Chapter 5 Chapter five
Chapter Five
The palace of Valdris was nothing like Ethan had imagined a palace would be.
He had grown up consuming fantasy stories the same way most broke kids did — in stolen internet sessions at the school library, reading whatever free content he could find online. In those stories, palaces were always gleaming. White marble, gold trim, fountains that caught the light and threw rainbows across polished floors.
The Valdris palace was old. Genuinely, heavily old — the kind of old that had stopped trying to hide itself. The stone walls were dark grey and thick, worn smooth in some places and rough in others where repairs had been made and aged again. Torch brackets lined every corridor, casting uneven orange light that made shadows jump and stretch. The ceilings were high enough to feel oppressive rather than grand. Tapestries hung at intervals, their colors faded to suggestions of what they once were.
It felt less like a symbol of power and more like a place that had simply survived everything thrown at it.
Strangely, Ethan found that comforting.
He was led through the main corridor by two knights who walked slightly ahead and said nothing. Aldric had disappeared shortly after they entered, muttering something about preparations. King Caelion had gone separately, flanked by his own guards, pausing only to instruct a servant girl to ensure the summoned hero was fed and given adequate rest.
The servant girl — young, perhaps fifteen, with a thick brown braid and nervous hands — now walked beside Ethan, stealing glances at him every few seconds.
"You can just ask," Ethan said without looking at her.
She startled. "I — pardon?"
"Whatever you're trying to figure out. You can just ask."
She was quiet for a moment, then, in a small voice: "You don't look like the heroes from the old summoning records."
"What did they look like?"
"Bigger," she admitted. "The last one was apparently nearly seven feet tall and had arms like tree trunks. The records say he cleared an entire goblin encampment alone on his first night."
"How long ago was that?"
"Eighty years, roughly."
Ethan absorbed that. "And what happened to him?"
The girl hesitated just long enough for the answer to become obvious before she gave it.
"He died in the dungeon he was sent to clear," she said quietly. "They recovered his sword but nothing else."
"Encouraging," Ethan muttered.
She looked mortified. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have —"
"It's fine," he said. "I'd rather know the truth than be told everything is going to be fine."
She glanced at him again, differently this time. Less curiosity, more assessment.
"My name is Sela," she offered.
"Ethan."
"That's a strange name."
"You're not the first person to think so."
---
The room they gave him was modest by palace standards, which still made it the finest space Ethan had ever slept in. A real bed with an actual frame, sheets that smelled faintly of dried herbs, a writing desk, a wardrobe, and a window that looked out over the palace's inner courtyard where torches burned in neat rows along the walls below.
Sela left a tray of food on the desk without being asked — bread, a thick stew, something that resembled roasted root vegetables, and a clay cup of something warm and faintly sweet — then excused herself with a small bow and closed the door behind her.
Ethan sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the food for a long moment.
Back home, a meal like this would have cost him more than he could comfortably spend in a single sitting. He usually ate whatever was cheap and filling — instant noodles, day-old bread from the bakery two streets over that sold it at half price after six in the evening, boiled eggs when he could manage it.
He ate slowly, not because he was being careful about manners, but because he wanted to actually taste it. The stew was rich and slightly smoky, with chunks of some kind of meat he didn't recognize but didn't question. The bread was dense and warm. The drink turned out to be some kind of spiced tea that settled in his chest like a small, steady fire.
When he finished, he set the tray aside and lay back on the bed, staring up at the stone ceiling.
[Current Status Update]
The robotic voice arrived without warning, the way it always seemed to.
A holographic window flickered open above him, hovering at a comfortable reading distance as though it understood he was lying down.
[Host: Ethan Ashworth]
[Age: 18]
[Dimension: Eryndal — Kingdom of Valdris]
[Mission: Destroy the corrupted soul stone within the Dungeon of Malgrath]
[Mission Rank: C]
[Time Limit: 14 days]
[Reward upon completion: 500,000 gold coins (converted to home dimension currency upon return) + 1 Attribute Point]
Ethan read it twice.
"Fourteen days," he said aloud.
[Correct. The dungeon reaches full awakening in fifteen days. Entering after that point will result in a significant increase in enemy difficulty and a near-zero survival probability for a first-time host.]
"Reassuring."
[Your current stats have been updated following weapon selection.]
Another window appeared beside the first.
[Strength: 14]
[Agility: 12]
[Perception: 10]
[Endurance: 13]
[Skill: Swordmaster Lv. 1]
The numbers meant nothing to him yet. He had no reference point for what a fourteen in strength actually translated to in practical terms — whether it made him formidable or merely adequate.
[Average untrained adult male in this dimension registers between 6 and 9 across base stats. Trained knights average between 15 and 22. Dungeon creatures on the first level of Malgrath average between 11 and 16.]
So he was somewhere in the middle. Better than a regular person, weaker than a trained soldier, roughly even with whatever was waiting for him at the dungeon entrance.
He closed his eyes.
Outside, the torches in the courtyard burned steadily. Somewhere distant, a night bird called once and went silent. The palace settled around him with the quiet groaning of ancient stone.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Ethan slept without setting an alarm.
