Shardbound: Oath of Levelers

1
Kai Moreno's apartment smelled faintly of old coffee and the antiseptic wipes that came with his sister's prescriptions. The ceiling was a patchwork of settling plaster and glow-strips he had scavenged from a dozen different salvage runs; the strips hummed with a soft, therapeutic cyan that cut the edges off the city's neon. Outside, the towers of the district pulsed with advertisement loops and tournament banners for Shardbound's Prime Day; inside, Kai lived off the margins of the game's economy the way some people lived off freelance gigs—two, three small wins stitched together into just enough currency to keep the next week from collapsing. Tonight the glow-strips reflected in the cracked screen of his old deck as if the world inside and the world outside had decided to mirror each other.
He moved to the rig like a ritual. Coffee gone cold, the tablet warm under his palms, the login icon ready. He had memorized every few-line system prompt the way a monk might memorize prayer. Class: Scavenger / Crafter. Level: 12. XP: 1,238 / 1,500. Shard Credits: 47.23. Daily quota: Salvage 4/5. Reputation: Low Sector Syndicates +0.2. Each line was small and practical, and each number felt like a breath measured to keep his sister's next treatment within reach. He wasn't a spectacle player. He didn't stream. He didn't have the time or the charisma to become somebody else online. He logged in, he leveled, he sold what he didn't need, and he turned shards into bills through the game’s sanctioned transfer windows and the handful of markets that still tolerated small traders.
The patch notification blinked at the corner of his HUD with the sterile authority of corporate copy. UPDATE 14.2 — REMNANT ANCHORS ENABLED. New mechanic: Remnant Presence overlay and Attunement Events. Optional broadcast nodes for public extraction. Quality-of-life improvements and balance adjustments. Asterisks linked to the patch notes that scrolled in a separate pane: Terms and Conditions for Remnant Acquisition apply. Dispute arbitration details appended. He skimmed for the exploitables—short-term opportunities the update might create—but the legalese blurred into the ordinary background noise developers used to shield profit-driven features.
He trusted the grind more than the headlines. He accepted a Salavage Node run from his inbox and dropped into the neon-wracked alleys that functioned as a mid-tier farming zone. The zone's wildlife had been replaced with scavenger bots and scripted looters, each with predictable spawn windows and drop tables. He was good at finding patterns, at seeing where other players overlooked trash because they were chasing the flashier nodes. Tonight, the alley smelled of rain and hot metal, and the HUD blinked a small notification: QUEST — Salavage Node: Recover 3 Alloy Cores. Reward: 180 credits. Time Remaining: 02:04:36.
He moved through the crowds. Other players clustered in groups, forming temporary alliances around rare spawns, their avatars loud and brash, their chat windows full of banter and trade offers. The remnant update had already become a billboard in social feeds: special events, limited-time Harvest Bounties, auction previews from major guilds. He kept to the shadows, picking up scrap and selling in increments that would not attract attention. That was the luxury of being unnoticed—profits small but steady, decisions free from the moral commentary that trailed the big players.