Free Web NovelChapter 2: The First Blood
Gabriel woke up gasping for air.
The neural helmet fell to the floor with a metallic clang as he gripped the edge of his makeshift bed.
His chest rose and fell violently while cold sweat ran down his neck.
The familiar smell of dampness, rusted metal, and burnt cables inside his tiny apartment slowly brought him back to reality. The faint light filtering through his cracked window helped him regain his senses.
Gabriel could barely hear the noise outside. His ears rang with a painful tinnitus.
He looked down at his trembling hands. To his relief, they were still human. Still normal.
But he knew something was wrong...
His body felt heavy, as though he had been running for hours.
No. Worse than that.
It felt as if something had slowly drained the energy from his bones.
"What the hell was that...?"
The AI’s voice still echoed inside his head.
Incompatible identity.
Impossible.
And the name... Amazias Von Tepes.
Gabriel rubbed his temples.
A bug? A helmet malfunction? Some kind of malware?
His hand felt freezing cold against his face.
Then he remembered the old man from the black market. Old Bob.
"He said people started seeing strange things after using it..."
An unpleasant sensation crawled down his spine.
For several seconds, he stared at the helmet lying on the floor... black, silent, motionless. freewebnovel.cσ๓
It looked like nothing more than an empty shell.
And yet... Gabriel could not look away.
Eventually, he stood up.
He needed air.
---
Lower Neo-Atlas never slept.
The metallic streets were filled with industrial steam and sickly neon lights. Massive pipes ran across the buildings like artificial veins while police drones watched from above.
Gabriel walked slowly through the crowd.
Nobody paid attention to anyone else.
A man slept beside a heated pipe, covered in synthetic newspapers.
Two children fought over scraps of food printed from cheap protein paste.
Further ahead, an automated ambulance remained parked beside a corpse covered by a gray sheet on the sidewalk.
Too many dead.
Too much hunger.
Too many broken people.
Gabriel looked up at the massive screens suspended between the buildings.
They all talked about the same thing.
The Heaven Above All.
The opportunities were limitless... clans, legendary items, auctions, conquered cities.
The bridge between ascending into heaven or continuing to sink through hell.
The entire world seemed obsessed with that game.
And there were reasons for it. Because inside it... everyone could become something more.
They could become important. Powerful. Useful.
While outside...They were nothing but forgotten numbers feeding an endless system built on misery and inequality.
Gabriel looked away from the giant screens.
His stomach hurt. He had not eaten since morning, and he probably would not eat that night either.
Every last credit he owned had disappeared into that defective helmet.
A desperate gamble.
And even so, his feet eventually carried him back to the apartment.
Because there was something worse than hunger... Remaining insignificant.
***
The room was still dark when he returned.
The neural helmet remained where he had left it, its shell gleaming faintly.
Gabriel stood motionless for several seconds.
He could choose to ignore it. Lie down and sleep. Accept the loss... and continue living his miserable life.
But then he remembered that feeling.
That strange moment inside the game, when the AI hesitated.
When that name appeared inside his mind.
Amazias Von Tepes.
His heart began pounding again. He felt fear. It was curiosity, ambition, and hunger silently convincing him.
"One more time..." he murmured.
He picked up the helmet with both hands. The metallic surface was still ice-cold as he slowly placed it on his head.
CONNECTING...
Once again, that familiar silence disconnected him from the outside world.
The screen remained black for several seconds.
Gabriel swallowed nervously, afraid the damaged technology inside might completely fail.
But suddenly, the darkness turned red.
A deep crimson, like blood spreading across water.
SYNCHRONIZATION ERROR.
REESTABLISHING SESSION.
USER ACCEPTED.
The pressure inside his head returned.
And the world disappeared.
---
When Gabriel opened his eyes, he was no longer in the beginner village.
The place surrounding him felt completely unfamiliar.
He stood up abruptly.
A narrow, damp alley stretched before him, built from black stone. Dark puddles spread across the ground.
The walls were covered in worn symbols. And somewhere far away, bells echoed beneath endless rain.
The environment felt hostile.
There were no players. No smiling NPCs. No tutorial.
Only fog and darkness.
The air smelled of mold and old blood.
It reminded him of the hidden alleyways back in the city.
Then a window appeared before him.
Unlike the usual blue or white quest windows, this one was crimson.
UNIQUE AND IRREPEATABLE QUEST.
"What...?"
The letters looked as though they had been written in liquid blood.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
THE FIRST BLOOD
Classification: UNIQUE EXISTENCE
Description:
Find the Seer Witch and uncover the ancient secrets.
When gothic castles still reeked of aristocracy...
When the moon still shone hidden from the sun...
Follow the clues until you uncover the Ruin of the Blood Aristocracy.
Warning: This quest permanently alters the player’s destiny.
Accept?
[YES]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Gabriel had to read it twice.
He had never heard of quests like this before.
And receiving one before even finishing the tutorial was unheard of.
The system’s wording sounded ancient.
Like fragments screaming a mystery. A hidden message buried beneath centuries of manipulation.
A sharp pain pierced his forehead.
He could not understand the source of the disturbance, but strange images repeated inside his mind.
Fragments.
A massive table illuminated by candlelight, nobles laughing while music echoed through the hall. Wine glasses endlessly filled and emptied.
A deep voice whispered:
Men... The nobility does not rule through kindness.
It rules because the world needs predators.
Gabriel braced himself against the wall, gasping.
The images vanished in an instant, but an inexplicable knowledge remained behind.
He began understanding information that had never belonged to him.
His gaze slowly drifted through the alley.
He could identify escape routes, blind spots, shadows... freewebnøvel.com
Instincts he had never possessed before.
Then he heard footsteps.
He lifted his head.
At the end of the alley... someone was watching him.
An old woman wrapped in black rags stood motionless beneath the rain. Her white eyes looked dead.
And yet... they were fixed directly on him.
The woman slowly smiled, revealing blackened teeth.
"You have finally returned... my Count."
Gabriel’s heart skipped a beat.
And the old woman began to kneel.
