[Ding!]

[Server Announcement: The Final Boss, Malakor the Voidborn, has been slain!]

[Congratulations to the Vanguard Guild for clearing the Aethelgard Realm!]

[The game world ’Aethelgard’ will begin its shutdown sequence in 24 hours. Survivors, prepare for the next Zenith Protocol cycle.]

Dante collapsed heavily onto his knees. His heavy broadsword clattered loudly against the cracked floor.

He was completely out of breath.

His in-game armor was completely shredded to pieces, and his stamina bar was blinking a dangerous red. Worse, his HP was sitting at a miserable two percent.

But he was alive.

The colossal and twisted corpse of Malakor the Voidborn was currently dissolving into a mountain of digital ash right in front of him.

The air smelled strongly of blood and victory.

"We actually did it," Dante muttered.

He wiped a mixture of sweat and grime from his forehead.

It had taken three brutal months.

Three months of sleeping in the mud, fighting nightmarish monsters, and watching good people die.

In the Zenith Protocol, death wasn’t just a simple respawn screen.

The cosmic system had hijacked humanity’s fate back in 2290 on Veridia, forcing people into hyper-realistic and high-stakes game worlds using their physical bodies.

If your HP hit zero in the game, the capsule housing your real body back on Veridia scrambled your brain.

Game over meant real death!

But they had survived. The Aethelgard cycle was finally over.

Suddenly, a glowing sphere of golden light emerged from the pile of Malakor’s ashes.

It floated gently toward Dante and hovered right in front of his chest.

[Ding!]

[Supreme Artifact Looted: Aegis Blueprint]

[Description: A world-tier artifact schematic. Items of this tier bypass the Zenith Protocol’s reset rules and can be carried over into the next game world.]

Dante reached out and grabbed the glowing blueprint.

The moment his fingers closed around it, the golden light solidified into a heavily sealed metallic scroll.

Abilities and levels reset with every new game world. Everyone went back to being Level 1 nobodies.

But Supreme Artifacts? Are carried over to each games.

Whoever held this blueprint would effectively rule the early stages of whatever hellish world the Zenith Protocol threw at them next.

Footsteps echoed loudly from behind him.

"Man, you look like absolute garbage," a voice called out.

Dante let out a tired laugh without turning around. It was Silas. ID: Gilded.

His blood-brother, his vice-guild master, and the guy who had watched his back since day one of this nightmare.

"You didn’t do much better against that third phase, man," Dante said.

He slowly stood up and turned around.

"I saw you hiding behind the pillars when Malakor started spamming the AoE voids."

Silas walked up. His silver armor was remarkably clean compared to Dante’s wrecked gear.

Behind him stood six other core members of the Vanguard Guild. They were all completely silent.

"Yeah, well, surviving is a skill," Silas said.

He stopped a few feet away, and his eyes locked onto the metallic scroll in Dante’s hand.

"Is that it? The Supreme drop?"

"The Aegis Blueprint," Dante nodded. He tossed it lightly in his hand.

"This is our ticket, Silas. Next world, we won’t have to scrounge for scraps. We can set up a real safe zone."

"Our ticket," Silas repeated. The corner of his mouth twitched upward into a small and tight smile. "Right. About that."

Before Dante could even register the shift in tone, a cold and sharp pain exploded in his chest.

He froze completely.

Looking down, he saw the jagged tip of a high-tier assassin’s dagger protruding from the center of his breastplate.

The blade had pierced straight through his back and out his front, right where his heart was located.

[Critical Hit!]

[HP: 0.1%]

Dante coughed loudly. A thick spray of blood splattered across the obsidian floor.

His knees buckled, and he dropped hard.

The [Aegis Blueprint] rolled out of his grip, clanking against the stone floor.

He looked up, and his vision started blurring.

Silas stood over him, holding the blood-stained hilt of the dagger.

The other six guildmates didn’t even flinch. They just watched with indifferent expressions.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Dante spat. His voice was a wet rasp.

Silas chuckled. He reached down and scooped up the Aegis Blueprint. He dusted it off like it was a cheap trinket.

"Nothing personal, Vanguard. You’re just too heavy to carry into the next cycle."

"I carried you," Dante gritted his teeth. He fought the paralysis debuff creeping up his spine.

"Yeah, and it made me look like a sidekick. I hate playing sidekick," Silas said and stepped back.

"You always have to be the hero. The noble leader saving the day. It is exhausting. And honestly? The sponsors back on Veridia pay better when you’re a solo act."

"You spineless piece of trash," Dante choked out.

"Save the dramatic final words, man," Silas sighed and rolled his eyes.

"You’re bleeding out. Brain death in the real world is going to kick in any second now. Just close your eyes. It will be quicker."

Dante looked at the faces of his guildmates.

People he had shared rations with. People he had taken hits for.

They looked away and checked their system menus. They looked incredibly bored.

The anger hit him like a physical shockwave.

He wasn’t going to just lie here and die so Silas could play king in the next world.

With a shaky and blood-soaked hand, Dante forced his inventory menu open.

He bypassed his potions and standard gear, scrolling straight down to a banned item he had looted from a hidden dungeon two months ago.

[Item Selected: Unstable Void-Core]

[Warning: Activation will deal 50,000 fixed explosive damage to the user and all entities within a 20-meter radius. Cannot be blocked by standard defenses.]

"Hey, Silas," Dante coughed. A manic grin spread across his face.

Silas paused and narrowed his eyes at Dante’s hand.

A glowing and dark-purple sphere had materialized in Dante’s palm.

It was vibrating violently, emitting a high-pitched whine.

The color completely drained from Silas’s face. "Are you insane?!"

"If I’m going, you’re all coming with me," Dante said.

He crushed the sphere.

"Pop the scroll! Now!" Silas screamed loudly and scrambled backward.

One of the guildmates instantly shattered a golden crystal.

An [Aether Scroll].

A massive barrier of absolute invulnerability slammed down around Silas. It encased him in a dome of untouchable light just a fraction of a second before the Void-Core detonated.

The explosion was completely silent.

A wave of purple energy devoured the entire room.

It vaporized the six guildmates instantly, turning them to dust before they could even scream!

The energy crashed into Silas’s golden barrier. It cracked it and bent it, but it completely failed to break it.

Silas stood inside, completely unharmed. He clutched the Aegis Blueprint and laughed hysterically.

Dante didn’t hear the laughter. The purple energy consumed him.

The pain was absolute. It tore his digital body apart at the molecular level.

[HP: 0]

[Status: Deceased]

His vision snapped to black.

The feeling of falling consumed him, accompanied by a deafening and static roar.

This was it. The system was severing the connection. His real brain was about to get fried by his capsule.

He waited for the final and permanent dark.

***

"Gah!"

Dante violently sat up. His head slammed hard into a curved sheet of plexiglass.

He gasped for air like a drowning man breaking the surface.

His lungs burned as he inhaled the stale and recycled oxygen of his apartment.

He pushed the heavy lid of the VR capsule open and tumbled out.

He hit the cheap linoleum floor of his bedroom with a heavy thud.

He lay there for a second. His heart hammered against his ribs at a million miles an hour.

"I’m alive?" he whispered. His voice was hoarse.

He grabbed his chest, fully expecting to feel a gaping hole where Silas’s dagger had pierced him.

There was nothing.

Just his sweat-soaked t-shirt and the steady and rapid thumping of his own heart.

He looked around the room.

It was exactly as he had left it three months ago.

A cramped and dingy studio apartment in Oakhaven, one of the lower-tier mega-cities on Veridia.

Neon light flickered through the dirty blinds from the mag-train rails outside.

The desk was still littered with empty instant noodle cups and energy drink cans.

It was 2290. He was actually back in the real world.

Dante sat up and leaned against the side of the cooling VR capsule.

His mind was racing.

The Zenith Protocol didn’t make mistakes.

If you died in the game, the capsule overloaded your neural link.

You died. Period.

He had watched a dozen people get dragged out of their apartments in body bags over the last year.

So why was he breathing?

A sudden and intense burning sensation flared against his collarbone.

Dante winced and reached into his shirt.

He pulled out a small cord necklace.

Hanging from it was a jagged and dull piece of crystal.

It was the pendant Lillian had given him.

Two years ago, his girlfriend Lillian had vanished without a trace.

No note, no message.

Just her apartment cleared out and this broken and seemingly useless crystal pendant left on his kitchen counter.

He had worn it every day since, mostly out of stubborn sentimentality.

Right now, the crystal was glowing with a faint and violet light, rapidly cracking into dust!

Before his eyes, a familiar blue holographic interface flickered into existence in the real world.

It projected directly into his vision.

[Ding!]

[System Notice: Fatal neural shock averted.]

[Anomaly Detected.]

┏━━━━━━[ Item Profile ]━━━━━━┓

│ Name: Tear of the Forgotten

│ Grade: Mythic (Broken)

│ Effect: Binds to the user’s soul. Negates one instance of True Death across all Zenith Protocol realms by absorbing the neural overload.

│ Status: Depleted. Item destroyed.

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Dante stared at the floating blue text.

The crystal pendant crumbled into fine gray ash. It slipped through his fingers and drifted onto the floor.

Lillian’s pendant was an actual Mythic-tier Zenith Protocol item.

He sat there for a long time. The hum of the city traffic outside was the only sound in the room.

He didn’t understand how Lillian had possessed an item like that before the Zenith Protocol even officially launched on Veridia.

He didn’t understand where she had gone.

But as the initial shock faded, the memory of the boss room rushed back in.

Silas’s smug face.

The dagger twisting in his back.

The theft of the Aegis Blueprint.

Dante climbed to his feet.

He walked over to the small and cracked mirror hanging above his sink and looked at himself.

He looked exhausted, pale from three months in the capsule.

But his eyes were completely clear.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t smash anything.

Rage was a useless emotion if it wasn’t focused.

Silas had just stolen his loot, murdered their guildmates, and tried to permanently end his life.

The bastard was probably sitting in his own high-end penthouse right now, popping champagne and getting ready to cash in on the Vanguard Guild’s fame.

Silas thought Dante was dead. Silas thought he had won.

Dante turned on the faucet and splashed freezing water onto his face.

The next game cycle was starting soon. The Zenith Protocol never stopped for long.

He dried his face with a towel, his mind already turning cold and calculating.

He needed resources. He needed a new ID. And he needed to find out exactly what the hell Lillian was involved in.

Silas wanted to play the king of the new world?

Fine.

Dante was going to burn his entire empire to the ground.