A red pyramid towered over a hellish landscape filled with the broken bodies of pale-skinned homunculi.

Its four sides featured a flight of stairs, each of which led up to a fiery star situated atop the pinnacle.

An eerie mist wafted over the rest of the landscape, rising and waning in fits and starts. It hid the bodies that littered the ground—the burnt, bloodied, butchered bodies—only to reveal them again in all their glory.

An arid wind blew the stench of sulfur into my face. I tried to shield my nose and encountered a dizzying loss of sensation instead.

. . . which was just as well, seeing as I lacked arms, a face, or anything resembling a body.

I simply observed the scene, as though all parts of it were an extension of myself.

A rotation of my viewpoint revealed stationary Flame Guardians gathered in a ring around the pyramid. Their cat-like faces sat framed by beards with facial expressions capable of terrifying death itself.

Pyronodons flitted around the open sky. But, just like I’d observed in what now seemed like ages ago, the clouds didn’t move an inch as though painted in place atop a crimson canvas.

My viewpoint lurched. The ground sped up beneath me until the pyramid returned to focus. And then, the scenery adjusted, like the zoom function on a camera, until I was pressed up against the base of the stairs. A second lurch saw me shoot up the steps to the top of the pyramid, where the brazier waited with blinding fire.

Multiple blue screens hovered over the fire, moving at impossible speeds. They expanded and collapsed with such rapidity that the text blurred into an incoherent mess. A thousand of the blue screens vanished right before my sight, only to be replaced by ten thousand more. Those too collapsed before I could parse them, giving way to tens of millions.

The entire display left me feeling nauseous despite my current state of disembodiment. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the blue screens represented. And, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

The shuffling went on for a second that felt like an eternity. Blue screens sprang up and died in a process that felt like it spanned the entirety of human existence. Then, as if stopped by hand, all of the blue screens in one sector of the glitchy mess froze.

A single red screen appeared among them, bearing an emergency sign.

It vanished and was replaced by two others.

Two became four.

Four became eight.

Then many.

Red.

Red.

Red.

I woke up with a start.

Daylight filtered in from a window beside my bed, bright enough to hint at the hour.

I was back again on the straw mattress in the same hut from earlier, which wasn’t right. I strongly remembered buckling under Dread Tiger teeth. I should have been dead, and even if I wasn’t, the quest . . .

I jerked upright. The quest.

How was I still alive?

“You have Mavari to thank for that, child,” a gruff voice replied.

Nana sat in a corner of the room, smoking a pipe. The Blackreach Dagger glinted in her lap, alongside a strange object. The latter looked like a crystal ball, notwithstanding that it was completely opaque and patterned with stars.

“Mavari?” I asked, pawing at my naked chest. My entire torso sat intact beneath my fingers, as though I hadn’t been mauled by a big cat many times my weight.

The faded potion timers still hovered at the upper right corner of my vision. But, I felt great, as if the entire battle had only been a dream.

“Yes,” Nana said, puffing a stream of smoke. The heady tang of the strange substance curled through the air. “Good to know the fool girl remembers her herbalism. She forced you to feed on goblin ears, a known coagulant. Not the safest way to use alchemy ingredients, but it kept you alive long enough to be treated by a healer.”

Vague memories of bleeding out over Mavari’s back rose to the surface, as did an intense revulsion from the thought of eating raw ears.

I shoved them into the depths of my queasy stomach and opened the urgent notification that blinked in the periphery.

Warning: Spirit orbs are necessary to sustain migrant souls. Ingest one orb a day or die.

Time till next ingestion: 00:07:19.

Seven minutes?

I swooned atop the bed. The entire room blurred out of focus, leaving me alone with my heartbeat. There was no possible way I could hit level ten in the time that remained . . . unless I went full murderhobo on the Dark Elves.

The Blackreach Dagger nestled idly in Nana's lap.

No, not Nana. Someone else. Maybe the Dark Elves could provide a willing sacrifice or a prisoner on death row? If I asked nicely—

What the fuck are you thinking, Damien?

I pressed my palms against my cheeks. The awful feeling of revulsion reared its ugly head again, this time focused on me, at the depths I’d just tried to stoop to.

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Nana grabbed by the shoulders. “Hey! Are you alright?” She steadied me with strong arms and pushed me back onto the bed.

I struggled to get the words out of my mouth. “I didn’t make it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t reach level ten!”

The timer ticked down by one minute, adding to my agony.

“Are you sure about that, child?” Nana said with a wry smile. “Why don’t you summon your status sheet?”

I stared at the old lady, then did as she asked. The text box unraveled in front of my eyes.

Damien Njoku

Race: Dark Elf

Level: 10

Affinity: Fear

Class: Ranker [Potential]

VP: 28/28

MP: 25/30

Attributes:

STR 7, PER 5, END 10, DEX 10

INT 5, WIL 9, V.F 2, MGK 3

Free Stat Points: 6

Traits:

[Born of Fear], [Against the Odds], [Migrant Soul]*

Skills:

[Map], [Identify]

Abilities:

[Scaredy-cat], [Fear Aura]

I honed in on the only piece of information that mattered.

Damien Njoku. Level: 10.

“H-how?” I asked.

“How what?” Nana said with a grin.

“I blacked out at level nine!”

“That you did.” She gathered her dagger and the strange crystal ball, then returned to her seat. “I only know what Mavari told me. You two got ambushed by a goblin party, and you came to her rescue, despite being outmatched and outnumbered.”

“But, the last Dread Tiger—”

“Mavari incapacitated it, but bless her soul, that girl has more sense than I give her credit for. You might have been unconscious, but it was a simple matter of moving your limp arm through the motions. She helped you score the last hit.”

Tears welled in my eyes at that. Freaking, perfect Mavari.

“Of course,” Nana continued, “that alone wasn’t enough to get you up to level ten. You owe me a herd of Dread goats.”

“Pardon?”

Nana tapped the crystal ball in her lap. “I wasn’t about to let you die, child. Not after you had come so close to success. You better be grateful too. Dread goats are some of the toughest animals to rear, and you cost me forty of them.” She wrinkled her nose. “The village would need to get by without milk for a while—not that we needed it. Some of the hunters had begun to grow soft around the stomach.”

Her words faded into the background, drowned out by my thoughts. Pressure rose like a geyser in my throat, forming a blockade that strangled my sobs. I hadn’t done anything to deserve the help of the Dark Elves, and yet they’d helped me anyway, at great expense to themselves.

It felt . . . nice? The last time anyone had cared about my well-being, I’d been ten years old. And that incident had ended with the loss of someone I’d loved the most.

Nana’s voice cut through my musings. “You mentioned something about a deadline. You are in the clear, yes?”

Oh. Right.

I opened the [System] log. The timer on the warning had dropped down to four minutes. But, I focused instead on the most recent information in the log.

You have found the Dark Elf village.

Quest: [Lost Kinsman].

Objective complete.

[10] spirit orbs have been added to your inventory.

My heartbeat quickened. “There’s no error message.”

I returned to the home screen and browsed the waiting notifications.

Huzzah! You have leveled up.

You are now level 10!

Visit your status sheet to distribute free stat points.

And, another:

You have reached the threshold! [System] classes are now available.

Visit a World Shrine to make your choice.

Note: Until this process is completed, you can no longer level up or gain XP.

This process results in specialization which can only be performed once. Choose wisely!

Specialization, huh? Mavari had taught about that. Based on what Nana had said, the vast majority of people unlocked their inventories after the act.

I didn’t know what a World Shrine was, but my case was supposedly anomalous. The third notification proved me right:

Due to the presence of an affinity, your nature has changed from regular to ranker [potential].

You have unlocked an inventory. Never carry a bag again in your life!

“Where’s the Inventory?” I murmured.

A new table appeared in the center of my vision: a grid of some sort, five by five across. It featured a scroll bar that rolled downward to reveal a multitude of slots, certifying the claim that bags had now been rendered redundant.

A small blue crystal occupied the first slot with the number ‘ten’ scrawled in a small font right next to it. I reached hesitant fingers for the icon and gasped in wonderment as my hand sank into the grid. I withdrew my arm a moment later, complete with a single ball of an ethereal nature spinning in my grasp.

Nana took a sharp intake of breath. “Is that it? The thing you need to eat?”

“Yeah. A spirit orb . . .” I’d gleaned from experience that [System] windows couldn’t be viewed by anyone other than the user, but it seemed like Nana didn’t have an identification skill either.

I used [Identify] on the orb.

[???].

Error: This material is not recognized.

Well, that was new. What did that mean about the nature of spirit orbs if [Identify] could not recognize it?

“What are you waiting for?” Nana cut in with a humph. “You’re killing me with anticipation.”

I grinned at her impatience.

Ingest spirit orb? Y/N?

Yes.

The orb evaporated. Mist-like tendrils raced up my nostrils and into my skin, leaving me aglow. A feeling of satiation percolated in my gut, as though I’d just completed a five-course meal, loaded with haute cuisine.

You have ingested a spirit orb.

Time till next ingestion: 23:59:59.

Automate this process? Y/N?

Definitely a yes. I wasn’t scatterbrained, but I couldn’t risk the chance of death by omission. Automating the process also ensured my survival in case I ended up indisposed.

Nana watched me with hawkish eyes. “Is that it? Have you settled the doom over your head?”

“I have. How was it possible that you knew the amount of XP I needed anyway? I thought [System] windows were set to private?”

“They are, but there are other ways to share your details with others.” She raised the black crystal ball. “This here is called a—”

“Please, don’t say palantír. I don’t think my heart would survive the experience.”

“What are you on about? This is a viewing stone.”

A rather mundane name for an evil-looking crystal ball, but it served its purpose. “Would you mind showing me your status sheet?”

“Hah! You wish. I don’t trust you enough for that. Besides, this stone is too weak to fully reveal one's status. It only reveals class and level.”

Ergo, kinda like my [Identify] except more cumbersome. “Fine. What’s next on the agenda?”

Nana lowered the stone. Her beautiful features creased into a frown that distorted her tribal markings.

“I don’t think I like where this is going,” I stammered.

“You won’t because we need to talk.” The elf-matron folded her hands over her lap. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but you were murmuring in your sleep. Who killed your mother?”