Dante turned away from the trash chute. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his gray hoodie and walked back toward his apartment door.

Before he could slide his keycard into the lock, the door next to his swung open again.

Sera leaned against the doorframe. She had swapped her sweaty tank top for a dark leather jacket, though she still looked completely exhausted.

"Hey," Sera called out.

Dante paused. "Yeah?"

"Lila, Nyx, and I are starving," Sera said. "We have been moving VR rigs all afternoon and we do not have any food in the fridge yet.

We are heading down to the pub on the corner to grab burgers. You want to come? Our treat. Consider it a thank you for helping with that plating box."

The stomach of Dante immediately let out a loud and embarrassing growl.

The intravenous nutrients from the capsule kept his organs functioning, but they didn’t do anything for actual hunger.

"I will not say no to free food," Dante said.

Ten minutes later, the four of them were sitting in a cracked leather booth at The Rust & Ruin.

It was a dimly lit and grimy pub situated right under the mag-train rails. The neon signs in the window buzzed loudly and cast a harsh red glow over their table.

Sera ordered a pitcher of cheap synthetic beer and a mountain of greasy fries.

Dante took a long drink from his glass. It tasted faintly of copper and bad decisions, but it was ice cold.

"So," Lila said and leaned forward. Her bright blue hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. "What do you do, Dante? You look like you just woke up from a coma."

"I work from home," Dante said smoothly and grabbed a fry. "Freelance logistics. Data management. It is boring."

It wasn’t a total lie. He had just managed the logistics of moving 1.2 billion credits into an offshore account.

"We run an in-game studio," Nyx said. She was sitting next to Lila.

She was currently ignoring her beer to aggressively scroll through a datapad. She pushed her dark glasses up her nose.

"Astral Vanguard. We broker gear, manage resource nodes, and supply raiding guilds in the Zenith Protocol."

"Oh," Dante said. He perfectly faked mild interest. "The big death game. I do not really play. Seems stressful."

"It is incredibly stressful," Sera sighed and rubbed her temples. "Especially today. The entire server economy is completely upside down."

"Because of Dan," Lila blurted out. Her eyes lit up.

Dante froze with a fry halfway to his mouth. He popped it in and chewed slowly. "Who is Dan?"

"He is a ghost," Nyx said and did not look up from her screen.

"Or a hacker. Or a psychopath. The forums are completely melting down. Some un-guilded solo player named Dan just spent the entire day humiliating Vanguard’s Legacy."

"Vanguard’s Legacy?" Dante asked and played dumb.

"The biggest guild on the server," Sera explained and poured herself another glass of beer.

"They are run by this guy named Silas. He is incredibly well-funded. He was supposed to lock down the entire Outpost 404 region today and establish an absolute monopoly."

"Supposed to?" Dante asked.

"Yeah, until Dan showed up," Lila laughed and grabbed a handful of fries.

"It is hilarious. Silas sends his top Enforcer, Malric, with three hundred guys to lock down Embercraig Canyon.

Dan apparently just stood in the middle of a volcano, wiped the entire army, and then placed a public bounty on two of Silas’s officers."

"He did not just wipe an army," Nyx corrected. She tapped her datapad furiously.

"He stole a Titan-tier World Boss kill and a Gold-tier Zone Boss kill. Both First Kills. On day one."

Nyx slid the datapad onto the sticky table and spun it around so Dante could see.

It was a blurry and zoomed-in screenshot taken from the canyon ridges. It showed Dante standing in the magma pool and surrounded by twelve glitching spatial clones.

"Look at this," Nyx said and pointed a sharp fingernail at the screen.

"The math does not make any sense. He is Level 19. A standard Warrior class at that level cannot output the burst damage required to drop an Inferno Behemoth in ten seconds."

"He is either exploiting a physics glitch, or he has an unlisted and cosmic-tier innate talent."

Dante stared at the blurry picture of himself. He kept his face completely blank.

"Maybe the guild just sucks," Dante suggested casually.

Nyx glared at him. "Malric does not suck. He is a former military contractor. Dan is a mathematical anomaly. I would give my left arm to see his raw character sheet."

"Well, whoever he is, he is great for business," Sera said and took a sip of her beer.

"Vanguard’s Legacy is bleeding influence. Everyone is terrified of this guy. This means the mid-tier guilds are frantically buying up gear to protect themselves. We actually just secured a massive supply drop today because of the chaos."

Dante raised an eyebrow. "Supply drop?"

"Yeah," Sera nodded. She smiled for the first time all night.

"Some anonymous whale dumped an entire guild worth of weapons and skillbooks on us about two hours ago.

It completely set our studio up for the entire cycle. I do not know who the guy was, but he just handed us the keys to the local economy."

Dante took a slow sip of his beer to hide his smirk. "Wow. Lucky you guys."

"It is not all good news, though," Lila said.

Her hyperactive energy suddenly completely vanished. She looked down at the table and traced the condensation on her glass.

The mood at the table shifted instantly. Even Nyx stopped scrolling on her datapad.

"What is wrong?" Dante asked. He was genuinely curious.

"The server is just a mess right now," Sera said quietly. "It would not be this chaotic if Vanguard was still here."

The grip of Dante on his glass tightened slightly.

"Vanguard?" Dante asked.

"He was the leader of the original guild," Nyx explained. Her cynical tone softened.

"Before Silas rebranded it to Vanguard’s Legacy. Vanguard was the number one player in the Aethelgard cycle.

He was not a corporate suit like Silas. He actually protected the starter zones. He organized the safe routes."

"He was a hero," Lila added softly.

"He took the frontline in every major raid. He died yesterday fighting the final boss. Silas gave this massive press conference this morning talking about how Vanguard took a fatal blow meant for him."

Dante stared at the three women sitting across from him.

They genuinely believed it. They were actually mourning his death.

A cold spike of anger hit the chest of Dante.

It wasn’t directed at the girls. It was directed entirely at Silas.

Silas hadn’t just stolen his gear and his life. He had weaponized the reputation of Dante. He had taken the goodwill Dante had bled for over three months and twisted it into a PR shield to recruit naive players and rake in sponsorships.

Dante wanted to scream.

He wanted to slam his hands on the table, tell them the truth, and show them the exact spot where Silas had driven a dagger through his spine.

But he didn’t.

He looked at Sera, Lila, and Nyx. They were just trying to run a business. They lived in Sector 4 of Oakhaven, the exact same slum he did.

Silas wasn’t just a player in a game. Silas was a billionaire back on Veridia.

He had real-world Enforcers like Malric tracking neural signatures and IP addresses. Silas had already issued a blank check to find the guy named "Dan".

If Dante told these girls the truth, he made them accessories.

If Silas found out Vanguard was living next door to the Astral Vanguard studio, he wouldn’t just wipe their characters in the game. He would send a strike team to their apartment building.

Dante couldn’t drag them into his war. He had to stay dead.

"Sounds like he was a good guy," Dante said. His voice was perfectly level.

"He was," Sera said. She raised her glass of cheap synthetic beer. "To Vanguard."

"To Vanguard," Lila and Nyx echoed and raised their glasses.

They looked at Dante.

Dante forced his hand to move. He picked up his glass and clinked it against theirs.

"To Vanguard," Dante said. He toasted to his own fake death.

He took a long drink. The beer tasted even worse now.

"Anyway," Sera said. She cleared her throat and shook off the heavy atmosphere.

"Enough about dead heroes and crazy solo players. Dante, you should really think about picking up a VR capsule.

The Zenith Protocol is dangerous, but the credits you can make just farming safe-zone materials are better than whatever freelance data gig you have."

"I do not know," Dante lied smoothly. "I do not really have the reflexes for combat."

Nyx scoffed. "You do not need reflexes if you just hit rocks with a pickaxe all day. We could even hire you. We always need cheap labor to gather iron ore."

"I will keep it in mind," Dante smiled.

The waitress finally brought out their food.

It was a massive platter of greasy synth-beef burgers and onion rings.

The conversation shifted to complaints about the broken elevator of the apartment building and the terrible water pressure in the showers.

Dante ate his food in silence. He listened to them argue about who was going to take the trash out tomorrow.

They were normal. They were just trying to survive the nightmare the system had forced on humanity.

Dante finished his burger and wiped his hands on a napkin.

He looked out the grimy window of the pub and watched the neon lights reflect off the wet pavement of the Oakhaven streets.

Silas wanted to play the grieving brother. He wanted to use the ghost of Vanguard to build an empire.

Dante was going to make sure that empire burned to the ground before it even finished its foundation. And he was going to do it without anyone ever knowing he was still alive.