The coffee cup was empty again.

Leo Chen stared at the glowing monitor and tried to remember when he had last slept. It was somewhere between the triple raid and the account boost order for a client who wanted Level 90 by Friday. Seventy-two hours, maybe. He had stopped counting after the first day.

"Just one more login," he muttered. "Server maintenance ends in ten minutes. I'll place the character, then I'll rest."

He had said that six hours ago.

The game was called *Eternal Dominion*. A hundred million players across the globe. A world where you could be anything — a warrior, a mage, a merchant, a king. Leo had never been any of those things. He was a booster, a hired hand, a man who played other people's accounts so they could brag about levels they had never earned.

His own account sat at Level 1.

He had made it on the first day the game launched, three years ago, and never touched it again. What was the point? His clients were the ones who mattered. His rent mattered. His mother's hospital bills mattered.

The screen flickered. The server came back online.

Leo logged into his own character for the first time in years. A young farmer appeared on the screen, standing in a wheat field with a hoe over one shoulder. The name above his head read **LEO — Level 1**.

"Last login: 1,097 days ago," the game announced.

"Tell me about it," Leo whispered.

His vision blurred. The coffee was definitely not enough. His chest felt tight, the way it always did when he pushed too hard. He had felt that tightness for three years now, and it had never once stopped him.

The character stood in the golden field, waiting for instructions.

Leo leaned closer to the screen. "Let's at least kill one boar before I quit."

He never got the chance.

The screen went black. A single line of text appeared, written in a language he did not recognize, and then the world tilted, and the chair, and the ceiling, and everything else fell away.

---

When Leo opened his eyes, he was standing in a wheat field.

Golden stalks swayed in the wind, taller than his knees. The sun was warm on his skin. The sky was a blue so deep it looked painted.

"This is a dream," he said. "I'm finally hallucinating."

He looked down at his hands. They were not the hands he remembered. No calluses from a mouse, no burn scar from the cheap kettle. These hands were young. Strong.

He was wearing rough brown cloth and a straw hat.

And above his head, floating in the air where no one could miss it, was a name tag.

**LEO — Level 1**

"No," Leo said.

He reached up and touched the tag. It was solid. It rotated gently in the air, as if on an invisible string.

"No, no, no."

He spun around. The field stretched in every direction, ending at a village of mud-and-wood houses. Beyond the village, mountains clawed at the sky. And floating over the distant peaks, shimmering like heat haze, were numbers.

**Lv. 87**

**Lv. 93**

**Lv. 100**

Leo had played *Eternal Dominion* long enough to know a high-level zone when he saw one. Every number over the mountains was a monster that could kill him by breathing in his direction.

He was Level 1.

In a Level 100 world.

"Okay," he said, forcing himself to breathe. "Okay. This is fine. This is just a very realistic dream. I'll wake up in a second."

He pinched himself. It hurt.

"You have got to be kidding me."

A wolf howled somewhere in the distance. Leo turned toward the village and ran.

---

The villagers were not much comfort.

An old man with a pipe watched him stumble into the square and laughed around the stem. "You again, boy? Can't you find your way out of the same field twice?"

"I'm not—" Leo stopped. "Wait. Do you know me?"

The old man squinted. "Know you? You're Leo, the farmer's son. Born in this village twenty years ago. What's wrong with you? Did the sun bake your brain?"

Leo's heart sank. He was not just in the game. He was *in* the game. He had a past here, a history that the world had simply decided he had.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly. "I hit my head. I don't remember much."

The old man cackled. "Then you'll fit right in! Nobody in this village remembers anything worth remembering. Now get back to your field before the overseer docks your pay."

Leo looked around the square. Farmers. A blacksmith's forge. A well. A group of children chasing a chicken.

No portals. No auction house. No system menu.

"Where's the... interface?" he asked nobody.

"Interface?" the old man echoed. "Are you speaking some foreign tongue?"

Leo closed his eyes. In the game, a player could call up their status screen with a thought. He tried it now, reaching for the familiar mental trigger.

Nothing.

His stomach twisted. Without an interface, without a status screen, without any way to level up or use skills, he was just a man with a hoe in a world of monsters. He would be dead by nightfall.

"I'm going to die here," he whispered.

The children's chicken ran past him, clucking wildly. Something moved in the tall grass at the edge of the village. Two red eyes blinked.

A field rabbit. **Field Rabbit — Level 2.**

Even the rabbits were a higher level than him.

The rabbit charged.

Leo grabbed the hoe and swung with all his strength. The blade caught the rabbit mid-leap and sent it tumbling. It twitched once and lay still.

**You have killed a Field Rabbit (Lv. 2).**

**No experience gained. Level difference too great.**

"I knew it," Leo said bitterly. "I knew it."

But then, where the rabbit had fallen, something appeared. A small ball of blue light, no bigger than a marble, hovering over the corpse. It pulsed like a heartbeat.

And a voice spoke in his mind. Calm. Old. Hungry.

**【Devourer System initializing...】**
**【Congratulations, Level 1 host. You have made your first kill.】**
**【Would you like to Devour the residual experience of your prey? Yes / No】**

Leo stared at the blue light.

"What the hell are you?" he asked.

**【I am the one thing this world forgot to balance.】**
**【The Devourer.】**
**【Say yes, little farmer. Or die at Level 1.】**

The rabbit's blood soaked into the dry earth. Somewhere beyond the mountains, a Level 100 monster roared, and the ground trembled.

Leo looked at his hands. Then at the blue light.

"Fine," he said. "Yes."

The light shot into his chest.

**【Experience Devoured. +8 XP.】**
**【Level Up! You are now Level 2.】**

For the first time since he had opened his eyes in this world, Leo smiled.

---