The real world hit Dante like a physical blow.

He didn’t wake up slowly. The transition from the absolute power of his Level 55 avatar to the fragile, exhausted reality of his physical body was brutal.

The VR capsule hissed, the pressure seals disengaging with a loud mechanical clunk, and the heavy plexiglass lid swung open.

Dante ripped the neural-link cables off the back of his neck, gasping for air.

His body felt incredibly heavy, coated in a layer of cold sweat. The grueling, agonizing twelve-hour fight against Gluttony in the Abyss had taken a massive physiological toll.

Even though the capsule managed his base vitals, the sheer neurological stress of processing that much adrenaline, pain, and focus had completely drained him.

He didn’t climb out of the pod. He just lay there, staring up at the cracked, water-stained ceiling of his dingy Oakhaven apartment, listening to the loud, rhythmic screech of the mag-train passing outside his window.

"I need to move," Dante muttered, his voice hoarse.

He had purchased the high-security corporate penthouse. He had hired the private military contractors. He had scheduled the automated moving company to transport his rig.

He just needed to get up, pack his meager belongings, and wait for the transport crew.

Dante closed his eyes for a second, intending to just rest his eyes while the dizziness faded.

The second stretched.

His exhausted brain, pushed far beyond normal human limits by the Zenith Protocol’s continuous hyper-stimulation, simply shut down.

The adrenaline crashed entirely. Dante didn’t fall asleep; he completely blacked out, slipping into a deep, unresponsive state of utter physical recovery right there inside the open VR capsule.

***

Two days passed.

In the apartment next door, the atmosphere was growing increasingly tense.

Sera sat at the kitchen counter, aggressively tapping her datapad, reviewing the latest market fluctuations in the Veridian Alliance.

The regional economy was absolutely booming, largely due to the complete lack of competition from the locked-down Sakura Nation.

But Sera wasn’t focused on the spreadsheets.

Lila paced back and forth across the living room, stepping over the thick VR power cables snaking across the floor.

"It’s been forty-eight hours, Sera," Lila said, her voice laced with genuine anxiety. "I haven’t heard a single sound from next door. No water running, no door opening. Nothing."

Nyx, sitting on the couch with her dark glasses pushed up onto her forehead, didn’t look up from her screen.

"The guy said he works from home. Freelance data management. He’s probably just pulling a long shift."

"People still need to eat, Nyx!" Lila argued, stopping her pacing to glare at the analyst. "And he didn’t exactly look healthy when we saw him two days ago. He looked like he was one bad day away from a heart attack."

"He’s fine," Nyx dismissed, waving her hand. "He’s a grown man."

Sera set her datapad down, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Actually, Nyx, Lila might be right. We ordered that massive pizza spread two days ago, and he came over, took one slice, and immediately left.

He looked completely out of it. And with the crime rate in Sector 4..."

Sera trailed off. Oakhaven’s Sector 4 wasn’t exactly known for its neighborly check-ins. If someone died in their apartment, they usually weren’t found until the smell hit the hallway.

"I’m going to knock," Lila decided, marching toward the front door.

"Lila, don’t bother him," Nyx sighed, finally looking up. "You’re going to look crazy."

Lila ignored her. She opened their apartment door, stepped into the flickering, chemical-smelling hallway, and walked the three feet to Dante’s door.

She knocked loudly.

"Dante?" Lila called out.

Silence.

She knocked harder, her knuckles rapping sharply against the cheap wood. "Dante! It’s Lila from next door! Are you in there?"

Nothing. Not even the sound of shifting furniture or a muffled response.

Lila jogged back into their apartment, looking panicked. "He’s not answering. Sera, seriously, something is wrong. I think he might be hurt."

Sera stood up, her expression turning serious. "Alright. We’ll do a wellness check. If he’s just sleeping, we apologize and leave."

The three women walked out into the hallway. Sera knocked on the door heavily, announcing herself, but the result was the same. Absolute silence from inside the apartment.

"I’m calling building security," Sera decided, pulling out her datapad.

"Don’t bother," Nyx said, stepping past Sera and pulling a small, sleek metallic tool from her pocket.

"Building security in Sector 4 takes three hours to respond to a noise complaint. If he’s actually dying in there, he doesn’t have three hours."

Lila stared at the tool in Nyx’s hand. "Is that a lockpick? Why do you have a lockpick?"

"I’m an analyst, Lila," Nyx said dryly, sliding the thin metal prong into the cheap magnetic lock of Dante’s door.

"I analyze vulnerabilities. Real-world infiltration skills translate perfectly into the game engine’s lockpicking mechanics. It’s practical synergy."

"That is highly illegal," Sera pointed out, though she didn’t try to stop her.

"I’ll pay the fine if he complains," Nyx muttered.

She twisted the tool. The cheap magnetic lock clicked loudly, completely disengaging.

Nyx pushed the door open.

The apartment was pitch black, save for the flickering neon lights bleeding through the dirty window blinds. The air inside smelled stale and the distinct scent of an overworked VR rig.

Lila stepped in first, peering into the gloom.

"Dante?" she whispered.

She took two steps into the tiny living space and immediately stopped.

Sitting in the far corner of the room, fully powered down, was the VR capsule. The heavy plexiglass lid was wide open.

And lying half inside the capsule, completely unresponsive, was Dante.

He was completely naked, save for a pair of boxer briefs. His chest was rising and falling in slow, shallow breaths, his skin pale and covered in a sheen of dried sweat.

Lila let out a sharp, terrified scream.

"Oh my god! He’s dead!" Lila shrieked, covering her eyes with her hands and spinning around.

The sudden, piercing sound of the scream didn’t just echo in the tiny apartment. It shattered the absolute, silent void of Dante’s deep unconsciousness.

Dante’s eyes snapped open.

He didn’t realize he was in his apartment. The lingering neurological trauma of the Abyss difficulty immediately overlaid reality.

His brain registered the sudden noise and the shadowy figures standing in his room as a hostile encounter.

His neural pathways, conditioned by thousands of Zenith-tier executions, instinctively triggered his primary combat mechanic.

He held out his right hand, his fingers curling aggressively, perfectly mimicking the physical motion required to summon his weapon in-game.

The real world glitched.

The system connection between his brain and the deactivated VR capsule wasn’t fully severed.

The residual cosmic energy from his SSS-grade talents and his soul-bound weapon bled directly into the physical space of his apartment for a fraction of a millisecond.

Thick, light-absorbing black smoke erupted from the empty air in Dante’s palm.

Sera gasped, stumbling backward into the doorframe.

The black smoke rapidly coalesced, forming the distinct, terrifying silhouette of a massive, jagged greatsword right there in the physical world.

The dark bone hilt, the three empty circular sockets in the crossguard, and the brutal, unfinished edge of the blade materialized perfectly in the dim neon light.

It wasn’t solid. It was a faint, shadowy projection, actively flickering and struggling to maintain its form outside the digital servers. But the shape was undeniable.

Dante gripped the phantom hilt of [Voidsever], his eyes wide and completely unfocused, ready to swing the primordial weapon and cut the intruders in half.

The massive influx of adrenaline completely overwhelmed his physical limits.

The shadowy projection of the sword shattered instantly, dissolving back into harmless gray smoke.

Dante groaned, the combat illusion breaking. He dropped his hand, his head falling back against the padding of the capsule as reality finally reasserted itself.

He was completely exhausted, entirely incapable of moving.

He let out a long, heavy breath and closed his eyes again.

The three women stood frozen in the doorway, completely paralyzed.

Lila was still covering her eyes, hyperventilating slightly. Sera was staring at the empty air where the black smoke had just vanished, her business-oriented mind completely failing to process the physics-breaking display she had just witnessed.

But Nyx wasn’t panicked.

The top-tier analyst slowly lowered her hand, her dark glasses reflecting the neon light from the window. Her sharp eyes were locked onto Dante’s resting face.

She recognized the silhouette of the sword. Every analyst on the server had spent the last forty-eight hours reviewing every single blurry, leaked frame of combat footage from Embercraig Canyon.

They had all analyzed the massive, jagged black greatsword that the anomaly player used to completely vaporize five Gold-tier bosses simultaneously.

It was a completely unique, unlisted weapon. It belonged to exactly one person on the entire server.

Nyx slowly took a step back into the hallway, pulling the apartment door mostly shut behind her to give him privacy.

She looked at Sera. Sera looked back at her, her expression mirroring the exact same terrifying realization.

"Sera," Nyx whispered, her voice incredibly tight, completely stripped of her usual cynical sarcasm.

"I saw it," Sera breathed, her hands shaking slightly. "The shape of the sword."

"That wasn’t just a sword," Nyx said, looking back through the crack in the door at the exhausted, half-naked man sleeping in the capsule. "That was the sword."

Lila finally lowered her hands, looking between the two of them in confusion. "What are you guys talking about? What sword?"

Nyx reached into her pocket, pulled out her datapad, and opened the massive, highly detailed forum post made by Oracle.

She scrolled past the mathematical breakdowns and stopped on a single, enhanced screenshot.

It showed ’Dan’ standing in the magma pool, holding [Voidsever].

Nyx held the datapad up, pointing at the jagged black blade on the screen, then pointing directly at Dante’s apartment door.

"Our quiet, boring neighbor who works in freelance data management," Nyx said, her voice dropping to a hushed, terrified whisper. "Is Dan."