When I say the "game descending to reality," it isn’t like the game itself takes over the world all at once. It’s more like a slow merge—two spaces gradually bleeding into each other, the boundary between them thinning over time, like ice giving way at the edges of a frozen lake.

And the thing that controls how fast that merge progresses?

Rifts.

Small gaps. Cracks in space, connecting this world to "that" one.

The points where monsters cross over and begin appearing where they have no business being. The longer a rift stays open, the faster the merge accelerates—and with it, the timeline toward something a lot worse than stray dogs on train tracks.

Which meant I—no, we—needed to close this one. Now.

"I’ll need to enter that rift and close it." I said to Miyabi, already gripping the rail and shifting my weight forward to jump.

Someone grabbed the back of my shirt before I could commit to it.

The pull was sharp enough to break my grip, and for one genuinely unpleasant second I was scrambling against the rail with nothing between me and the river below—the wind cutting cold against my face, the distant sound of water rushing up to meet me in my imagination.

"Fuck! That’s dangerous!" I hissed, hauling myself back up and locking both hands around the rail until my knuckles settled.

I turned my glare on the culprit, who was still holding my shirt with no apparent intention of letting go. "Miyabi, are you trying to kill me?!"

"No. I’m trying to stop you from doing it yourself." Her expression was fierce, not apologetic in the slightest. "Going in there alone? That’s just asking to die with extra steps."

"What extra steps—"

I pulled myself fully back onto solid ground and exhaled.

"And I’m not going alone anyway. I have Ram and the rest with me."

Right. That was the key point she seemed to be glossing over.

Although our player stats were currently locked to roughly 1% of their in-game values, the android girls operated as part of the game system itself. No such restriction applied to them.

Sending me in with three system-native combatants at full strength was hardly the suicide mission she was making it sound like.

Putting my life on the line recklessly? My life wasn’t that cheap.

"Then me coming along doesn’t change anything, does it?" Miyabi said.

She still hadn’t released my shirt.

I looked at her face properly for the first time since the exchange started. No trace of bluffing there—no wavering, no fear. She was completely, entirely serious about this, and from the grip on the fabric, she had already decided the answer before she’d even asked the question.

I sighed.

"It’ll be life threatening." I said.

"I know." The reply came without a moment’s hesitation. "And for your information—although my other IRL stats are basically at zero, my Strength is already at 3!"

She said it with a bright, fierce smile, like she was presenting a winning hand.

It was genuinely surprising, if I thought about it. My own approach had been to spread things as evenly as possible—which was why I was sitting at a measly 1 across the board right now. Miyabi had apparently gone the complete opposite direction, dumping everything into a single stat.

I’d be willing to bet a few of her other numbers hadn’t even cracked double digits yet, given how skewed her distribution must be. A glass cannon who didn’t even know what a cannon was yet.

"I’m stronger than you right now!" She declared.

Seeing her so thoroughly pleased with herself, I reached over and pinched her nose.

"Silly girl. Having more raw strength than me doesn’t make you stronger."

But there was no convincing her otherwise, and I had already accepted that about thirty seconds ago. And honestly—leaving her out here alone while I went in might end up being the more dangerous option anyway. At least inside the rift, I could keep an eye on her.

I let go of her nose, turned back toward the river, and reconsidered the jump.

---

The city continued its hustle and bustle around us, nobody sparing a second glance at our small group hopping the railing and clearing the river below.

People walked past with earphones in and eyes on their phones, entirely indifferent to the impossible glowing tear in space hovering not fifty meters away. Maybe it was selective perception. Maybe the rift bent attention away from itself, like a blind spot the mind chose not to fill.

Either way, it made the whole thing feel lonelier than it had any right to.

Now, all of us stood before the entrance.

I glanced up at the two-meter tall oval of pulsing purple energy, feeling bitter memories flash through my head in quick succession.

"Rifts..."

Who would’ve thought I’d be entering them this early in this life?

"Ready?"

I turned to the girls one last time, checking their preparations.

Though even if I say "preparations," it was mostly mental. We didn’t have equipment available, after all. At most, I still had my trusty crowbar hanging at my side—the one I’d carried with me today before I left home.

"I’m ready."

Miyabi answered, her fingers working quickly to pull her hair into a sharp ponytail.

The slight change in her hairstyle actually shifted her entire impression—she looked cooler than usual. Leaner, somehow. More focused. Like the act of tying it back had drawn a line under everything soft about her and put it away for later. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Ram, Gwen, and Sunny were already waiting without needing any such ritual. Perfectly still. Perfectly ready.

I smiled and gave a single nod.

"Then let’s go!"

I jumped into the rift and immediately felt the shift in gravity. That faint, disorienting lurch—like the ground deciding it had somewhere better to be—tickled across my senses. An old, familiar sensation by now, the same way turbulence eventually stops bothering frequent fliers.

My vision burst with tangled streaks of purple and black before opening up all at once.

A weird space spread before my eyes.

To me, a familiar sight. To Miyabi, something else entirely.

"What is this place...?" She whispered, turning slowly in place, taking it all in.

I couldn’t blame her. I’d reacted the same way the first time.

Around us spread a barren, cracked landscape. The earth was ice-blue and fractured in long jagged lines, like something enormous had struck it from below and the wound had never healed. Leafless white trees bent under winds that were dry and carried a faint grit between the teeth.

Above us, the sky was not a gentle blue but a bleeding smear of yellow and deep arterial red, as though the clouds themselves had been wounded. The whole scene felt like a canyon photographed and color-inverted—recognizable in shape, entirely wrong in feeling.

"This... feels weird." Miyabi muttered, rubbing her arms as the chill settled in. "So this is the other world..."

"Yes, it is. As proof..."

I pointed forward at the creatures moving across the cracked earth, conspicuously un-inverted in color—the one sign that they didn’t belong here any more than we did.

"See? Those Plague Canines are here."

"Monsters!"

Seeing the things I was pointing at, Miyabi dropped her weight and lowered her stance in a single fluid motion. At the same time, a small folding dagger appeared in her hand, grip tight and thumb braced against the spine.

So she actually brought a weapon with her.

I had my crowbar, though I was resting it over my shoulder with considerably less urgency.

"Don’t worry, Miyabi." I said, keeping my voice easy. "Those monsters are barely level 5 in terms of strength. Against three level fifties, even barehanded, they wouldn’t even be much of a challenge."

I tipped my chin forward. A simple signal.

Ram moved without preamble, closing the gap to the Plague Canines at a pace that was just slightly too smooth to look natural. Then the gap closed entirely, and she was among them.

Like a bowling ball through pins, the creatures scattered—tumbling and yelping in directions they hadn’t chosen. She punched, kicked, and chopped in clean sequence, each strike landing with the kind of precision that didn’t need to be showy because it simply worked.

Every hit was a conclusion. A delivery of cold death.

When she accidentally burst a blister on one of them—plague source misting briefly into the air—Sunny was already moving to neutralize it before the droplets could settle. Not even worth breaking stride over.

Within a few breaths, the group of five Plague Canines was swept clean.

"Good job, Ram." I called from behind. "Now, let’s check our loot."

"Loot...?"

Miyabi raised her voice, turning to look at me.

Fair enough. This wasn’t inside the game anymore—it was reality. A parallel world, technically speaking. The rules weren’t supposed to carry over so cleanly.

"Yes, loot." But I just nodded.

Seeing was believing.

I walked over to the nearest corpse, pressed my palm flat against it, and watched the body dissolve into drifting particles of soft light. The shape of the creature faded entirely. In its place, a few items settled against the cracked earth like things that had always been there, waiting.

"Hmm. Poor drop quality."

I muttered, shaking my head at the single pair of normal-rank gloves.

I moved to the next corpse, then the next. By the end, I’d claimed a total of eight items: one glove, two rings, a sword, a spear, a belt, and two boots.

Prioritizing the actual fighters, I handed the sword to Ram and the spear to Gwen. Miyabi and I divided the defensive pieces between ourselves. It wasn’t much—all White rank, nothing worth writing home about—but having proper gear at all beat going in empty-handed.

We’d be able to handle this rift’s boss, at least.

"There’s a problem, though..."

I straightened up and looked around at the horizon, which seemed to stretch further than any open space had a right to. The cracked earth extended in every direction without a clear landmark to anchor to.

"Where is the boss? We can’t search the entire map for it in just a single day, that’s for sure..."