Chapter 2: Level Zero Trash

by inkadmin

The first thing Cassian learned about Eidolon was that even the grass looked expensive.

It rolled in emerald waves beneath the blood-red sky, each blade sharp enough to cut moonlight, jeweled with dew that glittered like someone had spilled a dragon’s ransom across the tutorial field. Beyond the meadow, black pine forests climbed the hills in jagged ranks. Farther still, a castle floated upside down in the clouds, its towers dripping blue fire into the open air.

The second thing Cassian learned was that being labeled Worthless made people very comfortable treating him like scenery.

“Wait, wait, wait.” A boy in a white-and-gold robe shoved through the crowd and pointed at Cassian’s translucent status window like it had personally insulted him. “His class actually says Worthless?”

A ripple of laughter moved through the freshly summoned players.

Cassian stood in the trampled grass with his hands still raised from when he’d tried to swipe the interface away. His vision flickered at the edges. The cracked blue panels burned over everything, stitched into sight like a bad overlay that refused to close.

STATUS
Name: Cassian Vale
Level: 0
Class: Classless
Designation: Worthless
HP: 1/1
MP: 0/0
STR: 0 | DEX: 0 | VIT: 0 | INT: 0 | LCK: ERROR
Skills: Steal Respawn [GLITCH]

The panel hovered there with all the charm of a hospital bill.

“It doesn’t say actually,” Cassian said. His voice came out raspier than he liked. Dying in a gaming chair apparently did bad things to the throat. “It says it in a hurtful font.”

The robed boy blinked. He had perfect skin, perfect teeth, and the energy of someone who had never had to apologize to a landlord. A slim golden staff floated beside him, haloed by motes of light.

Above his head, his name and class gleamed in clean blue text.

ALDEN GRACE
Level 1 — Lightbound Acolyte

“How did you get zero stats?” Alden asked, delighted. “That shouldn’t even be possible.”

“I min-maxed humility.”

Another laugh. Not kind this time. The kind people gave when they’d decided who the joke was and wanted to make sure the joke knew.

There were forty or fifty of them scattered across the meadow, all dressed in the torn remnants of whatever they’d worn before being dragged into Eidolon. Pajamas. Hoodies. Work uniforms. Club dresses. Business suits. One middle-aged man wore one sock and a bathrobe with cartoon ducks on it. But over those ordinary clothes, the System had laid its claim. Weapons shimmered into hands. Leather jerkins snapped over chests. Spell circles bloomed beneath boots. Class titles hung above heads like neon price tags.

Iron Vanguard. Ember Witch. Thorn Ranger. Gravebound Duelist. Storm Initiate. Beast Tamer.

It was a starter party buffet, and Cassian hadn’t even gotten a plastic spoon.

He looked down at himself. Same faded black hoodie. Same jeans. Same cheap delivery sneakers with one lace fraying near the toe. No sword. No staff. No shield. Not even a tutorial dagger sharp enough to threaten a sandwich.

A woman with cropped silver hair adjusted the bow in her hands. The string hummed, faintly alive. Above her head floated:

LYRA VALE? No. LYRA VOSS
Level 1 — Windshot Ranger

She squinted at Cassian’s panel. “What’s Steal Respawn?”

The laughter thinned.

Cassian felt every eye tilt back toward him. The air around the words on his status window pulsed with ugly violet static.

“No idea,” he said.

That was mostly true. The words had appeared just before the goblins—or tutorial mobs, or whatever nightmare with teeth had rushed them at the end of his first coherent minute in Eidolon—came crashing through the trees. Then a horn had sounded from nowhere, freezing the monsters in place mid-lunge as if the world had hit pause.

After that came the System announcement.

TUTORIAL RAID INITIALIZING
All newly summoned Players are required to participate.
Objective: Reach the Beacon at Dawnspire Outpost.
Warning: Nonparticipation may result in reduced reward allocation, delayed progression, social isolation, emotional distress, and death.

Cassian had appreciated the honesty on the last two.

Alden lowered his voice, badly. “It says glitch.”

That word moved through the meadow like someone had thrown meat into a kennel.

“Glitch?”

“Is he broken?”

“Can the System break?”

“Maybe he’s an NPC.”

“NPCs don’t talk like depressed streamers.”

“Hey,” Cassian said. “I prefer financially cornered streamer.”

No one laughed at that one except a broad-shouldered woman in a mechanic’s jumpsuit near the back, who gave a single snort before hiding it behind a gauntleted hand. Her weapon was a hammer too big for any reasonable wrist. Above her head:

MARA QUINN
Level 1 — Iron Vanguard

She caught Cassian noticing and shrugged as if to say, Sorry, but that was kind of funny.

Before Cassian could decide whether she counted as an ally or merely a less hostile spectator, the meadow tore open with light.

A pillar of gold slammed down from the red sky. Grass flattened in a perfect circle. The frozen goblins at the treeline dissolved into flakes of ash, their snarls cut off mid-frame. The air filled with the ringing sound of a menu opening in a cathedral.

A figure descended inside the light.

Not walked. Not floated. Descended, with the bored elegance of a luxury patch note.

It wore polished white armor trimmed in gold, too beautiful to be functional and too sharp to be decorative. A faceless helm reflected the crowd in a hundred curved fragments. Six translucent wings fanned behind it, each feather made of layered code and glass. A crown hovered over its head, rotating slowly, studded with red gems that looked disturbingly like watching eyes.

Every player’s interface flashed.

TUTORIAL GUIDE ARRIVED
Seraph-Moderator Ilyon
Crowned Authority: Lesser

Cassian’s skin prickled under his hoodie.

The thing’s gaze swept the field. When it passed over him, his cracked interface fizzed hard enough to send pain through his left eye.

Seraph-Moderator Ilyon spoke, and its voice arrived in layers—one warm, one metallic, one speaking a fraction too late beneath the others.

“Welcome, summoned Players, to Eidolon. Your prior lives have concluded. Your new metrics have begun.”

Someone sobbed.

Someone else whispered, “This is real.”

Cassian wanted to say something sarcastic. He wanted to ask if there was a terms-of-service violation form for involuntary reincarnation. But the meadow smelled suddenly of ozone and old blood, and the upside-down castle in the distance seemed to be watching.

Ilyon raised one gauntleted hand. Blue windows opened in front of every player.

TUTORIAL RAID: DAWNSPIRE RUN
Reach the Beacon before Nightfall.
Recommended Party Size: 5+
Recommended Level: 1
Raid Reward: Class Skill Unlock, Starter Currency, Sanctuary Access
Failure Penalty: Death, Item Loss, Ranking Reduction

“Ranking?” Alden asked, straightening like the word had put a hook in his spine.

Ilyon turned its faceless helm toward him. “Performance is observed. Performance is valued. Performance is rewarded.”

That did it.

The panic in the crowd didn’t vanish. It converted. Cassian watched it happen with a grim little fascination. Terror turned into calculation. People checked their weapons. People compared stats. People clustered around the ones with shinier titles. The old world had ended five minutes ago, but the leaderboard had already been invented, and humanity was sprinting toward it with both arms open.

“We should form balanced parties,” Lyra Voss said, nocking an arrow made of green light. Her voice had the clipped steadiness of someone trying very hard not to shake. “Tanks front. Ranged behind. Healers central. Anyone with scouting or detection?”

“I have Radiant Mend,” Alden said loudly.

Half the field drifted toward him.

Of course they did. Starter healer with rich-boy posture and hair that fell perfectly despite interdimensional kidnapping. Cassian had seen less obvious party anchors in gacha banners.

Mara lifted her hammer onto one shoulder. “I can take hits. Skill says Guard Stance.”

“Good,” Lyra said. “You’re with us.”

Cassian took a step forward. “I can also take hits.”

Several people looked at his HP.

One of them laughed so hard he coughed.

“You have one hit,” Alden said.

“Exactly. Very efficient.”

“No offense,” Lyra said, though her eyes kept flicking to the violet glitch text. “But we don’t know what happens if someone with a broken skill joins the raid group. It might scale enemies. Or trigger a bug.”

“It already triggered one,” said a lanky guy with twin knives and a wolfish grin. “Him.”

His name read:

JAX MORN
Level 1 — Shadowblade

“Great,” Cassian said. “Found the rogue who thinks edgy is a personality.”

Jax’s smile sharpened. “Found the loot penalty.”

Alden lifted both hands as if calming a board meeting. “Look, nobody wants to be cruel. But the tutorial guide said performance is observed. If we drag dead weight, we all suffer. It’s basic optimization.”

There it was. The holy phrase. Basic optimization. Cassian had heard variations of it for years from speedrun moderators, raid leaders, algorithm-chasing content goblins, and every boss who had ever scheduled him outside availability because “the team needed flexibility.”

People could wrap selfishness in so many clean words it started looking like strategy.

“I’m good at optimization,” Cassian said. He hated how thin his voice sounded under the System’s red sky. “I know routes. Patterns. Exploits. If this place runs like a game, then—”

“Does your exploit include not dying to a stiff breeze?” Jax asked.

More laughter.

Cassian’s jaw tightened.

Ilyon watched from its pillar of light, utterly still.

That bothered Cassian more than the mockery. A guide should be guiding. Explaining aggro, respawn rules, damage types. Anything. Instead it simply observed the players sorting themselves like merchandise. Its faceless helm remained angled slightly toward Cassian, crown rotating overhead with slow mechanical patience.

“Players,” Ilyon intoned, “the raid gate opens in sixty seconds.”

At the far end of the meadow, two stone arches burst from the ground, dragging roots and soil with them. Blue fire crawled along carved runes. Beyond the arches shimmered a road through dark woods, narrowing into fog.

The players surged into motion.

Parties formed by instinct and fear. Alden ended up surrounded by Mara, Lyra, Jax, a nervous spear-wielding accountant named Ben, and three others Cassian didn’t catch. A second group clustered around an Ember Witch whose hair smoked. The bathrobe man got pulled into a group after demonstrating that his duck-patterned robe came with a skill called Taunting Honk.

Cassian stood in the middle of the meadow as bodies moved around him.

“Seriously?” he called. “No one wants the mysterious glitch guy? That’s usually how you get the secret ending.”

A girl with antler-like wooden growths woven through her braids glanced back with pity. “Maybe stay here? The guide might fix you after.”

“That’s comforting,” Cassian said. “Love being a customer support ticket.”

Mara paused near the raid gate. Her heavy boots crushed the glowing grass. “Cassian, right?”

He blinked. He hadn’t told her his name. Then remembered: it was above his head, probably in humiliating gray.

“Unfortunately.”

She looked from him to the gate, then to Alden’s group waiting impatiently. Her expression pinched. “If you follow behind us, maybe we can—”

“Mara,” Alden said, his tone smooth and warning. “Party limit.”

“It says recommended five plus, not limit.”

“Unregistered followers can leech threat without contributing. My interface flagged it.” He flicked a glance at Cassian. “We need to be smart.”

Mara’s gauntlet creaked around the hammer shaft.

For one wild second, Cassian thought she might argue. That she might swing that oversized hammer into Alden’s perfect nose and declare the start of an underdog alliance. He could already see the thumbnail. Worthless Player Adopted by Tank Goddess, Admins Hate Him.

Then Lyra touched Mara’s elbow. “We need you alive,” she said quietly.

Mara exhaled through her nose. Her eyes found Cassian’s again. “Don’t die,” she said.

Cassian gave her a two-finger salute. “Statistically unlikely to be a long process.”

Her mouth twitched, but then Alden’s group stepped through the gate, and the blue fire swallowed them.

One by one, the others followed. Light flashed. Names vanished from the meadow. Weapons, voices, footfalls—all gone into the fog road and whatever tutorial horrors waited beyond.

Cassian tried to enter after the last group.

The arch rejected him.

Not dramatically. Not with a lightning blast or divine voice. He walked into the blue shimmer and bounced off like he had face-planted a glass door.

His nose exploded with pain. He stumbled backward, clutching his face.

ENTRY DENIED
Minimum Level Requirement: 1
Tutorial Raid access unavailable to Level 0 entities.

For a long moment, he just stared.

Then the message refreshed.

Helpful Tip: Increase your Level to access Level-gated content.

“Oh,” Cassian said to the empty meadow. Blood trickled over his upper lip. “Thank you. I was going to try decreasing it.”

The raid gate flickered once, then collapsed into sparks.

Silence dropped heavy over the grass.

Seraph-Moderator Ilyon remained in its pillar of gold.

Cassian slowly turned toward it. “So. Support ticket time?”

The faceless helm tilted.

“I cannot provide individual troubleshooting during active tutorial sequences.”

“Great. General troubleshooting?”

“Your designation is functioning as assigned.”

The words hit colder than they should have.

Cassian wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve. “Assigned by who?”

Static crawled across his interface.

Ilyon’s crown stopped rotating.

For the first time, the guide looked less like a statue and more like a predator that had noticed movement in tall grass.

“All assignments are generated by the System,” it said.

“And the System never makes mistakes?”

The meadow darkened by a shade.

Or maybe Cassian imagined it. Maybe the red sky simply pulsed like a living wound overhead. Maybe the upside-down castle’s blue flames flared brighter at the exact moment he asked the question by coincidence.

Ilyon descended until its armored feet hovered inches above the grass. Up close, Cassian could see hairline cracks in the white armor, each one filled with crawling symbols. Its faceless helm reflected him as a dozen warped Cassians: pale, bloodied, empty-handed, ridiculous.

“Players who demonstrate instability,” Ilyon said softly, “are advised to pursue corrective progression.”

“And how does a level zero get progression if level one content says no?”

A pause.

Then a new window snapped open, so close to Cassian’s face that he flinched.

OPTIONAL SOLO ACTIVITY UNLOCKED
Field Pest Control
Objective: Defeat 1 Lesser Meadow Slime
Reward: 1 EXP
Difficulty: Trivial
Note: Even the weakest Player can overcome nature’s softest mistake.

Cassian read it twice.

His eyes narrowed.

“Are you bullying me through quest text?”

Ilyon rose back into its pillar. “Corrective progression has been provided.”

“Do I at least get a weapon?”

The golden light around Ilyon brightened.

“Improvisation is a valued Player trait.”

With that, the Seraph-Moderator vanished upward in a streak of gold, leaving Cassian alone beneath the red sky with a bruised nose, one hit point, and a quest to murder jelly.

For several seconds, he listened to the wind.

It hissed through the grass. Somewhere far beyond the vanished raid gate, thunder rolled, followed by a faint chorus of screams and battle cries. The tutorial raid was underway. The real players were earning skills, currency, sanctuary access. They were probably already level two. Maybe level three if Eidolon had generous early scaling.

Cassian stood at spawn like an abandoned side character.

His hands trembled.

He shoved them into his hoodie pocket.

Okay. Breathe. You have beaten games with worse starts. You have routed broken physics engines. You have clipped through walls using a chair, a bucket, and spite. This is just another system.

His inner voice sounded convincing until a wet plopping noise came from behind him.

Cassian turned.

A slime oozed out from beneath a patch of violet flowers.

It was the size of a basketball and the color of mint toothpaste left in the sun. Its translucent body wobbled with every movement. Two black dots floated inside it where eyes might be, along with a half-dissolved beetle and a tiny pebble suspended like fruit in gelatin.

Above it hovered:

LESSER MEADOW SLIME
Level 1

Cassian looked at the slime.

The slime looked at Cassian.

Somewhere, an explosion lit the distant woods blue.

“All right,” Cassian said. “You and me, nature’s softest mistake.”

The slime made a sound like a wet sock hitting tile.

Cassian scanned the meadow for weapons. The System had said improvisation. Fine. He could improvise. Rocks dotted the grass. Branches lay near the treeline. He spotted a broken length of root with a pointed end and jogged toward it.

The slime bounced after him.

Slowly.

Embarrassingly slowly.

Cassian almost felt insulted on its behalf. It had no limbs, no mouth, no visible ambition. It advanced by compressing itself and sproinging forward six inches at a time.

“This is doable,” Cassian muttered. “This is absolutely doable.”

He grabbed the root. It was damp, crooked, and smelled like rotten carrots. A panel appeared.

Improvised Weapon Acquired
Soggy Root
Damage: 0-1 Blunt
Durability: Emotional

“Durability what?”

The slime bounced closer.

Cassian lifted the root like a baseball bat. His gamer brain began mapping variables despite the absurdity. Slime movement speed: terrible. Attack range: unknown. HP: hidden, which was rude. Weakness likely physical? Fire? Salt? Existential shame?

He circled left. The slime pivoted with him, wobbling. Its body made tiny suction sounds against the grass.

“If you kill me, just know it’s punching down,” Cassian said.

The slime launched itself.

Not fast. Not high. But Cassian, expecting a pathetic hop, misjudged its elastic snap. The slime stretched midair like a thrown water balloon and slapped into his shin.

A red flash burst across his vision.