The forty-eight hours passed in a blur of agonizing physical conditioning and silent meditation. When the designated morning finally arrived, Aamon Maverick was ready.
He stood in the center of Room 614, the worn duffel bag slung over his shoulder, wearing his clean but faded civilian clothes. He took one last, sweeping look at the cramped, dingy apartment that had been his predecessor's entire world. The cracked mirror, the stained mattress, the lingering smell of cheap artificial chicken ramen—it was a monument to a life destined to end quietly in the slums.
"I'll make it count," Aamon murmured softly, a final farewell to the ghost of the boy who had died in the incident so that he could live.
A sharp, authoritative knock echoed on the thin wooden door.
Aamon opened it to find Agent Myra Elswright standing in the dimly lit hallway. She was dressed in her standard, immaculate Bureau uniform—a white, tailored trench coat reinforced with subtle arcane weave, her silver ARIES badge gleaming on her lapel. Her sharp eyes immediately swept over him, taking in the subtle but undeniable changes in his physique.
The sickly pallor was gone, replaced by the lean, tightly wound tension of a predator learning how to use its limbs. His soft pale-skin seems to glow now, especially with his baby-lile features. If not for his ragged clothes, one could mistake Aamon for a model especially with his pale blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.
"You look less like a corpse, Maverick," Elswright noted, her tone crisp. "I assume you haven't been slacking."
"Just some basic conditioning, Agent Elswright," Aamon replied smoothly, stepping out and locking the door behind him. "I didn't want to show up to training looking completely pathetic."
"Good. The Bureau does not invest its resources in charity cases. Come along. Our transport is waiting."
They descended the concrete stairwell and stepped out into the smoggy morning air of District 4. Parked illegally by the curb was a sleek, matte-black armored vehicle. It had no visible wheels, hovering two inches off the cracked pavement on a cushion of localized anti-gravity mana.
Aamon slid into the back seat, the luxurious, shock-absorbent leather a stark contrast to the grit of the slum outside. Agent Elswright sat beside him, tapping a sequence into the privacy partition. The vehicle silently surged forward, accelerating with zero physical inertia.
"Where are we heading?" Aamon asked, watching the dilapidated buildings blur past the tinted windows. "I assumed the preparatory training would be here in Solmire." Of course not, Aamon is just talking shit. He already knew that there is no preparatory training facility in the Solmire Branch of ARIES Bureau.
"You assumed incorrectly," Elswright replied, her eyes fixed on a holographic datapad she had materialized from a spatial ring on her finger. "The Solmire Branch is merely a regional outpost. You have been drafted as a special recruit under the direct jurisdiction of ARIES Headquarters. We are heading to the Solmire Branch only to use the Translocation Network. Our final destination is the capital. Nocturnis City."
Aamon allowed a feigned look of appropriate, wide-eyed astonishment to cross his face. "Nocturnis City? But that's on the other side of the country. Using this car would take atleast almost two days."
Of course, being a lead-tester and the one who understood the entire lore and mechanics of the game, Aamon already have an idea on how they would be able cross the other side without using any means of modern vehicle. He's just feigning ignorance as a rookie who hasn't seen the wider view of the world.
"Which is precisely why we will not be using this vehicle as our means of transportation," Elswright said, not looking up from her datapad.
Ten minutes later, the vehicle descended into a highly secured, subterranean parking facility beneath the towering glass structure of the ARIES Bureau Solmire Branch. They walked past layers of biometric scanners and heavily armed Arcanist guards, descending deeper into the facility until they reached Sector 4—a restricted, heavily shielded subterranean bunker.
Agent Elswright swiped her badge against a monolithic steel door. It parted with a heavy, grinding groan, revealing a massive, circular chamber.
The walls were lined with thousands of glowing, intricate runes that pulsed in sync like a giant, mechanical heartbeat. In the absolute center of the room sat a massive platform constructed from pure, unblemished Star-Silver.
Suspended above the platform was a swirling, three-dimensional vortex of condensed, sapphire-blue arcane energy. It looked like a miniature galaxy, spinning silently, defying the laws of gravity and physics.
"Whoa," Aamon breathed, allowing his jaw to drop slightly.
And truthfully, he wasn't entirely acting. Seeing it rendered in 4K resolution on a monitor was one thing. Standing twenty feet away from a localized tear in the spacetime continuum, feeling the raw, static electricity of the portal raising the hairs on his arms, was entirely different outlook.
"Impressive, isn't it?" Elswright said, a rare hint of reverence bleeding into her usually clinical voice. "This is a Translocation Portal. One of the greatest arcane marvels of the modern era."
She gestured toward the swirling vortex as they approached the platform. "This network was the magnum opus of one of the original founders of the ARIES Bureau—a Legendary-Rank Arcanist whose mastery over spatial magic has never been replicated since his passing. Because he crafted the anchor points personally, the Bureau holds an absolute monopoly over this technology."
Aamon nodded slowly, actively recalling the deep lore files he had proofread for the game's codex.
In Arcane Frontier, the Translocation Network was essentially the game's fast-travel system. But narratively, it was a massive geopolitical lever.
Only the ARIES Bureau and the Polaris Academy possessed these portals, with a single, highly regulated node located at the SCALE Headquarters for political appeasement. It was the reason ARIES could respond to national threats faster than the military.
"If this exists, why doesn't the government use it for mass transit or supply lines?" Aamon asked, playing the part of the inquisitive rookie perfectly.
Elswright scoffed softly. "Because the cost of operation is astronomical. Tearing a stable hole through spacetime and maintaining the coordinate anchor requires an ungodly amount of raw arcane energy."
She pointed to the periphery of the Star-Silver platform, where several large, transparent crystalline pillars were slotted into the floor. Inside the pillars, high-grade monster cores—the crystallized hearts of A-Rank and S-Rank beasts—were glowing violently, their energy being aggressively siphoned into the portal.
"A single jump for two people will consume hundred thousands of credits worth of refined arcane energy from arcane materials," she explained. "It is not for public convenience. It is for absolute, critical emergencies. Or, in this case, the secure transport of highly classified assets."
Aamon felt a twinge of surreal amusement. Thousands of credits just to pick me up. Talk about a VIP Uber ride. Time is definitely of the essence for the Bureau.
"Step onto the platform, Maverick. Stand perfectly still. Do not let your mana leak, or the spatial currents might rip your limbs off during transit."
Aamon gulped—a genuine reaction to that terrifying warning—and stepped onto the Star-Silver. Elswright stood beside him, her posture rigid and practiced.
"Solmire Branch, this is Agent Elswright from Headquarters. Authorization code Alpha-Seven-Nine for translocation usage. Destination: Nocturnis HQ. Initiate the sequence."
"Copy that, Agent. Initiating sequence," a voice echoed from a hidden speaker.
The room began to vibrate. The sapphire vortex above them suddenly violently expanded, dropping down like a heavy curtain of liquid light, swallowing them whole.
Aamon felt a sensation like his stomach being yanked through his spine. Colors inverted. The sound of the world was replaced by a deafening, high-pitched ringing. For a fraction of a second, he felt like his physical body had been unraveled into millions of lines of glowing green code, fired across the continent at the speed of light, and violently stitched back together.
Before he could even register the nausea, his boots slammed onto solid ground.
The swirling blue light vanished, replaced by the stark, sterile white lights of a new chamber.
Aamon stumbled forward, falling to one knee and dry-heaving violently. His newly formed F-Rank core was spinning like a top, highly agitated by the violent spatial translation.
"Breathe, Maverick. The dimensional sickness passes in a few seconds," Elswright said, sounding completely unfazed and amused at his predicament. On the other hand, she didn't even have a hair out of place.
Must be tolerance of a higher rank arcanist. Aamon thought to himself as he coughed, forcing his breathing to slow, allowing his Gaming Sense to re-anchor his perception to reality. He stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
They walked out of the portal chamber and through a series of security checkpoints, finally emerging into the main lobby of the ARIES Bureau Headquarters.
If the Solmire Branch was a fortress, the Headquarters was a citadel. The lobby was cavernous, easily the size of a sports stadium. The floor was polished black obsidian, and the walls were lined with massive holographic maps of the Aurelion Republic, dotted with hundreds of flashing red and yellow icons indicating rift activities and threat levels across the nation.
Through the massive glass facade at the front of the lobby, Aamon caught his first glimpse of Nocturnis City.
It was breathtaking. The capital was a city built on an impossible scale. The skyscrapers here pierced the clouds, connected by a sprawling, multi-layered web of glowing sky-bridges. The Zenith Ward protecting Nocturnis wasn't a translucent grid. It was a solid, shimmering dome of golden light, radiating an aura of absolute, impenetrable safety.
Yet, as Aamon looked around the massive HQ lobby, he noticed something incredibly strange.
It was virtually empty.
Aside from a few uniformed personnel manning the heavily fortified reception desks and answering an endless stream of flashing communication consoles, the massive space was devoid of life. There were no squads of heavily armed Arcanists marching around, no bustling crowds of agents.
"It's quiet," Aamon noted, his brow furrowing in genuine surprise.
"As it should be," Elswright said, her heels clicking rhythmically against the obsidian floor as she led him toward a side exit. Then she added with tinge of amusement in her voice, "It seems that like most people, you are under the misconception that a Bureau Headquarters operates like a military barracks, Maverick. But I assure you, it does not."
She gestured vaguely to the massive holographic maps depicting the nation's ongoing crises.
"The ARIES Bureau does not possess a standing army. We are a surgical instrument. The vast majority of our personnel are elite field agents. They possess skills specifically tailored for survival, navigation, and extreme combat within chaotic spatial anomalies. Right now, nearly ninety percent of our active roster is deployed in the field, closing rifts, hunting high-priority targets, or securing unstable zones across the continent."
She looked at Aamon, her expression serious. "The people you see here are logistics, intelligence analysts, and dispatchers. A Bureau filled with agents sitting at desks is a Bureau that is failing its country. If you survive your training, do not expect to see the inside of this building very often."
Aamon nodded, filing the information away. It made perfect sense from a world-building perspective. The Bureau wasn't the police; they were the special forces of the arcane world.
They exited the Headquarters through a heavily guarded side gate, stepping out onto a private, impeccably manicured avenue.
The air in Nocturnis was noticeably cleaner, smelling of blooming arcane-infused flora planted along the pristine sidewalks.
"Where is the preparatory facility?" Aamon asked, keeping pace with the agent.
"We are currently walking along the western perimeter of the Polaris Academy," Elswright said, pointing toward a massive, sprawling complex of gothic and modern architecture in the distance, surrounded by towering walls of white stone. "The Academy proper is currently closed for the summer break, preparing for the entrance ceremony in June. The preparatory dormitory is an auxiliary facility located just off-campus."
They walked for about ten minutes, turning down a quiet, heavily warded street lined with ancient oak trees. At the end of the street sat a sprawling, beautiful, three-story manor built from dark mahogany and pale stone. It looked less like a military barrack and more like an elite fraternity house.
In front of the dormitory was a massive, open-air training yard. It was easily the size of a football field, covered in reinforced hex-plating, dotted with various enchanted training dummies, obstacle courses, and weapon racks.
"This is the Special Recruits Dormitory," Elswright announced, scanning her badge at the wrought-iron gate. The gates swung open silently.
"Currently, the facility is severely underpopulated. You are only the third recruit to be inducted into this specific fast-track program for the upcoming academic year. The Bureau only sponsors geniuses."
"Three?" Aamon asked, feigning ignorance.
"Who are the other two?"
"You will meet them soon enough," Elswright replied as they walked up the cobblestone path toward the manor's entrance. "One of them you are tangentially aware of. Seraphine Blackwood. The young healer who accompanied me during your extraction in Solmire. Her talent is exceptional, and the Bureau is taking a vested interest in her development."
Aamon nodded. Seraphine. The ultimate support NPC for the Warrior's storyline. He already met her. And her somewhat eccentric and greedy personality for a healer is quite interesting to witness to say the least. Of course her talent to be able to assimilate every toxic essence and substances are sought-after, especially for a dangerous miasma-filled unstable rifts. That's why the Bureau also recruited her. Added the fact that Seraphine could also heal, making her a perfect utility and rescue agent prospect in the eyes of the Bureau.
"And the other?"
"A boy roughly your age. He arrived a week prior to you. He is... intense. I suggest you tread lightly around him."
They reached the heavy wooden double doors of the manor. Before Elswright could reach for the handle, her Bureau-issued earpiece chirped violently, a sharp red light blinking on the device.
Aamon, whose newly awakened F-Rank body had drastically sharpened his senses, could faintly hear the frantic voice of the dispatcher bleeding through the earpiece's tiny speaker.
"...Emergency. Lumeirn Branch calling HQ. Code Red. Spontaneous Unstable Rift manifestation in Sector 7 Civilian Zone. Local forces overwhelmed. We have three civilians pulled into the anomaly perimeter—two senior citizens, one minor. Requesting immediate Elite backup. Any available spatial or navigation-specialized agents..."
Elswright's expression, usually a mask of calm professionalism, hardened into a terrifying mask of absolute focus.
The situation was a carbon copy of the disaster Aamon had miraculously survived a week ago. And just like before, the local branch was understaffed and begging the capital for a miracle.
This is why the Translocation Portals exist, Aamon realized with a jolt of clarity. A localized portal is probably spinning up back at HQ right now, ready to drop Elswright directly into the meat grinder in Lumeirn.
Elswright tapped her earpiece. "This is Agent Elswright. I am three minutes from the portal chamber. Spin it up. I am responding."
She turned to Aamon, her demeanor entirely shifted from a chaperone to a soldier going to war.
"Change of plans, Maverick. I have to deploy immediately. Your room is on the second floor, door number three. Your biometrics have already been registered to the lock."
"I heard the call," Aamon said, dropping the naive act for a second. "Good luck, Agent Elswright."
Elswright gave him a curt, approving nod. "The official training curriculum begins tomorrow at 08:00 AM. The other two recruits might still be asleep. Settle your belongings, familiarize yourself with the facility, and stay on the grounds. And Maverick?"
"Yes?"
"Do not blow upsomething while I am gone."
With a sudden, explosive burst of kinetic mana, Elswright blurred out of sight, leaving a cracked cobblestone and a gust of wind in her wake as she dashed back toward the Headquarters at superhuman speed.
Aamon watched her go, a solemn respect settling in his chest. In the game, the ARIES agents were mostly faceless quest-givers. In reality, they were the thin, overworked line standing between humanity and total annihilation.
He pushed open the heavy wooden doors of the dormitory and stepped inside.
The interior was lavish. Polished hardwood floors, plush leather couches in a sprawling common room, a massive kitchen stocked with high-end appliances, and walls lined with arcane-infused lighting fixtures. It was a staggering upgrade from Room 614.
The silence of the manor indicated the other two were indeed still asleep or keeping to their rooms. Aamon didn't call out. He climbed the grand staircase to the second floor, located door number three, and pressed his thumb against the digital lock. The door clicked open.
His new room was the size of his entire old apartment. It featured a massive king-sized bed, a private en-suite bathroom, a large desk, and a walk-in closet.
Aamon tossed his duffel bag onto the pristine white sheets. He didn't bother unpacking. His blood was still humming with the residual adrenaline of the Translocation jump and the lingering tension of Elswright's emergency departure. He needed to move. He needed to test out the training yard.
He left his room, quietly navigating back down the stairs and out the front doors, stepping into the crisp morning air of the massive training field.
The yard was an Arcanist's paradise. Aamon walked over to a rack of blunted, enchanted training weapons, running his hand over the hilt of a perfectly balanced longsword. He took a deep breath, preparing to cycle his mana and practice his Kinetic Edge combo on one of the reinforced dummies.
Suddenly, a cold, violent shiver ran violently down his spine.
Gaming Sense flared like a siren in his brain, painting a blazing red trajectory line across his vision.
THREAT DETECTED. HIGH VELOCITY.
Aamon didn't think. He didn't have time to look. His body reacted with the sheer, ingrained panic of a gamer dodging a frame-one boss mechanic.
He violently threw his body backward, forcefully channeling ten mana into his core.
"Frame Lag!"
The world around him stuttered. The vibrant colors of the morning dulled to a grayish hue. Time didn't stop, but it glitched, stretching a fraction of a second into three long, agonizing heartbeats.
A searing silver projectile—a condensed blade of pure, compressed arcane energy—tore through the space where Aamon's throat had been a millisecond prior. The projectile carried so much kinetic force that the wind of its passing sliced a shallow cut across Aamon's cheek as he fell backward onto the hex-plated floor.
The projectile slammed into the enchanted weapon rack behind him, detonating with a concussive boom that sent blunted swords and wooden spears flying into the air like shrapnel.
The Frame Lag broke. Reality snapped back to normal speed.
Aamon scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering wildly against his ribs, his F-Rank core burning from the sudden, aggressive mana drain.
"What the hell is your problem?!" Aamon roared, spinning toward the origin of the attack, his hands already glowing faintly with the blue light of Kinetic Edge.
Standing fifty feet away, near the entrance of the manor, was a boy.
He was roughly Aamon's height, possessing a lean, incredibly muscular build that spoke of years of relentless physical conditioning. He wore a simple gray t-shirt and dark sweatpants. But it was his face that Aamon recognized instantly.
Sharp, aristocratic features. Messy, dark brown hair. And eyes—piercing, glowing golden eyes that burned with an intense, unyielding hostility. His face was set in a deep, perpetual frown, an expression so iconic Aamon had once ordered the art team to make it the default render for the game's promotional posters.
It was him. The Warrior.
The boy didn't flinch at Aamon's shouting. His right hand was raised, three more silver, condensed mana blades hovering around his forearm like deadly, orbiting satellites.
"I sensed an unfamiliar, erratic mana signature creeping around the weapons rack," the boy said, his voice deep, raspy, and completely devoid of warmth. "State your name and your affiliation. If you lie, I will pin you to the wall."
Aamon stared at him, incredulity temporarily overpowering his anger. "Are you insane?! I'm a recruit! I literally just got here five minutes ago! You almost took my head off!"
The golden eyes narrowed slightly, sweeping over Aamon's cheap clothes, the slight cut on his cheek, and the faint blue mana currently pooling in his hands.
"You snuck onto a highly classified Bureau facility at dawn, wearing street clothes, and your first instinct was to grab a weapon," the boy countered coldly. "For all I know, you're a Dark Arcanist who bypassed the perimeter wards to assassinate the recruits."
Aamon's jaw dropped. He let out a harsh, exasperated laugh, completely dropping his guard. He ran a hand through his blonde hair, wiping away the small bead of blood on his cheek.
"A Dark Arcanist?" Aamon repeated, gesturing wildly to his utterly average, non-threatening appearance. "Do I look like a fanatic cultist trying to summon a rift lord? I'm wearing a five-credit jacket from a District 4 thrift store! What kind of paranoid delusion are you living in?"
But even as he yelled, Aamon's developer brain was rapidly supplying the context.
Right. The lore. Dark Arcanists weren't just standard villains in this world. They were rogue magic users who worshipped the chaos of the Rifts, intentionally causing monster breaks and sabotaging Zenith Wards to plunge cities into anarchy.
And this boy's parents—two highly respected, B-Rank Arcanists—had been brutally murdered in a massive crossfire orchestrated by a Dark Arcanist syndicate when he was only ten years old. He had survived the collapse of a building by hiding under his mother's corpse.
It was the defining, tragic backstory of the Warrior class. It was the reason he was ruthlessly hyper-vigilant. It was the reason he possessed an almost pathological hatred for anything he deemed 'suspicious.' It was classic, edgy protagonist syndrome.
And Aamon was currently standing on the receiving end of it.
"Look," Aamon sighed, letting the blue glow of Kinetic Edge fade from his hands. He raised both arms in a universal gesture of surrender. "My name is Aamon Maverick. Agent Elswright just dropped me off. She had to respond to a Code Red in Lumeirn. You can call the dispatch and verify my registry if you want. But if you throw another one of those silver toothpicks at me, I'm going to get very annoyed."
The boy stood perfectly still for a long moment, his golden eyes boring into Aamon, searching for any hint of deception. Slowly, the glowing silver blades orbiting his arm dissolved back into harmless ambient mana.
His posture relaxed marginally, though the intense, brooding frown remained firmly etched onto his face. It seemed Elswright had indeed briefed him on a new arrival.
"Maverick," the boy muttered, testing the name on his tongue. He lowered his hand and began to walk slowly across the training yard toward Aamon.
He stopped a few feet away, extending a calloused, scarred hand.
"My apologies," he said, though the tone was incredibly stiff and offered very little actual remorse. "I don't take chances with security. I assume you're the newbie the Bureau dredged up from the slums."
Aamon looked at the extended hand, a myriad of complex emotions swirling in his chest. For two years, he had controlled this character. He had guided him through tragedy, watched him overcome impossible odds, and celebrated his victories. Now, he was looking him in the eye, bleeding slightly from an unprovoked attack.
Aamon reached out and gripped the boy's hand. The grip was like a steel vise.
"Yeah. That's me. The newbie," Aamon said, forcing a tight smile.
"Draco," the boy replied, his golden eyes unblinking. "Draco Riven."
Aamon suppressed a sigh as they released the handshake. Of course he introduced himself like a dramatic movie character.
That was how Aamon Maverick finally met his dearest warrior, the main protagonist of his beloved storyline.
Bleeding, nearly decapitated, and thoroughly exasperated.
It was absolutely not the way he would have expected it. And looking at Draco Riven's intensely paranoid demeanor, Aamon realized that keeping the warrior character alive through this story run was going to be an infinitely larger headache than he had ever anticipated.