently, followed you even through death.

"Alright," he said quietly, to no one, to everyone. "Let’s see what I’m working with."