Detached from the machine that had revived me, I reequipped my clothing and was immediately given a bear hug… rat hug by Chuu, who seemed particularly ecstatic that I was fine. Trapped between the inhumanly strong vice-like arms of the white Rattan and her massive breasts, I was forced to watch in horror as my HP bar slowly declined down towards zero. This was a different fear of death than what had assailed me when I was sent flying by Chuu before, as the creeping inevitability of death by crushing was far more immediately noticeable than the instant death I had faced before.

“Chuu…! Please…! Stop…! HP… in the red!”

Chuu snapped out of her murderous cuddling of me and let my body slump to the floor.

“Hah! Hah! Hah! I almost… went back… to that place!”

As my HP recovered and I got to my feet, I was met with concerned looks from the five rat raid bosses. I assured them that I was fine, just very fragile in comparison to them and that seemed to wipe the worry from their faces. I now had a better movement range compared to when I was locked to the table, and so managed to get a better look at the infernal contraption that I had been strapped to.

Over to the side and attached by tube-like wires that led to the base of their brain stem were the corpses of thousands of Rattans. It seemed like they were either quite low-leveled or perhaps were from the slave caste of the Under Empire, as the collars around their neck were clear giveaways that they were disposable workers at best. In the Game, when an entity was killed it would simply act as a movable part of the environment as the items from said entity were deposited in your Item Box, after a set amount of time later, the bodies would fade from existence altogether. What I was seeing was different. Bodies stacked on bodies, all of them with faces full of pain and anger that could not be replicated in the world that was.

Aside from the even more exquisitely terrible detail that everything possessed, there was the smell of burnt meat and rotting tissue that flowed like a malodorous breeze from every orifice of the dead Rattan Slaves. Smell in-game was bland, as was pain, for if the Full Dive System linked too deeply into your senses there was a risk of something terrible happening to the user. So, to experience the static electricity, smell and more that this world leveled upon him further reinforced the truth that he was no longer in a game, but in a real world with some game-like elements.

“We built this ahead of time, yes-yes. Experiments on giving life to new tools were going quite well, yes-yes. Only small modifications needed to be made to revive you. Feel no discomfort? Revival sickness tends to be quite potent-intense on first timers, yes-yes.”

Grima and Snikty were intent on checking me out to make sure I was in peak physical condition, but I felt fine. This wasn’t my first brush with resurrection, at least not if you counted the game world. I remembered the first few times I died and resurrected and the mix of shock and fear that had made me question whether I should even continue the Beta. I do remember that once I exited the Dive, I almost immediately voided my stomach due to the sensations of being killed and brought back. Full Dive Games were definitely not for everyone, and there were many ‘Game Reviewers’ who proclaimed that the games were too hard and too damaging to the minds of its players.

Fucking Lightweights couldn’t even beat the tutorial in a more than 28-year-old game. I believe it was called ‘Cuphead’. Looking back on how easy games had gotten, it would have been beyond surprising if those ‘Expert Reviewers’ had managed to even beat the opening area from an even older game like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on Normal Difficulty. But I needed to focus on the present, not the Old World.

…

“Failure.”

One word was all that was written on a scroll in the hands of the current King of the Ironheart Dwarves. Written in a language brought to his kind by the Hero Gods of the Dwarves, those who arrived in Dwarf-kinds darkest hour and rescued the Mountain’s Children from destruction, the runic scrawl of the velum was decipherable by only a handful. It was a language that was both foreign and native, spoken like Basic, yet with sigils that were not of it. They called it Eenglesh, and it was a language that the Dwarven Hero Gods shared with those of the Elves, Humans and Werean. The Hero Gods of each race arrived at the same time, and their merits were still sung about by bards to this very day.

But while the man who read the one-word missive was a direct descendant of the Dwarven Hero Gods, he had none of their true power. It was said that the Hero Gods could level mountains with a single gesture, and no beings save for the dreaded Bringers of the Apocalypse could hope to match them in combat. The villainous Beastmen, Demons, Urkos, Nagara and even the righteous Races counted those labeled ‘Bringers of the Apocalypse’ amongst their ranks, and the Hero Gods had endeavored to vanquish these foes at all cost.

But not every story has a happy ending, and while the Hero Gods managed to halt the advance of the Apocalypse, they paid the ultimate price. This last fact was a state secret for every nation, for it was still widely preached that the Immortal Hero Gods were still fighting the Bringers of the Apocalypse. But people like Gilder Ironheart IX knew the truth. The fact that the Dwarven Hero Gods had either perished against the Rattan Under Empire, or worse had been captured by them was something that he intended for his line to take to the graves, and they just might have to.

The one word from the one known as Morgrim Nobeard let him know that the elusive Vermin-King had either not been where it was rumored to be or was there and the attempt on its life was a bust. As the Rune-King of the final Bulwark Kingdom held up a special monocle to his eye, the truth came to light.

The Vermin-King was not just a myth, but a reality. There were too many witnesses, too much proof of its existence and the actions of the Vermin Council seemed too strange to knock up to chance. For the Vermin-Queen to send her best assassin to rescue a single human, a hideous freak of a human but a human nonetheless, was unthinkable. There was only one reason that the Ruinous Rat-Council would gather together outside of their capitol, and only one being who would have the importance to merit the Grand Master of the Verminous Assassinorum attempting a daylight rescue in front of so many witnesses. The Unseen Blade of the Dwarves confirmed the suspicions of the most recent Bulwark-King of the Ironheart Kingdom.

“Grrrr… I had hoped to my ancestors that this was just a ruse by the rats to put us off for a bit, but this... this is far worse.”

Grumbling like a true Dwarf, Gilder Ironheart IX picked up his quill and began to write a request for aid from the other Dwarven Kingdoms. If his hunch was right (and it often was) then the Bringers of the Apocalypse that had infested the caves and ruined Dwarven lands beneath the earth were about to start something truly terrible.

Gilder steeled himself for the future and what would come. He knew he would soon have to deal with the worst possible thing a Dwarf can face; a Vermintide. The only question was when the rats would strike.