Morning came slow. Kevin surfaced through a fog of dream, the memory of the purple-whisped giant still stamped behind his eyes. Soon, it had said. His skin remembered the weight of that word even after the glow of dawn crept in through the shutters. He sat up with a groan, rubbed grit from his eyes, and swung his legs over the edge of the cot. Straw shifted beneath him, scratching faintly and satisfyingly.

  The inn was quieter than usual. Garric had only just lit the firepit, the great logs smouldering low, their smoke weaving upward. Borik and Tharn were already gone, likely hammering away at some commission. Renna would be in her apothecary’s nook, elbows deep in roots and distillates. That left Kevin with a kind of open day—a rare luxury.

  He checked his UI again, partly out of habit, partly to chase the last vestiges of unease. Everything still sat as it had: stats, inventory, the coin purse that always looked lighter than he wanted. He flicked through the map, confirming the forest zones around the clearing. Wolf Den Ridge. Southern Glade. Names that now felt too safe, too small.

  He thought about the dream again. The inn, safe and bright behind him, the trellis framing something vast and hungry. A boundary between comfort and threat. His gaze lingered on the map’s outer rings, on the sub-zones just past his comfort level.

  “Alright,” he muttered, forcing a grin. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  The forest breathed differently when you weren’t bent double over rats. Kevin realised that on the trail southward. The trees seemed taller, bark striped with lichen. Birds clattered through the canopy. Shafts of pale light stabbed down through breaks in the leaves, dust motes drifting like lazy spirits.

  For once, he wasn’t scouring the ground for vermin trails or glowcap stems. He just… walked. His ratleather armour creaked softly with each step, shields weighing comfortably across his back. He tried not to think about how ridiculous two shields still looked, even if it worked.

  “Better daft and alive,” he muttered.

  The paths curved tighter the further he went. What Garric had once called the outer skirts of the forest became knotted, roots braiding like muscles underfoot. Kevin clambered over them, pausing often to drink from his waterskin. Time slipped strangely out here. He felt both restless and lulled, the way you might when hiking too far with no clear plan.

  The map kept whispering at the edge of his sight. Every so often he’d pull it up, zoom, pan. It confirmed what his instincts said: he was edging out of the Level 1–10 safe stretch, brushing the border of harder zones. Wolves howled distantly. Once, he caught the glimmer of red eyes deep in the underbrush. But nothing came at him. He hoped it was because he looked too intimidating, too much to chew, but he knew it was more likely because he was just too small a morsel to be bothered about chewing on in the first place.

  The deeper he went, the quieter it became. Not silence—there was always the breeze, the twitch of leaves—but the hush of expectation, as if the forest itself was waiting.

  He had found the ravine around midday. It wasn’t on the map.

  Kevin almost stumbled into it—one more step and his boot would’ve skidded off the edge. The ground simply dropped, a cleft in the earth over twenty feet across, plunging into shadow. The air wafting up smelled damp, mineral-rich, like a cellar sealed too long.

  “Christ.” He staggered back, heart hammering. He hadn’t seen it coming. The canopy above bent low here, branches clutching like ribs. No wonder it was hidden.

  He crouched, peering down. The ravine wasn’t empty. Its walls sloped into a rough basin, and at the far side, tucked half in shadow, was a mouth.

  A cave—not his first, but this one felt different. Not large—not the sort of gaping hole you’d expect to belch bats—but a clear entrance nonetheless. Its rim was jagged, edges worn by water and time. Moss slicked the rock.

  Something about it prickled him. The map in his vision updated with a small ripple of light, as if acknowledging the discovery. No name appeared. Just ??? where a sub-zone should’ve been.

  Kevin swallowed. His pulse quickened. This was new. Unmapped.

  He looped around the ravine until he found a down-slope, half-slide and half-climb. His boots scraped loose stones. By the time he reached the basin floor, sweat had darkened his collar. The cave loomed close now, dark mouth waiting.

  He pulled one shield from his back and set it ready, more for nerves than sense. “Here we go,” he muttered, stepping toward the opening.

  The wall appeared before he crossed the threshold.

  Blue light bled into being, a translucent sheet across the cave’s mouth. It rippled faintly, like heat haze trapped in glass. At its centre floated a handprint, glowing brighter than the rest—a perfect outline, five fingers spread.

  Kevin froze. He reached forward, then stopped short of touching it. The wall hummed faintly, not sound but vibration under the skin, as if his bones already knew what it was.

  “What the hell…”

  He tried circling left. The wall bent with him, still blocking the entrance. Right—same thing. No gaps, no cracks. Just a seamless barrier of light.

  Finally, he extended his hand.

  The wall pulsed as his fingers neared, faint ripples expanding outward. The handprint shone brighter, beckoning. His palm hovered inches away.

  Every instinct screamed at him not to. That dream again—something huge behind a veil, whispering soon. But he couldn’t stop staring at the glow.

  He pressed his palm flat against it.

  The sensation wasn’t cold, or hot. It was recognition. The barrier seemed to notice him, light flaring outward in concentric waves. The hum deepened, sliding down into his chest. For a heartbeat, the entire forest felt like it exhaled through him.

  Then the UI flared:

  Dungeon Discovered: Hollow of the First Gate

  Entry Requirements: Minimum Level 10. Solo Attempt or Registered Party.

  Status: Access Denied.

  The wall remained.

  Kevin staggered back, sucking in air. His hand tingled, ghost-warm, as though the barrier had imprinted on his skin. He stared at the notification until it blinked away.

  Level 10. He was nine.

  “One bloody level short,” he breathed.

  The cave entrance loomed behind the shimmering wall, dark and waiting. He felt both relief and dread in equal measure—that he couldn’t yet enter. A reprieve, but also a promise.

  The forest remained hushed around him. Too hushed. He backed away, shield raised, scanning for movement. Nothing. Just the low pulse of the wall, fading back into its slow shimmer.

  Kevin swallowed hard, hoisted his second shield into place, and began the climb out of the ravine. His boots scraped, arms aching by the time he reached the top. He dared one last glance back.

  From above, the cave looked ordinary again, shadow and stone. But he knew better now. A dungeon. His first real one.

  He returned to the inn at dusk, legs sore, mind buzzing. Garric looked up as Kevin pushed through the door, one brow lifting.

  “You’ve been gone,” the innkeeper said simply.

  “Found… something.” Kevin dropped into a chair, drained. “A cave. Only—it wasn’t a cave. There’s a wall. Blue, with a… handprint. Said Dungeon. Said level ten.”

  Tharn grunted from his corner, arms folded. “Ah. First Gate.”

  Kevin blinked. “You know it?”

  Borik looked up from his stitching. “Course. It’s where the world starts to test if you’re worth anything. Most don’t even find the door. Some find it and never come back. You’re lucky it barred you.”

  Renna, at her small table with a bundle of herbs, glanced up sharply. “The handprint… you touched it?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “Then it knows you now.” She closed her ledger with a snap. “You’ll be expected. When you reach ten, the wall won’t refuse you.”

  Kevin sat back, the weight of her words sinking like a stone in his chest. He thought again of the giant in his dream, the word hammered into his bones. Soon.

  The fire crackled. Garric poured him a drink without asking. Kevin took it with both hands, staring into the ale’s dark surface.

  Kevin—Level 9—Rat Slayer

  Experience: 88%

  Twelve percent. That’s all he needed before his class selection. Before the dungeon.

  “Maybe that’ll be it for me,” he said aloud, words spilling into the inn’s common room.

  “It’s possible,” Garric replied dryly from behind the counter. His chipped tooth caught the glow of the firelight as he spoke. “There’s no sugar coating it.” He leaned forward on his elbows, mug dangling loosely in one hand. “It ain’t like that Greyfang quest you ran through all those times. It’s rough.”

  “How would you know?” Renna chimed, not looking up from her bowl as she scooped porridge with a wooden spoon. “You’ve been looking after this place so much, I doubt you even remember.” She darted a look at him and jabbed the spoon toward his lined face. “You’ve more wrinkles than memory, Garric.”

  “Oi!” He protested, nearly spilling his mug. “Well… actually, maybe you’re right.”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Kevin frowned. “What’re you on about? You guys have been in a dungeon before?” He gestured toward the lot of them: Renna, Garric, Borik hunched over a strip of leather, Tharn sharpening a hammer that didn’t need it. Lirae wasn’t in sight, but Kevin pictured her too, with her charcoal-stained hands. They were… fixtures. Background characters. Safe-zone dressing.

  “Wait,” Kevin said slowly. “Aren’t you just NPCs?”

  The word landed heavy in the air.

  Borik barked a laugh sharp enough to cut. “HA! NPCs, he says. As if we sprouted from stone with a few lines of flavour text.” He slapped the leather down on the table. “How d’you think we got to be NPCs? You don’t just wake up brewing potions or hammering steel.”

  Kevin blinked. “What, you mean—”

  “You gotta put in the work,” Borik cut across him, voice gone fierce. “Blood, time, teeth. You think the System just hands out safety? No. You survive long enough to master your craft, prove you’re worth more as a pillar than as fodder. Then it gives you the offer. You can stay, or you keep running dungeons ‘til you break.”

  Kevin’s throat dried. “So you’re… all players? Like me?”

  “Four weeks…” Tharn chuckled, shaking his head. His beard twitched with the motion. “Four bloody weeks and you’re only just asking. HA!” He set the hammer aside and leaned forward, elbows on the table, his eyes the colour of iron. “Yes. We are. Or we were, anyway.”

  Renna finally looked up, her spoon dangling mid-air. Her expression softened. “We all started the same way you did, Kevin. Naked, confused, terrified. We bled. We starved. We scrabbled for scraps until our hands shook too much to hold them. But we didn’t die. Long enough to get here.”

  Kevin sat back, stunned. The common room seemed to tilt, the shadows of the rafters bending strange. “You’re telling me—every single one of you—was like me once? Just some… poor sod dragged into the Games?”

  “Not just your world, boy,” Garric said, voice dropping low. “Many worlds. Each one coughing up its unfortunates, throwing us into this meat-grinder. You think it’s only Earth that feeds the Games?”

  Kevin’s stomach knotted. He’d imagined, at best, other humans scattered across this place. But Garric’s eyes held something different. A glimmer of elsewhere.

  Borik leaned back, folding his arms. “I came from a world of stone and fire. Dwarves, aye. You think I was born this height, with this beard? Ha! I was a man once. Same soft flesh as you. The System reshapes us. Fits us into its stories.”

  Tharn grunted. “Same for me. The hammer wasn’t always in my hand. But swing enough times, the System decides that’s who you are now. Makes it stick.”

  Renna’s gaze flicked between them, then settled on Kevin. “I was a healer. Not here—before. I worked in a hospital. Real one. You wouldn’t have called me an apothecary then. But herbs, poultices, medicine—they all rhymed close enough. The System loves rhyme. It gave me mortar and pestle instead of scalpels. And when the choice came…” Her lips pressed thin. “I took it. Better to serve forever than die screaming in a hole.”

  Kevin’s heart thudded against his ribs. He looked to Garric. The innkeeper’s chipped smile seemed sadder now.

  “And you?” Kevin asked. “What were you?”

  Garric shrugged one broad shoulder. “A barman. Not much else. Always figured I’d die behind a counter anyway. So when the Games asked if I’d like to be permanent—keep pouring drinks, keep watching fools come and go—I said yes. Figured it was safer than rolling the dice in some bloody dungeon.”

  Kevin rubbed his temple. “This is… insane. You’re saying you chose this? To be trapped here, forever?”

  Tharn’s voice hardened. “It’s not trapped. It’s survival. We’re alive. We keep our crafts, our skills, our faces. We don’t get cut down by the first beast that breathes wrong. That’s a mercy most players never see.”

  Renna added softly, “Not many live long enough to even be offered. Don’t mistake it for some golden ticket. Most are bones in the dirt before they’d ever have the choice.”

  Kevin felt the weight of their words settle on him like a second shield. All this time, he’d laughed with them, taken advice, eaten Garric’s stew. He’d thought of them as… characters. Friendly, sure, but scripted.

  Now he saw the ghosts under their skin. The choices they’d made. The compromises.

  “So what,” Kevin whispered, “if I keep going… I’ll get that choice too? Stay, or…”

  “Or keep climbing,” Borik finished for him. “And if you keep climbing, boy, remember this: the Games don’t care how high you get. There’s always another gate. Always another dungeon. You stop when you die, or when you bow your head and let it bind you to a hearth.”

  Kevin stared into the fire. The crackle of the logs sounded too loud, too sharp.

  “Christ,” he muttered. “All this time I thought I was getting chummy with some quest-givers. Turns out I’ve been drinking with ghosts of players past.”

  Renna reached across the table and set her hand lightly on his wrist. Her touch was warm, grounding. “Not ghosts, Kevin. Survivors. We lived long enough to choose. You should remember that. You’ve already lived four weeks. That’s longer than most.”

  Garric raised his mug. “And if you reach ten, lad… well. You’ll see how sharp the world gets past that point. Maybe you’ll get your chance. Maybe not. But if you do—don’t spit on it. Even shackles are better than a grave.”

  The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the pop of a log splitting in the fire. Kevin sat with their words heavy in his chest, twelve percent of an experience bar burning like a fuse.

  He thought of the wall in the cave, the handprint waiting. He thought of the purple giant whispering soon. And he thought of the faces around him—friends, comrades, all of them echoes of choices he hadn’t known existed.

  Kevin leaned back in his chair, the wooden legs groaning on the floorboards. He stared at the fire for a long time before speaking, voice low, uncertain.

  “So… what levels are—” he caught himself, then corrected, “were, you lot, when you chose the permanent NPC life?”

  The room shifted. The clink of Borik’s awl stopped. Renna’s spoon hovered, dripping porridge back into the bowl. Garric’s eyes flicked toward the rafters, as though searching for the right words.

  Borik broke the silence first, of course. “Twenty-nine.” He said it like a hammer blow, blunt and unapologetic. “I’d made it through three dungeons by then. Nearly lost my hand to a spider-queen the size of a bloody horse. You think leatherworking came natural? No. I stitched my own wounds shut before I ever stitched hides. Twenty-nine, and I said aye, I’ll take the trade. Spent enough nights thinking every breath was the last.”

  Kevin nodded slowly, though his brows pinched. “That’s… not even that high, though. You could’ve kept climbing.”

  “Aye,” Borik growled. “And where would I be now? Bones in a forgotten corridor? I chose a craft. A wall. It keeps me here.” He tapped the strip of leather on the table like it was proof.

  Renna sighed softly. “Thirty-five,” she murmured, finally setting down her spoon. “The dungeon I’d just left… gods, I can still smell it. A swamp, choked with vapors. Half our party drowned in muck, the other half bled from the lungs. I was the only one who walked out. The offer came at the gates. I didn’t hesitate. Thirty-five was enough.” Her eyes glazed with the memory. “And I don’t regret it. Not when I’ve kept healing ever since. Just… quieter work.”

  Kevin rubbed the back of his neck. He wanted to argue, to say that thirty-five wasn’t far from where he might one day be—but the shadow in Renna’s voice stilled him.

  Tharn’s laugh was low, bitter. “Forty-two. And I’ll tell you this—I should’ve died at thirty. Maybe earlier. You ever felt your bones shatter, lad? I have. Ogre fist took me clean off my feet. System knit me back together, aye, but something in me cracked permanent. After that, I was just counting down.” He shook his head, gaze on the hammer in his lap. “When the offer came, I spat on it first. Said I’d never bow. But when I saw Borik take it… when I saw him get to keep building, keep shaping… I relented. Better a smith than a corpse.”

  Kevin’s eyes went to Garric. The innkeeper only smiled, faint, rueful. “Eighty-one.”

  Kevin nearly choked. “Eighty one?! Shit, you must have been adventuring for years!?”

  Garric shrugged. “Not all of us gave in early. I kept pushing. Deeper dungeons, higher gates. My party and I—six of us—we made it further than most. But the cost…” He tapped his mug against his teeth, chipped white glinting in the firelight. “You lose friends, you lose yourself. I’d seen too many graves. One day I looked around and realised I didn’t even recognise the faces beside me. That was when the System whispered: stay, Garric. You’ve served enough.”

  Kevin swallowed, throat dry. “And you took it.”

  “I took it,” Garric said simply. “Because eighty-one didn’t feel like a victory anymore. It felt like a countdown. Every encounter just chilled me to the bone, regardless if it was victory or a flee-ed defeat. It was all hollow.”

  The fire snapped. Kevin shifted in his chair, uneasy.

  “What about Lirae?” he asked, glancing toward the door as though she might drift in with her charcoal-stained hands.

  Renna answered for her. “Seventy-three. She doesn’t speak of it often, but she told me once. Said she was tired of seeing jewels buried with the dead. So she chose to stay. She carves beauty now, instead of graves.”

  Kevin sat back, stunned. Numbers rolled in his head like dice—twenty-nine, thirty-five, forty-two, seventy-three, eighty-one. They weren’t just stats, they were gravestones that hadn’t been dug.

  His voice was faint when he finally spoke. “So it’s different for everyone. No set mark. Just… when the System decides you’ve had enough?”

  Borik snorted. “Not quite. It’s when you decide. The System offers, aye, but you choose. Take the bargain, or keep rolling the dice. That’s the only freedom you get.”

  “And freedom,” Tharn added, “is a thin word here. Thinner the higher you climb.”

  Kevin’s hands tightened on his mug. Twelve percent more. That was all he needed before the first dungeon, before his own fork in the road. He looked around at them—friends, survivors, ghosts in flesh. Each of them had stopped climbing when the weight got too heavy. Each of them had traded the sky for walls.

  He wondered what number he’d stop at, or what number he’d be forced to stop at.

  “Knew a guy once. Managed to reach level One-hundred and eleven. Said that his permanence offer was different.” Garric said. “Said he had two offers instead. He had the offer before, just the NPC offer, but… yeah, two different offers.”

  “What were they?” Renna asked, leaning closer.

  “He said he had the NPC, same as usual, but also a Dungeon Boss… Can’t imagine crawling around a dank cave or dim castle being any good, but ‘least you’d get some action from time to time I s’pose.” He trailed.

  Kevin wondered what was beyond what he could see on his map, 166 -198 was the highest number he could see. There must be more still, he’d only just begun after all, level nine, he felt smaller than he had ever before, surrounded by all that were double figures, Garric at eighty-one… It perplexed Kevin, his heart sinking, he wondered just how long it would take him to either die, or to get to where Garric had once stood.

  “So why am I leveling so slowly?” Kevin asked.

  “... You’re not” Borik said. “Takes time to adjust the body to the new world, filled with magic. Right now, you’re like a guppy acclimatising to the water, staring out into a vast and empty tank.”

  “How long did it take you?” Kevin asked.

  “To twenty-nine? Few months.” Kevin's eyes popped. ”Doubt it’ll take you as long though, not with that build-”

  “Not to mention; solo players level up quicker. Less experience to have to share around.” Tharn chimed in.

  “Comes with a lot more danger though.” Renna said. “No dedicated healers or tanks to save you.”

  Kevin nodded silently taking in the information. Naivety washed over him as he realised Borik was spot on, he was just a guppy in this vast and sprawling world. A question popped into his head, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, he remained silent for a moment, churning the possibilities over in his head before he spoke it:

  “I’m guessing I’m not the first player you have all helped? How many have you seen die?” His heart hitched waiting for the response.

  “Gods… I haven’t a clue… Garric?” Tharn turned to Garric, who was already heaving a great ledger from below the bar, it was around twelve inches thick and heavily dusted. He heaved it open at its seam, scanning his finger down a long list, he flipped and flicked through page after page.

  “Ah, here we are. Serena—Light-Willer. Last seen—Level 54. Player number 283,222. Went out to gather ore, never returned.” Garric slammed the book closed. “That makes you number 283,223 I s’pose.”

  “I remember the AI saying something, a player number when I was in the white room.” Kevin said. “I think it was something in the three-hundred-thousand’s.”

  “World 628349-C, Player #301,129.” The AI interjected. Kevin repeated.

  “From what we gather, world number is the designation of your world's space-time coordinates. Player number is your personal number as you were reaped from that world. The number Garric just read, that’s just the running total we have recorded for the players we’ve met.” Renna said.

  The words mulled in Kevin's mind. Space-time what-now? It sounded like something from a sci-fi TV series. “How many worlds have there been, then?”

  “Who knows… There’s no way to know without also knowing all of the world designations too. And that’s impossible.” Borik said.