You Already Won

Twelve years.

Twelve years.

That's how long Simon Myers had been trapped in Requiem.

And since one year here equaled two on Earth, he'd racked up nearly twenty-four years of hard-earned experience. In that time, he had carved out a life of power and prestige. From a Star-Veda in Star Plunder Overdrive, a mobile strategy game with sleek UI and instinct-based commands, Simon had risen—swiftly and brutally.

Ryun came naturally to him. It was tactile, responsive, almost as if the system itself bent to his whims. He didn't need incantations or convoluted gestures. Just intent. A flick of his thoughts. That was enough.

He ruled parts of Curtenail. Took over towns. Built something real. A home. A legacy. He even had lieutenants he trusted, a crew of veterans, and a well-earned reputation.

Life was good.

Until this Event dropped like a blade from the sky.

Now?

Curtenail was gone.

The world twisted. The Rukes of Denvel, once a proud faction, were reduced to shadows of their former glory. And this man—this psycho in black—just one-shot Truvack.

Yes, Simon had planned to subdue them.

Yes, Rekjet had tried to capture them.

But that was precaution.

To prove themselves worthy.

To show they shared the same principles—loyalty, respect, purpose.

This man clearly didn't care for any of that.

Simon's wild silver-blue hair swayed slightly in the breeze. His teal-violet eyes narrowed. His grey-and-black jacket shifted as he crossed his arms and scanned the battlefield.

A shame. He would've liked to recruit them.

He quickly assessed the group again.

The elf—Level 310. Dangerous. Swift. Probably a former assassin.

The Outlander woman—Level 255, solid build, confidence, likely a frontliner or hybrid build.

The green-eyed one… odd. Her level just said [Higher Status]. She had an aura about her. Something beyond data.

And the man in black—

???

No level. No stats. No class. Just question marks.

That alone made Simon twitch.

The only other creatures he'd seen with that kind of marker were the Serpent-Eyed Beings. The ones that dropped the towers.

Could he be one of them?

Or worse…

Could he be something new?

Simon's hands flexed. He smiled faintly, but there was no warmth in it.

Whatever this man was—

He was about to find out.

Simon took a step forward, confidence radiating like armor.

"We outnumber you," he said, voice cool. "You might survive this—but your team?"

Caroline stepped beside Jonathan, her hands in her pockets as four radiant Sigil fox tails flared out behind her, glowing with shifting hues of flame.

"The team isn't NPCs, dumbass," she said flatly.

"I'm just—"

Fwip!

An arrow screamed past his face, a green blur that sliced the air so close it clipped his cheek. He flinched instinctively, eyes narrowing as he caught sight of Sšurtinaui lowering her bow with terrifying calm.

Oh right.

He grimaced.

Can't reason with these lunatics. Just a bunch of savage Freelancers.

This region was already rotting… having them die with it would be fitting.

"ATTACK!" he roared, voice laced with Ryun as it echoed across the dying town.

All thirteen of the Rukes burst into action, leaping from rooftops and alleyways. They fell like rain, weapons gleaming, Ryun flaring—

And the battle began.

The group split and everything ignited into chaos. Tinsurnae's aura darkened. Not with malice, but with purpose. Her Ryun flared like an opening meye—violet rings spinning around her.

"Oh come thee worms of old and wyrms of new. I call deep into the ancient forest dew. Rise up and devour all until the grove is full."

From the four glyph circles at her feet, the ground ruptured. Massive wyrms erupted—each one a grotesque miracle of biology. Too many eyes. Too many mouths. Too many limbs that shouldn't be there. Their wails were a harmony of devouring hunger, and they slithered forward like ruin incarnate.

The Rukes responded in kind.

One called forth a thunder-winged avian, eyes burning like stars. Two others unleashed twin serpents, sleek and smoking with mirrored coils of silver and tar. Four others summoned hound-like beasts, their spines were spiking bone, their shadow paws cracking stone with every lunge.

Tinsurnae merely smirked. A bead of water spun above her fingertip. She flicked it.

It expanded. Swelled. Then—

WHOOOOOOM

—turned into a towering tidal wave, crashing down like divine punishment. Wyrms and beasts vanished beneath it in a roaring flood that drowned the battlefield in churning wrath. A domain spawn over part of the ruined town.

Elsewhere a couple blocks away, Caroline blurred through the ruins of crumbling buildings—her flame tails flickering and vanishing behind corners. Four Rukes pursued her, trying to isolate and pin her down.

But that was fine.

She baited them into a half-collapsed building. As they closed in, she spun mid-air, light spiraling from her body.

"Sigil Execution!" She chanted.

A Ryun circle formed below her opponents. With a vicious spin-kick, she slammed into it. The ground erupted—a geyser of foxfire glyphs roared upward in a symphony of burning runes, devouring the space with dancing sigils and melodic fire.

The building shook. Then—

BOOM!

It exploded, flames licking the sky as rubble scattered across the town.

Meanwhile, Sšurtinaui moved like a phantom.

One dagger licked with green Ryun—the paralytic sting—while the other gleamed with the hue of death. She dove into two Rukes: an Imaginer with a black whip, the other—

Her breath caught for half a second.

Feniné Zee.

A Freelancer she remembered entering the event. A legendary cadet. He was on his way to becoming a Sword Paladin. His technique was smooth. Refined. Though not as sharp as Zavrien's… it was dangerous all the same.

The second was a dark elf, cloaked in flowing violet Ryun. A mirror to Sšurtinaui in heritage, but not in allegiance. The feud between Grove Elves and Shire Elves was no small matter—centuries of war and betrayal laced in every step they took.

They clashed in a hallway of broken stone, blades scraping, daggers flashing. One moment Sšurtinaui vanished in a Ryun burst, slashing an X with her daggers through the air, and in the next, she flipped backwards, slicing with the rhythm of a murderous dancer, each step layering more momentum.

The dark elf met her stroke for stroke—spinning low, rising high, striking with a savage ferocity as the black whip sang through the air.

They crashed through the hallway. Into rooms. Through walls. Furniture exploded. Ceilings cracked.

None gave ground.

A symphony of green Ryun and shadowy cursecraft blurred the lines between them. Every dodge became a dance, every block a message.

——

Simon stood with arms folded, silver-blue hair catching the breeze as he observed the chaos unfold below. His eyes glinted with quiet calculation, every flicker of Ryun and blast of aura reflecting in their depths.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

He opened his mouth to speak.

But Jonathan beat him to it.

Arms equally crossed, cloak fluttering behind him, the red underlines beneath his eyes glowed faintly. He didn't even glance Simon's way.

"Let's wait for the outcome first," Jonathan said coolly, as if discussing a halftime score. "No rush, right?"

He jabbed a thumb toward the battle below—where flames, wyrms, and green Ryun collided with the Rukes of Denvel in a spectacle of chaos.

"Besides," he added with a crooked smirk, "I think your guys could use some pointers."

Simon's lips curled faintly. Whether in amusement or annoyance was anyone's guess. But he said nothing.

Not yet.

——

Tinsurnae grinned.

The ground beneath her shimmered, thin water layering like mirrored glass. Stillwater Domain had activated, and in that quiet tide she was queen.

The seven Rukes stood before her—summoners cloaked in war-wrought confidence. Their beasts—one colossal bird-beast with metallic feathers, two shadow and tar snakes thick as trees with mirrored coils, and four shadow-hounds with glimmering bone armor—surged toward her wyrms.

The wyrms met them with explosive roars, bodies slamming into the bird mid-dive, drowning it and its rider. Jaws snapping at the snakes, coils constricting hounds and shattering bone armor. A symphony of violence unfolded behind her.

But she was already moving.

One summoner leapt from his beast, twin daggers flashing. She met him midair with a swirling spiral of water—Tidecoil Barrier erupting like a serpent from beneath her. He sank into the vortex, slowed and drowned.

Another Ruke conjured burning chains and hurled them at her from a rooftop. Tinsurnae rolled under a snapping hound, flicked her wrist—and a spear of ultra-dense water formed instantly beside her.

"Abyssal Lance," she whispered.

The water warped with pressure, then shot like a railgun. It shattered the chains mid-flight, pierced the summoner's head, and flung him off the roof in a bloody spiral.

A snake snapped at her left. She sidestepped, dancing through the ankle-deep water, and called to the wyrms.

The closest one turned—its eyes glowing in tandem with hers—and body-checked the snake mid-lunge. Runes cracked. The snake coiled, screaming, as another wyrm descended upon it with crushing weight, devouring it as the snake continued screaming.

Another summoner came close—closer than they should have. Big mistake.

Tinsurnae turned her palm, felt the domain beneath her ripple, and reappeared behind him in a blink. The water had shown her his every step. She jabbed a water spike through his spine and swept his legs out from under him. Once he fell in the water she pierced through his skull. Red started to leak into the water.

Stillwater Domain meant there was no hiding. No flanks. No sneak attacks.

A summoner dropped from above, sword drawn, aiming to cleave her in two.

She didn't dodge.

She caught his blade with her water-shielded forearm and slammed her palm into his chest, sending him careening across the battlefield like a skipped stone. Every skip dissolved more and more flesh until they were no more.

The last snake tried to constrict her.

Stillwater whispered the motion before it happened. She stepped over it and forced a water blade through its skull with her heel.

The hounds were next, her wyrms overwhelmed them—ripping one apart, drowning another in mouths. The remaining two tried to flank—but Tinsurnae already had a plan.

She raised both hands.

From the edges of the domain, long tendrils of water surged like whips, coiling around each hound and snapping them back mid-pounce. They hit the ground hard. Didn't rise again.

The last two summoners watched her with wide eyes.

"What the hell are you?!," one breathed.

"A damn freak!" The other growled.

Tinsurnae turned to them. Her hair floated slightly in the water-imbued air. Her eyes shone with a violet hue as a tidal wave rose behind her.

"I'm not a freak," she said sternly.

——

Caroline landed hard, skidding on tile as the air cracked around her. The Ruke Zetun came at her with a spiral whip of condensed Ryun—red and jagged like barbed wire coiled around lightning. She ducked under it, only for The Ruke Dewten to slide in with a flaming crescent kick that sent stone debris flying. The Ruke Forgan raised both arms, summoning a gravity well lined with violet Ryun chains that pulled at her limbs, while N4 The Waiting Ruke—silent and unblinking—launched crystalized shots from mechanical gauntlets shaped like oversized syringes.

"Damn, I forgot how chaotic these lobbies could get," Caroline muttered, dashing sideways and flicking her tail. "Y'all are trash at throwing hands."

"You're cocky!" Zetun roared.

"Only because you're basic!" she shot back, vanishing in a flare of foxfire.

She reappeared behind Dewten, who was mid-pivot, and slammed him into a cracked pillar with Foxsigil Clawrush—her tails spiraling and forming a blazing claw. Flames exploded outward as he hit the stone, grunting in pain. A sharp ping behind her—she Trickfire Teleported a second before N4's spike rounds hit, leaving behind a flickering trap that burst a heartbeat later.

Caroline landed on a roof beam above them, crouched low.

Zetun snarled. "You think you're hot shit?!"

"I am hot shit." She swiped the air, launching Ember Spiral Glyph, the disk screaming downward in a glowing spiral. It passed through two sigils before smashing into Forga's mid-block. The impact launched him into the side of a building, collapsing the wall in a blaze of brick and smoke.

They came from all sides again. She backflipped onto the next rooftop, then ran along its ridge, weaving between Ryun projectiles and support beams. N4 warped above her, then fired an energy rod downward like a javelin. She flipped, tail blooming forward—

Tailflame Bloom.

A fan of fire petals burst from her, shaped like hearts but carrying the bite of a bomb. N4 flinched as the explosion took him out of his teleport trajectory, crashing through a building with a painful grunt.

Dewten and Zetun tried to flank her on a walkway.

"Alright," she grinned, cracking her knuckles, "let's take this to the next level."

She dashed to meet them—feints and parries flying in all directions. Zetun's spiral whip pulsed red as they clashed with her flaming tails. Dewten moved like a boxer, fists coated in compressed kinetic Ryun, each strike sending out ripples of pressure. She blocked one, slipped the second, then blasted them both backward with another Ember Spiral Glyph, this one turbo-charged from point-blank range.

They fought around the town. Buildings cracked. Dust swallowed them all. She felt her body heaving—but still buzzing, tails flickering with residual heat.

Then—her moment.

All four enemies had regrouped on a bridge. Caroline jumped—straight up.

"Skyburn Sequence!" She shouted.

Her tails twirled mid-air, flames etching glowing spirals beneath her. Glyphs formed, hovering like constellation wheels. From above, she rained down a storm of sigil-tipped fire arrows, each one homing and detonating on impact. Zetun and N4 tried to shield, Dewten leapt sideways, Forga tried absorbing it with his Ryun shell—but it didn't matter.

The barrage consumed the bridge in a chain of rhythmic explosions.

Caroline reappeared behind them with a final blast, leaving all four smoldering in the wreckage. She hovered, suspended for just a second, tails curling in victory.

"Hmph," she exhaled, landing gracefully. "That's a lot of XP!" Her UI pinging away, as notifications filled her screen.

——

The hallway shuddered as Sšurtinaui slid low beneath a black whip and ducked around Fenine's sword cleave in one breathless motion. Wood cracked and stone sparked under their feet. She was dancing between chaos—close enough to see the flinch in Fenine's left eye, the tightening in Kard's fingers just before a strike.

Her Ryun-laced boots leaving faint, invisible prints of energy behind. Green trails spiderwebbed through the battlefield, marking their movements and predicting their angles. Kard lunged, chains hissing toward her like striking cobras.

Compressed Ryun burst beneath her feet—she vanished, reappearing above Zee in a blur, her blade slicing downward like judgment from the heavens. He barely raised his sword in time. The impact rang out like a gong, blowing out the side of the wall. Dust billowed. He skidded back.

Kard yanked, and the whip found her ankle—but her eyes flared. Green Ryun twisted around the whip, climbing up like ivy, grabbing the whip mid-pull, then crushed. Kard cried out as the backlash surged into his wrist.

But still they pressed her. Fenine was relentless, using sword techniques that generated shockwaves on contact, while Kard's whip slithered through broken beams like a viper. They were coordinated. Deadly.

She couldn't outpower them.

So she set traps.

Fangtrail Step tracked their rotations. In the span of minutes, she was bouncing between shattered archways and split floors, seeding the rooms with dormant traps. She used the environment: broke lanterns to slick the ground, knocked shelves to block lines of sight, dashed across loose boards that groaned beneath her—only to reroute her path.

Zee and Kard were getting frustrated. That's when she vanished into the dust again.

When they finally caught a glimpse of her—standing behind a pillar—they struck together. The black whip shot forward. Sword cleaved through the center.

But it was bait.

The whip wrapped around the wrong support beam, triggering a hidden Warden's Maw. It snapped down, crushing the limb that held the whip. Kard screamed.

Zee turned too late.

She used Verdant Pounce again, this time from the ceiling beams above, and came down blade-first into his collarbone, snapping bone and armor in one precision strike.

She looked over at Kard withering in pain and threw a dagger into his head.

She stood alone, panting softly in the silence.

"I won," she muttered.

——

Simon stared at the battlefield in horror, his jaw tightening as the last of his squad fell.

"What the—"

"You're probably thinking, 'what the hell,' right?" Jonathan interrupted with a crooked grin. Simon's arm swung reflexively, lashing out in a horizontal arc—only for Jonathan to skip back a half-step, letting the strike cut nothing but air.

"…Now," he said casually, finishing his earlier thought.

Simon's expression twisted. "What the fuck, mate?!"

Jonathan just shrugged, loose and relaxed. "Hey man, you came to us. Maybe if you hadn't tried to imprison us, this would've gone smoother."

"I've been here for years!" Simon snapped, aura flaring in jagged pulses. "This world doesn't play fair. The strong survive by taking every precaution. That was the best way! But this?" His voice cracked. "This is a goddamn slaughter. Who the hell are you?!"

"I'm North," Jonathan said coolly, slipping his hands in his cloak pockets. "Nice to meet you… well, I guess boss of the Roomies?"

"Rukes," Simon growled.

"Oh. Rooks—like chess?"

"No! It's—never mind!" Simon hissed. His chest rose and fell with erratic breaths. His eyes locked on Jonathan's, searching for something—logic, remorse, understanding.

"You see life like a game, huh?" he said finally.

Jonathan blinked, then gave a low whistle. "Wow, man, don't try to get all deep on me now. We're literally in some anime-death Elden Ring mixmatch bullshit world. If you don't see this as some kind of game, you're lying. Let's be real—one outlander to another."

Simon's hands twitched. "You can't—"

"I can," Jonathan cut him off. "But honestly? This was just a bad stroke of luck."

Simon stared hard at him.

"I told you," Jonathan continued, voice sharpening, "I was looking for a fight. I wanna test myself. And you…" He smiled faintly. "You look like you'll put up a good fig—"

Simon laughed. A short, bitter bark of disbelief.

"Okay. Wow." He shook his head. "I really tried."

He flared his aura—silver-blue and burning hot. The very air vibrated as the ground beneath him cracked and lifted from the sheer pressure. "I really fucking tried."

His glare met Jonathan's. "DIE."

A thunderous boom split the sky as Simon launched a beam of condensed star energy, so dense it shimmered between gold and ultraviolet. It erupted from his palm like a divine spear—howling forward with the weight of a collapsing sun.

Jonathan's eyes widened.

The beam tore through the air. It obliterated the ruined town, carved through the land, and lanced into the far-off mountains—where it vaporized the peak in a single flash of annihilation.

Silence followed. A smoking trench the size of a canyon scarred the region now.

"Hell yeah!" Jonathan roared from above, silhouette framed by the bleeding light of the canyon Simon had carved.

He dived, lightning streaking from his limbs, wild and red.

A spiral of black lightning with red arcs exploded behind him. The air warped as silence fell, not just over the battlefield but over the soul. A crashing pulse with no sound, only the absence of will. The grass withered from mere proximity.

Simon's eyes twitched as his aura around him shuddered.

He barely had time to reinforce before the second attack came. Tendrils of red lightning shot out like capillaries, snaking through the air and into him.

He choked as his body convulsed—veins lighting up, muscles locking. His healing slowed to a crawl, his thoughts frayed at the edges. He saw things—fractals twisting in on themselves, memories that weren't his.

With a growl, he thrust his hands outward and blocked, catching Jonathan's follow-up strike in a violent clap of energy. The air rippled around them.

The two shot into the sky.

Clash after clash rang out—lightning and starlight. Jonathan blitzed forward, cloak trailing behind like smoke, and Simon met him with explosive counters, star-tipped blades bursting from condensed Ryun panels at his wrists.

They fought like they were trying to break the horizon.

On the ground, Tinsurnae stood beneath the cover of her writhing wyrms. The hulking creatures formed a half-circle shield, growling and snapping at anything that dared approach. Behind her Caroline adjusted her tails, breathing steady, while Sšurtinaui kept an arrow half-drawn, eyes flicking upward.

Tinsurnae didn't speak. She just watched.

Jonathan and Simon collided again, a ripple of red and silver-blue flaring across the clouds.

And for a brief moment—just a flicker—she smiled.