"Damn." I ran down the stairs, hastily wiping my hands on my trousers as I grabbed the loaf. Thankfully, it was still warm.

  Without further ado. I tore into the bread.

  The inside was soft, dense, with that faint sweetness that only fresh bread had. I took a bite, and my brain short-circuited for a second. It was ridiculous. Bread was bread. I had eaten worse food without complaint for years.

  'Was bread ever this delicious?' I took a moment to think. Maybe. Or perhaps I'd come to appreciate the small things in life after spending three weeks in an aid camp.

  Either way, I ate more slowly after that, letting the warmth settle in my stomach. Occasionally, I dipped it in the hot soup. Even took a sip from the bowl here and there. As the cold in my fingers finally eased, the ache in my arms became bearable.

  A moment later, I had devoured everything in front of me. Heck, I'd even licked the bowl clean.

  "Well. Now that that's done." I wiped my hands and dragged a chair to sitdown at the centre table. "There's only one thing left to do."

  I pulled the notebook and pencil towards me. It was time for a crucial task. A task I should've done weeks ago. Unfortunately, the world was harsher than I'd expected. I was struggling to barely survive. But now that I'd gotten a place to stay and a source of food, I could safely assume that at the minimum, I wouldn't die starving in an alleyway.

  My eyes drifted back to the notebook, and I flipped it open.

  'I need to align my thoughts'

  I set the pencil down and forced myself to think plainly. 'First, let's get the facts straight.' I nodded to myself.

  I was in Advent. Not in the game. But in the world.A world that, in my old life, lore-wise had ended with humanity losing. Suffice to say, if nothing changed, it would still end that way. Why wouldn't it? My pencil hovered again, and I started listing what I remembered. There were definitely a few key events that I recalled.

  First, the Academy. Sooner or later, humanity would lose the Academy in the South. A blow that they'd find impossible to recover from. The Academy was an overarching organisation that had multiple schools in each region, but its core, a place for the top awakened to study, was in the South.

  Eventually, the lower number of awakened would lead to Demon infiltration. It'd start slow. Quiet. But then it would be rampant. A Great War would start in the North. Naturally fragmented and divided, Humanity would lose. Finally, total war. The Human coalition fractures. Territories start to fend for themselves. Then, everything collapses.

  'Wait'

  I paused. My eyes widened slightly as something clicked into place, sharp and cold. The story had gone that far because the players were there. Players had been the miracle glue in the seams of the world.

  'They did not exist here.'

  What happens to Advent with no players? The answer felt obvious in the worst way.

  'It dies faster.' The danger of the world ending was not just greater. It was absurdly high. I pressed my knuckles against my mouth and stared at the notes. Then the next thought hit, heavier.

  In Advent, the Hero trait belonged to players. Not NPCs. Not civilians. Not random soldiers. Players. Which meant only one thing. Right now, in this world, there was a very real chance that only I had it. I lowered my hand slowly and looked at the pencil as if it could confirm reality for me. The Hero trait had never looked impressive on paper. It wasn't some legendary spell that made you invincible.

  But against demons, it was everything. It was the cheat code that let you hunt them without being eaten from the inside out. The difference between "fighting a demon" and "becoming one."

  I leaned back in the chair, the old wood creaking.

  "This...has become difficult."

  My eyes lingered on the paper I had just jotted down everything on. There were simply too many things I didn't know.

  What I did know was this.

  If the world were already on a path to collapse, with players present.

  Then, without them, it would only crumble faster.

  And if I really was the only one carrying the Hero trait.

  Then this wasn't just my problem.

  It was everyone's.

  I picked up the pencil again.

  "Alright," I whispered to the empty room. "We do this properly."

  I needed a plan. Naturally, I was planning to join the academy. But to make use of everything I could, it was important I lay out all my cards. And so I began to write down the story I remembered.

  Letter by letter.

  -

  I started writing where everything had started for me before.

  I wrote a single line and underlined it twice.

  PLAYERS STARTED AS THIRD YEARS.

  I paused after writing it, frowning.

  That had always been strange to me. Most games didn't do that, but Advent was unique. It dropped you into the Academy already at the end. Lore-wise, you were a third year, almost ready to graduate.

  You woke up in a third-year dorm, band on your wrist, a schedule in your hand, and a teacher who shoved you some easy intro missions. It would all come to an end with the intro boss fight.

  I remembered it too clearly.

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  A combat trial against an instructor. The final "intro" mission. The boss fight the game used to check if you were ready to be let off the leash. As a VR game, the combat was very immersive. Which was why the first half of the intro was teaching you skills, and the second half was this boss fight.

  It wasn't just a test of damage. It was timing. Movement and how well you truly knew the class you picked. Staying calm when you were being beaten in a 1v1 versus a boss with far better skills than you.

  I tapped the pencil against the page.

  Unfortunately, since I started as a third-year student in the game, I did not know how the Academy here operated at the start. If this entrance test I had heard about was similar to the tutorial.

  "Hmmm. It'll be difficult"

  It could be anything. A stamina trial, a mock battle? Who knows. Regardless, in the game, once you beat the boss fight, the next step was mercenary work. Players started going around the open world and doing odd jobs. Subjugation, demon hunting, and the work. Anything and everything was a mission in an open-world game.

  After that, there would be the Hunts in the South. For a while, the game had been a slow burn. Players hunted demons hiding in the south. Quiet nests in basements. Corruption disguised as cults. Strange disappearances that were never really disappearances if you knew where to look.

  I clicked my tongue as the memory flashed in my mind.

  "Right after that, was the academy blowing up, huh."

  I pressed harder with the pencil until the tip squeaked. I remembered the patch that had come with it. The way the zone changed. The way the music shifted, like the world had stopped pretending it was safe. By the time players realised what was happening, it had already happened.

  The Academy fell, and the game stopped being "adventure" and started being war.

  I drew a rough map shape on the page without thinking. Not accurate. Just directions. The war that happened was at almost every front and every region. But in the end, everything came to settle in the North. Eventually, no matter what front you ran, the story funnelled you there. Players could pretend they had choices, but the world had been built to funnel them into that frozen wasteland. I paused, pencil hovering.

  The reason had been a twist that made people argue on forums for months. A sudden alliance that was never really an alliance. Vampires and the other non-humans finally stopped fighting each other long enough to stand against humans. Which led the Werewolves and some other factions to stand with Humanity. "I remember that." I sighed, "The war didn't stop anyway. Not like we could overpower the demons." Eventually, the demons would assassinate our key figures, and Humanity would become fragmented. This would be followed by a gruelling war across the servers. And finally.

  "The last raid."

  The pencil stopped.

  I stared at the page until I couldn't think of anything else till I realised I needed to instead focus on something else.

  If the world were going to fall apart, it would not fall apart randomly. It would fall apart around people.

  In Advent, there had been seven. Seven "main" figures that the story kept orbiting, whether you liked them or not. Seven lives that the demons kept trying to snuff out because the world revolved around them.

  I wrote the heading:

  THE SEVEN.

  Then I started listing everything I remembered about them in the lore. These seven individuals were all graduates of the academy. In a sense, they were peers of the players.

  1. DARIUS VALE: A Mercenary and an orphan of war. He served as the NPC that led players into missions, which hunted new kinds of demons and figured out their weaknesses. In a sense, players treated him like a journal. All I could really recall about his design was that he used a great axe. Sometimes a Halberd.

  2. ADRIAN KADE: A player's favourite NPC. Primarily because he was responsible for giving players bounties. Though the missions were always crazy hard, you always made bank. This NPC was strange as he was among the few to use constructs and spells together.

  3. ELIAS ROWAN: The Battle-mage. More so, the elemental magic NPC. Players always hounded this NPC because he gave out skills and missions that helped them get to the next rarity.

  4. NICO SELWYN: Didn't know much about him. But he was the "scouting" NPC. The one who could find demons hiding. His missions were always assassinations.

  5. MIRA HALSTON: The greatest healer in the game. This NPC was basically the only reason the game was playable. Not only did she sell potions, but she also sold "healing spells" that let players survive the tough boss fights.

  6. KAI ASHCROFT: This NPC was crazy. Might as well call him the main character of the story. All magic, even demonic. The only one who could fight demons without needing the Hero trait. He was also among the few who taught "melee" skills to players; Many "lore enthusiasts" even identified that he was considered the most prodigious martial talent in the game's story. His main role was issuing us raids.

  7. SARA KEENE: The Northern sentry. This NPC was the strategist for the players. She issued missions to defend, subjugate or abandon areas on the map. Though I wasn't exactly sure what she did beyond that, since she was a key NPC, I didn't want to forget her.

  I stopped writing and stared at the list. Seven names. Seven lives. Seven targets. In the game, they had been the main NPCs. They had been story anchors. They had been convenient, reliable, always there when you needed to pick up a quest or unlock a new skill. Here they would be… people. .

  And the worst part was, I had no idea where any of them were. No idea if they were even alive right now. But one thing was obvious. The Academy was still standing. That meant I was early. But I wasn't sure how early. I leaned back in the chair and let my head rest against it. "For all I know, the Academy could fall tomorrow." My breath fogged faintly in the basement air. My first move was already decided. I needed to get into the Academy.

  I flipped to another page and wrote a new heading: ENTRANCE TEST. I had heard about it in the camps. But currently, the problem was simple. In Advent, players never took it. For now, the only thing I could focus on was what I knew. "The tutorial probably comes closest to a test from the academy, I guess." I could not rely on one theory. I had already considered a combat trial. In my playthrough, my weapon was a spear. If the entrance test had combat, even limited combat, I needed to train my spear skills.

  My physique still came first. It was the foundation. I couldn't expect to react or move fast enough for it to matter, since all my stats were in the dump. I activated [Insight]

  -

  [NAME]

  NOAH REED

  [STATS]

  Strength: F

  Agility: F

  Constitution: F

  Intelligence: E

  Perception: E

  Charisma: F

  [VITALS]

  Vitality: F

  Stamina: F

  Mana: F

  [GIFTS]

  INSIGHT: RANK EX

  HERO: RANK F (DORMANT)

  [SKILLS]

  ENDURANCE: Rank E

  Knife Work: Rank E

  I sighed, and my voice reverberated.

  "Alright," I read through my stats once more. "Feels a bit unreal that I really gotta start again."

  I stood up, stretched my shoulders, rolled my neck, and immediately felt the dull ache in my arms from cleaning. Then my eyes landed on the bookshelf.It looked cleaner now. I walked over, fingers trailing along the wood. A thought echoed in my mind. 'Marin's grandson had studied down here.' Marin had said it offhand, but he had said it.

  "Could it be.." My eyes narrowed as I slowly looked through the books.

  Maybe the entrance test wasn't just physical. I mean, at its heart, the academy was a school.

  "There might just be a written component."

  A comprehension piece. Geography, history, and basic law. I wasn't sure. I pulled a book at random and opened it. I focused, just slightly, and felt the familiar pressure behind my eyes as Insight stirred. Small text stamped itself onto the book in my mind as clean, simple tags.

  [BOOK TAGS: BASIC LINGUISTICS, WRITTEN STANDARD, GRAMMAR] [DIFFICULTY: MODERATE]

  I blinked once, surprised.

  I slid the linguistics book onto the clean table, then reached for another.

  [BOOK TAGS: GEOGRAPHY OF THE HUMAN COALITION, FRONTLINES, REGIONAL BORDERS] [DIFFICULTY: LOW]

  A third.

  [BOOK TAGS: HISTORY OF THE HUMAN COALITION, THE TERRITORIES, COALITION FORMATION] [DIFFICULTY: MODERATE]

  A fourth, thinner, with a battered spine.

  [BOOK TAGS: CADET ENTRANCE PREPARATION, ACADEMY REGULATIONS, PRACTICE QUESTIONS] [DIFFICULTY: VARIABLE]

  I stared at the thin book with wide eyes. Of course, why hadn't I thought of looking through the books? There had to have been a guide for some students looking to apply. I picked it up carefully and flipped it open. The first page had handwriting on it. Faded. Not elegant. Just a name. Though I couldn't make it out to anything legible. I closed the book and set it on top of the others.

  Geography. History. Language. Entrance preparation.

  The basics.

  The world was bigger than my memories, and my memories were not enough.

  I looked back at my notebook on the table and exhaled slowly. "Alright. Let's get to studying."