The screen glowed once more in front of Rin, outlining the new task like a commandment etched in air.
Upgrade your house.
Reward: 500 gold coins, 5 diamonds
Condition: Steal the materials.
Time Limit: 4 days.
And then the board disappeared.
Rin exhaled slowly, shoulders stiff. He looked around the cramped, quiet hut again. The slanted roof. The soot-stained stove. The blanket barely thick enough for one person, let alone three.
It definitely needed an upgrade.
But not like this.
Steal materials?
From where? From who?
And why—why did it have to be stealing again?
His fists clenched before he even realized it.
These people, whether they were real or code or something in between… they didn't deserve to be part of a thief's objective. Especially not when they were living like this.
"Son...?"
Rin flinched. The voice pulled him straight back into the moment.
His eyes darted to Iris, the woman who apparently gave birth to him—at least according to the system.
"Y-yes, mama?" he said, forcing the word past his tongue like it had thorns.
It felt foreign. Wrong. Like he was pretending to be someone who belonged in a life he never had.
Iris didn't seem to notice the hesitation.
"The food's ready," she said, calm as ever. "Take your place."
He shuffled forward and sat beside Chi Chi, who had already claimed her spot. A wooden bowl was placed in front of him. It was chipped at the edge, stained from years of use. Not dirty—but old. Like everything in this place.
He looked down at the food. Some kind of porridge, maybe. Rice. A few roots, maybe a hint of spice if they were lucky.
That lump returned to his throat.
He was used to stealing tech, cracking safes, running across rooftops.
But this?
Being served by a woman who called him son, with a smile like it was the best part of her day?
This was harder.
"What happened, brother? Cap bit your tongue?" Chi Chi's voice was half-sarcastic, half-concerned. She wasn't mocking him for real. He could tell.
"You mean cat," Rin muttered, offering a weak smile.
"Yeah. That."
"I'm fine," he lied. "Just... a bug growled in my tummy."
He scooped some food with his hand. No spoons here. He didn't even mind. The food was warm.
---
When the meal ended, he was still chewing on his thoughts.
"Rin," Iris spoke again, rinsing out the cooking pot with a cloth that barely held together, "don't you have to go to the smithy job? Or did you get kicked out again?"
Rin blinked.
Smithy job?
Oh. Right. His assigned persona. The system said nothing about this, but clearly, the "mother" remembered.
"What? Uh—yes. I... I'm going." He stood up too fast, trying to play it cool with a forced grin.
"Wrong side."Chi Chi muttered without looking up, clearly unimpressed.
He paused mid-step, awkwardly pivoted, and walked the other way.
"Yeah. I knew that," he mumbled.
---
Ding!
The system board appeared again, like it had been watching the whole thing.
A glowing map spread out in front of him, flickering with golden lines and markers.
Destination: Local Smithy (Job Site)
Time: 9 minutes on foot
Route: Tracked
Status: ACTIVE
Rin stared at it, then at the dirt path ahead of him.
So this was it now.
This was life.
The game didn't feel like a game anymore.
It felt like someone else's life, wrapped around his neck like a noose.
Rin glanced between the glowing map and the road ahead, scanning for anything that looked vaguely familiar.
Surprisingly… it did.
The dirt path bent gently along a field, curving past low trees and short walls made of stacked rock. It wasn't modern GPS-level accuracy, but at least it wasn't sending him into rivers or through walls like the cheap bootleg systems back home.
At least this one won't have me climbing a bridge that doesn't exist, he thought, half amused.
As he walked, the world began to shift. A few wooden stalls appeared in view, followed by more—and then more. Soon he was standing at the edge of what might've passed for a town square: makeshift tents, rickety carts, uneven stone roads, and a whole chorus of voices.
"Two for one! Fresh apples! Not even worm-bitten today!"
"Spiced goat tongue! Still steaming!"
It was chaos. Medieval chaos.
And then he saw it.
A building that looked less like a shop and more like a stone volcano with iron veins, belching smoke from its chimney and glowing faintly from the windows like it housed hellfire itself.
The smithy.
"Here we go," Rin muttered, stepping toward the forge.
---
He didn't even make it through the door before colliding with what felt like a moving furnace.
Thump.
He bounced off something massive, sweaty, and disturbingly soft in all the wrong places. A wall of muscle and chest hair met his face.
He stumbled back, gagging.
The man—if he could be called that—towered over him at nearly seven feet tall, with the build of a bear and the scent of a rotting stable crossed with fermented armpit. His beard looked like it had been braided by a raccoon in a thunderstorm.
Rin nearly threw up. He held it back through sheer willpower.
Gods above... this man hasn't bathed in years. YEARS. Even I bathe once a month. This guy's BO has levels. I'm breathing in his ancestors.
The hairy behemoth exhaled through his nose.
Rin felt it in his lungs.
"Oi! Rin Poo, back to your post! You're late again." The man growled, voice like gravel soaked in whiskey. Without waiting for a response, he tossed a hammer at him—an actual, blacksmith-grade hammer.
Rin flailed but somehow caught it, spinning on one foot like a circus clown trying to tame a boomerang.
"I see why I'm poor now," he mumbled.
---
He stepped inside.
The forge roared like a beast. The heat was instant. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he looked around. The place was packed with other boys around his age—skinny, tired-looking, all dressed in similarly patched shirts and soot-stained trousers. Their hands were rough. Their faces, resigned, obligated to do this work like him.
Poverty is indeed a curse-only those who have faced know it's terror.
So this is my job, he thought. This is the life I was assigned.
The system, of course, hadn't bothered to explain anything. Not in his bio. Not in his hints. Not even a tutorial.
He didn't know where to stand. What to do. The hammer in his hand felt more like a threat than a tool.
So he wandered.
Eventually, he picked a spot near the far end of the room, where the heat was bearable and the noise slightly duller.
That's when he saw it.
A scroll of parchment, laid out carefully on a low workbench. Not like the messy blueprints scribbled by apprentices—this one was precise. Clean lines, balanced proportions. A professional's hand.
Drawn on the page was a sword.
But not just any sword.
Its hilt was carved like a dragon's open mouth, the blade emerging from its jaw. The handle curved slightly, shaped to fit a human grip like it was born from it. Sleek. Dangerous. Beautiful.
Rin's eyes widened.
"Okay..." he whispered. "Now we're talking."
Something flickered in his chest. Something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Not survival.
Not fear.
Curiosity.
He stared at the blueprint, then at the materials stacked beside the bench. Iron rods. Leather straps. A half-melted mold. A bowl of dull stones used to sharpen.
The air shimmered faintly in front of him.
Rin stared at the parchment. The sword was too perfect to be random. Its blade was long and sleek, its handle curved like it belonged in the hand of a legend, and that dragon-mouth hilt?
It wasn't just for show.
It meant something.
He leaned closer, scanning the lines and measurements. He could tell whoever drew this had a clear vision. It wasn't art—it was instruction. But not written. Not obvious.
Instinctual.
His eyes drifted to the metal scraps on the bench—long rods, bent blades, and a few pieces that didn't even belong to a sword at all.
And yet…
Something in his mind whispered: That piece fits under that. That melted iron can be stretched thin, then bent around the base. That broken mold—flip it.
He blinked.
The forge didn't glow.
The hammer didn't hum.
But in his mind?
Click.
One piece slid into place.
Click.
Another.
And another.
It was like seeing invisible gears turn.
No logic. No skill. Just... a weird kind of knowing.
---
Ding!
> Side Mission Unlocked:
Create the Mystic Key Sword – The Key of Hell Gate.
Status: 0%
Reward: ???
Penalty: ???
Hint: "Creation requires inspiration. Materials may not always be obvious."
Rin's face stiffened. "Mystic. Key. Hell Gate. Oh, that sounds completely safe and not at all like it'll unlock a door to flaming death."
He looked down at the blueprint again. Something about the sword had changed.
The dragon mouth now had tiny, jagged key ridges along the inner part of the blade's hilt. The tip of the sword had a strange groove, like it was designed to twist into something.
"Wait a sec," he muttered. "Was that there before?"
It wasn't.
But now it was.
He checked his system board. Still no spell. Still no activated ability. Still no help.
And yet…
He knew he could build this.
If the hair-beast boss didn't catch him fiddling with scraps.
If he could get the right pieces.
If he didn't mess it up and melt his own hand off.
---
Around him, the forge was roaring. Other boys were hammering away, working on swords that looked like rusted farming tools. One of them shot Rin a dirty look. Another was too tired to lift his hammer properly.
They were all trying to survive.
But Rin?
He wasn't here to survive.
He was here to make something.
And the system had just dropped him a side mission wrapped in mystery and a curse.
Perfect.
He tied the leather strap of his apron a bit tighter, slid the blueprint toward him, and reached for the warped iron mold.
"Alright," he muttered. "Let's build something nobody's supposed to have."