In the peaceful foothills of a rugged mountain range, on the eleventh floor of the Hundredfold Haven, sat the village of Dunverholm. A breathing, working, dwarf-built gem tucked into folds of green hills and laced with streams so clear they caught every bit of morning light.

And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. This unique and wonderful site could’ve come straight from a fantasy travel brochure. But this place? It’s real.

Dunverholm felt stitched together with care. It looked handcrafted, not in a polished showroom way but in the way someone made something because they loved it.

Right in the middle of the village stood Stout Oak. Not just any tree. This one dominated the square. Its trunk was wider than most cottages, and the roots broke through stone, ignoring all compromise.

That square was the village’s heart. Markets flared up at dawn, packed with bread so fresh it steamed and vegetables as if newly born. Festivals blasted open with bagpipes and tankards big enough to drown a squirrel. Arguments over whose turn it was to bring the ale usually spiraled into bets before anyone remembered the rules.

The buildings bore the same spirit. Every wall and beam felt chosen. Foundations were carved into the rock, timber twisted into place and welcomed by the hillside. Just standing close to them gave a strange sense of trust. If the world cracked open, these places would’ve endured.

This was where life in Dunverholm hummed. Loud, stubborn, unpolished, but warm enough to thaw a glacier.

Step just beyond the village and things stretched out in layers. Terraced fields rippled up the hillsides. Barley swayed in the breeze, responding to music no one played. Potatoes sat in neat rows, apples hung so low you could catch one just by breathing, and the sound of work reached you before the sight did. Dwarves moved through their day side by side with their kin. They laughed, they shouted, they lived loud.

It was pure. Honest. Almost aggressive in how good it felt.

But yeah. Don’t get lulled into it.

Out at the village edges, the watchtowers rose. Guards up top scanned the distance with eyes that never settled. Hands hovered near weapons. Jaws stayed tight.

And here’s why.

From floor eleven to twenty lay the Akai territory. The lizardmen roamed those parts. Cold-eyed, scaly freaks who did not build, did not talk, did not leave things standing. They did not raid for resources. They raided to destroy.

One thing was clear. This village survived, but not because luck favored it. Dunverholm endured because people here fought like hell to make peace stick. They bled for quiet mornings. They clawed for every safe harvest. And if you were the kind to believe in prayers, this was where you learned which ones truly counted.

As the morning sun spilled over the mountains and laid gold across the rooftops, a window creaked open on the second floor of a stone house.

And there I was.

Arms raised like I could embrace the horizon itself. The breeze brushed my face, light pooled on my skin, and this ridiculous grin started climbing my jaw.

I breathed in deep. Clean air, soaked in dew and the scent of baking bread. If someone had hurled a loaf my way right then, I wouldn’t have even used my hands.

This was one of those rare slices of time where everything felt reset. New. The universe had lifted its pressure from my shoulders.

“Sup,” I said. To nobody in particular. Just throwing that main character energy into the void felt necessary.

Let’s back up a second.

Name’s Akira Sakamoto. Aoi player. Marksman class, subclass Gunner, if we were doing labels. And I’d been stuck in the eternal prologue of a cursed game called The Fortress of the Fallen.

Sounds impressive, right? It wasn’t. It was confinement wrapped in lore.

The game had been supposed to have structure. Levels. Advancement. A destination. But not for me. I’d gotten snagged in the system ten years ago, locked in this rerun titled How Will Akira Die This Time?

Eighty-one deaths so far.

Yeah, I’d been keeping count. What else was I going to do?

You died. You woke up. You died again. Over and over until even the drama started to feel tired.

There was supposed to be a hub world. A starting gate. Some place where players arrived together to begin their journey. Not me. I never made it there. It felt like the way a system behaves when it loses track of you yet keeps the punishment running for its own entertainment.

Time here did not pass. It folded. Days melted into each other with no edge, no line between them. I had seen the sun rise over Dunverholm more times than I had eaten real food.

Still, I had not given up. Not entirely.

Because deep under the bitterness and sarcasm, there was one faulty wire still sparking. I kept thinking maybe the system could shift the other way, just once. One good crash, one heroic death, one screwup in the code, and maybe I would land where I was meant to be all along.

The Live Game.

Where real players faced real stakes and chased real purpose.

And that flicker of belief, that tiny beat of unreasonable hope? It was the only thing keeping my sanity in check just enough to stop me from talking to birds about time travel.

I was not just some data error. I was a player. A glitch with a goal and more ammo than patience. One day, I would break through, and when I did, the game better not blink.

Let’s backtrack a bit.

It had been three years since I took down Krag.

The fight had been brutal. I burned through five life tokens. But Krag had not even been the real problem. The real issue came with him, his ride-or-die ladies, Mirella and Nirella. His so-called bodyguards. Yeah. Bodyguards. That was the age-appropriate version.

These two were not just defenders. They were fanatics. Every time I lined up a clean shot at Krag, one of them pulled something wild to throw me off.

Mirella blew me a kiss mid-death spiral. Nirella flashed her peaches like it was an actual tactic. It turned into an adults-only highlight reel real fast.

I remembered the way they exploded from my hiishi rounds. Not physically painful, but man, that one stung. Emotionally.

Watching them disappear that way hit harder than I wanted to admit. Sure, they were hot, let’s be real, they were, but that was not what got me. Back then, after I cleared floor ten, those twins, including Krag, vanished completely. Not just from the arena. From the entire floor every time I got reset. Gone, as though they had never been coded in the first place.

Weird, right?

After that, everything changed on floor eleven.

That was where I met my first Midori.

The dwarves.

It happened in the forest. I was walking with no real goal. Mostly sulking. Maybe kicking a few rocks.

Then motion. Fast. Between the trees.

A tiny figure crashed through the brush. Kid-sized. Shorter than my waist and running as if something tore at his shadow. His legs were stubby, his eyes wild. Maybe eight, nine years old.

Right behind him came a Saurian. And if you had never seen a Saurian up close, picture a nightmare with teeth, scales, and a tail built to bulldoze buses.

I didn’t think.

SlingBam out. Hiishi hot.

I dropped the beast with a few lucky hits and a reload I barely pulled off in time.

The kid did not flinch. Just stared at me, mouth half open, eyes wide. I might as well have dropped from the sky as a hero in a story he could not yet grasp.

Then he grabbed my hand. Did not ask. Just latched on. Fingers cold. Grip solid. And we were moving.

He dragged me through the woods, talking a mile a minute. About his people. About dwarven clans. About old customs and sacred trees and something called the Ironroot Oath. I had caught maybe ten percent of it.

There was this weird moment where I couldn’t tell if I had triggered a hidden questline or just gotten kidnapped by a pint-sized lore dump.

We reached Dunverholm on the same day. And yeah. That village? It changed everything.

I stayed. Longer than I had meant to. Longer than I had admitted out loud.

And just like that, two years passed in an instant.

I spent most of my time in the dwarves’ insane library of tower lore, especially buried stuff in the back about the Midori races. Some of those dwarven scrolls mentioned a green glass sky. I had thought it was just a metaphor. Now? Not so sure.

These NPCs knew things. Real things.

Turned out, there were nine Midori groups total. Not counting Human Midori, since we were basically the normies of the Tower.

The dwarves were the builders. The diggers. Solid people with no patience for nonsense and probably born with a hammer in one hand and a mug of ale in the other.

Then there were the elves. All grace, brains, and cheekbones. Too pretty for their own good.

Halflings came next. Same size as the dwarves but leaner and joy-fueled. They treated farming with the care of an artist and could coax crops from stone.

Next in line were the fairies. They floated. Literally. Spell weavers bathed in a soft glow that warped reality around them.

Centaurs bore an authority all their own. Fighters. Loyalists. Great hair. Every one of them stood ready to lead a cavalry charge or silently condemn poor posture.

Gnomes were wired differently. Engineers with caffeine addictions and no fear of explosions. Give them scraps, and they would hand you a miracle.

Gremlins loved chaos. Not the fun kind either. The profit-hungry, market-manipulating kind. They would sell you the bomb and the toolkit to defuse it. And then they would sell you fake insurance.

Finally, the dryads. Rooted deep. When they looked at you, their gaze weighed your crimes against the wind. Just breathing near them invaded sacred soil.

So yeah. It was a lot.

And just as I started to process it all, just as I eased into one of those rare moments of reflection, I reminded myself not to get comfortable with it. I would not.

Then something snapped outside.

Laughter.

I blinked, pushed off the chair, leaned toward the window, and peeked out.

Three young dwarf girls strolled past under the shade of one of the village’s older trees. Their voices wafted softly, brushing the air around them. They laughed and teased each other, totally wrapped up in their world, unaware of anything beyond Dunverholm.

This was one of those images that stuck. My mind stored it, knowing I would need it later when darkness came again.

And for some reason, it cut a little deeper than I had expected.

Yeah, Dunverholm was safe. Peaceful. Warm in ways that most floors forgot how to be. But it was not mine. It never would be. I was still just a player. A bug in the system with stubborn boots and no game plan. And maybe that was why I wanted to fight harder. Not just to climb. Not just to survive. But to prove I existed outside someone else’s script.

Now let’s get back to the scene outside my window.

Leading the trio with the confidence of someone claiming the road as her own was Thrainna. Red hair spilled down her back in a wave unconcerned with spectators.

Beside her was Durrina. Quieter. Smoother. Her braid swung steady with each step. Every movement showed she understood her presence without needing to prove it.

And then there was Brundis. She moved to an unseen rhythm. Hair cropped short. She had the kind of energy that could persuade you to rob a merchant caravan and then charm the guards into letting you go.

They all wore the usual dwarf clothes. Thick wool, layered linen, practical stuff made to handle mountain winds and surprise monster attacks.

But do not get it wrong. These were not your grandma’s hiking dresses.

The cuts stayed clean, the stitching exact, and the whole outfit fit so perfectly it suggested divine hands with a talent for tailoring.

Necklines stayed modest, sure, but there was this whole look-but-do-not-drool feeling going on. Enough tease to keep your imagination clocked in and working overtime.

And that right there was why I never skipped my morning window watch. Call it a hobby. Call it recon. I called it appreciating cultural depth.

No offense to Mirella and Nirella. Full credit to the green crew, but dwarf girls? Top tier.

Not that I had much of a sample pool in recent years. It had been years since I had seen a human girl, real by old-world standards.

The Tower rewired your taste eventually. It made you nostalgic for things you never even finished.

So maybe daydreaming a little was not creepy. Maybe it was just survival.

Technically, I am twenty-eight, using Earth time. But in here, in this world, in this game, I am eighteen on a loop. Too much free time, no romantic prospects, and a brain that refused to learn how to filter.

“Morning, girls,” I called out, hanging off the windowsill like a flirty anime side character about five seconds from catching a shoe to the face. “Any of you ladies heading to Hillstone for the festival this evening?”

Hillstone sat ten miles west. Another dwarf settlement, older than this one, and famous for two things. Armor you could not dent, and ale that could flatten an ogre if you were not pacing your sips. It was built into the cliffs, surrounded by wheat fields and wild goats. I had been there once. Got punched by a goat. Ten out of ten ale, though.

And their market festival was the yearly excuse to dress cute, gossip hard, and pretend they were buying root vegetables instead of fresh scandal.

“Probably not, Kira-kun,” Thrainna replied..

“We’ve got other plans,” Brundis added.

They traded a glance. One of those silent girl-telepathy exchanges that always ended with someone getting blindsided. Then they burst into giggles. I was already stepping into some elaborate trap.

Which, yeah. I probably had.

“Oh? And what plans would those be?” I shot back.

Durrina glanced over her shoulder with a knowing smile. “It’s a secret.”

Then they vanished into the sun-slicked road, arms swinging, laughter trailing through the air. Just gone. No trace of the curiosity bomb they planted behind my eyes.

I grinned idiotically and closed the window. Whatever that secret plan was, I was already bracing for it to involve mild peril, suspiciously choreographed giggling, and at least one village elder pretending they had not overheard something incriminating.

I headed to the kitchen and started throwing together some breakfast. Gourmet? Not even close. Edible? Mostly. It served its purpose, and sometimes that was enough.

That was the thing with Dunverholm.

It was not where you would expect to land after bleeding through dozens of boss fights, burning out every stat sheet, and dying eighty one times in increasingly embarrassing ways.

But if you stayed long enough, it got under your skin. Little moments wedged between the mundane. A village that should not matter. But it did.

And if this broken save file of a life had taught me anything, it was this.

Sometimes the quiet places carried the loudest stories.