The screen on FramePerfect's stream went pitch black. The chat, usually a waterfall of emotes, slowed to a trickle of anticipation.
Then, the logo appeared. Three stylized gray skulls, their eye sockets glowing with menacing ruby gemstones. Beneath them, the title burned onto the screen in sharp, jagged letters:
H A D E S
"Whoa," FramePerfect whispered, leaning closer to his monitor. "That art style is sick."
A deep, gravelly voice, one that sounded like tectonic plates grinding together narrated over the darkness.
"Few tales are told of Hades, whose very name inspires fear and penitence, reminding us of the inevitable fate which we all share."
The chat immediately flooded with confusion.
> Who is Hades again?
> Wait, I thought we play as Achilles?
> Where is the golden armor?
> Is this the bad guy?
> What about our revenge for Patroclus?
The voice continued, darker and more commanding.
"I, however, mean to tell you such a tale. Listen carefully..."
The screen faded to black again.
When it faded back in, the perspective had shifted. It was a stunning, hand-painted isometric view of a dark, opulent palace. Green flames licked the air from iron braziers, casting long, eerie shadows. To the south, a river of churning red liquid flowed endlessly.
Souls; translucent, gray figures wandered the halls aimlessly, moaning in silent despair.
Then, a figure dropped from a balcony. A young man with flaming feet, mismatched eyes, and a wreath of laurels. He landed with a heavy thud, dust billowing around him.
He looked back up at the balcony he had just jumped from.
Zagreus:"Good-bye, Father."
The location text slammed onto the screen with a heavy orchestral hit:
T A R T A R U S
FramePerfect, true to his nature as a speedrunner who skipped every cutscene in existence, didn't care about the emotional weight. He didn't know the significance of the red river or the green fire.
"Okay, control check," he muttered, ignoring the atmosphere.
He tapped the keys. Up, down, left, right. The character moved crisply, snapping to the inputs with zero latency.
"Movement is buttery smooth," FramePerfect noted. "Okay, let's see..."
He glanced at his chat monitor. It was exploding. It looked like an epic raid battle in an MMO.
> HOLY SHIT
> TARTARUS?!
> WE ARE IN HELL
> THATS THE RIVER STYX
> WE ARE DEAD??
> GUYS TARTARUS IS THE DEEP PIT
FramePerfect blinked. "What... what happened? Did I mistakenly stream the wrong screen?"
He looked at the chaotic wall of text. One comment caught his eye.
> HOLY SHIT ITS TARTARUS.
"What's Tartarus?" FramePerfect asked, tilting his head.
…
Meanwhile, in the living room of the Lyn family, Junior sat on the floor with his heliopad connected to the main holoscreen. His parents sat on the sofa behind him, watching intently.
"Tartarus?" his dad asked, reading the text on the screen. "Sounds ominous."
"It is," Junior explained, his eyes glued to the game. "Tartarus is one of the afterlives of the world in this game's lore. It was only mentioned once in the lore compilation the community found during the event. It's the deepest pit."
He pointed to the red river. "And that mention of Hades... he's a place, but also a God. The God that must never be named by mortals, because saying it out loud is said to invite death early."
His mom shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. "See, honey? He plays scary games. This is not good. Inviting death?"
"Come on, darling," his dad soothed, patting her hand. "He already learned Accord history at school. This is nothing but legend. A myth. It's creative."
He leaned forward, genuinely interested. "Go on, son. Play. I'm curious how it works."
Junior nodded, his fingers hovering over the controller. "Okay. Let's test the kit."
He moved Zagreus around. Tap. A sword slash. Tap tap tap. A rapid three-hit combo that ended with a satisfying knockback.
"Attack is fast," Junior noted.
Spacebar. Zagreus vanished in a blur of motion and reappeared a short distance away. "Dash. It has i-frames... maybe?"
Cast. Zagreus threw a red, ruby-looking jewel that lodged into a wall.
"Seem complicated, son," his dad observed, watching the frenetic movement.
"It's actually really simple control, Dad," Junior replied, his eyes scanning the UI. "One attack, one special, one cast, and a dash. Easy to learn."
He walked Zagreus to the end of the starting chamber. There was a door with a strange symbol floating above it.
"Proceed?" the prompt asked.
Junior tapped it.
Zagreus stepped through the door. The screen transitioned.
He entered the first true room of the dungeon. The doors slammed shut behind him with a finality that echoed through the speakers. Enemies spawned from the ground in pools of blood.
Junior didn't know it yet, and neither did the galaxy, but they had just stepped into a Roguelike. A genre where death wasn't a failure state, it was part of the loop.
…
Meanwhile, on Ardota Prime, the capital planet of the Stellar Accord, the Grand Library stood as a monolith of knowledge. It was a sprawling, sterile structure filled with data servers and knowledge gathered from all over the galaxy.
The main hall was crowded with "Low Scholars"; ministry servants, junior clerks, and military students who lacked the credits to purchase the curriculum directly. They walked the aisles, tapping their wristbands against the magnetic strips of the books.
Beep. Download complete. Access granted for 24 hours.
It was a conveyor belt of learning, efficient and soulless.
A young military student, his uniform slightly too big for him, wandered away from the main cluster. He reached for a heavy, sealed door at the back of the hall.
"Alert," a mechanical voice barked. A security Compadre hovered in front of him, its lights flashing amber. "Restricted Area. Clearance Level 4 required."
The student jumped back, his face flushing red as heads turned to look at him. "I'm... I'm sorry! I'm new to the capital. My professor told me I could find the Ethics Curriculum in this section."
"Ethics Curriculum is located in Sector 7-B," the Compadre droned, pointing a manipulator arm toward the far end of the hall. "Proceed immediately."
The student hurried away, head down.
Behind the restricted door, the atmosphere shifted instantly. The brutalist, efficient structure of the Accord gave way to a cohesive, controlled museum of the dead.
This was the Preservers Branch.
The room was filled with artifacts; statues of weeping gods, scrolls written in dead languages, sustained plants from planets that had been glassed by orbital bombardment. Rows of physical books were neatly categorized not by topic, but by "Extinguished Societies." This was where the Accord kept the trophies of the civilizations they had destroyed, cataloged under the guise of preservation.
In the middle of this silent graveyard, sitting at a desk piled high with ancient, unread books, was a woman with thick-rimmed glasses and messy hair.
She ignored the priceless history surrounding her. Her attention was entirely focused on the heliopad propped up against a stack of dusty scrolls.
She was LoreSeeker_Yna.
On the screen, she was controlling Zagreus in the House of Hades. She was walking slowly, her eyes wide behind her glasses.
"Incredible," she whispered, tilting her head.
She noted every single detail. The mosaics on the floor. The way the light caught the dust motes. In Ardota Prime, where efficiency dictated plain concrete and transparent glass, the intricate, decadent pillars of the House of Hades felt like a revelation. It was architecture with a soul.
"Even the shadows have weight," she murmured, taking a screenshot.
Finally, she decided to proceed. She moved Zagreus to the purple door and stepped into Tartarus.
Run 1.
She walked into the first chamber. It was dark, moody, and filled with spikes.
Suddenly, a Wretched Thug, a massive, bulbous spirit wielding a club lumbered out of the shadows.
"Eep!" Yna squeaked in the quiet library.
She panicked. Her fingers fumbled over the controls. She tried to attack, but missed. The Thug swung its club.
WHAM.
Zagreus took a massive hit.
"No, no, dodge!" Yna hissed. She tapped the dash button, but her timing was off. She dashed straight into a spike trap.
SHINK.
"Ah!"
She got hit again. And again. Her health bar plummeted from 50 to 20 in the very first room. She was a historian, not a gamer. Her coordination was terrible.
"I'm going to die in the first room," she despaired. "This is embarrassing."
But she managed to click the attack button enough times to whittle the Thug down. It dissolved into shadow.
As a reward for surviving the encounter, a glowing orb descended from the ceiling. It wasn't a weapon or a coin. It was a round, golden emblem featuring an owl and a shield, surrounded by four cardinal dots.
A Boon.
Yna tapped [Accept].
Zagreus's voice cut through the speakers, sounding hopeful.
"It's got to be her. Then, here goes nothing... Ahem. In the name of Hades! Olympus, I accept this message."
Yna held her breath. "Who is it?"
The screen flashed with golden light, and a portrait appeared. A woman in regal armor, holding a shield, with wisdom burning in her grey eyes. It was the same figure she had seen in the ink-wash animation, the one who stopped Achilles.
Athena.
…
Meanwhile, Verza Zal was approaching the game with the same terrifying discipline she applied to her military career. She analyzed.
Run 1.
She moved Zagreus with calculated precision. Every dash was measured. Every sword swing was timed. But Hades was not a game that rewarded hesitation.
A Wretched Witch threw a purple orb. Verza dodged, perfect. But she backed right into a numbskull trap.
CRUNCH.
"-5 HP."
Verza's eye twitched. Her perfectionist soul recoiled. The health bar was no longer full. It was imperfect.
"Aggh," she hissed, gripping the heliopad tighter.
She became agitated. She tried to correct the mistake by playing aggressively, but her rhythm was broken. She took another hit. And another. The chaotic nature of the roguelike genre, the RNG, the enemy spawns, the trap placements was an affront to her need for absolute order.
Finally, a Wretched Thug slammed its club down.
THERE IS NO ESCAPE.
Verza stared at the screen, her breathing shallow. She had failed.
The screen swirled with blood and darkness, depositing Zagreus back into the Pool of Styx. He climbed out, shaking off the red liquid.
Verza sighed, smoothing her hair back. She moved the character forward, out of his bedroom and into the main hall.
She stopped.
The structure was opulent, a dark, majestic palace of black stone and gemstones that seemed to hum with authority. It was inefficient, yet undeniably powerful.
Then, she saw him.
Sitting behind a massive desk covered in paperwork was a giant of a man. Compared to Zagreus, who looked like a twig, this figure was a mountain. His beard was long, his red cape sit on top of his shoulder looked like a mountain. Even the three-headed dog, Cerberus, sleeping nearby was massive, but the figure at the desk commanded the room.
"What's this?" Verza whispered, eyes widening. "Am I not playing as the God?"
She walked Zagreus up to the desk. The interaction prompt appeared.
Hades:"Stupid boy. I told you nobody gets out of here, whether alive or dead. Though, how was your wanton ransacking of my domain?"
The voice was deep, dripping with disdain and weary authority.
Verza leaned back in her chair, a shiver running down her spine. It wasn't fear. It was recognition.
"So he is my father," she murmured. "Hades. The one who is feared and sorrowful. The God of the dead."
She looked at the paperwork on his desk. The bureaucracy of the afterlife. The absolute control.
A sinister smile slowly spread across her face.
"I like him," she whispered.
She turned Zagreus away from the desk, towards the purple door leading back to Tartarus.
"Run 2."
…
The chat blew up like a thermal detonator the moment the death screen appeared.
> LUL
> WASHED
> "I WILL BREAK THE GAME" - FramePerfect, 20 mins ago
> RIP BOZO
> RTS 1 - FRAMEPERFECT 0
FramePerfect took a deep breath, staring at the camera. He looked calm, almost clinical.
"Chat... Chat..." he began, his voice cutting through the mockery. "This is the behind-the-scenes of what it's like to be a speedrunner. We fail. Constantly."
He pointed at his monitor. "What you see on my channel; the world records, the flawless glitches, those are the fruits of labor of these failures. You don't see the thousand runs where I hit a wall. You only see the one where I go through it."
The chat wasn't having it.
> Copium
> You're the one who arrogantly provoked the dev
> Cope Harder
> Keep your promise
> I smell something... it's the smell of someone backing out
FramePerfect chuckled, shaking his head. "Okay, okay. You guys just wait. I'll find the way to speedrun this game. But for now... how about we enjoy the game for what it is? The art is nice, the combat is–"
> BOOO
> WE WANT SPEED
> COWARD
> DO IT FAST OR DONT DO IT
FramePerfect sighed, rubbing his temples. "Alright. Tough crowd today."
He hovered his mouse over the 'End Stream' button for a split second, then pulled away. "Fine. I'll just mute the chat and play it by myself then. Watch and learn."
The chat immediately flipped.
> NOOO
> DONT MUTE
> WE SORRY
> PLS BRO
FramePerfect turning back to the game. He started his second run, but his mind was racing faster than his fingers.
'What the hell is this game?' he thought, dashing through a chamber. 'I've never seen this kind of game before. The geometry is... rigid.'
Usually, corners were his best friends. In 3D games, corners were where collision detection failed, where you could clip through the world. In side-scrollers, corners were where you could pixel-perfect jump.
'But this game...'
He dashed into a wall. Solid. He tried to clip through a pillar. Solid.
'The isometric view messes up the corners. Every corner is a perfect mathematical intersection of up, down, left, and right. It's tight. It's polished.'
"It's going to be harder to speedrun through exploits," he muttered to himself. "The layout is too clean."
He cleared a room, and a timer flashed briefly on the screen, a subtle tracking of his clear time.
He grinned.
'But the fact that the dev built a timer inside the game... means they expect us to race.'
In his eyes. RTS were provoking people like FramePerfect. They were saying, 'We built a perfect maze. Try to escape from it.'
"Challenge accepted, RTS." FramePerfect whispered, gripping his mouse. "Let's do this."
…
Back in the Junction of Round Table Studios, the atmosphere was one of focused observation. The central holographic array displayed four distinct feeds, hovering in the air like windows into different souls.
"These four players really have different styles of playing, huh," Bem Lendu commented, adjusting his glasses as he watched the screens flicker with the chaotic colors of the Underworld.
Ross Dalle walked over to Logan's station, placing a steaming cup of fresh Brewka on the desk. "Here you go. Fuel for the machine."
"Thanks," Logan grunted, taking a sip without looking away from the data stream.
Dalle glanced at the screens. "Wait. Where is the other one? We sent out five keys."
"Mr. Lockley isn't really interested in our game per se," Logan explained with a grin. "He is more interested in the code. He's currently dissecting the asset bundles we sent. We can't really monitor him snooping around the backend of our game, but his 'gameplay' is just scrolling through lines of our codes."
"So these four are the only players we need to keep focused on right now, right?" Lin Liseli asked, leaning on the back of Kasavin's chair.
"That's right," Arthur said, stepping into the circle. He watched FramePerfect's feed. The speedrunner was moving methodically, testing hitboxes, counting frames on enemy attacks.
"FramePerfect is the embodiment of a speedrunner jumping into a new game," Arthur analyzed. "They are methodical. They enjoy the game, but they are also studying it. He's building a mental map of every mechanic."
"It seems he has given up trying to break our game for now," Bem noted. "He seems to want to do a speedrun in a legitimate way first."
"Is that why you made a built-in timer in the corner of the game?" Kasavin asked, pointing to the small, unobtrusive clock ticking away on FramePerfect's screen.
"It's an option," Arthur said. "It's small and insignificant enough for normal players to not chase it, but for those who seek it... it's a challenge. It tells them: 'I dare you to beat this number.'"
"Speaking of which," Logan said, swiping his hand to enlarge another feed. "LoreMaster_Kez. The perfectionist seems to have found her rhythm. She was struggling at first, but look at this."
On the screen, Kez was weaving through projectiles with terrifying precision. She cleared a room without taking a single hit.
"Yeah, but not for long though," Bem murmured.
As soon as he said it, Kez made a mistake. She dashed a fraction of a second too late and took a hit from a Brimstone laser.
-10 HP.
Immediately, her gameplay changed. She became erratic. She tried to force attacks to "make up" for the lost health. She overextended. She took another hit. And another. Her rhythm collapsed into a mess of frustration.
"For such a neat player, she seems to fall back into the trap of life," Arthur observed quietly.
"Trap of life?" Lin asked.
"The urge to be perfect," Arthur explained. "The game urges the player to learn from their mistakes, not dwell on them. There is no perfect run in a Roguelike. The RNG of the boons, the layout you're getting... if you obsess over a single mistake, you lose the flow. To chase perfection is a fool's errand. I hope Kez, or whoever they are, can learn the art of letting go."
…
CRASH.
Verza Zal threw her heliopad across her private cabin. It slammed into the bulkhead and slid to the floor, the screen cracking but still glowing.
She stood in the middle of the room, her chest heaving. Her breath came in ragged, furious gasps. She had taken a hit. A stupid, avoidable hit. And because she couldn't let it go, she had died. Again.
She closed her eyes. She stood perfectly still for a full minute, forcing her heart rate to slow.
Inhale. Exhale.
As her breathing regulated, the fury didn't vanish, it solidified. It turned cold and sharp. She straightened up, smoothing her uniform.
She walked to the door and opened it. For today's training, she hoped she could let out some steam.
Unbeknownst to her unit, today would mark the birth of the "Hellish Lieutenant." From this day forward, every now and then Verza Zal would make her unit pay the price in sweat and drills.
Her units didn't know it yet, but they had just entered their own personal Tartarus.
**A/N**
~Read Advance Chapter and Support me on [email protected]/SmilinKujo~
~🧣KujoW
**A/N**