Ell… no.
Not Ell anymore.
The name still echoed somewhere deep inside him, like a half-remembered dream—soft, distant, painful in a way he couldn't explain. But the moment his eyes opened in this world, that name became useless. It belonged to streets soaked in rain, to hunger that never left, to a life that ended before it ever started.
Here, his reflection in the basin didn't look like Ell.
It looked like Cael Thornwood.
A boy in a body that felt like it had been built wrong—too light, too fragile, too… breakable.
Cael pressed his palm against his chest and inhaled slowly. The air was clean. The faint scent of herbs lingered in the room, mixed with something metallic—like old stone holding centuries of magic. Outside the small window, the world was bright in a way Earth never was.
Sky too blue.
Clouds too sharp.
Wind that smelled like grass, not smoke.
For a moment, he just stood there in silence, listening.
No horns.
No engines.
No sirens.
Only birds and distant voices—people living lives that didn't sound desperate.
So this is real…
It was one thing to see Elaris through a screen. It was another thing entirely to feel it around him, pressing against his skin like it had always existed.
The game's world had always been beautiful.
But it had also been cruel.
Cael tightened his fists.
He couldn't afford to stare too long.
Seven days.
That clock was already ticking.
Still, he forced himself to move carefully, like an injured animal testing its limbs. He stepped out of the small room and into a narrow hallway that led to a humble building—an herbal clinic, perhaps. A woman in a plain robe watched him with mild surprise, as if she hadn't expected him to wake so soon.
"You're up already?" she asked, her tone cautious. "Your body was… exhausted."
Cael hesitated. Words formed in his throat, but he kept them shallow.
If he spoke too much, if he asked the wrong thing, he might expose himself as an outsider. And in this world, outsiders didn't last long unless they had the strength to back their existence.
"I'm fine," he said quietly.
The woman frowned, but said nothing else, turning back to her work.
Cael walked out through the front door.
The village was small—stone paths, wooden roofs, clothes drying on lines. Children ran barefoot. A blacksmith's hammer echoed from somewhere nearby. The sight should've been comforting.
Instead, it made his stomach tighten.
In the game, villages like this were "safe zones."
But in Elaris, safety wasn't a zone.
It was something you earned every day.
He started walking, slow and observant, letting his eyes soak in details the game never bothered rendering. The weight of a basket carried by an old man. The way a mother held her child's hand tightly when a stranger passed. The tiredness in the guards' faces near the gate.
They're afraid.
Even here.
That was the first thing the game never showed properly.
Not the monsters.
Not the quests.
The fear people carried quietly, every single day, because the world didn't care if you were innocent.
Cael breathed out.
He needed information—real information. Things beyond scripted dialogue.
He approached a notice board near the village square. Wooden sheets were pinned to it, filled with inked warnings and requests.
"Wolves sighted near the northern trail."
"Missing merchant—last seen near the creek."
"Bandits—reward available."
Bandits.
That word alone made Cael's fingers twitch.
Third-rate enemies in the game… but in reality, bandits killed people. Burned homes. Stole children. The same ugly cruelty from Earth existed here too, just dressed in fantasy clothing.
Cael stared at the paper until the wind tugged it slightly.
Then he looked down at his own hands again.
A weak character.
A body that had no right to stand against anything in this world.
And yet… the System had given him a quest. A cruel, impossible quest.
He closed his eyes.
"System," he whispered.
The air shimmered.
A blue interface unfolded in front of him like a floating sheet of glass.
[Status Window]
Name: Cael Thornwood
Race: Human
Age: 16
Class: None
Title: None
Level: 1
HP: 43/43
MP: 18/18
Stamina: 27/27
Strength: 3
Agility: 4
Endurance: 2
Magic Power: 1
Perception: 5
Luck: 1
Trait:Irregular Growth System (Locked)
Condition:Weak Constitution / Mana Flow Defect
Skills: None
Talents: None
Cael stared at the numbers.
His lips parted slightly.
"…Miserable."
Strength: 3.
Endurance: 2.
Magic Power: 1.
Even the weakest beginner NPCs in the game had better stats than this.
He almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was cruel in a way that felt personal.
So this is what fate thinks of me.
A background character. A disposable pawn.
Someone the world wouldn't miss.
Cael clenched his jaw hard enough that his teeth ached. His hands shook—not from fear, but from anger.
All his life, El had lived like a ghost. No one cared if he ate, if he slept, if he survived.
And now, even in a new world…
He had been reborn into weakness again.
The blue window flickered, as if sensing the tension in his heartbeat.
Cael whispered, voice low enough that only the wind heard him.
"No."
His eyes sharpened.
He remembered Elaris too well.
He remembered hidden mechanics, buried questlines, item routes that players dismissed as myths. He remembered the late-game monsters that would slaughter S-Class elites like paper. And most importantly—
He remembered the one item that didn't look powerful at first.
But became terrifying with time.
An item tied to growth itself.
A relic almost no one found because it was hidden behind an early death-flag zone—an area meant to punish greedy players who wandered too far.
But Cael wasn't wandering.
He wasn't greedy.
He was desperate.
He dismissed the status window with a flick of his hand and stared toward the distant outline of hills beyond the village walls. Somewhere beyond those trails, beyond the safe paths and merchant roads…
There was a place the game called:
The Withering Grove.
And within it—
An item known only to completionists and madmen.
The Seed of Irregular Growth.
A slow, cruel relic.
It didn't give instant power.
It gave something far better:
the ability to keep growing when the world says you've reached your limit.
Cael exhaled slowly, feeling the fragility in his chest, the weakness in his limbs, the pitiful mana inside him.
Then he spoke the vow aloud, as if carving it into the world.
"I don't care what this body was meant to be."
His eyes narrowed.
"I don't care what the story wants."
He stepped forward, toward the village gate, toward danger, toward the route meant to kill him early.
"I'll take that item… and I'll grow strong enough to rewrite every ending."
The System chimed softly in response.
[New Objective Updated.]
[Survival Route: Begin.]
Cael didn't look back.