What bullshit is this?

My heart pumped with anger I couldn't quell. With clenched fists, I looked up at the fake world.

Is it all fake?

My status blinks out of nowhere.

Connecting ….

I look past my wife's worried eyes, a number blinking within the cursed jail.

A game? There are enough hacky tropes already.

A butterfly floats with its soft wings to another flower.

No… It's too real. But maybe that's the point…

A warm hand woke me from my consuming thoughts.

"Tarion…" She glanced at the jail and then back at me.

I gave her a reassuring smile. "It's okay… Just one more try…"

Some time later.

LEVEL 1 COMPLETED

My mind unlinked from the game like a dip into ice-cold water. Reality seemed to sharp. Whipping sweat from my brow, I looked around. A mage studied the flora. Haru greeted me with a small bow. The black robed cultivator dropped lightly on wind swept grass. His visage was more plaque than before.

"Tch."

"Expecting me to fail again."

"I was expecting less failure, but it will do…"

Haru fizzed beside her beloved. "Our faith is not misplaced."

"Our?" Yuran spat like poison. "I have no faith in you at all."

I could see why he said that after seeing me die twelve more times.

"But the designer saw something in the hijacker. I must… abide." The subdued rage, so familiar. I felt it in my chest where my rings churned. I looked at this fading existence stuck in a mini world where he can barely feel the flowers. And I pitied him.

'Place your worries aside; I am forever the designer's soldier." I fell on the stone, my knee cracking stone. A heavy salute blew the wind away as I prayed to the heavens above. Witnesses see me swear fealty, but only prayers of gratitude were sent. Whether it's my life or not. I live another day to feel this rush again.

"By my family's honour, his Will will be done. For the world."

"Good." Yuran sauntered away, slouching deeper in his walk. A step and his figure could be seen hundreds of metres away in high trees.

"I'm sorry about that man. As stubborn as month-old grease. But he has his reasons." Haru's eyes watched over me, contemplatively. "I am sure you have gathered why we are still 'alive'."

"To teach us."

"Haru nodded. " Yes, it was our mission on the mortal plane. To give the knowledge to beat the hard task ahead. But our heads clouded with… longing. We knew we weren't the right ones. But it is human to be a bit greedy."

A girl tugged on my cloak.

"What did you see?" Vanessa asked.

"Mmm." I scratch my head, thinking of a way to explain technology to a mediaeval mind. "A video game is… umm… Fuck, this will be hard."

Vanessa's eyes trace around my body, studying it with academic curiosity.

"A dream of some sort? A simulation of battle?"

"Ye-yes! Exactly!! How did you figure it out…?"

"When you touched it, your muscles twitched in ways I had seen in training during your shadowboxing meditation. But I see this is a step above it."

"Leaps ahead…" I touched my tattered shirt where I felt a spear enter my stomach.

"Death… I never thought I could feel it again so soon and so vividly."

Vanessa smirked. "Had fun?"

I couldn't hide the grin at all. "I want to go again."

"You can." Haru glitched into existence beside me. "Check your status."

PLONK

Connected: Training dungeon.

"As long as you are close to the monument, you can use its power to send you into the game with a single button."

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

ENTER

"Brilliant… Haru, how?"

Haru raised her glitching hand, controlling golden ether.

"Every software has its own language." She spoke with an almost salesman tone, her original Korean accent heard in the vowels. "It's own logic to follow. Luckily, I am well-versed in the holy word. Makes reworking the programming of the subspace easier. Perhaps that's my reason for being…here."

The elder saint laid her eyes on her younger self, who was mesmerised by the working of code and magic in her fingers. She still smiled gorgeously in her later years.

I snapped my studious wife out of her trance with my voice. "Haru here was quite the talented programmer."

"Oh, don't remind me of old times. The past is the past." Haru's fingers moved left, messing with the monument's properties.

"From what I read, you were a big fucking deal!" I boasted to Vanessa with a proud nod. "On track to the department head."

Vanessa clapped. Ether burst, leaving shimmering gold around.

"A big deal wouldn't have been so quickly fired."

Oh shit, sore issue?

Haru looked into the distance at the jealous Liuen. At the sight of his lover, suddenly saddened, the Liuen ran towards us. Before the lien could rush to us, a saint blew a kiss, freezing the former heavenly demon like a statue. A wave of the hand opened a bright door in the air.

"Oh dear, look at the time! It seems it's time to bid adieu."

Immense Qi swelled around the frozen man, and I found myself quickly agreeing.

"It wasn't your fault. You meant well, as always."

My head snapped back to the saint. "What… did…"

"I will persuade the fool over. Rest and have fun!"

"Wait!"

A saint's gentle hand pushed, tripping me on the portal door.

****

I couldn't believe Yuran's story.

Vanessa saw the ghosts of the monument off with a wave as the monument clicked and clanked closed. Yuran's lover, a Vanessa from another reality and another time, smiled us off with her unfrozen husband gruff and grumbling. He says his body isn't mine. But these memories of Mother's apple pie didn't feel stolen. The memory of my first sword lesson with Father didn't feel loaned to me. Two fingers venture the old mage to me.

"Grace." The tower master bowed deeply. "This experience was a priceless gift to these old eyes."

"Get your portal situated. In a week, we begin."

"Of course, your grace. "

From an inventory linked to the dungeon, I chucked a crystal to frail hands. "Another gift for tight lips." "My…wow… My loyalty was always yours." The uncut crystal snapped on his staff like a magnet. Runes shone on the floor below him. "But I have never been the type to refuse a gracious gift. See you soon, my duke." He popped away. Leaving Vanessa and me in the dark room with tall

Every bump on my shin and cuts from sharp forest leaves. The cold from the chilly corridor as I saw my father's new family cuddle by the father's hearth. Father invited me over. My stepmother's eyes said go away.

These are my memories; they feel like mine. Why did I have to believe in a ghost of past failure? A bitter digital apparition bent on putting me down. Yes, he saw my success. Saw he he could have had if he didn't give up.

Give up?

A sharp headache, like a knife digging and pulling brain matter.

I heard Vanessa in the mist. "Tarion".

"Mm?" I regained my wits quickly.

"Dear…" arms wrapped around mine. "What he said…"

I scooped my arm up and away, taking a step back. "I need time. I need air. I need… space."

"I understand I will be the party if you need me."

"Mm." I gave her a long-lasting kiss. "I am sure I will." I stepped away swiftly in case her green-eyed apple eyes capture me again.

*****

An hour later.

With Qi, I drift amongst the clouds above my conquered territory. A mess. Weapons, broken, smashed and strewn across the battlefield. A flood of blood gave wet the grass. Bodies lay still as a city smouldered.

I won.

I breathed in the iron stench.

"Please accept my apologies."

Another walked on the air to stand beside me.

"It was nothing but a tickle. All is forgiven." A strong hand grasped my left shoulder tightly. "This change in you… Forget it, cousin. I came to you to make an offer."

I turned to his highness and his golden entourage. One is missing, the water user. They bared down with the energies. But my qi pieced through.

It would be a struggle, but…

"What is it?" I floated backwards from Kyros' hold with arms wide. "Surely it can be better than winning a city, can it?"

"An offer uttered by my mouth can be greater than the sum of countries." The guardian of wind formed a cloud, shaping it into the shape of my dear. "State to the world you divorce to wife."

"Divorce? There is no such thing."

"Haha!" A guardian of fire unrolled a parchment sign by the king and the pope. "You dare lie to a prince!?"

Like a frog was stuck in my throat, I struggled with my words. "I-I- haven't! W-w-we have n-not…"

Haru… fuck me…

A prince's clicked fingers rolled the letter back. An arm grabbed around me, close enough to smell his ale-tainted breath; Kyros laughed, giddily. "You know I am proud of you for taking my advice. I know it must have been embarrassing to divorce that slut."

Qi repelled Kyro's arm from my shoulder. A flicker jab exploded in the air by the prince's face, shattering twenty condensed shields.

The prince shook his head with pity. "Did you think because I let your wife hit me-

"HAAAAAA!"

105 points to strength

I unleashed all my might, breaking the rest of the hundred shields.

A prince still shook his blonde head with a single shield guarding my knuckles from his face.

"Cousin… The pussy can't be that good…"

I wake up on the ground surrounded by the dead. My men and my enemies. Their corpses almost make me hurl. I slowly got up.

A boot pushed me back to the crater. The guardian of stone crush lifted his large foot for a stomp. I reached up, twisting his leg the wrong way.

"Attacking me from behind!?" I held my knee and i straightened up standing. "Fucking bitch."

The wind shifted, and I shifted with it. Weaving into a golden-gauntlet's flaming punch, an overhand left punch evicierated the fire guardians nose. Bouncing the gold-plated man to the ground, my strength parted the earth. I caught him by the neck. Finger trickling his blood and the squeezed. I found him floating down. His confidence settled as he showed a calm demeanour. But there was no way he could ever hide the rage in his eyes.

I have had enough!

"Cousin… calm minds—"

No more bullshit!

"TAKE IT BACK, KYROS!"

I squeezed, and a guardian screamed in my grasp.

"TAKE BACK THOSE WORDS, YOU BASTARD!!!"

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