Ren logged on.
It was finally Day 5.
Towerbound was starting.
He had already passed the second helmet off to Reed, the laundromat guy.
Reed hadn’t been working that day, so he could jump in immediately and take the first six-hour block.
No time wasted.
Ren cracked his knuckles, heart pounding with excitement and nerves.
Before anyone had logged in, he had made sure everyone agreed on a starting plan—
pick fantasy-style names, start in the same starter town he knew by heart.
No wandering.
No fancy experiments.
The place he had picked was Greenwild Cross,
a starter town tucked deep in the lush borderlands of the Kingdom of Aramoor.
Greenwild was perfect—
tons of medical herbs, low-level monsters like root wolves and dusk spiders,
and most importantly, almost no high-level players or guilds crowding it early on.
It wasn’t glamorous.
It wasn’t rich.
But it was a launchpad.
A screen popped up in his vision.
WELCOME TO TOWERBOUND
Please select your name.
Ren smiled.
He entered: Ren Varrow.
Close enough to his real name that he wouldn’t forget it after twenty hours of grinding, but still low-profile enough not to trip any alarms.
Another screen flickered.
Please select your class.
Cleric.
He tapped it without hesitation.
If he could’ve chosen Alchemist as a main, he would have.
But alchemy was always a side profession in Towerbound.
One combat class. That would eventually allow players to get Elite at level 10.
One life class, again at level 10. Or as people called it “Professional class”
That was the rule.
Finalize your choice?
“Yes,” Ren confirmed.
The screen blinked, and a wave of nausea hit him for half a second—
the classic VR “world load” feeling. If he had a full dive pod? He wouldn’t be suffering.
When it cleared, he stood on sun-warmed cobblestones, surrounded by wood and stone buildings sprawling out under a bright blue sky.
The gates of Greenwild Cross towered behind him.
Beyond them, the endless wilderness of the Kingdom of Aramoor stretched into the misty horizon.
He looked down at himself.
Gone was everything he had once earned.
Now he was wearing the Level 1 starter kit:
simple brown cleric robes, a rough rope belt, beat-up sandals.
Ren tightened his fingers into a fist.
No gear.
No riches.
But he didn’t care.
He had knowledge.
And this time?
He wasn’t going to sell himself to a guild.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
He was going to own this world.
***
The first thing Ren did when he finished loading in was immediately message Reed.
“Reed, are you here?” he sent to Reed’s fantasy name: Reed Richie Rich.
They had both passed their chosen names to each other before logging on—
because with only six hours apiece, they couldn’t afford to waste even a second getting lost.
A few seconds later, Reed’s message popped back.
“Yeah! I’m here!”
“Alright,” Ren typed quickly, “What do you think?”
Reed’s response came with a laughing emoji at the end. ??
“This is awesome. Everything looks, feels, and even smells so damn real.”
Ren grinned.
He remembered feeling that same rush the first time around.
Still, there was no time to waste.
“Check your settings,” Ren messaged. “Turn everything up to 100%.”
There was a pause.
Then Reed replied.
“Alright. Why though? Wouldn’t that just make it harder?”
Ren cracked his knuckles and explained fast.
“Because Towerbound gives you bonus experience and better loot chances if you play with full pain, full immersion.”
It was one of those weird things the world had learned years after the launch.
At the beginning, almost nobody went into the settings and increased the pain level.
Why would they?
At 100% setting, not only did hits feel real, but if you died at 100%,
you didn’t just lose a level—
you got slammed with a 24-hour game ban.
In the early days, who the hell would have agreed to that?
Only insane people.
Or desperate people.
But those insane and desperate players?
They had gotten double the loot rates.
Double the quest rewards.
Double the item drops.
It was the hidden mechanic that only hardcore guilds figured out later.
Way, way later.
Ren knew now.
And he wasn’t about to leave that kind of advantage lying on the table.
“Trust me,” Ren messaged. “It’ll suck when you get hit. But it’ll be worth it. We’ll level twice as fast.”
There was a pause.
Then Reed’s response popped up:
“Done. 100%. Let’s fucking go.”
Ren grinned wider.
Game on.
***
Reed had selected a warrior.
He would’ve chosen martial arts if he could—he actually had real training growing up, helping out at the local dojo.
But Towerbound didn’t have a martial artist or kung fu class, not at the start anyway.
Not until you unlocked unique professions at level 10.
Just like Ren.
Ren was a cleric again. And even back then, he had never bothered to explore his level 10 elite class.
Alchemy had been all that mattered to him.
Ren messaged quickly.
“Don’t worry, I know you don’t want to be a regular warrior and you’d rather be a kung fu guy. But at level 10, you can switch.”
Reed messaged back, surprised.
“For real?”
“Yeah,” Ren replied smoothly.
“My cousin told me that.”
It was funny, in a weird, sloppy kind of way.
Ren kept changing the story. First, it was a friend who got him beta access. Then it was a cousin. A day later, he might say it was a guy he met in a Discord server or some streamer’s mod. The truth was, he just threw out random names and vague connections every time someone asked.
Because how the hell was he supposed to tell them the real reason?
That he was a time traveler.
That he had knowledge of the future.
That everything he knew—every broken strategy, every meta-skip, every gold mine—wasn’t theorycrafting. It was memory.
But even if he wanted to explain, who would believe him?
In a dorm full of slum-scraping cynics, who’d buy “Hey, I looped through time and came back with patch notes”?
Exactly.
So yeah. It was his friend.
Or his cousin.
Or maybe just someone he knew.
He didn’t care which lie stuck.
He just needed enough of them to get to the truth.
Of course, there was no mystical cousin/friend/coworker..
It was just the best excuse Ren could come up with on the fly.
“Alright,” Ren messaged again. “You in the same starter town? Jump up and down so I can find you.”
He looked around the bustling streets of Greenwild Cross, scanning past crowds of Level 1 newbies running to and from the various NPCs.
Then—
out of the corner of his eye—
he saw it.
Someone in standard warrior gear, hopping up and down like a lunatic.
“Okay, I see you,” Ren said, grinning. “I’m heading over.”
He jogged across the square, sandals thudding against the cobblestones, and met up with Reed.
Reed gave a mock salute, swinging his basic iron sword around.
“Alright!” Reed said. “I’ve got a sword and I’m ready to use it!”
Ren chuckled.
“Hold up,” he said. “We’ve gotta get ourselves some tasks first.”
He glanced around the familiar town square.
There were a dozen quest-giving NPCs wandering around: farmers asking for wolves to be killed, bakers missing flour, hunters needing pelts.
But Ren already knew exactly who they needed to see.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re visiting Old Widow Shelly.”
Reed looked confused but followed without question.
Shelly was an old widow who lived in the small side street behind the herb vendor.
Her husband had died years ago on a trading expedition to the Nevermore Continent, and she had never gotten over it.
Her basic quest was simple:
gather five thistle roses.
Thistle roses didn’t have any combat use—
they just smelled good.
Shelly had planted a few on her husband’s grave, and every month she wanted to refresh them.
Most players skipped her quest.
Too sentimental.
No real rewards.
But Ren knew better.
Because if you brought her more than five thistle roses—
and chose the right dialogue options about love, memory, and regret—
she opened a hidden quest chain.
A hidden quest chain that Ren had only learned about because some blabbermouth streamer had bragged about it years later, claiming it was his first big break.
Well, that big break?
This time, it was going to be Ren’s.
Well—
Ren’s and Reed’s.
***
“So we’re really looking for thistle roses?” Reed asked, trudging alongside him.
“That we are,” Ren said, grinning.
The two of them pushed out through the old wooden gates of Greenwild Cross and into the surrounding wilderness.
Before they left, though, Ren had made a quick pit stop at the general vendor.
He had spent every copper coin he had—and Reed’s too—on basic gatherer tools.
Simple, low-grade herbalist kits.
Nothing fancy.
Gatherer tools for herbalists weren’t expensive at early levels.
Towerbound made sure newbies could at least afford to get started.
But the tools were still crap.
If you found a high-level herb out in the wild and tried to harvest it with newbie tools?
You were screwed.
Your attempt would fail automatically—
wrecking the herb beyond recovery.
Didn’t matter how good your skill was.
Low-level tools meant guaranteed failure.
But for thistle roses?
For basic starter herbs?
They would do just fine.
Reed was trailing behind, looking worried.
He kept glancing at his now-empty inventory and grimacing.
“You sure about this, man?” Reed asked. “I just blew all five of my copper coins.”
Ren clapped him on the back.
“Relax,” he said. “That five copper? It’s barely anything. It’s like half a stale donut back home.”
Reed still didn’t look convinced.
Ren shrugged.
“Look, one silver coin equals one real credit. One hundred copper coins make one silver. So your five copper? That’s five cents.”
Reed blinked.
“Five cents?”
“Yup. And right now?” Ren swept a hand at the open fields ahead. “We’re investing that five cents into making hundreds. Thousands if we do it right.”
Reed kicked a rock off the road, thinking it over.
Then he nodded slowly.
“Alright,” he said. “Five cents to maybe get out of this hellhole.”
“Exactly,” Ren said, grinning. “Best five cents you’ve ever spent.”
He tightened his grip on the worn wooden starter staff and looked out over the rolling hills beyond the town walls.
“Come on,” he said, nodding to Reed.
“We’re about to pick flowers like our lives depend on it.”
***
