Insomniac Player

Last night’s negotiation had gone in circles. A thousand gold, requested. Ten thousand, transferred anyway.

Rejected.

A hundred thousand, offered next, John insisting the first number must have sounded insulting. Only the threat of calling Rahul instead finally pinned it down to exactly one thousand, on loan, in writing.

[Pay.]

The number vanished from his account with painful efficiency.

➤[Payment accepted.]

➤[Proceed to the Registration Operation Room.]

A narrow bridge formed across the mist ahead of him. He crossed it alone. There was neither any receptionist nor a clerk taking down a face. Not even another player loitering in some waiting room. The system ran the whole building itself; people could walk through its doors, but nobody had a hand on the levers behind them.

That was the whole point, according to Imran. A government official could be bought. A guild clerk could sell what he knew. A stranger in a waiting room could remember a face at the worst possible moment. The system didn’t gossip.

Probably.

A circular door swung open on its own, revealing a white chamber and a raised platform at its center.

➤[Enter the operation area.]

"’Operation’ is not a comforting word."

Nothing answered him. He stepped onto the platform anyway. Light rose in bands around his body, scanning boots to scalp, and a transparent copy of himself formed hovering in the air beside him.

Two choices bloomed next to it.

➤[Register with Real Identity]

➤[Register with Anonymous Identity]

Second one, no hesitation.

➤[Anonymous registration selected.]

➤[Generating identity customization interface.]

The clothes vanished off the floating copy.

He stared. The system had rendered him completely naked, rotating slowly under bright white light, in impressive, entirely unnecessary detail.

"You can connect entire worlds, teleport living bodies, build pocket dimensions," he said. "And underwear was somehow beyond the budget."

The model kept rotating. He worked through the customization menu, eyes carefully fixed above the waist, which felt strange even though it was, technically, his own body.

Height, build, skin, scars, hair, voice, hundreds of smaller sliders past that. A small button sat at the bottom of the panel.

➤[Enable Modesty Filter]

He hit it. Black shorts appeared. He looked at the button, then at the calm blue light of the interface. "You could’ve led with that."

The first field asked for a name. He considered Sleepless, then dropped it, anyone digging into him could tie that straight to his condition. Nightwalker was worse. The Hollow Giants had already said it out loud in front of half the government, and plenty of people wanted to know what it meant.

He needed something broad, plain, disconnected from all of it. His eyes drifted up toward the fake stars overhead.

He typed one word.

Earthling.

➤[Name available.]

He blinked. Out of every player who’d ever walked through this room, not one of them had taken it.

"Maybe everyone else had some dignity." He confirmed it anyway, before he could develop any himself.

For the body, he kept his height and build close to reality. Getting taller or broader would throw off his sense of distance, balance, reach, all of it, even if this was technically just a Sanctuary identity layered over him. A false face had its uses. A body that lied to its own owner didn’t.

He moved on to hair. Short black felt too close to his real one. White read as dramatic in the specific way of someone about to announce a forbidden bloodline. Blue would almost certainly earn Hamari’s approval, which disqualified it immediately.

Then he found a deep red.

He let it grow down past his shoulders and gathered it into a heavy braid.

It reminded him instantly of John. Not the mustache, not the receding hairline, some cruelty had limits, but the exact same shade of red.

He pictured John’s reaction to it. The man would either laugh for a solid hour or declare it proof of adoption on the spot. Both outcomes were bad. He kept it anyway.

He left the face alone. Instead he opened his inventory and pulled out the mask Rahul had given him.

The Rakshasa mask was genuinely a piece of enchanted craftsmanship, dark surface molded into a fierce demonic face, raised brows, curved fangs, a smile promising a whole catalog of imaginative crimes, thin crimson lines tracing across the cheeks like veins of fire.

Rahul had called it elegant. Damien thought it looked like something built to scare off nightmares before they could finish forming.

He fit it over the model’s face. The enchantment folded seamlessly into the anonymous identity, hiding every real feature and slightly warping the voice that came out from behind it.

Clothing was all that remained. Rahul had recommendations there too, fitted robes, layered armor, a coordinated palette, enough decorative flourish to suggest wealth without inviting a mugging.

He ignored every one of them. Loose black trousers. A baggy black top. Soft boots built for moving without a sound. Over all of it, a long black cloak with a deep hood, fabric loose enough to hide his hands, blur his outline entirely, and leave room to conceal a weapon underneath.

The finished identity turned slowly in front of him. Long red hair fell in a thick braid under the hood. The Rakshasa mask sat in the shadow of it, barely visible. Loose black cloth swallowed his whole shape, less martial artist now, more like a ghost that had recently picked up a habit of carrying knives.

Intimidating. Anonymous. Practical.

Rahul would absolutely hate the baggy clothes. For the final touch, he added a bowler hat.

He looked at the figure now labeled Earthling and smiled. Nobody in this new world would know who he actually was. No expectations attached to the name. No political interrogation waiting around the corner. No legendary friends casting a shadow over every single step he took.

Nobody would be watching for Damien, the missing first-generation player, waiting to see what made him special.

Just a masked stranger with red hair, a black cloak, and a ridiculous name that somehow, against all odds, nobody had claimed first.

➤[Confirm Anonymous Identity: Earthling?]

He set his hand against the glowing panel. "Let’s see if Murim can cure a ghost."

He selected Confirm.

The chamber went dark.