**Chapter 14: Casualties of War**
**Day 1,125.**
**Status: The Butcher's Bill.**
**Global Player Count: 72,000,000.**
The human mind is a fragile piece of software. It is designed to handle stress, fear, and pain, but only within the parameters of what it considers "real." When you blur the line—when you convince the brain that a digital sword passing through a digital gut is a fatal event—the hardware starts to glitch.
I sat in the War Room of the Atacama facility, staring at a new data stream that had appeared on the main console. It wasn't blue (System Data) or gold (Tithes). It was a dull, sickly grey.
**[Neural Feedback Report.]**
**[Category: Trauma.]**
"Show me the fallout," I commanded.
Zero projected a series of windows. They weren't views of Aethelgard. They were security feeds from hospitals in New York, London, and Seoul.
In New York-Presbyterian Hospital, a ward had been quarantined. Inside lay twenty young men and women. They weren't physically injured—not by a bullet or a knife. But they were catatonic.
These were the players who had suffered "True Death" during the first phase of the Abyssal Sovereign raid. The tanks who had been vaporized. The DPS who had been crushed.
When their avatars were deleted, the System severed the connection instantly. But the bio-feedback loop—the flow of Prana that had been reinforcing their bodies—didn't just stop. It snapped.
It was like pulling the plug on a deep-sea diver without decompression.
"The energy vacuum caused a rapid regression," Zero explained, his voice devoid of sympathy. "Their bodies had adapted to the influx of your power. When it was removed forcibly, their own biology couldn't sustain the new baseline. Their muscles have atrophied overnight. Their immune systems have crashed."
I zoomed in on a patient chart. *Player: IronWall.* Real name: Marcus Trent. Before the game, he was a gym teacher. During the game, he was a superhuman. Now? He looked like a man who had starved for a month.
"Casualties of war," I whispered.
"The governments are calling it 'VR Sickness'," Zero noted. "They are threatening to shut down the internet to stop the spread."
"They can't," I said, swiping the feed away. "The economy has already shifted. The Dungeons are producing clean energy resources. The Guilds are policing the streets where the cops can't go. The world is addicted to the miracle. Now, they have to pay the price."
I leaned back in my chair. The 10% growth hit me—Day 1,125. I barely felt it. My capacity had grown so large that adding a mountain to a planet felt like adding a grain of sand to a beach.
"But we need to manage the fear," I decided. "If they are too afraid to log in, the Tithes stop. If the Tithes stop, I lose my stabilizer. And if I lose my stabilizer... I break the Earth."
I stood up.
"We need a victory. A clean one. And we need it fast."
***
**The Real World: Tokyo. A Safe House.**
Ren sat on the floor of a small, nondescript apartment in the Shinjuku district. The blinds were drawn. The only light came from the humming Black Box around his neck and the monitors set up on a folding table.
He was rubbing his legs.
Since the Leviathan raid, his legs felt... distant.
He hadn't died. He hadn't suffered True Death. But the sheer psychic pressure of the boss fight—the terror—had left a mark. The Prana flow was turbulent. Sometimes, his toes would go numb for an hour. It was a terrifying reminder that his ability to walk was on loan.
"You're doing it again," a voice said.
Ren looked up. Elena—*Saintess*—was on the screen via a secure video call. She looked exhausted. The bags under her eyes were dark enough to carry groceries.
"Doing what?" Ren asked.
"Checking your status. Measuring your grip strength. Touching your legs." Elena sighed. "Ren, we all feel it. The recoil."
"Did you see the news?" Ren asked, ignoring her concern. "The tanks from the Blades who died... they aren't waking up, Elena. They're withering."
"I know," Elena said softly. "I'm treating three of them in London. It's... it's horrific, Ren. It's like their life force was sucked out."
"It was," Ren said. "The System gives, and the System takes."
He stood up, testing his weight. His knees held.
"That's why we have to clear the next one without casualties," Ren said. "We can't let Damon lead. He treats people like ammo. If he leads the raid on the Deep Sea King, half the server will end up in a coma."
"The Deep Sea King," Elena shuddered. "Level 60. Located in the Shattered Isles. Ren, we barely survived Level 50 with a raid of a hundred people. The King is a Duelist type boss. He doesn't just spam AoE attacks. He hunts."
"That's why we're not bringing a hundred people," Ren said. "We're bringing ten."
Elena blinked. "Ten? That's suicide."
"No. It's surgical. The King feeds on fear. The mechanic is 'Drowning Despair'. The more people present, the stronger his aura gets. We need a small team. High mental resistance. High skill."
Ren picked up the *Twin Fangs* from his desk. In the real world, they were just data, but he could feel the phantom weight of them in his hands.
"Sanctuary needs a Charter, Elena. Damon has one. He's turning L.A. into a fortress. If you want to protect people, you need a Sovereign Zone. You need the drop from the King."
Elena was silent for a long moment. Then, she nodded.
"Who do we take?"
"You and me," Ren said. "And the Elite Eight from your guild. No Blades. No mercenaries."
"When?"
Ren looked at the clock.
"The tide is rising in the Shattered Isles. We go in one hour."
***
**Simulation Layer: The Shattered Isles.**
**Zone: The Coral Fortress.**
The new continent I had created was a masterpiece of hostile geography. It wasn't land; it was a series of massive, jagged spires of rock and coral jutting out of a violently churning ocean. Bridges made of hard-light magic connected the islands.
The weather was permanently set to 'Typhoon'.
Ren stood on the precipice of the central island. The rain lashed against his avatar, soaking his leather armor. The wind howled, threatening to blow him into the abyss below.
Behind him stood Elena and eight of Sanctuary's best. They wore white and gold robes, heavily enchanted for water resistance.
"This place feels hostile," Marcus (the replacement tank for Sanctuary) muttered. "Not just the mobs. The air. It feels heavy."
"That's the King's aura," Ren said. "He knows we're here."
Ren checked his HUD.
**[Raid: The Throne of Tides.]**
**[Party Size: 10/10.]**
**[Difficulty: Mythic.]**
"Remember the briefing," Ren shouted over the wind. "If you get hit, you don't just lose HP. You lose stats. Temporarily. If your Strength drops below 10, the armor crushes you. If your Willpower drops, you disconnect. Do not get hit."
"Easy for the Rogue to say," Marcus grumbled, raising his greatshield.
Ren stepped forward. He pulled a conch shell from his inventory—a key item looted from a sub-boss.
He blew into it.
The sound was a deep, mournful horn blast that cut through the storm.
The water in the center of the fortress churned. A massive geyser erupted.
From the water, a figure descended slowly, floating on a pillar of hydro-magic.
He wasn't a monster like the Leviathan. He was humanoid. Seven feet tall, muscular, with skin like blue steel and a crown of jagged red coral fused to his skull. He wore armor made of sea-dragon scales and carried a trident that crackled with black lightning.
**[BOSS ENGAGED: THE DEEP SEA KING (Level 60)]**
The King landed on the wet stone. He didn't roar. He simply looked at them with eyes that held the crushing pressure of the deep.
*"Only ten?"* the King spoke. His voice sounded like drowning. *"Arrogance... or desperation?"*
"Efficiency," Ren retorted.
Ren vanished. **[Stealth.]**
"Formation!" Elena screamed.
The fight began.
***
**The Atacama Facility.**
I watched the raid from my console.
"Ren is gambling," I observed. "He's betting that the King's scaling mechanic relies on crowd fear. He's right, of course. I coded it that way."
"However," Zero interjected, "The Deep Sea King has a secondary mechanic Ren is unaware of."
"The 'Riptide'," I nodded. "Physical trauma transfer."
I leaned in. This was the test. Not of their gaming skill, but of their resilience.
On the screen, the Deep Sea King moved with terrifying speed. He didn't cast spells; he dashed. He closed the gap to Marcus in a single frame.
*BOOM.*
The trident slammed into Marcus's shield.
In a normal game, a damage number would pop up. Here, the physics engine—powered by my reality-warping Prana—simulated the kinetic transfer perfectly.
Marcus's avatar was driven into the stone floor, knee-deep.
In London, inside his apartment, the real Marcus screamed. His arm, holding a plastic controller (or wearing a Silver Visor), felt like it had just been hit by a sledgehammer. The bone didn't break, but the phantom pain was 100% real.
"Hold the line!" Elena shouted, casting **[Greater Heal]**.
Ren materialized behind the King, his daggers glowing with toxic green energy. He struck at the King's gills.
*Clang.*
The King didn't even turn. He blocked the backstab with the shaft of his trident, spinning it behind his back with impossible dexterity.
*"Too slow, little fish,"* the King mocked.
He spun, lashing out with a backhand strike.
Ren ducked—barely. The wind of the punch ruffled his hair.
"He's fast!" Ren yelled. "Faster than the Leviathan! He's reading our inputs!"
"He's an adaptive AI," I whispered to the screen. "He learns your rhythm, Ren. You can't spam the same combo."
The battle raged. It was a dance of death in the pouring rain.
Sanctuary's DPS—a Fire Mage named Ignis and a Ranger named Hawkeye—were pouring damage into the King, but his health bar was barely moving.
**[HP: 95%]**
"His regeneration is tied to the rain!" Elena realized. "Ignis! Vaporize the water around him!"
"I'm trying!" Ignis shouted. "But the storm is endless!"
The Deep Sea King laughed. He raised his trident.
*"Drown."*
A sphere of water materialized around Hawkeye's head.
Hawkeye clawed at his throat. His oxygen bar appeared and depleted instantly.
"Cleanse it!" Elena shouted.
She cast a dispel, but the King was ready. He dashed through the defensive line, ignoring Marcus, and thrust his trident at Elena.
It was a killing blow.
Ren saw it.
He was mid-air, recovering from a dodge. He calculated the distance. He couldn't reach the King in time to attack.
But he could reach Elena.
Ren triggered **[Shadow Step]**.
He materialized in front of Elena, creating a flesh shield.
He didn't have a tank's armor. He had leather.
The trident pierced Ren's chest.
***
**The Real World: Tokyo.**
Ren gasped.
It wasn't a gasp of surprise. It was the sound of his lungs seizing.
The pain was absolute. It felt cold. Ice cold. Like a spear of frozen nitrogen had been driven through his sternum.
He fell off his chair. The Black Box clattered against the floorboards.
His vision tunneled. The room spun.
"Ren!" Elena's voice screamed from the speakers.
Ren lay on the floor, clutching his chest. There was no blood, but his body was reacting as if there were. Shock. Hypothermia.
And then, the worst part.
His legs.
The warmth that had been building there for weeks—the Prana—flickered and died. The numbness returned, rushing up from his toes like a rising tide.
*No,* Ren thought. *Not that. Anything but that.*
**[System Alert: Critical Avatar Damage.]**
**[Neural Sync Destabilizing.]**
**[Warning: True Death Imminent.]**
He was dying in the game. And if he died, he knew—he *knew*—he would never walk again. The shock would sever the pathways he had worked so hard to rebuild.
"Get up," he wheezed.
He grabbed the desk. He dragged himself up.
On the screen, his avatar was impaled on the trident, dangling in the air. The Deep Sea King was laughing.
Ren put his hands on the keyboard (he used a hybrid control scheme for precision).
"I am... not... done."
***
**Simulation Layer.**
The King lifted Ren's impaled body high.
*"A noble sacrifice,"* the King sneered. *"Useless. But noble."*
He prepared to fling Ren into the ocean.
But Ren's avatar didn't go limp.
Ren's hand reached out and grabbed the shaft of the trident.
The King paused.
Ren's eyes—usually a soft brown—flared with a brilliant, blinding blue light.
It wasn't a game mechanic. It was the Bleed.
In Tokyo, Ren was pouring everything he had—every ounce of his desire, his fear, his hatred of the wheelchair—into the Black Box.
**[Override Detected.]**
**[Subject 042 is channeling excess Prana.]**
**[Limit Break: FORCED.]**
Ren's avatar began to glow. The wound in his chest didn't heal, but it stopped bleeding code.
"You made a mistake," Ren whispered. His voice in the game distorted, sounding like *my* voice for a split second. The voice of the Architect.
"You got too close."
Ren activated **[Twin Fangs: Self-Destruct]**.
It wasn't a skill in the skill tree. It was something he had discovered by accident. By overloading the durability of his weapons with mana, he could turn them into bombs.
He jammed both daggers into the King's arm holding the trident.
*BOOM.*
A massive explosion of kinetic energy.
The King's arm shattered. The trident fell.
Ren hit the ground. He rolled, coughing blood.
"Elena!" Ren screamed. "He's stunned! The armor is broken! KILL HIM!"
The King roared in pain, clutching his stump. The regeneration was trying to knit the limb back, but the "Self-Destruct" damage was Cursed. It wouldn't heal.
Elena didn't hesitate. She saw Ren's health bar hovering at 1%. She saw what he had sacrificed.
"Ignis! Marcus! Everyone!" Elena commanded, her voice cracking with fury. "Target the wound! Bury him!"
The Sanctuary team unloaded.
It was a massacre. Without his trident, without his arm, the King was unbalanced. He flailed, trying to summon the water, but Ignis—fueled by Ren's desperation—channeled a firestorm that boiled the rain before it could touch the boss.
The King's HP plummeted.
**[10%... 5%... 0%]**
The Deep Sea King fell to his knees. He looked at Ren, who was lying in a pool of digital blood.
*"The ocean... always... returns..."* the King gasped.
He dissolved into foam.
**[VICTORY.]**
**[Raid Complete.]**
A chest appeared. It was made of coral and gold.
Ren didn't move toward it. He couldn't. His avatar was paralyzed.
Elena ran to him. She knelt in the mud, casting heal after heal, but the health bar wouldn't fill past 10%.
"Ren," she cried. "Ren, speak to me."
Ren's avatar looked up. He smiled weakly.
"Did we... get the Charter?"
Elena looked at the chest. "Yes. We got it."
"Good," Ren whispered. "Then it was worth the legs."
His avatar flickered.
**[Player Ren has disconnected.]**
***
**The Real World: Tokyo.**
Ren lay on the floor of his apartment.
The connection was cut. The silence of the room was deafening.
He lay there for an hour, staring at the dust motes dancing in the light of the monitors.
He tried to move his toes.
Nothing.
He tried to move his ankles.
Nothing.
The numbness was back. Heavy. Absolute. The brief window of freedom—the weeks of walking, of running—felt like a dream that was rapidly fading.
Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, running into his ears.
He had won. Sanctuary had their Charter. They could save people now.
But he had paid the toll.
*Click.*
The sound came from the monitors. A notification.
**[System Message: Architect.]**
Ren blinked, clearing his blurry vision. He looked at the screen.
A single line of text hovered there, glowing with a golden light he had never seen before.
**[Payment Received.]**
**[Status: Overcharge.]**
**[You broke the vessel, Ren. But you expanded the capacity.]**
Ren frowned. What did that mean?
Then, he felt it.
Not a twitch. Not a spark.
A burn.
It started in his chest, where the trident had pierced him in the game. A ball of heat, white-hot and agonizing. It didn't stay there. It rushed downward. It slammed into his spinal cord like a freight train.
Ren screamed.
It was a scream of agony, but also of life.
The heat blasted through the blockage in his nerves. It tore through the atrophy. It hit his toes with the force of a lightning strike.
His legs kicked out. Violently. Knocking over the table.
**[System Gift: Adaptive Regeneration.]**
**[Your sacrifice has been noted. The Order of Truth honors its veterans.]**
Ren curled into a ball, sobbing and laughing as the fire reshaped his body. He wasn't back to square one. He was evolving.
***
**The Atacama Facility.**
I lowered my hand.
The energy expenditure for that "miracle" was significant. I had manually injected 1% of my daily growth directly into Ren's nervous system.
"You interfered," Zero stated. "That violates the rules of the experiment."
"I adjusted the parameters," I corrected, leaning back in the chair. "Ren proved that the human will can override the system limitations. He hacked the game with his own pain. I simply... patched the bug."
I looked at the stats.
Sanctuary had the Charter. The Deep Sea King was dead.
But the cost was clear. The hospitals were full. The government was terrified. And Ren... Ren was becoming something else. Something less human and more like *me*.
"The war is just starting, Zero," I said. "Damon is going to be furious that Sanctuary cleared the King. He's going to retaliate."
"Faction War is inevitable," Zero agreed.
I closed my eyes.
"Good. Let them fight. Because while they fight each other... they aren't looking at the sky."
I pulled up a new window. A deep space scan.
Something was moving out there beyond the orbit of Mars. Something that had noticed the massive flares of Prana coming from Earth.
The bored god had asked for entertainment. The universe was about to send a Challenger.
**[Day 1,125 Ends.]**
**[Daily Growth: +10%.]**
**[Casualties: High.]**
**[Entertainment Value: Optimal.]**