I woke up feeling like someone had stuffed my body inside a meat grinder, turned it on low, then politely put me back together with duct tape and regret.

Everything hurt. Arms. Shoulders. Back. Even my fingers ached from gripping that rusty pickaxe for hours.

I groaned and sat up, rolling my neck. My entire body cracked like a glowstick. Neat.

Across the cell, my cellmate—some older, ragged NPC with dead eyes and a permanent scowl—watched me without a word. No greeting. No acknowledgment. Just quiet judgment.

I ignored him and stretched, testing my limbs. Sore, yeah, but… not as bad as they should be.

And then—

DING.

A translucent notification popped up right in front of my face.

> [Strength +1]

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

…Wait. What?

I sat up straighter, my exhaustion momentarily forgotten. That was an actual stat increase. A real one. No level-ups. No skill upgrades. Just my physical body adapting to the grind.

This was new.

Most VRMMOs didn’t work like this. In normal games, you put points into stats when you leveled up. Maybe drank a buff potion. Not this. This was closer to…

Shit. This was like going to the gym in GTA San Andreas.

Like, do enough reps, and boom—you get swole. No menus. No allocating points. Just straight-up training-based progression.

I flexed my hand, gripping and ungripping my fingers. Did I actually feel stronger? Hard to tell. But the system sure thought I did.

Across the cell, my roommate just shook his head like he could already tell I was about to start some dumb shit.

I grinned. This changed everything.

After a while, the mind-numbing repetition actually started helping.

Pick up the pickaxe. Swing. Hit rock. Feel like shit. Repeat.

It gave me time to think.

At first, my brain focused on survival stuff—how to make the work suck less, how not to break my wrists on every swing, how to keep my breathing steady so I didn’t pass out. Basic things.

Then my thoughts drifted.

Why the hell was a high-level player like Mortreign running a forced labor camp?

I stole a glance at the nearest guard—just another armored goon with a ‘punch first, ask questions never’ approach to life. But these guys weren’t the masterminds. They were just enforcers. Grunts.

No, the real question was what we were actually mining.

I looked around at the walls, the tunnels stretching into darkness, the piles of chipped stone being hauled away by prisoners who looked half-dead.

It wasn’t just mindless labor. This had a purpose.

Were they stockpiling rare ores? Hoarding crafting materials? Funding some underground market?

Whatever it was, it was worth enslaving players and NPCs alike.

That part was still messing with me.

In most games, NPCs had scripted roles, predictable behaviors. They didn’t suffer. They didn’t exist outside of their questlines.

But these guys? They weren’t just filler. They were scared. Exhausted. Beaten. Real.

And then there were the players.

Mixed right in with the NPCs. No special treatment. No easy way out.

Which meant one thing—this wasn’t part of the game’s intended design.

I kept swinging. Kept thinking.

The thug from earlier—the one who tried to scam me outside the city—he’d acted like he belonged to something bigger. “The right people,” he’d said.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Then there was the shady teleporting bastard who handed me the package. He wasn’t just some random quest-giver. He was plugged into something serious.

And then there was the word—Excidium.

Everyone who heard it reacted the same way. Like it meant something. Something bad.

I exhaled slowly, setting my jaw.

Shadow Land wasn’t a starter area.

It wasn’t just a weirdly designed MMO city with a broken economy.

Someone had taken control of it. Twisted it. Locked it down.

And now I was neck-deep in whatever the hell was going on here.

The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was.

Not the good kind of quiet, like a peaceful night or a deep forest. No, this was the kind of quiet that sat heavy in the air, pressing down on everything. The sound of pickaxes hitting stone echoed through the cavern, but there was no conversation, no idle chatter—just the slow, endless rhythm of people too exhausted to do anything but work.

I kept swinging, my arms burning from the constant motion. Every now and then, my grip slipped, and I had to readjust before I lost the pickaxe entirely. My body was screaming for a break, but I had already learned the rules of this place. You stop, you suffer. Simple as that.

Then, just a few feet away, someone collapsed.

Not a dramatic fall, no cries for help—just a quiet, tired slump as their body finally gave out.

For a moment, nothing happened. The other prisoners barely reacted. The ones closest to him just kept working, their gazes fixed forward. Like they had seen this before. Like they knew what came next.

A guard sighed. The sound of boots scraping against dirt.

I didn’t look directly, but I saw him move past me, stopping next to the fallen prisoner. There was no checking for injuries, no concern. Just a long moment of silence before the guard crouched down and grabbed the man by the collar.

Then he dragged him away.

No one even looked.

It was like he had never been there at all.

I swallowed, my grip tightening around my pickaxe.

This wasn’t just some game mechanic. This wasn’t an NPC fading out of existence like in normal MMOs.

This was something else. Something worse.

I forced myself to keep working, swinging at the stone like nothing had happened.

A few feet away, a younger player—the only other one I had seen in hours—was staring. He was pale, his eyes wide, his fingers clenched so tightly around his pickaxe that his knuckles had turned white. It was obvious he was still waiting for someone to step in.

For a quest to trigger. For the game to tell him what to do.

For someone to save that guy.

No one did.

I saw it hit him in real time. The realization sinking in, shattering whatever expectations he had left.

No help was coming.

No system message. No NPC rushing to intervene. No divine justice.

This wasn’t just some temporary punishment.

This was real.

I exhaled, adjusting my grip again.

I wanted to say something to him. A joke. A reassurance. Something to snap him out of it before he got himself killed.

But I didn’t.

Because right now? There was nothing to say.

I kept working, feeling the weight of the pickaxe in my hands, the ache in my arms, the sting of blisters forming on my palms.

I wasn’t strong enough yet.

I wasn’t fast enough yet.

Was I mad?

Yeah.

I wanted to kill someone.

Not in a stupid, hotheaded, oh wow I’m so edgy kind of way. No, this was something deeper. Colder. The kind of anger that settled in your bones and made a home there.

Dinner time.

If you could even call it that.

The meal area was just rows of wooden benches lined up in a cavern barely lit by torches. Prisoners shuffled in without a word, forming a line for the bubbling pot of whatever-the-hell they were serving tonight.

The NPC serving the food had all the enthusiasm of a man filling out tax forms. One ladle, one bowl, one step forward. Nobody complained. Nobody made a sound.

When my turn came, I peered inside my bowl.

Thin, gray liquid. No smell. Some unidentifiable chunks floating around. Could’ve been meat. Could’ve been something else.

“Five-star cuisine,” I muttered. “Really outdoing yourselves tonight.”

Nobody reacted.

Not the prisoners. Not the guards. Not the guy slopping food into bowls.

I grabbed my portion and sat at the nearest empty spot. Across from me, a frail-looking man hunched over his food, shoveling it into his mouth with robotic efficiency.

I took a cautious sip.

Tasteless. Not bad. Not good. Just… nothing.

They did that on purpose.

Food wasn’t just food in a place like this. It was another weapon. Another system. Just enough to keep you alive, but so bland it chipped away at whatever made you human.

I exhaled through my nose and kept eating.

After the meal, the guards shoved us back into our cells with all the care of a moving company on a tight schedule.

I rolled my shoulders, wincing. Today had sucked. And tomorrow would probably suck worse.

At least I’d have a few hours of sleep before—

More footsteps.

The door to my cell swung open again.

A body hit the floor.

Not in the dramatic thrown like garbage way. Just a rough drop, like the guards couldn’t be bothered to care anymore.

Then the door slammed shut.

I looked down.

The guy groaned and slowly shifted. Older, maybe mid-forties. Worn-out face. Thick arms that said he used to be strong, but the bruises on them said it didn’t matter anymore. His clothes were the same as mine—ripped, filthy.

Another prisoner.

I sighed. “Yeah, no offense, but I liked my last roommate better. He at least knew how to stare at me in silence.”

The man let out a dry chuckle, pushing himself up onto his elbows.

I raised an eyebrow. A reaction. Huh.

Without hesitation, he held out a hand. A handshake.

I didn’t even think twice about it. By this point, I knew better than to treat NPCs like lifeless background props. I clasped his hand, a solid grip, firm like two guys sealing a silent understanding.

“Alric Nightwell,” he said.

I barely kept my expression neutral. Nightwell. That name. I’d heard it before.

My mind immediately jumped back to the city—to the alchemy shop tucked between shady-looking buildings, the air thick with the scent of dried herbs.

Tall. Pale. Dressed in black. A goth alchemist with a voice smooth enough to sell snake oil and a body that could probably turn a profit on its own. Aveline Nightwell.

And now, here was this guy.

Before I could react, Alric’s eyes flicked up slightly—just above my head.

Yeah. He was reading my gracename.

I sighed internally.

“Nice to meet you, GigaChad420,” he said, lips twitching.

I cringed so hard my soul left my body.

Alric didn’t say anything else. He just sat down by the opposite wall, exhaled through his nose, and shut his eyes. Like he’d done this a hundred times before.

I watched him for a moment, then did the same.

At least now I wasn’t completely alone in this mess.

Georgio had been helpful in his own way, but that guy was a walking question mark—half cryptic, half useless.

Alric, though? He looked like someone who actually knew things.

And for the first time since waking up in this nightmare, I had someone who might finally give me some real answers.