Five days.

  ‘What could he do in five days?’

  Ren swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, staring at the battered floor.

  The answer was simple:

  Enough.

  If you knew what you were doing.

  He thought back to when Towerbound had first launched.

  Back when it was still called Tower of Badwinter during development.

  Back before everyone realized it was going to be the biggest thing in gaming history.

  He had saved for six months just to get his first helmet.

  Not the fancy kind—the rich kid pods that let you live in-game for eighteen hours a day without needing to log out, eat, or even stretch.

  No, his helmet had been the cheapest one on the market.

  Low-grade response times, basic tactile feedback, no auto-hydration, no auto-waste system.

  Just a clunky, squeaky plastic shell you strapped to your head and prayed didn’t fry your brain when you jacked in.

  And even that had only been possible because of a promotion that popped up at just the right time.

  Six months of scraping, saving, taking every crappy day labor job he could find.

  And finally, that deal had dropped:

  Buy a helmet, and the internet subscription fees were waived for a year.

  For most people, those fees weren’t a big deal.

  Ten, maybe fifteen credits a month.

  For Ren?

  It was the difference between eating real food and scraping mold off bread.

  Waiving the fees didn’t mean you got free internet.

  It meant you could only access the internet through the helmet.

  No outside browsers.

  No phone hookups.

  Just the helmet.

  Ren hadn’t cared.

  In fact, it had been better.

  The helmet was faster, sharper, more real than the crappy 60-inch LCD screen mounted in the common room.

  That TV had pixels so big you could practically count them with your fingers.

  The helmet?

  Even the cheap model made it feel like you were standing in another world.

  Like you could actually do something.

  Be something.

  That first helmet had been a lifeline.

  A cheap, and fragile doorway into something better.

  And now, sitting in this miserable little bunkhouse five days before Towerbound’s launch, Ren realized something else:

  He had the chance to do it all again.

  Only this time?

  He knew exactly where to start.

  Exactly what mattered.

  Exactly how to get ahead before the rats even left the starting line.

  Ren grinned, sharp and mean.

  ‘Five days,’ he thought.

  ‘That’s four days more than I need.’

  ***

  Ren did a quick tally of what he had on hand that he could leverage before the game started, and sadly, he realized… it wasn’t much.

  Game knowledge.

  That was about it.

  No rare equipment. No early-access beta gear. No VR rig. Just a previous lifetime’s worth of gaming theory jammed into his skull. But then he paused.

  No. Wait. He had more than that.

  He had brothers—or, well, nine other half-broken, half-functional degenerates crammed into a stinking, 10-room bachelor dormitory in the slums. The kind of place where the pipes rattled at night and no one was quite sure who owned what in the fridge anymore. Some of them he barely talked to. Others he argued with over instant noodles and shared web credentials.

  But still. They were his guys.

  Potential Tanks. Fighters. Mages. Thieves.

  Some washed out of school. Others couldn’t afford to go.

  And now?

  Now the world was about to turn into a game.

  Ren might not have had gold. Or stats. Or a flashy weapon.

  But he had knowledge—and he had nine semi-reliable, semi-crazy, potentially-trustworthy allies.

  ‘Yeah,’ he muttered, already opening a shared doc and pinging the group chat, ‘time to turn this bachelor nest into a war council.’

  That night a lot of people in the bachelor’s dorm were enjoying their Krud beers, passing them around as they could—

  because no one wanted to be seen as a tight-ass.

  Not here.

  Ren stood up again, holding his half-empty can like a gavel.

  “Guys, I’ve got an announcement to make.”

  “Shut up,” said Kanuka. “Drink your beer and watch the game.”

  The game was a typical football matchup, nothing special. Just two teams that might—might—make it to the Super Bowl. Chances were neither of them would. It was background noise, more tradition than excitement.

  “No, seriously, guys,” Ren said.

  He’d always been quiet in the dorm. Not a fighter in-game, and definitely not a fighter in real life. But tonight, he stood up.

  “I heard from a friend of mine. Someone who doesn’t live in the slums. Something big’s coming.”

  “Oh, what?” said Kanuka, not even looking at him. “A chance? A chance to get out of the slums?”

  That actually made everyone pause. They’d heard that before. Usually right before someone pitched an MLM scheme. One or two of them had even fallen for it—selling herbal supplements, cooking ware, or some ‘convenient life accessories.’ None of them had succeeded.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Seriously, guys,” Ren said. “It’s not a scam.”

  “That’s what they all say,” Kanuka snapped.

  Ren actually laughed. “You’re right. That is what they all say. But seriously—this thing is huge.”

  “What if I were to tell you,” he said, pacing now, “the world’s biggest game is coming. And that you could actually make money playing it.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” said Kanuka.

  “I’m serious,” said Ren, raising a hand. “And don’t you dare throw that beer can at me.”

  Kanuka lowered his hand—he’d been thinking about it. He was one of the guys who’d fallen for an MLM scheme. Selling cookware. Seriously.

  “You’ve all seen the ads, right? Bad Winter. They’ve been talking about it.”

  A few heads nodded. One of the guys in the back said, “Yeah, there was an ad five minutes ago. Right during the last commercial break.”

  “This thing is real,” Ren said. “They’re not talking about the credits part, but that’s real too. Credits can be exchanged for in-game coins. People don’t know that yet. But this is going to be huge.”

  “I know we all want to get out of the slums. Nobody here likes living like this.”

  “Hell yeah,” someone shouted from the back.

  Not all ten of them were there. Seven were in the dorm that night. The other three were working. That was how it went. Twenty-four-hour rotations. Shared bathroom. Shared kitchen. One busted TV. It wasn’t the worst place they could be—but it wasn’t good either. At least it wasn’t a 20-man hot bunk dorm where you didn’t even own your bed, just borrowed it in eight-hour shifts.

  Ren kept going.

  “You know what they want, right? They want to keep us slum dwellers out of the game.”

  “That’s right,” Kanuka muttered bitterly.

  “Why give us a chance,” Ren said, “when they can just take it all for themselves? Why ever give anyone from down here a chance?”

  “Fucking right,” Kanuka said.

  Ren’s voice hardened. “What I can tell you is this—who needs a hand up… when we can take it ourselves?”

  That got their attention. For Ren to talk like this? That was new. Normally, he barely spoke at all.

  “I’m serious, guys,” he said. “The only thing stopping us from changing our lives is 2,000 credits.”

  “2,000 credits?” Kanuka barked. “Go fuck yourself.”

  He threw his arms up. “I knew this was some kind of MLM bullshit!”

  “I know nobody here has 2,000 credits,” Ren said loudly, grinning,

  “—well, wait. If you do, could you please raise your hand so the rest of us can beat you up and steal it?”

  The room erupted into laughter.

  It wasn’t even really a joke.

  There weren’t any formal rules against that kind of thing here.

  Nobody would have batted an eye if someone actually tried it.

  But somehow, in this dorm?

  This run-down, battered dormitory stuffed with ten broke guys?

  They’d been lucky.

  There were no thieves here.

  No one who stole from their own.

  Everyone just worked their asses off, kept their heads down, and survived.

  There was a kind of honor in that, even if nobody talked about it.

  Ren smiled a little to himself, then kept going.

  “So,” he said, pacing a little, “I know none of us have 2,000 credits.

  Ren kept going, even as Kanuka muttered and shook his head.

  “Look, I get it. 2,000 credits sounds like a scam. I know it sounds like a scam. But it’s not.”

  He stepped closer to the TV, blocking the view of the game. “We need the 2,000 credits for Game Helmets. You all saw it in the ad—this game isn’t something you play on a laptop. Or a desktop. Or your goddamn phone.”

  He pointed at the tv like it owed them money.

  “This is VR. Full-dive. Most immersive game ever made. My friend played the beta.”

  He didn’t mention the friend was fictional. That the “beta” was actually his own future memory, thanks to the time loop he wasn’t going to explain until he had to. They wouldn’t believe him anyway.

  “But this game,” he said, lowering his voice a notch, “this game is the real deal. It’s not just immersive. It’s reality-breaking. You’re not watching a screen—you’re living it. Every step, every breath, every fight. It’s all real in there.”

  They were watching him now. Still skeptical. Still grounded in beer and disappointment. But watching.

  “And you can’t just download it. You need the gear. The minimum is the full headset. The neural link. The cheapest way in is through the Game Helmet. And the Helmet costs 2,000 credits.”

  Kanuka scoffed. “So you’re saying if we don’t blow 2k on some sci-fi head toaster, we’re locked out?”

  “Yes,” Ren said, dead serious. “And I’m telling you, if we don’t get in—if we miss the window—we’re going to be left behind.”

  He paused, then added, “And I don’t just mean in the game. I mean real life, too.”

  “I know none of us has 2,000 credits,” Ren said, pacing in front of the flickering TV, “but what if we pooled our money together?”

  He stopped and looked around the room. Seven guys in varying states of shirtlessness, beer-thirst, and existential burnout stared back at him.

  “Then maybe we have more than 2,000 credits, right?”

  The room didn’t answer right away. Someone coughed. Kanuka scratched his chest and avoided eye contact. A couple of them suddenly found the game on TV much more interesting.

  But Ren saw it—the subtle shifts, the uncomfortable wiggles. They had some cash. Not much. Being a slum dweller didn’t mean you lived with zero credits. It meant you didn’t have extra credits. You had rent. Shared food bills. Maybe a little saved for a broken phone upgrade or emergency noodles.

  And all of them worked. Night shifts. Street-level gigs. Delivery routes no one wanted. It wasn’t glamorous, but it meant they weren’t flat broke.

  “Look,” Ren said, “I’m not asking anyone to hand over their savings for nothing. I’m saying we buy Game Helmets. We take turns. A couple guys gets in first, gets ahead, makes money, and pulls the rest of us in. And that means we can only maybe, maybe, buy a handful of these helmets.”

  Kanuka snorted. “And who gets to go first? You?”

  “I’m the only one who knows how the game works, because of my friend,” Ren said, steady. “You want someone wasting the entry ticket figuring out how to log in? Or do you want someone who knows exactly where to go, what to do, and how to turn credits into more credits?”

  He let that sit.

  Someone from the back spoke up. “What if you ditch us?”

  Ren just smiled. “I live in the same stink-box as the rest of you. If I run, you know where I sleep.”

  That got a few chuckles.

  Heads nodded.

  They all knew it.

  “So who here has ever played VR before?” Ren asked.

  A few hands went up.

  Some people looked shy about it, like admitting you’d wasted time you couldn’t afford to lose.

  Ren pointed at them, trying to draw them in.

  “I’ve played it,” Ren said.

  “And when I say it’s like living a second life?

  It really is.

  Do you guys agree?”

  The people with raised hands murmured back,

  “Yeah,”

  “Definitely,”

  “Feels real.”

  Ren grinned wider.

  “Why don’t you play more?” he asked.

  One of the guys, a short, wiry dude named Tanner, sitting halfway up a bunk bed, laughed bitterly.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Tanner said.

  “When the hell do we have time for that?

  I’d love to ascend into some apocalyptic wasteland and slay monsters or whatever—”

  he shrugged,

  “—but unless they start handing out VR headsets at the soup kitchens, it ain’t happening.”

  His friend, a beefier guy named Choi, who worked construction shifts, chimed in from his bunk.

  “Damn right,” Choi said, raising his can.

  “I got about three minutes a day I’m not working or sleeping.

  Unless the game’s playable on my eyeballs during forklift runs, I’m out.”

  The room chuckled again.

  Ren smiled sharper.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he said.

  “You can’t afford to waste time.

  You can’t afford to screw around.”

  He paused, letting the weight of it settle in.

  “The helmets right now are two thousand credits,” Ren said, standing in front of the TV like the world’s most inconvenient halftime show. “They’ve been out for a while—fancy models, full-immersion VR pods, whatever version you’ve seen in the ads. But here’s what they don’t tell you: they’re universal.”

  He swept his hand across the room. Seven guys. One battered couch. A dozen empty beer cans. Flickering lights and secondhand hope.

  “They’re not just for one game. These headsets work across all major titles. Doesn’t matter if it’s fantasy, sci-fi, mech battlegrounds, or some weird alien dating sim. You get one of these rigs, you can plug into everything.”

  Someone in the back mumbled, “So not just that Badwinter thing?”

  “Right,” Ren nodded. “Badwinter is just what they’ve been calling it in the ads. That’s the name they’re using for the launch event. “Prepare for a bad winter!”

  The ‘hook’ to get attention. But some smart people—data miners, beta testers, streamers who broke NDA—figured out the truth. The real name of the game is Towerbound.”

  That got their attention. Towerbound had weight. Towerbound sounded serious.

  “This game,” Ren continued, “is going to change everything. It’s the most immersive system ever launched. You don’t play it on a laptop, or desktop, or your damn phone. You need a VR rig. Full neural link. And the cheapest one that actually works costs 2,000 credits.”

  “You all saw the ad, right? Badwinter is coming. The freeze, the monsters, the chaos—it’s all Towerbound’s intro event. But what they’re not telling people is this: credits can be exchanged for in-game coins. That’s not speculation. That’s fact.”

  He looked them all in the eye.

  “Real money. Real value. Real world impact.”

  A long pause.

  Then someone said, “We could actually get out.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Ren nodded. “This isn’t a scam. Not cookware. Not vitamins. Not another bullshit pitch. This is the first real crack in the wall. The kind they don’t want people like us to find.”

  Kanuka looked at him for a long moment. “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we get in,” Ren said. “We stop waiting for a handout. And we take the chance.”

  And just like that, the room changed.

  No more watching game on the TV.

  Just seven guys staring at the only doorway that might actually lead somewhere.

  “In five days, a new game launches. Towerbound. And the crazy part?”

  He leaned forward like he was letting them in on a secret.

  “The game’s free to play.”

  The room exploded in confusion.

  “What?”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  Ren lifted his hands to calm them down.

  “I don’t know the catch,” he said honestly.

  And technically, he didn’t.

  He knew a hell of a lot more than he was saying.

  But he didn’t know everything.

  What he did know was burned into his memory like a brand:

  The final seconds, after they had sacrificed him.

  After they had stolen his levels, laughed in his face.

  Right before he had been swallowed by the void—

  There had been a message.

  A system message.

  Clear as day.

  Congratulations, Earth.

  You have proven yourself worthy.

  Now, conquer the Tower.

  Twelve levels.

  One year.

  Or Earth will be destroyed.

  That had been the last thing Ren saw before he was thrown into nothingness.

  And now he was back.

  With five days to get ready.

  Five days to convince as many people as he could.

  Five days to scrape together every advantage possible.

  Five days to start building the army he’d need.

  Not just for revenge.

  Not just for survival.

  But for victory.

  And, of course—

  for cheese.

  A cheese castle so big it would need its own postal code.

  Preferably with a wine moat.

  And cracker drawbridges.