As the campfire flickered, Alaric looked at the map. To the north, the Nords were sharpening their axes. To the south, the Swadian knights were preparing a feast they wouldn't live to finish. The world was a chaotic sandbox of shifting borders and broken loyalties, and Alaric realized that in v1.174, the only thing truly "free" was the right to die for a cause—or live long enough to see your own banner fly over the walls of Suno.

He gripped his sword hilt and smiled. The conquest had just begun.

His first recruit was a drunken farmer named Rolf, who claimed to be a noble. Together, they chased down a group of looters near Praven. Alaric didn't fight with grace; he fought with the desperation of a man trying to rewrite his own code. He swung his blade, and for a moment, the world slowed. The physics of the strike felt real—the weight of the steel, the thud against leather armor.