Chapter 5: Launch Eve

Felix held the compression at forty-one seconds before the edges started to fray.

It didn't matter because he only needed it to last one more day. His body ached in layers. The deep muscle soreness from two days of bodyweight training sat underneath a newer, stranger exhaustion, a hollowed-out feeling behind his sternum where the mana cycling pulled from some reserve he couldn't name. He'd slept in ninety-minute blocks, three of them through the night, waking each time to run another training cycle before his body cooled down too much. The pattern was brutal and unsustainable, and it did

Isometric holds. He deliberately pushed past the point where his form started to degrade, chasing the specific kind of muscular exhaustion that left the tissue damaged and hungry for repair. He started with push-ups. Slow, measured, chest to the floor. Twenty, then thirty, then he held the bottom position until his arms shook. Squats next, deep enough that his hip flexors screamed. Planks. Leg raises hanging from the doorframe bar until his grip gave out. He worked through the circuit, rested two minutes, and started again. Then again. For the next two hours he cycled through variations: narrow push-ups, split squat

ipe. Most of it dissipated before it reached the target tissue. But some of it arrived. Not the dispersal he used at the end of a training cycle. This was targeted. He directed the compressed warmth into his quadriceps, his calves, the small stabilizer muscles around his knees that were screaming from the squats. The mana moved sluggishly through pathways that barely existed yet, like pushing water through a clogged p

very, even marginally, even crudely, was not a normal human body. The System's Initial Assessment scanned for anomalies. He didn't know the exact thresholds, but a body that could accelerate its own reco

king through it. He pulled up a chair, sat at the small desk beside the kitchen counter, and st

g while the memory assembled itself. It wasn't until months later, when a forum post from a Korean player went viral, that the community learned the priestess offered a hidden evaluation. Specific dialogue choices, a small offering. The reward depended on the player's class and stats at the time, and for most people it was minor. A buff. A piece of uncommon gear. But for certain builds, at certain thresholds, the priestess offered something else entirely. A small, unmarked stone structure on the outskirts of the starting village, half-hidden by overgrowth, staffed by a blind priestess NPC that most players walked past without a second look. Felix had walked past her himself in his first life. He peeled open another protein bar and bit into it, chewin

: retrieve a shipment of ore from a collapsed mine entrance. Standard early-game busywork that ninety percent of players completed without noticing the secondary objective hidden in the mine's lower level. A sealed door. An inscription in a language the game's basic translation system couldn't parse. Felix checked the time on his phone, just past eight, and set it back down. Behind that door was the first link in a quest chain that eventually led to a class inheritance path. It started with a minor fetch task from the village blacksmith

four, but he wasn't certain, a server-wide event triggered in the Valdris region. A mana storm that temporarily opened access to a hidden zone. In his first life, most players had treated it as a random weather hazard and sheltered in town. The handful who ventured into the storm found something extraordinary, but by the time word spread, the event was over. Felix intended to be inside the storm zone within minutes of it appearing. Then there was the event. Sometime in the first week, he thought it was day three or

affic, resource-dense, the kind of territory that rewarded large-group coordination. Dorian had moved fast, leveraging real-world corporate money to recruit top players within the first week, locking down grinding spots and rare spawn points through sheer organizational muscle. Dorian Hale wouldn't be in Valdris. Felix was almost certain of that. In his first life, Apex Coalition had established its base of operations in the Ashenmoor starting region: high-tr

id-game in his first life, Dorian's guild controlled resources that Felix now knew were critical for specific class advancements and crafting paths. Resources Felix intended to secure for himself this time around. The problem was territory. In the months after launch, Apex Coalition had expanded from Ashenmoor into adjacent regions, claiming dungeon access, rare material nodes, and strategic chokepoints. By the time Felix had reached the m

He stopped moving.

s the cleanest of the three days. His final mana session w

warmth persisted in his core, quiet but constant, like an ember that had decided to stay. Three days ago there had been nothing. Now there was something. Small, fragile, trivial by any standard that mattered. But something. When he finally released it, the residual sensation didn't vanish completely. A faint

ontoured to his body; the calibration scan had mapped him when he first set it up. Neural interface contacts lined the headrest in a subtle array, barely visible, designed to make full contact with the base of the skull and the temples when the canopy closed. Felix crossed the room and ran his hand along the pod's rim. The material was smooth, cool under his fingers. The interior was c

would be an extended immobile session. He showered. Changed into clean compression shorts and a shirt, the kind of thing that wouldn't chafe during hours of motionless lying. He climbed back out. There was no point lying in the pod for seven hours. He ate again, mechanically, stoking the furnace, and did one more round of stretching to keep his muscles from locking up during what

faint warmth in his core pulsed once, as if responding to the moment. Felix lay still. His heartbeat was steady. The