Rust clung to the back of Amelia’s throat like dried blood. Scraping her knuckles against a jagged sheet of iron, she cursed softly under her breath. She didn't stop digging. Her fingers, stained a deep, stubborn orange from hours of searching the scrap-heaps, clawed through the debris of what used to be a massive gear shaft. There, nestled in the damp crevice where the metal met the rotting earth, grew a small cluster of rustbloom fungi. They were bulbous, spongy, and smelled faintly of vinegar. To anyone else, they were toxic weeds. To Amelia, they were dinner. Carefully, she used a rusted file to pry the delicate stalks from the iron. She placed them into a greasy leather pouch hanging from her belt, counting them one by one. Six. Just enough to trade for a single tube of grey ration paste if the merchant was in a decent mood. "Status," she whispered, her voice barely louder than the wind whistling through the scrap heaps. A pale, flickering blue screen materialized in her field of vision. It was dim, resembling a dying monitor from her old life as a game developer, and it hovered just out of reach. --- Name: Amelia Vance Level: 3 Class: None XP: 142 / 300 Stats: Strength: 6 Agility: 7 Constitution: 5 Intelligence: 11 Charisma: 8 Active Quest: None Daily Quest: Be kind to one person (Incomplete) --- Staring at the screen, she felt a familiar, hollow ache in her chest. Three years. She had been stuck in this miserable, decaying fantasy realm for three agonizing years, and she was only level three. Back on Earth, she had spent her career designing intricate progression systems for massive multiplayer games. She knew how math worked. She knew how scaling worked. But the sadistic entity that brought her here had handed her a system that was practically a death sentence in a world as brutal as Aethelgard. Kindness. In a realm where the strong devoured the weak, where mercenary guilds ruled the streets and dark mages sold souls for power, her only path to leveling up was radical altruism. The first time she had shared her meager food with a starving beggar, she had expected a massive windfall of experience points. Instead, she received a single, mocking point of XP. Every small act of goodwill since then had yielded the exact same result. One XP. No matter the risk, no matter the sacrifice, the System valued her kindness at the lowest possible denomination. Swiping the blue screen away with a bitter sigh, she slung her dirty canvas bag over her shoulder. She began her descent from the trash heaps toward the Lower Ring of Rust-reach, the sprawling slum that clung to the outer walls of the city like a parasite. Cold wind whipped through her thin, patched tunic, biting into her skin. She shivered, pulling her collar up. Her stomach rumbled, a sharp, angry reminder that she hadn't eaten a solid meal in two days. Crowds choked the narrow, muddy streets of the Lower Ring. Men with hollow eyes and scarred faces pushed past her, their shoulders slamming into hers without a word of apology. Mercenaries clad in mismatched leather armor stood outside taverns, laughing loudly as they watched a small boy get thrown into the gutter by a shopkeeper. Nobody helped the boy. Nobody even looked at him twice. In Rust-reach, showing sympathy was a sign of vulnerability, and vulnerability got you killed. Amelia kept her head down, weaving through the throng until she reached a dilapidated wooden stall. Behind the counter sat Garrek, a corpulent man with a greasy beard and a permanent scowl. He was currently slicing a block of salted lard with a rusty butcher knife. "What do you want, scavenger?" Garrek grunted, not even looking up. Placing her leather pouch on the stained counter, she opened it to reveal the rustbloom fungi. "Six fresh rustblooms. Harvested from the deep iron piles. They’re plump, Garrek. Excellent for thinning out your stews." Garrek poked one of the fungi with a thick, dirty finger. He sneered, pushing the bag back toward her. "They're small. Dry, too. I'll give you half a tube of paste for the lot." "Half?" Anger flared in her chest, her jaw tightening as she stared at the man. "These are worth at least two tubes, and you know it. I risked the scrap-slides to get these. One tube. No less." "Take half or get out of my sight before I have my boys toss you into the canal," Garrek spat, gesturing to two burly men standing behind the stall. Desperation warred with pride. Her knuckles turned white as she clenched her fists. She couldn't fight them. She was level three, with stats that wouldn't even qualify her to be a common goblin in any standard RPG. "Fine," she muttered, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous quiet. "Give me the half tube." Garrek chuckled, a wet, unpleasant sound, and tossed a small, crumpled metal tube onto the counter. It was filled with a grey, tasteless gelatin that kept the stomach full but did nothing to satisfy actual hunger. Snatching the tube, she shoved it into her pocket and walked away, her heart heavy with a profound sense of weary resignation. Her initial hope of escaping this world, of finding a way back home, had died a long time ago. Now, she was just surviving. Barely. Walking down a side alley to avoid the main thoroughfare, she squeezed past piles of rotting garbage and broken crates. She needed to find a quiet corner to consume her pathetic meal before someone smelled it and decided to beat her for it. Ahead of her, a small girl, no older than six, stood crying next to a heavy iron grate. The child was dressed in rags, her face smudged with soot. In her tiny hands, she held a single copper coin, but as Amelia watched, the coin slipped from her trembling fingers and fell directly through the gaps of the grate into the dark, murky water below. Loss washed over the child's face, her soft whimpers turning into silent, desperate shoulder-shaking tears. Amelia stopped. She looked at the grate, then at the girl, and then at the dark alleyways around them. No one was watching. No one cared. "Stupid," Amelia whispered to herself. "It's just a copper. It doesn't matter." Yet, her legs moved on their own. She walked over to the grate and knelt down in the filth. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a small wire tool she used for cleaning her scavenged gear. Bending the wire, she slid it through the grate, fishing around in the foul-smelling muck below. It took her three minutes of scraping and blind searching, her arm submerging up to the elbow in freezing, stagnant water, before she felt the wire hook onto the coin. Slowly, carefully, she pulled it up. Placing the wet, dirty copper into the girl's hand, Amelia offered a small, tired smile. "Here. Don't drop it again." Snatching the coin, the little girl didn't say thank you. She didn't even look Amelia in the eye. She simply spun on her heel and bolted down the alley, disappearing into the crowd. *Ding.* A soft chime echoed in Amelia's ears, and the blue screen flickered into existence. --- Daily Quest: 'Be kind to one person' completed! Reward: +1 XP XP: 143 / 300 --- Staring at the notification, she let out a dry, humorless laugh. One point. A freezing cold arm, covered in sewage, all for a single point of experience. At this rate, she would die of old age before she ever saw level four. Turning back toward her hovel, she wiped her wet arm on her trousers, the familiar weight of cynicism settling over her shoulders like a heavy lead cloak. She was a fool. A soft-hearted fool in a world made of iron and teeth. Suddenly, a heavy thud echoed from the dark corner of the alley. Footsteps, frantic and uneven, sounded from around the bend. A small figure stumbled out of the shadows, gasping for breath, before tripping over a broken crate and collapsing face-first onto the damp cobblestones. Amelia froze, her hand instinctively dropping to the small rusty dagger at her waist. Struggling to rise, the figure rolled over onto their back. It was a ragged orphan, a boy no older than ten, his chest heaving as he clutched his right leg. His face was deathly pale, his eyes wide with a terrifying blend of agony and sheer panic. Looking down, Amelia gasped. Slashed across his thigh was a deep, jagged wound. It wasn't a clean cut; the flesh was torn, angry purple veins spidering outward from a dark, festering center. The sickening, sweet odor of rot and necrotic poison immediately filled the narrow alleyway. Then, the blue system screen didn't just flicker. It violently flashed, turning a deep, warning crimson before a golden notification box burst into her field of vision, brighter than anything she had ever seen. --- New Quest: Act of Genuine Compassion Reward: ??? ---

Chapter 1: A World of Rust and Scraps