Chapter 69:The Weight of Old Rules

Chapter 69: Chapter 69:The Weight of Old Rules

Flashback

Level five hundred forty-five. That was his level, placing him within the top hundred among the billion players.

The sky over the central continent lit up with a colossal hologram, the Garden of Eden opening for the first time in the game’s history. Golden light revealed the fruit of healing and knowledge hanging in plain sight. Every major guild channel exploded.

"Finally. I thought it would take another year for someone to unlock it." Allan said out loud in his private rest zone, already calculating his routes.

A player from one of the top-ten guilds drifted over, armored in vanity gear, his voice loud enough for the whole plaza. He saw Allan wearing high-level gear and noticed that he had played far later than he had.

"Oh, who do we have here? Going alone with your little NPC dolls again, scoundrel? Must be lonely. Virtual girlfriends you can’t even touch. Pathetic, really."

Allan ignored him for a while.

"Hey! I’m talking to you. Come on, talk to me. Did you forget me, junior? I showed you that grinding spot where you reached level ten. At least you owe me a piece of that armor."

Allan still didn’t say anything. He kept ticking and crossing the routes. Instead, he took a gear piece from his inbox and threw it at the guy’s feet.

The guy looked down at the high-level shining shoulder pressor, but the way Allan had thrown it, as if he were some beggar, didn’t sit well with him.

If this were the real world, he would have beaten him up. But this was a safe zone, and no violence was allowed. So instead, he pointed at one of the NPCs standing behind Allan, the one with blue hair and a noble dress, talking with the other girls.

"Hey you, damn shitty clanking NPC. Tell your master to have some manners." He said, then took the shoulder pressor.

Allan smiled. Rest zones forbade PvP. Everyone knew it. One of the seven women standing behind him, with blue hair and calm eyes, was the daughter of a high-tier Archduke in the lore. She had access to this area by right. When Allan glanced at her, she tilted her head.

Allan gave a nod, and she gave a nod back. The rules bent. Just enough.

"Hey." Allan called to the guy.

The man turned. "Oh, you can speak now, you lonely dumbass..."

Before he could say anything more, Allan struck him with his bare hands. No skills. No weapons. Just ten years of knowing exactly where joints failed and how long a player stayed stunned. When the body hit the ground, Allan activated the hundred-percent loot spell he had invested three full dungeon clears to obtain. Gold, enchanted weapons, rare materials, everything vanished into his inventory.

"Wha... how?" The guy barely managed to speak. He tried to log out, but his hands and legs were still barely moving from the stun, and his health bar was just low enough that he wasn’t forcibly logged out.

A leveled version of Diva stepped forward, her voice utterly cold. "Curse him, Allan. Take the levels as well."

Allan looked at Diva, then at the guy, and smiled.

Just before he could use the curse he had been saving up, the guild leader arrived in a storm of private messages and then in person: Dr. Voss from the clinic, the one he worked with.

"Allan, stop!"

Allan did. "Dr... ahem, I mean, Lady Boss. Why are you here?"

"Come on, what’s happening? Leave the man alone. He is part of my guild."

Allan wanted to discuss it, and he knew he would hear an earful from her tomorrow at the clinic. But he activated the curse anyway. If he didn’t, the girls behind him would lose trust in him, and he didn’t want his assets to stop respecting him.

"I’m sorry, Lady Voss. The world isn’t fair. He should have understood that."

She begged him not to finish it, but he did. Level three hundred and six, down to three hundred, then to two hundred, then to one hundred, and at last, absolute zero.

The man saw it and felt it. His spells were gone. Everything was gone.

"AAAAAA!!!" The player screamed, logged out, and never came back.

"ALLAN!" Voss yelled.

Allan sighed, but he suddenly held her hand and spoke a few quiet sentences about debt, the clinic’s books, and things only the two of them knew. He told her not to worry, since it was just a game, and that he would take her to a café she liked. Slowly, she went silent.

Later that same night, he and the seven NPCs took the Atlantis route. Clean. No monsters. Perfect, actually. They reached the city gates under clear skies.

But the moment they entered, Archduke Poseidon’s forces arrested every player within the walls. Loot was confiscated. Most of them were executed on the spot for "banditry and crimes against the fief." Two of Allan’s highest-experience NPCs died in the purge.

He had cried that day. His two villainesses, the one who had leveled him so nicely, were now gone. The developers called it a bug. Compensation was issued. The forums raged for a week and then moved on.

In the game, the charges had been exactly the same as the ones happening in this valley right now. All the rape allegations, the nobles’ loot, everything.

Back in the current world, Allan’s hand tightened on the cheap sword he still carried. The same injustice, repeating itself in flesh and blood instead of code. Noble rules had been absolute then. They were absolute now. If the Archduke had shifted the crimes onto players once, he could do it again. Allan would not walk into Atlantis as a convenient scapegoat a second time.

They passed the guard with the silver trident without slowing. Allan kept his head down, the borrowed leather jerkin still stiff with another man’s sweat. The partial veil thinned further as they crossed the threshold of the main house, turning them into nothing more than four more rough figures moving through the noise.

Inside, the air changed. The reek of the street became the heavier stench of old blood, lamp oil, and fear that had soaked into the wood itself. Stairs climbed both sides of a wide entry hall. Voices drifted up from lower rooms: orders, laughter, the occasional sharp cry cut short. Above, the floors grew quieter.

Allan stopped them in the shadow of a support pillar.

"Seris. Find anything that ties this place to the Archduke’s ledgers. Contracts, seals, coin marks, whatever proves this business is not just bandits. Quiet and fast."

She gave a single nod and melted toward the side corridor that led to what looked like offices and storage.

"Lira. Amelia. Free everyone you can reach without raising the whole town. Commoners, slaves, any nobles still breathing. Get them to the river side of the valley if possible. Use the veil where you must. Do not engage unless there is no other choice."

Amelia’s eyes still held the dull red of recent bloodwork. "And you?"

"I will go up." He tapped the analysis crystal against his chest once. The pulse it returned was steady and heavy. "The one giving orders sits at the top. When that one falls, the rest lose their spine. Go."

They did not argue. The three women moved in different directions, the darkness of Lira’s hex book clinging to them like smoke. Allan started up the main stairs alone.

The higher he climbed, the fewer voices he heard. His boots made almost no sound on the worn boards. The crystal’s reading climbed with him: two hundred, two hundred fifty, then a hard stop at three hundred. Whatever waited on the top floor was not a common bandit captain.

Halfway up the last flight, the memory hit him without mercy.

He reached the top landing. One door. Heavy oak. No guards. The analysis crystal hummed steadily against his ribs.

[Level 300+]

He pushed the door open with the flat of his blade.

Blue hair. Familiar build. The woman standing by the high window turned slowly, torchlight catching the silver trident embroidered at her collar.

Chani.

The Archduke’s daughter. The NPC he had once made his wife.

Chani did not reach for a weapon. She simply watched him step inside and close the door with his heel. The room was large, with almost austere maps on the walls and a single long table covered in ledgers and sealed letters. A low fire burned clean in the hearth. The contrast with the floors below was deliberate.

"Oh, you look clean for a bandit." Her voice had the same calm tone he remembered from a hundred late-game cutscenes.

Allan kept the sword low but ready. Level three hundred. In the game, she had been one of his strongest combat assets once fully invested. Here, the reading matched. "Chani of House Poseidon. Last I checked, Archdukes’ daughters do not run bandit towns."

A faint smile. "Oh, you know me... That’s bad for you. That will be your death warrant."

He did not respond to the name. "The silver trident on the gate guard’s sword. The closed western road. The open slave pens. Your father’s mark is on every piece of this. And that infamous hair. Even a commoner would figure it out."

"I see. But you don’t look like a commoner. What are you?"

"Let’s say, your future husband."