The world dissolved into white light.
When Ah'Ming opened his eyes, he was standing in a crystalline chamber that hadn't existed a moment before. The walls pulsed with soft blue luminescence, and floating before him was a massive screen displaying his statistics.
|INSTANCE CLEARANCE REPORT
|BROADCASTER: AH'MING
|INSTANCE: RESTFUL RESORT (#4238)
The numbers scrolled past:
|SUBSTORY COMPLETION: 34% (50/64 unique stories)
|MAIN STORY COMPLETION: 94%
|TOTAL KILLS: 2,847 (Instance Average: 234)
|DEATHS: 0
|PROPERTY DAMAGE: ████ POINTS REDACTED FOR BROADCASTER'S MENTAL HEALTH
|NPC FAVORABILITY: +47 (Unusually High)
|UNIQUE ACHIEVEMENTS: 23
|OVERALL GRADE: S
Ah'Ming watched the report compile itself, feeling oddly detached. It was like watching someone else's game stats.
"Huh," he said to the empty chamber. "I actually did okay."
|Broadcaster exceeded 99.8% of all previous attempts
|System is... grudgingly impressed
"Aw, Steve, you do care."
|System takes it back
More screens appeared, showing his rewards breakdown, his new rank (D!), his unlocked perks. It was all very official and impressive and made Ah'Ming's eyes glaze over after the first thirty seconds.
"Can I just... go now?"
|Processing complete
|Exit is behind you
Ah'Ming turned and saw a door that definitely hadn't been there before. It was plain white, with a simple handle.
He grabbed it, turned, and stepped through—
—into sensory overload.
"What the fuck—"
The door vanished behind him with a soft pop, leaving Ah'Ming standing on a street made of obsidian that reflected a sky full of colors that hurt to look at.
This wasn't the Hub Zone.
This was something else entirely.
Towers rose around him in impossible geometries, their architecture bending space in ways that made his head spin. Some buildings seemed to exist in four dimensions at once. Others flickered in and out of reality like bad video signal.
And everywhere— literally everywhere—were screens.
Massive holographic displays floated through the air, each one showing... instances. Broadcasters. Death compilations. Highlight reels set to music.
It was like Times Square had been designed by something that had only heard about architecture through a fever dream.
But it was the beings that made Ah'Ming freeze.
They weren't human.
Oh, some looked almost human. They had beautiful faces on bodies that moved wrong, or had too many joints, or skin that shifted through colors that shouldn't exist.
But others...
A creature made of geometric patterns browsed a nearby stall, its form shifting between shapes Ah'Ming's brain refused to process. Something with wings made of static and eyes like dying stars drifted past overhead. A being that looked like someone had tried to sculpt a person out of television noise haggled with a vendor whose face was just... fractals. Endless fractals.
They were all watching the screens.
"Holy shit," Ah'Ming whispered.
Nobody noticed him. They were too busy watching.
One of the largest displays showed a familiar scene: The Resentful Resort. The funeral shop pavilion. Four players approaching with the golden book held high.
"Oh, this is the good part!" someone said nearby. The voice sounded like wind chimes having a panic attack.
Ah'Ming watched, transfixed, as the players presented the book to the statue.
The statue's wooden face split into a grin.
"FOOLISH MORTALS. YOU HAVE FREED ME!"
The players realized too late. They tried to run. The villagers poured from shadows, paper hands reaching, grasping—
The screams were still echoing when the screen cut to the death confirmation:
[PARTY ELIMINATED][MAIN STORY: FAILED][BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!]
The crowd cheered.
"Classic misdirect!" A being made of crystallized sound clapped appendages together. "They thought they were fixing the seal!"
"Idiots," agreed something that looked like a well-dressed businessman, except his head was an ever-shifting mass of fractal patterns. "Didn't even read the inscription. The real book was in the office, not the pavilion."
Another screen lit up, showing a different attempt.
This time, a solo player made it all the way to confronting the statue. She was good—dodging paper hands, fighting through villagers with some kind of fire magic.
But when she tried to destroy the statue's core, the wood reformed around her hand, pulling her in.
Her screams turned into calligraphy as she became part of the seal, her body flattening into paper, her voice becoming the binding script.
The crowd roared approval.
"Ooh, that's a new one!"
"Did you see the transformation sequence? Beautiful!"
"I'm using that as my wallpaper!"
Ah'Ming felt sick.
Another screen flickered to life with bold text:
[RESENTFUL RESORT: DEATH COMPILATION][VOLUME 47]
It showed rapid-fire deaths. Crushed by the statue. Torn apart by villagers. Consumed by red paper. Transformed into calligraphy. Sealed into paintings. Drowned in ink. On and on and on.
Other deaths didn't have anything to do with the main story at all. It even showed the death of the mean guy from the egg tart shop, a couple of deaths from the library, nail salons etc.
Each death got reactions from the crowd:
"Ooh!"
"Nice!"
"That's going in my highlights folder!"
Ah'Ming wanted to look away but couldn't.
Then one of the screens changed.
His own face filled the display.
"—and here we have a fascinating case," a commentator's voice narrated over footage of Ah'Ming stumbling into the Egg Tart Emporium. "This human here is a complete newbie. He somehow didn't have any forum access at all! For some reason, in his first substory, he had no system guidance. Absolutely clueless—"
The footage jumped to him punching through the library wall.
"—but what he lacks in common sense, he compensates for with raw destruction—"
Fighting the Librarian, covered in shadow-ichor.
"—and apparently, complete disregard for structural integrity—"
Confronting the statue, ripping through villagers.
"—Ladies and gentlemen, I genuinely don't think he knew he was doing the main story until he finished it—"
The footage showed him stomping through the office floor, falling through, finding the book by complete accident.
The commentator's voice was gleeful: "And there it is! Solving a puzzle through falling! Revolutionary!"
Laughter rippled through the crowd of viewers.
The screen showed his fight with the statue. The red paper explosion. The final clearance:
[MAIN STORY: CLEARED][GRADE: S][FIRST S-RANK CLEAR IN 37 CYCLES]
The plaza went silent.
Then erupted.
"AN S-RANK?!"
"ON THAT INSTANCE?!"
"FIRST CLEAR IN THIRTY-SEVEN CYCLES?!"
A being made of moths and whispers turned toward the screens in shock. "Wait, wait, rewind—did he actually clear it or is this edited?"
"It's real!" someone else confirmed. "Check the official records!"
More screens appeared, showing Ah'Ming's stats, his completion percentage, his—
"Holy shit, look at his property damage score—"
"How is it that high?! What did he do?!"
"He stole the floors," someone said in awe. "And the walls. He literally looted the instance architecture."
"THAT'S why his evaluation notes say 'catastrophic property damage'—"
Ah'Ming stood frozen, watching this play out, hoping desperately that nobody would—
"Hey," a creature with too many eyes said slowly. "Hey, wait."
Oh no.
"Isn't that the guy over there?"
Every. Single. Being. Turned to look at him.
Ah'Ming's survival instincts screamed at him to run.