The apartnt was dark except for the glow of three monitors stacked on a cluttered desk. Energy drink cans and snack wrappers littered the floor, evidence of nights blurred together. The hum of a cooling fan filled the silence, broken only by the frantic pounding of keys and the faint chatter of a live chat scrolling along the side of the middle monitor.
Sitting in the center of this chaos was her.
A young woman with sharp cheekbones, long dark hair tied ssily into a ponytail, and eyes that glimred with the focus of soone who had long since traded sleep for ambition.
Her gar tag, [Lyrica], floated above the stream overlay, frad by neon graphics and viewer count.
Twenty-seven thousand people were watching.
Just monts ago, they had all witnessed her defeat.
"...Who the hell was that guy?" she muttered again, leaning back in her chair, headset sliding off her ears. Her voice cracked with frustration, but the chat had already exploded into a frenzy.
"LOL smurf account lost??"
"Ayo, Lyrica caught lacking."
"Is this the first loss on the streak?"
"Not you losing to a public VR user 💀"
She clenched her fists. Public VR. The words echoed like an insult.
Everyone in the competitive scene knew that public pods were garbage.
Their calibration was inconsistent, haptics were laggy, and sensory depth was stripped down to bare minimums. Only desperate newcors or casual players used them. To compete seriously required a personal pod, tuned and personalized to a player’s body and reflexes.
And yet... she had lost.
Not just lost—she had been dismantled. Her combos unraveled, her precision countered, her rhythm broken apart like it was nothing.
The sting worsened because this account wasn’t her main.
It was a smurf account she had spun up only a week ago, a way to entertain her viewers while showing how easily she could climb through the lower leagues.
Her promise had been clear: One hundred percent win streak to Silver.
She had delivered, ga after ga. Smooth victories. Clean sweeps. Opponents that fell before her relentless, tournant-honed style.
She had hyped it up on stream, made it a running joke. "I could do this blindfolded, guys. Watch ."
And now?
Now, on the last match she needed to qualify for Silver, her streak had been shattered—by a na she’d never even seen before.
[DragonMaster123].
"Ridiculous," she hissed, tearing open another can of soda. Foam fizzed over the tab as she drank, ignoring the sting in her throat. "He shouldn’t even exist. No new player reads movent that well."
Her chat disagreed.
"Nah, he’s cracked."
"That dude was built different."
"You saw the 1v5, right??"
"DragonMaster123 already trending on the forums lmao."
Lyrica froze. "...Trending?"
Alt-tabbing, she pulled up one of the larger Silent Eclipse boards.
Her jaw tightened.
Sure enough, a clip of the duel had already been uploaded.
’Public VR newbie solo wipes veteran squad.’ Thousands of upvotes. Comnts flooding in by the second.
And in every single clip, she was there—losing.
Her hands trembled around the soda can. For years, she had clawed her way through brackets, clawed her way into recognition. Dozens of tournants, hundreds of hours of training, every inch of progress bought with sleepless nights.
She had entered the global top two hundred by sheer blood and will.
And now her image—her na—was being tied to this.
A fluke, a nobody, a damn rookie with a cheap avatar and a stupid userna.
"DragonMaster123..." she whispered, etching it into her mind like a brand. She would not forget.
Her teeth ground together. If the world wanted a rivalry, she would give it one.
"Fine," she said, forcing her voice steady as she turned back to her stream. "Enjoy your little victory, DragonMaster. But don’t think this is over."
The chat roared with excitent.
**********
"Haa..."
Luke stepped out of the pod three hours later, muscles stiff from staying in the sa position for too long. His hoodie clung to his skin, damp with sweat. He rubbed his temples before stretching, letting the stale arcade air fill his lungs.
The attendant at the desk barely glanced up as he left, receipt in hand.
Luke tucked it into his pocket and stepped outside. The city was calr now, the late afternoon sun softening the edges of the skyline. Cars humd past, students loitered by corner shops, and the sll of roasted at wafted from a street vendor’s cart.
For the first ti in days, he slowed down.
His mind replayed the battles he had fought. The rush of ranked play. The sting of bad teammates. The thrill of carrying against impossible odds. And...
... The quiet satisfaction of victory.
The ga was different from Hunters & Dragons. Sterile, artificial, lacking the raw heartbeat of Te’rah. But competition was universal.
Skill spoke louder than imrsion.
And Luke was certain of one thing: he had the skill.
He had played a dozen ranked matches since that first dramatic win, testing himself against players of every style. So were sloppy. So were sharp. A few gave him trouble. But none of them could break him.
His win rate was climbing fast, his rank points stacking up.
Still, he wasn’t naïve.
He knew that victories here didn’t automatically an money. The ga’s economy was brutal. Strears, tournant players, sponsors—profit only ca with recognition, and recognition only ca with rank.
Luke slipped his hands into his pockets, whispering to himself.
"Bronze is nothing. Silver’s nothing. To make real money, I need Gold. For decent money, Diamond. Platinum and Legendary... I should probably give up on those, since only the top gars get that position."
His gaze flickered up toward the digital billboards plastered across the side of a skyscraper. They displayed highlights of the world’s top players—Legends whose nas echoed across the globe.
He shook his head. "Diamond. That’s enough. Anything more is for people who’ve lived inside the ga since birth."
It was a practical goal, but the fire in his chest didn’t care for practicality.
Deep down, he wanted to see how far he could push himself.
He turned down an alley, heading for the subway station. His footsteps echoed softly against the pavent.
But what he perhaps didn’t notice was that he wasn’t alone.
Across the street, leaning against a wall just beyond the reach of the setting sun, a man stood watching him. His face was shadowed beneath the hood of a long jacket, hands buried in his pockets.
His gaze followed Luke with quiet intensity.
To any passerby, he was just another loiterer. But his stillness was unnatural. Too focused. Too deliberate.
The man’s lips curved into a faint scowl.
"...Strange."
The word was little more than a whisper, carried away by the hum of traffic.
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