Chapter One: One Tester Remains

For one second, the world was silent. Then the public channels erupted. Across every training floor on Earth, user icons went dark like lamps in a storm. Champions on Floor Ninety-Nine, beginners on Floor One, premium class instructors—even the gatekeeper who had impaled Lin dissolved into blue fragments. Lin did not. When the spear vanished, he fell from the wall. His wound was gone, but the logout button had turned gray. “Tester T-071, confirm status,” said a woman over the internal channel, clipped and controlled. “Online. Engineer Gu, I can't log out.” “Don't touch anything. Your neural link isn't returning a signal.” Gu Wanqing's keyboard rattled in the background. “That's strange. Your coordinates aren't on Floor Nine.”