Ran exited the Private World.
The transition was instant, just like entering. One second he was standing on the beach with sand under his feet and salt in the air. The next second he was back in his bedroom, lying on his bed, fully clothed. The ceiling was above him. The curtain dividing his room from Mia's side was swaying slightly in the draft from the window.
He sat up fast. His hands were shaking, but not from fear. From excitement. Raw, almost painful excitement. The kind that made his chest tight and his thoughts race so fast they tripped over each other.
He had to tell his family. He had to show them. Right now.
Ran threw open his bedroom door and burst into the living room.
"Mom! Dad! Mia! Come here!"
All three of them were still in the kitchen. Aurora was standing by the stove, mechanically stirring the stew she had forgotten about. Randolf was still at the table, in the same position, head in his hands. Mia was sitting on the floor next to his chair, hugging her knees, her banner folded up beside her.
They all looked up when Ran came out. His father's expression immediately turned to concern.
"Ran, please." Randolf lifted his head and held up a hand. "We know you're upset, but shouting isn't going to help. It won't change anything. Just sit down and—"
"I didn't fail!" Ran said.
The room went still.
"My martial innate soul," Ran continued, his words coming out fast, almost tumbling over each other. "It's not trash. It's not just a grey ball. It's a key. A key to a private world. A whole other dimension. I was just there. I was standing on a beach. There's an ocean and a forest and a system and quests and — I can take you there. I can take all of you there."
Silence.
Randolf stared at his son for a long moment. Then he pushed back his chair, stood up slowly, and walked toward the kitchen counter. He picked up a glass and filled it with water.
"He's lost his mind," he muttered, his back turned. "The shock broke him. I've seen it happen before. A boy in my unit years ago — got passed over for promotion, snapped the next day, started talking about invisible doors..."
"Dad, I'm not crazy."
"Aurora, we should let him sleep. In the morning—"
"Dad. I'm not crazy."
Randolf turned around. His face was tired. Not angry — just tired in a way that went deeper than one bad day. It was the tiredness of a man who had spent his whole life being disappointed by the world and had stopped expecting anything different.
"Ran," he said quietly. "I love you. But what you're describing isn't real. There's no such thing as a private world. A Basic Orb is a Basic Orb. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you something different, but—"
"I believe you, Brother."
Everyone turned.
Mia was standing up. She had gotten to her feet while Randolf was talking, and now she was looking at Ran with an expression that was pure, stubborn certainty. Her red eyes were still a little puffy from crying earlier, but her jaw was set and her back was straight.
"I believe you," she said again. "If you say you were there, then you were there."
Ran looked at his little sister. Thirteen years old, barely tall enough to reach his shoulder, wearing a shirt that was too big for her because they couldn't afford new clothes. And she was the only one in the room who believed him.
He held out his hand.
"Then hold on tight," he said. "I'll show you."
Mia grabbed his hand without hesitating.
The moment their skin touched, a screen appeared — but this time, it appeared in front of both of them.
---
**[Detection: Non-player contact established.]**
**[Lord 'Ran' wishes to invite 'Mia' to enter the Private World as a Subordinate.]**
**[Does 'Mia' accept this invitation?]**
**[YES / NO]**
---
Mia's eyes went huge. She let go of Ran's hand and stumbled back a step, staring at the floating blue screen in front of her face.
"I... I see it!" she gasped. "Brother, I can see it! There's a screen! It's asking me if I want to be a player!"
Aurora dropped the wooden spoon. It clattered against the stove and fell to the floor.
Randolf's glass of water stopped halfway to his mouth.
"Say yes," Ran said. "Trust me."
Mia looked at the screen. She looked at Ran. She took a breath.
"Yes," she said.
---
They vanished.
One moment Ran and Mia were standing in the kitchen. The next moment they were gone. No flash of light. No dramatic sound. They were simply there, and then they were not, like someone had erased them from the room.
Aurora screamed.
The plate she had been holding slipped from her fingers and shattered against the floor, spraying ceramic pieces across the kitchen tiles. She dropped to her knees, her hands reaching out to the empty space where her children had been standing.
"RAN! MIA!" she screamed. "RANDOLF, THEY'RE GONE! THEY—"
Randolf dropped his glass. Water splashed across the counter. He lunged forward, grabbing at the air where Ran had been, his hands closing on nothing.
"What — how — where did they—"
---
Inside the Private World, Ran landed on his feet. He was used to the transition now. The kitchen disappeared, and the beach appeared, and his body adjusted in less than a second.
Mia was not so lucky.
She hit the sand on her hands and knees, gasping. The sudden shift — the change in temperature, the change in air, the change in everything — had knocked the breath out of her.
"What — where are we — what's happening—"
Then the cold hit her.
Mia looked down at herself. Her eyes went wide. Her face went from its normal color to bright red in about half a second.
She was naked.
Just like Ran had been the first time. No clothes. Nothing. Just her and the sand and the ocean breeze.
"AHHHHH!" she screamed. It was a scream that could have been heard from the other side of the island. She immediately dropped flat onto the sand, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around herself.
"DON'T LOOK!" she shouted. "DON'T YOU DARE LOOK, RAN! TURN AROUND RIGHT NOW!"
Ran had already started turning the moment he heard her scream, but his eyes caught a glimpse before his brain could stop them. His face went hot.
"Sorry! I'm not looking! I'm turned around!" He slapped both hands over his eyes for good measure.
"I swear, if you looked—"
"I didn't! I barely — look, it was an accident! I forgot about the no-clothes thing! I should have warned you!"
"YOU THINK?!"
Ran kept his back turned, hands still clamped over his eyes. His face was burning. He had been so caught up in the excitement of showing Mia the Private World that he had completely forgotten that Sayfrid stripped you of everything when you entered. Clothes, tools, accessories — all gone. It was a core mechanic of the game. Start with nothing.
But in the game, it hadn't mattered. Your character was just a bunch of pixels. Here, his sister was a real thirteen-year-old girl whose body had already started to change, and she was currently lying face-down in the sand, screaming at him.
"Okay," Ran said, still facing the ocean, his voice strained. "Okay. I'm going to fix this. Just give me ten seconds."
He opened the System Store with a wave of his hand. He had zero credits, but the loan system was still available. He had a 100-credit loan limit. He scrolled through the clothing section — past armor, past combat gear, past decorative outfits — until he found the cheapest option.
Basic Tunic Set. Two pieces. Plain grey cloth. Five credits per set.
He bought two. One for Mia, one for himself. Ten credits total.
---
**[Loan: 10 Credits approved.]**
**[Please repay within 30 days or interest will begin to accumulate.]**
---
"Fine," Ran muttered. "With what I know, paying that back will be easy."
Two bundles of grey cloth materialized in his hands. He tossed one behind him without turning around.
"Here! Clothes!"
He heard Mia scramble to grab it. There was a frantic rustling of fabric.
"You can turn around now," Mia said after a moment.
Ran turned. Mia was standing up, wearing the tunic. It was plain — shapeless grey cloth that hung to her knees, tied at the waist with a simple cord. She looked like a character from a low-budget historical drama.
She looked down at herself. " Can you choose a better cloth?."
"It's all I could afford."
"But, You're a Lord of a whole private world?"
"I've been a Lord for about fifteen minutes, Mia."
She opened her mouth to argue, then stopped. Her eyes had drifted past Ran, past the beach, out to the ocean. Her expression changed completely. The annoyance melted off her face, replaced by something else. Wonder.
"Brother..." she whispered. "Where are we?"
"My Private World," Ran said. "It's called Sayfrid."
Mia turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. The white sand. The clear water. The green forest. The warm sun. The birds calling from the trees.
Then she looked down at her feet.
"Brother," she said. Her voice had dropped very low. "The grass."
Ran frowned. "What about it?"
Mia crouched down at the edge of the beach where the sand met the tree line. The grass there was short and thick, and each blade was giving off a faint, soft glow — a gentle green light, almost invisible in the daylight, but definitely there.
Mia reached out and plucked a single blade. She held it up to her face. Her red eyes went wide.
"Brother," she said. Her voice was shaking. "This is spiritual grass."
Ran blinked. He had been so focused on the system — on the screens, the quests, the menus — that he hadn't even looked at the ground beneath his feet. Now he crouched down beside Mia and really looked.
She was right. Every blade of grass along the tree line was glowing. Faintly, gently, but unmistakably. That glow meant one thing: spiritual energy.
Ran quickly reached into the knowledge from the Complete Beginner Knowledge Book he had consumed earlier. The information was there, stored in his mind like a file he could open at will.
Spiritual grass. A basic-tier natural resource. Found in areas with high concentrations of ambient spiritual energy. Used in healing, alchemy, pill creation, and energy cultivation. Market value in the your physical world: at least 100 silver coins per blade.
One hundred silver coins.
Ran's father earned about 10 silver coins per month.
One blade of grass was worth 10 months of his father's salary.
And there were hundreds — thousands — of blades of it, stretching along the entire tree line of the beach.
"Brother, every blade that glows is spiritual grass!" Mia said, her voice rising with every word. "Do you know how much this stuff is worth? One blade — just one! — sells for at least a hundred silver! People have to be Level 20 or higher just to enter the forests where this stuff grows, and even then they're fighting monsters to get it! Hospitals use it. Alchemists use it. Pill makers use it. It's—"
"I know," Ran said. A slow smile was spreading across his face. "I know."
He looked at the tree line. At the forest beyond it. At the island that stretched out in every direction, full of resources that he hadn't even begun to explore.
"Take as much as you can carry," he said. "We're going back with as much as we can hold."
---
They reappeared in the living room.
There was no warning. No flash, no sound. One second the kitchen was empty — Aurora on her knees sobbing, Randolf standing frozen with his hands at his sides, both of them about three seconds away from running out the door to call for help — and the next second, Ran and Mia were standing in the middle of the room.
"LOOK!" Mia shouted.
She thrust both hands forward. Her arms were full — overflowing — with glowing green grass. Each blade pulsed with soft light, and the moment she held them out, a fresh, clean smell filled the entire room. It was medicinal and sweet at the same time, like mint and honey and something else that didn't have a name. The glow from the grass lit up the walls of the tiny kitchen, painting everything in soft green.
Aurora stopped crying. She stared at Mia's hands. Then she stared at Mia's face. Then she stared at the grass again.
Randolf's mouth was open. No sound came out.
The room was silent for exactly four seconds.
Then Randolf stepped forward. Slowly, like a man approaching something that might disappear, he reached out and touched one of the blades of grass.
The moment his fingers made contact, he felt it. The raw spiritual energy. The buzz. The warmth. The unmistakable hum of a real, genuine spiritual resource — the kind that people risked their lives to harvest from monster-infested forests.
Randolf knew what this was. He might have been a carpenter with a Spring Rabbit soul, but he wasn't stupid. He had lived in this world his whole life. He knew what spiritual grass looked like. He knew what it smelled like. And he knew what it was worth.
The cheapest spiritual grass on the market — the lowest grade, the weakest energy — sold for at least 100 silver coins per blade. And that was before you factored in what alchemists and pill makers would pay for bulk quantities. Hospitals bought it for treatments. Military suppliers bought it for combat rations. It was one of the most in-demand natural resources in the world.
And his daughter was holding fistfuls of it.
Tears rolled down Randolf's face. Not the frustrated, helpless tears of a man watching his family's future crumble. These were different. These were the tears of a man who had been drowning for years and had just felt his feet touch solid ground.
"How?" he whispered. "How is this possible?"
"I told you," Ran said. "My martial innate soul is a key. The Basic Orb opens a door to a private world. A real one. I was there. Mia was there. She saw it."
"He's telling the truth, Dad," Mia said. She was grinning so wide it looked like her face might split in half. "It's real. There's a beach, and an ocean, and a forest, and everything glows, and there's a system with screens and quests—"
"And this is just the beginning," Ran said. "That grass is the most basic resource on the island. There's more. A lot more. But I need you to see it for yourselves." He looked at his parents. "Let me take you there. Both of you. I'll explain everything once we're inside."
Randolf looked at Aurora. Aurora looked at Randolf. Their eyes were red. Their faces were wet. But something had changed in the air between them — something that had been missing for a long, long time.
Hope.
Randolf wiped his face with the back of his hand. He straightened his shoulders. He looked at his son.
"Show us," he said.
---
Outside, through the thin walls of Unit 14, the neighbors could hear the commotion. The shouting. The crying. The sound of a plate breaking.
Mrs. Chen, who lived in Unit 15, shook her head and went back to washing her dishes.
"Poor family," she muttered to her husband. "That boy's failure at the ceremony finally pushed them over the edge."
Her husband grunted in agreement. "Shame. They were decent people."
They had no idea.
---
Ran held out both hands. His mother took one. His father took the other. Mia, who was already a registered Subordinate, grabbed Aurora's free arm.
"Everyone ready?" Ran asked.
Three screens appeared — one in front of Aurora, one in front of Randolf, and one already acknowledged by Mia.
---
**[Lord 'Ran' wishes to invite 'Aurora' to enter the Private World as a Subordinate. Accept?]**
**[Lord 'Ran' wishes to invite 'Randolf' to enter the Private World as a Subordinate. Accept?]**
---
Aurora gasped. "I can see it! There's a blue screen — Randolf, can you see it too?"
Randolf's eyes were wide. His grip on Ran's hand tightened. "Yes," he breathed. "I see it."
"Say yes," Ran said. "Both of you. Trust me."
His parents looked at each other one more time. Then they looked at their son — at the boy they had poured everything into, the boy who had gotten a Basic Orb, the boy who the whole city now thought of as a failure.
"Yes," Aurora said.
"Yes," Randolf said.
The kitchen vanished.
The Aldric family landed on the beach.
It wasn't gentle. The transition hit like a full-body flinch — one second they were in the kitchen, and the next second reality folded, twisted, and spat them out onto white sand under a sky so blue it didn't look real.
Randolf stumbled forward two steps and caught himself. Aurora grabbed his arm. They both stood completely still, their mouths open, their eyes moving slowly across the scene in front of them.
The ocean stretched out to the horizon. The water was so clear that they could see fish moving beneath the surface fifty feet from shore. The sand under their feet was fine and white and warm. Behind them, a dense forest rose up from the tree line — thick trunks, wide leaves, and the constant sound of birds calling from somewhere deep inside.
The air smelled like salt and flowers and something else — something clean and sharp that didn't exist back in Glory City.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
"Is this..." Randolf started. His voice came out as a whisper. He lifted his hands and turned them over slowly, staring at his own fingers, like he was checking to make sure they were still real. "Is this really another world?"
"It feels more real than home," Aurora said. Her voice was shaking. She reached out and touched the air, as if she expected it to be solid, like a wall or a screen. But there was nothing there. Just warm, clean air.
They were so amazed by everything around them that they didn't notice the most obvious thing about themselves.
Then a gust of wind came off the ocean.
It was sharp and cold, and it hit them from head to toe without warning.
Aurora looked down.
Her scream could have been heard from the other side of the island.
"OH MY — RANDOLF! WHY ARE WE — WHERE ARE OUR CLOTHES?!"
She folded into herself immediately, crossing her arms tight over her chest, hunching her shoulders, turning sideways. Her face went from pale to bright red in less than a second.
Randolf's reaction was half a beat behind. His eyes went wide, then snapped downward. He made a strangled noise — something between a shout and a cough — and started doing a panicked shuffle, trying to cover himself with his hands while also turning away from Aurora, then turning back, then turning away again, unable to figure out which direction was safe.
"RAN!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "Ran, what is going on?! Why are we — who — WHY ARE WE NAKED?!"
Ran and Mia had already spun around the instant they heard Aurora gasp. They had been through this before. They knew the drill.
Mia had both hands clamped over her eyes. Her face was so red it looked sunburned.
"I'm not looking!" she shouted. Her voice was high enough to scare a flock of birds out of a nearby tree. They exploded out of the branches in a burst of feathers and noise. "I promise I'm not looking! I am looking at a very interesting tree! This is a great tree! I love this tree!"
She peeked through a tiny gap between her fingers — just for a split second, just to make sure everyone was okay.
She saw her father doing his panicked dance.
"GROSS! Dad, cover up!" she screeched, spinning a full 180 degrees and pressing her palms flat against her face.
"Don't panic," Ran said. His voice was tight but controlled. He was already moving his fingers through the System Store interface, scrolling through the clothing section as fast as he could. "I'm handling it. Just — give me five seconds."
He found the Basic Tunic Set. Five credits each. He bought two more — one for his dad, one for his mom. That was another ten credits on loan, bringing his total debt to twenty.
Two bundles of grey cloth appeared in his hands. Without turning around, he threw them over his shoulder.
"Here! Put these on! Quick!"
Behind him, he heard the frantic sounds of fabric snapping open, arms shoving through sleeves, legs kicking into trousers. There was a lot of grunting and muttering and at least one instance of someone putting something on backwards and having to start over.
"Okay," Randolf said after about thirty seconds. His voice was still shaky. "We're... we're decent."
Ran turned around.
His parents were standing side by side, wearing matching grey tunics and trousers. The fabric was coarse and shapeless. Randolf looked like a scarecrow. Aurora looked like she was wearing a potato sack with arm holes.
But they were covered, and the panic was fading from their faces.
"So," Randolf said. He took a breath. He straightened his back and cinched the belt on his tunic. He looked at the forest behind the beach, then at the ocean in front of it, then at his son. "Let me get this straight. This is the private world you were talking about? Your martial innate soul brought us here?"
"Exactly," Ran said.
"And everything here is real? The sand, the water, the trees — it's all physical?"
"All of it. This isn't a dream or an illusion. Our real bodies are here. If you cut yourself, you bleed. If you eat something, you're full. It's a real place."
"And the grass that Mia brought back?"
"Real. One hundred percent real. Everything on this island — the plants, the animals, the minerals — it's all real, and most of it is worth more than anything we could buy in Glory City."
Randolf nodded slowly. He was processing. Ran could see the gears turning behind his father's eyes — the practical, grounded mind of a man who had spent his life building things with his hands, now trying to wrap itself around something impossible.