The western gate of Winston stood like a jagged, rotted tooth of grey stone, biting into a sky that promised the relief of rain but delivered only a stifling, heavy heat.
Usually, this gate was a chaotic artery of trade, a place where the scent of spiced meats and cheap ale mingled with the braying of pack mules. But under the Lord's new "Security Directives," it had been transformed into a suffocating bottleneck.
The residents of Winston were penned in like cattle, their movements restricted by iron-tipped pikes. Travelers were subjected to a scrutiny so invasive it bordered on the interrogation of war criminals.
Huroi walked toward the iron-shod gates with a measured, steady gait that hid a thundering heart. He was no longer a mercenary for the Mero Company. He had seen a better deal—not just in gold, but in the structural integrity of the world itself. The system had offered him a path to something greater than a silver-tongued shadow.
'Level 127,' Huroi thought, his fingers steady as he presented his identification card to a stone-faced guard. 'A high-level Orator, yet I've spent a year running errands for copper. This is it. The Apostle of Justice Partner class. The Courage stat. My chance to finally stop talking about heroes and start being one.'
He offered a practiced, friendly smile to the soldiers. "Fine weather for a march, isn't it? Thank you for your hard work in this heat."
The soldiers didn't move. They didn't blink. They stood like statues carved from the very ramparts they guarded, their eyes fixed on a distant, invisible point over Huroi's shoulder.
Huroi's smile faltered. As an Orator, he lived and breathed the "Feedback Loop." His entire class was built on the reaction of others—the nod of agreement, the flinch of a lie, the spark of inspiration. Silence was his only natural enemy, a void that his skills could not penetrate.
He tried again, weaving the subtle magic of his [Persuasion] skill into his tone. "Surely there isn't a mistake? I'm just a traveler seeking the crisp mountain air of the Frontier."
Still, nothing. The soldiers had been given a command that overrode the system's natural inclination for social interaction. They had been ordered to be deaf to the world.
"It is a wasted effort, Mr. Huroi."
The voice was thin, sharp, and carried the scent of expensive parchment and cold, surgical calculations. Huroi spun around, his hand instinctively reaching for a dagger he didn't have the stats to use effectively.
Rabbit stood ten paces away, flanked by a squad of elite enforcers from Baron Lowe's personal guard. The Chief Strategist wasn't wearing his usual office robes; he wore a traveling cloak of deep charcoal, and his spectacles caught the afternoon sun, turning his eyes into twin voids of blinding white light.
"Mr. Rabbit," Huroi said, his throat tightening as if an invisible hand were closing around it. "I thought you'd be buried in ledgers, working hard for company."
"I had a headache," Rabbit said, his voice terrifyingly neutral. "I found I needed some fresh air. And perhaps, a final word with a contractor who seems to have lost his moral compass."
Huroi's mind raced at a thousand miles per hour. He was an Orator; he had talked his way out of burning buildings and death-row sentences in other games.
"Ah, a misunderstanding! I was simply scouting the outskirts to see how the residents spend their leisure time. To incite a crowd, one must first understand what they fear losing, wouldn't you agree?"
He poured every point of his [Persuasive Power] into the lie, attempting to force the NPC's logic to align with his own.
But Rabbit only smiled. It was a cold, pitying expression—the look a mathematician gives to a rounding error.
"You are very good, Huroi. Your eloquence is a weapon. But I have spent my life building a monopoly in a land of wolves. I do not believe in people; I believe in contingencies. I didn't necessarily anticipate your betrayal—I simply made it a statistical possibility."
Rabbit stepped closer, the pressure of his presence as heavy as a physical weight. "The Mero Company distributed flyers this morning. The 'gap' in the residents' minds is wide open. A competent orator would be in the square right now, harvesting their souls, rewriting their subconscious. You, however, are at the western gate. Therefore, you are either incompetent... or a traitor. And I do not hire incompetent men."
"Kuk!" Huroi recoiled. He tried to trigger his emergency logout sequence. 'Logout!'
[You cannot shut down the game in this location.]
"The 'Logout' spell," Rabbit mused, watching Huroi's frantic, glazed expression. "A mysterious power your kind possesses to vanish to an unknown realm. Do you think we haven't found a way to neutralize it? In a zone under martial law, your soul is as bound to this earth as ours."
"Capture him," Rabbit commanded, turning his back as if Huroi were already a ghost. "Lock him in the lowest dungeon of Winston Castle. Ensure the Lord knows he is to be watched. He is not to die—death is just another door for his kind. He is to remain in the dark. Forever, if necessary."
Huroi didn't fight. An Orator against four Level 100 soldiers was a joke with no punchline. He was bound in cold iron, his mouth gagged with a chemically treated cloth to prevent his "Spiteful Tongue" from lashing out, and dragged toward the looming, windowless silhouette of the castle.
As the heavy iron door of the dungeon slammed shut, plunging Huroi into a damp, stinking darkness, a notification window flared to life in the center of his vision.
It wasn't the blue of a normal quest. It was a deep, bloody crimson—the color of a death sentence.
[The quest 'For the Residents of Winston (A)' has changed to 'Wait (S)'.]
[Wait]
Difficulty: S
Description: You have failed to reach Earl Steim. You are trapped in the Winston Dungeon, a place from which none escape through conventional means. But hope remains. If you can endure the hunger, the cold, and the absolute silence, the Apostle of Justice will come for you.
Quest Clear Condition: Do not log out for 50 hours in real time.
Satisfy Duration: Approximately 200 hours (8 days, 8 hours).
Warning: This is an extremely dangerous quest. The system will monitor your brainwaves in real-time. If you are forced to log out due to mental instability, S.A. Group medical staff will be dispatched to your home immediately.
Huroi stared at the text. Fifty hours. Two days and two nights in the real world, strapped into a capsule, his mind submerged in a pitch-black cell where the only sound was the dripping of salt water and the skittering of rats.
It was a test of sanity. A "mental endurance" quest that bypassed the stats of the game and targeted the actual soul of the player.
'Fifty hours...' Huroi thought, his breath hitching in the dark. 'I'm single. My doors are locked. My health is perfect. I have no appointments. The S.A. Group will protect my body... but can I protect my mind?'
He remembered the hollow, hopeful faces of the villagers. He remembered Khan's steady, soot-stained hand. And most of all, he thought of the quest which sent him in this path.
"I accept," Huroi whispered into the dark.
[The quest has been accepted.]
[The capsule has switched to Deep Immersion Sleep Mode.]
[External power shutoff is now impossible.]
The world of Satisfy shifted. The interface vanished. The menus disappeared. Huroi was left with nothing but his thoughts and the cold, damp stone beneath him.
He knew the dangers. Long-term immersion in total darkness without social stimuli could lead to "Reality Dissociation." He might forget his own name. He might forget that he was a man in a high-tech capsule in Mongolia and believe he was truly a prisoner rotting in a medieval hole.
But then, he thought of the reward.
[Apostle of Justice's Partner]
[One who Overcomes Hardships]
[The 'Indomitable' stat will be opened.]
[The 'Courage' stat will be opened.]
'A partner,' Huroi thought, closing his eyes against the void. 'The quest says the Apostle of Justice will come. Who is he? Is it an NPC sent by the Earl? Or is it someone else?'
'Whoever you are,' Huroi prayed to the silence, 'hurry. I will wait for two hundred hours. I will not break. I will be the voice that calls the world to the truth. Just... don't let the silence be the last thing I hear.'
Outside the castle, the sun set over the jagged rooflines of Winston. Rabbit returned to his office to prepare for the tournament, a faint smirk of satisfaction on his face. The Mero Company felt they had silenced the last witness, erased the last loose thread.
Inside the forge, the atmosphere was different. Grid was no longer crying. He was silent, moving with a mechanical, eerie efficiency. The news of Huroi's "disappearance" hadn't reached him yet, but he could feel the weight of the town square pressing in on the walls of the smithy.
Arthur stood in the center of the forge, his ruby eyes reflecting the dying embers of the furnace. He looked toward the castle, his gaze piercing through the stone walls as if he could sense Huroi's struggling consciousness in the deep dark.
"Huroi is a man of words," Arthur thought, his voice a low hum. "And sometimes, the only way to find the true value of your words is to spend time in a place where they have no meaning. He will endure. He has to if he break the shackles of the Orator class."
Arthur looked at the Sword Saint Candidate progress bar, it was a log way to reach Level 5 and the Sacrifice needed to trigger it was constantly grinding his way upward one step at a time.
Arthur knows, defeating Grid when he will become level 300 won't be easy, but perhaps, easy things aren't in the dictionary of Arthur.