Chapter 3: Wandering & the Underworld.
I lay back on the hay once more.
If I were being honest with myself, no amount of dramatics could properly capture how absurd my situation was.
It felt less like reincarnation and more like logging into a disastrously built account—one of those horror stories shared on forums.
Leon hadn’t been stupid.
That was the cruel part.
Every decision she made had been reasonable given what she knew at the time.
A talentless child choosing a class that valued intellect over innate power.
A desperate student grasping at the rebellion because it promised meaning.
None of it was irrational—it was simply unlucky.
And now I was the one paying for it.
To make matters nearly unfixable, she had been expelled from the only place where I might have forced a correction.
From hidden items to special locations and events.
All of it was closed to me.
Permanently.
My thoughts began to slow, not from exhaustion, but from a kind of reluctant acceptance.
I mentally traced out every possible route forward—and watched most of them collapse before they even formed.
Somewhere along the way, I realized something unsettling.
I was starting to think like them.
Those extra protagonists. The ones who looked at a doomed setup and immediately decided to “flip the script.”
Was there really any need for that?
Did I actually have to become the savior?
The answer came surprisingly easily.
No.
The protagonist of this world already existed—and he was absurdly overpowered.
Chosen talents, stacked passives, perfect growth curve.
By now, he would have already obtained the academy’s hidden pieces, the kind that snowballed into unstoppable momentum.
The world didn’t need me.
It never had.
Trying to interfere would only mean suffering for the sake of a role I wasn’t meant to fill.
Worse—it would mean competing against someone the narrative itself bent over backwards to protect.
I stared at the barn ceiling, listening to the quiet breathing of the night beyond the walls.
“...Yeah,” I murmured. “I’m done with that.”
With that settled, the weight on my chest lightened just a little.
I wasn’t going to fight fate.
I wasn’t going to compete with the protagonist.
I wasn’t going to claw my way into relevance out of stubborn pride.
I would live a simple life.
Survive. Stay out of sight. Let the world play out as it was always meant to.
And to do that—
I would use the Oath method.
The thought alone carried a strange finality.
—
Though I called it the Oath method, in truth, it was less a technique and more a route.
Back during one of End Starlight’s anniversaries, the developers had done something so outrageous that the entire community went into meltdown.
People half-joked, half-panicked that an End of Service announcement would follow any day now.
Because the devs had gifted every player an item.
Not just any item.
A Mythical—no, a Genesis-ranked artifact.
According to the lore, only fifteen such items existed across the entire universe.
They were relics tied to the creation myths of the world itself.
In gameplay terms, they were endgame-defining equipment, the kind you needed if you wanted to even attempt the highest difficulty content.
And the one they handed out so casually—
The staff was tied to a certain British legend.
The Staff of Merlin
At the time, people thought the devs had finally lost their minds.
Giving away something that busted could only accelerate the chaos.
But the devs reassured everyone. No shutdown was coming.
The game wasn’t ending.
And if you missed the anniversary, you could still obtain the item through other means.
So naturally—
Everyone rushed to use it.
It was only later—far too late—that people realised what the Staff of Merlin truly was.
And the hidden signs of a disastrous future.
The first passive alone was enough to break the game.
[Eternal Wanderer of the Star.]
No matter the damage taken, your HP could not fall below ten percent.
Not once.
Not ever.
True damage. Percentage damage. Execution mechanics. Boss wipes.
All invalidated.
And worse—it wasn’t a conditional effect. It didn’t require timing or activation.
Once equipped, it was permanent.
The passive extended to all forms of damage, trivialising encounters that had been carefully designed to punish mistakes.
Then came the second passive.
[The Guardian of the Eternal Dreamland.]
It allowed the wielder to use any defensive skill from any class—without prerequisites, resources, or restrictions.
Knight barriers.
Mage shields.
Paladin blessings.
If it was defensive in nature, it was yours.
All you needed was the name.
And the knowledge to use it.
On paper, it was invincibility.
So why—
Why did every veteran immediately warn newcomers to never equip it?
The answer lay in its restrictions.
The first was called “I Alone.”
Once equipped, you could not use any other gear.
No weapons.
No secondary items. You sacrificed all offensive potential for absolute defence.
The second—
“Together, Bound by Will.”
Once the staff was equipped on a unit, it could never be removed.
Even if you burned the unit.
Even if you rerolled the same character.
The staff would simply reappear.
Eternal. Inescapable.
And the final restriction was the cruelest.
“Protection Foremost.”
The staff didn’t just favour defence.
It enforced it.
It interfered directly with combat passives, suppressing offensive skills and converting action priority toward protection.
In essence—
It rendered DPS builds obsolete.
A character equipped with the Staff of Merlin could not be a hero.
Could not be a slayer.
Could not even meaningfully participate in combat beyond enduring it.
And so the item earned its nickname.
The Rookie Mistake.
New players saw the rank.
The passives, the legendary name—and ruined their favourite characters by equipping it, unknowingly sealing them into eternal mediocrity.
But despite everything—
The Staff of Merlin remained.
It was never removed.
Never nerfed.
Never deleted.
It simply existed.
As those memories drifted through my mind, I became aware of another, more immediate problem.
I tried to stand.
Pain shot up my leg, sharp and sudden, forcing me to grip the barn wall to keep from collapsing.
My balance was off—worse than before.
Leon’s body wasn’t just weak; it was damaged.
Old injuries. Neglected wounds. Bruises that had never properly healed.
The bullying hadn’t been harmless.
“Tch…”
I steadied my breathing, adjusting my stance until the pain dulled into a manageable ache.
If I pushed myself now, I’d only make it worse.
I can’t afford to be careless.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be the start.
—–-
The imperial City Altesia never slept.
Beneath its marble avenues and radiant spires, a second city pulsed—loud, hungry, alive.
In the gambling underworld, casinos roared with noise and colour.
Dice slammed against felt. Cards snapped as they were dealt.
Coins clinked, laughter rose, tempers flared, and fortunes were born and buried within the span of a single breath.
Smoke hung thick in the air, perfumed with alcohol and ambition.
Then—
The doors creaked open.
At first, no one noticed why the rhythm faltered.
Yet one by one, conversations stumbled.
Dice rolled a little slower. Laughter lost its edge.
Eyes drifted.
As if pulled by an invisible string.
A lone figure stepped inside.
Mud caked the hems of her clothes, dried into rough patterns that spoke of long roads and longer nights.
The fabric itself was worn, torn in places, utterly out of place among silk coats and jeweled rings.
She did not attempt to clean herself.
She did not lower her head.
She walked.
And people moved aside without knowing why.
Then they saw her eyes.
Silver.
Not bright. Not sharp.
Dull, murky silver—like moonlight reflected in stagnant water.
Eyes that held no excitement at the promise of gold, no fear of loss, no curiosity at the spectacle around her.
Only deathly calm.
A ripple spread through the hall.
Whispers sparked like dry tinder.
“Who’s that…?” “Did you feel that?”
“Hey—look at her eyes…”
She passed tables stacked high with chips and broken men.
Passed winners flushed with victory and losers hollow-eyed with regret. None of it touched her.
The noise bent around her presence, thinning just enough to feel wrong.
She stopped at a table near the centre of the hall.
The dealer froze mid-shuffle.
Cards slid from his fingers, landing unevenly on the felt.
She sat.
The chair creaked beneath her weight, loud in the sudden hush.
“I’d like to gamble,” she said.
Her voice was steady—neither timid nor bold. Just… certain.
A man across the table snorted, breaking the tension.
He leaned back, gold rings flashing under the lights, eyes dragging over her muddied clothes.
“And what are you betting with?” he scoffed.
“You don’t look like you’ve got a single coin to your name.”
A few chuckles followed. Nervous ones.
She met his gaze without flinching.
As if she had already anticipated the question.
“My body.”
The word struck like a thrown knife.
Shock erupted across the table.
Someone choked on their drink.
Another let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh.
A woman nearby stiffened, eyes wide. Even the dealer recoiled slightly, fingers curling into the felt.
For a moment, chaos threatened to burst forth—
Then it didn’t.
Because something about her expression stopped it cold.
She wasn’t smiling.
She wasn’t pleading.
She wasn’t trying to provoke.
She was offering.
Slowly, uncomfortably, they realised what stood before them.
This wasn’t a desperate gamble.
This wasn’t a drunken stunt.
This was someone who had already crossed the point of fear.
A madwoman.
No—
Something worse.
Someone who had decided the outcome no longer mattered.
The silver-eyed girl sat calmly amid the flickering lights and murmuring crowd, posture relaxed, gaze empty.
Around her, excitement twisted into unease, curiosity into tension.
In the beating heart of Altesia’s underworld—
Where greed ruled and luck reigned supreme—
Fate stirred.
Because tonight, among gamblers chasing fortune,
One soul had arrived who wagered existence itself—
And did so without blinking.
