I picked up the bandana I had wrapped around my face. The thing reeked of sweat, dust, and something vaguely metallic. Blood, probably. Not mine, hopefully.

  "Wash this before you put it back on," I muttered to myself, dropping the soiled cloth onto the nightstand with distaste.

  The sword belt came next. I unbuckled it with fumbling fingers (the clasp mechanism was different from what I'd expected, more complicated) and finally got it loose. The weight of the blade made the leather pull as I set it carefully against the bed frame. The weapon leaned there, pommel catching the dim light from the window.

  The blue coat proved easier to handle. I shrugged out of it, feeling the heavy fabric slide down my arms. Quality material, I noted. Better than anything I'd owned back in my old life. The dye was rich, the weave tight. I hung it on the iron hook by the door, where it settled with barely a wrinkle.

  Then I collapsed onto the straw mattress.

  The thing crunched under me, poking through the thin canvas covering in about a dozen places. Not exactly the Sleep Number bed I'd saved up for three years to buy. That felt like a lifetime ago now. Hell, it was a lifetime ago. Different life. Different world. Different body.

  I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

  Angus.

  The name sat in my mind like a stone. Angus the Grim. My boss. The man who'd just paid me for murder and encouraged me to spend it on "companionship."

  The man I was going to kill.

  No. Not "going to." The man I would have to kill if I followed Roxam's original path. That was the storyline. That was how Skullface Roxam became the leader of the gang that would eventually be renamed the Venom Syndicate. He overthrew Angus, took control, and spent the next several years building a criminal empire strong enough to assault Allstone Academy.

  But that meant killing him. Actually killing him.

  The thought made my stomach churn.

  In the game, killing was simple. Straightforward. You fought NPCs in third person, dodging their attacks, parrying others, all the while keeping your health and stamina up, or mana if you were casting spells. Eventually, you knocked down the enemy's health to zero, and they died. Easy peasy.

  But that had been on a screen. Pixels and polygons and carefully scripted dialogue trees. Click the attack button, watch the animation play out, collect your XP and loot when the health bar hit zero.

  This was different.

  Angus was real here. He breathed. He laughed. He sweated and bled and probably had favorite foods and childhood memories and maybe even people who loved him. The jolly demeanor might have been an act, but the person underneath? That was genuine. That was actual consciousness experiencing actual existence.

  Could I kill that?

  The ethical implications made my head spin. Sure, Angus was a crime lord. He ran gambling dens and probably smuggling operations and who knew what else. He'd ordered people killed; I'd just been paid for exactly that kind of work. By any reasonable moral standard, he was a bad guy.

  But did that make it right to kill him? To murder him in cold blood so I could take his place?

  And even if I could justify it ethically... could I actually do it?

  Physical capability, I meant.

  I'd been in exactly one real fight in my entire life. Eighth grade. Marcus Sullivan decided I'd looked at his girlfriend wrong during lunch. I hadn't even known who his girlfriend was. He'd shoved me into the lockers, I'd shoved back, and then his fist had connected with my nose in a burst of pain and stars.

  I'd gone down like a sack of potatoes.

  The fight lasted maybe ten seconds. I'd gotten a broken nose, a black eye, and a week of suspension for "fighting on school property." Marcus got the same suspension and a reputation boost. I got bullied for crying.

  That was the full extent of my combat experience.

  And now I was supposed to kill a man who could reportedly tear people in half with his bare hands? A man who stood head and shoulders above his own guards, all of whom looked like professional thugs? A man who'd survived long enough in the criminal underworld to become its undisputed leader?

  Right.

  I let out a bitter laugh.

  Except... I wasn't me anymore, was I?

  I looked down at my hands. Roxam's hands. Scarred, callused, with thick fingers and prominent knuckles. These weren't the soft girly hands of someone who'd spent twenty years playing video games and eating overpriced delivery pizza. These were the hands of a fighter. A killer.

  I was Skullface Roxam now. Vicious outlaw. Wanted criminal. Someone who'd already murdered duchy guards for money.

  The body came with the skills, didn't it? Muscle memory. Training. Experience. I'd moved through that crowd downstairs without conscious thought, my hand falling to the sword hilt automatically when that drunk had gotten too close. I'd known how to unbuckle the sword belt even though the mechanism was unfamiliar. My fingers had found the clasp through pure instinct.

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  So maybe I could kill Angus. Maybe Roxam's body already knew how. Maybe I just needed to trust it, let the training take over, and-

  But how strong was I, really?

  In the game, Roxam had been a level 40 boss fight. Challenging but beatable. His stats had been in the mid-to-high ranges for that level bracket. Strength around 135, Dexterity at 152, Constitution at 108. His Wisdom had been notably low at 53, making him vulnerable to mental status effects if you'd built your character that way.

  But would those stats even translate here? Did this world operate on the same numerical system? Was there even a system at all, or was that just game abstraction of more complex reality?

  If this was Path of Exemplar, I could just hit escape on my keyboard and bring up the status window. Check my stats, review my skills, maybe even access my inventory to see what I…

  Green light flared in front of my face.

  I jerked back, nearly falling off the mattress.

  A translucent screen hung in the air, glowing softly in the dim room. Text scrolled across it in neat columns, displaying information in the exact same format as the game's UI.

  I stared.

  Then I stared some more.

  "What the hell?"

  The screen remained, steady and solid despite its translucent appearance. I reached out slowly, half expecting my hand to pass through it, but my fingers met resistance. Cool glass-like surface that rippled slightly under my touch.

  A status screen.

  An actual, functioning status screen.

  But that shouldn't be possible. In Path of Exemplar, only the player character could access the UI. NPCs couldn't see it, couldn't interact with it, couldn't even acknowledge its existence. It was strictly a player-side tool.

  Roxam was an NPC. A boss character. He shouldn't have access to this.

  Unless...

  Unless I wasn't just in Roxam's body. Unless my presence here, my consciousness inhabiting him, had somehow granted him player privileges? Or maybe the system recognized me as the player and applied the UI accordingly, regardless of which character I occupied?

  More questions without answers.

  I sighed and decided to worry about the metaphysics later. Right now, I had actual, actionable information in front of me.

  Starting with the name.

  Roxam Archer.

  A smile tugged at my ruined lips despite everything. The game had never revealed Roxam's surname. Players had speculated endlessly in the forums; some thought it was Skull, others guessed Death or Graves or other edgy options. Turned out it was just Archer. Simple. Almost ordinary.

  I liked it.

  Level 27 made sense. In the game, Roxam had been level 40 during the boss fight at Allstone Academy. That happened at the end of Act 1. If I was in the past, years before those events, then obviously he'd be lower level.

  The class information caught my attention next.

  Duelist.

  Relief washed through me. Duelist was an advanced class, the evolution of Swordsman. You could only unlock it after getting Swordsman to level 20 and meeting certain skill requirements with bladed weapons. I'd been half afraid Roxam would still be a base Swordsman at this point, which would have meant grinding out levels and training to evolve the class.

  But no. He was already a Duelist. That saved me weeks, maybe months of work.

  Even better: the subclass slot was empty.

  In Path of Exemplar, every character could have one main class and two subclasses. The subclass provided additional skills and options, letting you customize your build. Most NPCs had their subclasses pre-assigned, locked in, unchangeable.

  But Roxam's was open. Empty. Ready for me to fill with whatever I wanted.

  The possibilities flooded my mind. I could go Shadowblade for stealth synergy. Or Battlemage for elemental damage. Or even Venomblade if I wanted to lean into the poison theme of the syndicate.

  But no. I already knew what I wanted.

  I had a build in mind. A specific, powerful build that would make Roxam an absolute monster. A build that had carried me through the Super Evil ending on the highest difficulty. A build that would let me not just survive in this world, but thrive.

  I just needed the right pieces to make it work.

  The attributes looked reasonable. Weaker than Roxam's endgame stats, obviously, but solid for level 27. Strength and Dexterity were his highest stats, which made sense for a Duelist. Constitution was respectable. Intelligence was low, but I didn't need it for the build I had planned. Wisdom would need some attention, but that was for later.

  Then there was Charisma.

  Negative fifty five.

  Most people would see that as a problem. A flaw. Something to fix as soon as possible. Charisma affected dialogue options, merchant prices, companion loyalty, and a dozen other social systems.

  I grinned.

  Negative Charisma was perfect.

  The game's community had figured out early on that negative Charisma wasn't actually bad, it just worked differently. Where positive Charisma made people like you, negative Charisma made people fear you. The players called it "Intimidation," and it opened entirely different dialogue trees. Darker options. More aggressive solutions.

  And certain builds (specific, powerful builds) actually scaled with negative Charisma. The lower your Charisma dropped, the stronger certain skills became.

  The build I had in mind was one of them.

  I scrolled down to the traits section, studying the list.

  Longsword at Expert level. That was his highest combat trait, which tracked with the weapon leaning against my bed. Expert meant he'd put serious time into training with that weapon type. Probably thousands of hours.

  But that was a problem.

  The build I wanted required a saber. Specifically, a unique saber that I knew the location of, one of the best weapons in the entire game for the path I intended to walk. But to wield it effectively, to unlock its full potential, I needed Saber at Expert level minimum. Preferably Master.

  Right now? Adept.

  That meant training. Lots of training. I'd have to deliberately stop using the longsword and switch to saber practice exclusively, grinding out hundreds of hours of work to push that trait up through the ranks.

  Adept to Expert. Expert to Master if I really committed.

  The other traits were useful but not critical. Unarmed Combat at Adept would help if I got disarmed. Riding would allow me to ride horses, which was quite a handy trait since I had no idea how to even approach a horse. Thrown Weapons would let me have a ranged option in combat.

  Everything was pointing in the right direction. I had the class, the empty subclass slot, the negative Charisma, and a clear path forward.

  I just needed to commit to it. Put in the work. Make the choices that would transform Roxam from a mid-level thug into something far more dangerous.

  The status screen flickered slightly, then faded, leaving me alone in the dim room with my thoughts.

  Outside, the sun was setting. Orange light crept through the window, painting the rough walls in amber and shadow.

  I had work to do.