"Good morning, Chef," one of the mages said as she walked past, keeping her head down and her voice neutral, though her heart was pounding. "Good luck in the lower levels."

"Thanks," Liam rumbled, handing her a wrapped piece of [Spiced Taro Bread]. "Take this. You look like you’re low on mana."

The girl nodded stiffly and hurried away, only to collapse against a pillar five meters later, clutching the bread as if it were a holy relic.

Liam began handing out the rest of the bread to the passing members. He moved through the crowd with the practised ease of a man who had run high-end kitchens back home, but every time his hand brushed a player’s fingers, they looked like they had been blessed by a saint.

Liam turned to his core party. Rogue was finally standing up, though he looked like he’d aged ten years. Mirra was sharpening a claw with a look of predatory boredom. Elizabeth, Noir, and Berry stood in a line, their eyes fixed on him. And Midnight, his newest "asset," stood at the back, clutching her bread like a lifeline.

"Listen up," Liam rumbled, his voice carrying to every corner of the silent hall. "The Catacombs are a Level 45+ zone. We’re not leading this charge; we’re following the main force. Keep your eyes open, and if you see a Ruby Eyed member trying to pull any ’PK’ stunts or lure mobs into the rear, let me know. I’ll make sure they never taste a meal better than raw flour for the rest of their time in this game."

The threat was oddly specific, but coming from the man who just served up a 20% Attack Buff to half the room, it was terrifying.

"Let’s go," Liam said, turning toward the glowing blue rift of the portal at the far end of the hall.

Liam paused at the swirling event horizon of the portal. The blue mana was humming, a low-frequency vibration that rattled his teeth. He reached into his interface with a sharp motion of his calloused thumb.

[NOTIFICATION: STREAM IS LIVE!]

[Title: Solo Chef Catacomb Run? (Just Kidding, Bringing the Squad)]

[Current Viewers: 200]

The chat log began to scroll at a speed that would have given a normal man a seizure.

[CMurdock]: "HE’S GOING IN! Look at that back muscle! The shirt is literally surrendering!"

[JudeTraore]: "Bro, is he actually bringing a dragon-kin as a pack mule? Legend."

[Daisycatt]: "Liam-sama, please don’t get hurt! I’ll buy 10,000 gift subs if you survive!"

[KikiKitten]: "Ruby Eyed is already inside, they’re gonna try to trap him."

Liam ignored the chat for now; he had a job to do. "Alright, team," he rumbled, his voice dropping into that low, authoritative baritone that makes the girl’s ears twitch.

"Check your HUDs buffs are active. Mirra, keep the heals tight Rogue, stay in the shadows, ugh, midnight... just don’t get eaten. If you die, I lose my best source of dragon-scale seasonings."

Midnight shivered, clutching her dagger. "Is that all I am to you? A spice rack?"

"A high-quality one," Liam replied without a hint of irony.

He stepped through.

The transition wasn’t like the usual; there was a sickening wrench in his gut, the feeling of a man being pulled through a straw.

The air on the other side was thick with the smell of wet earth, ancient rot, and something metallic. The Liches’ Catacombs were vast, a subterranean world of obsidian pillars and glowing purple moss. But as the last member of his party stepped through, the blue portal behind them didn’t just flicker; it shattered.

The fragments of mana dissolved into ash. The heavy silence of the tomb was broken by a voice that didn’t come from the system. It was ancient, cold, and echoed not in their ears, but directly in their souls.

"Welcome, children of the digital lie," the voice boomed, dripping with a terrifying, cosmic amusement.

"You thought this was a game world you could leave eventually? The people who died are dead for real, but the veil has been lifted. This is no game, this is another world."

"Death here is no longer a trip to the graveyard," the voice continued, each word like ice cracking. "It is permanent. The flesh you wear is the only flesh you have. You can never go back, and there is no ’Logout.’ There is only the crawl... or the end."

"We knew it was a death game," someone shouted from the back, voice cracking. "Just didn’t know we’d jumped worlds completely."

"Yeah," another voice called, hysterical laughter bubbling beneath. "Thought we were just trapped in a server, not... whatever the hell this is."

The heavy, metallic silence that followed the ancient voice was broken by the sound of Rogue’s knees hitting the obsidian floor with a hollow thunk.

"A different world?" Rogue whispered, his voice cracking. "I... I accepted the death game thing, and I made my peace with the ’trapped in the server’ trope. I just figured if I died, my brain just got fried by the headset, and that was that. But you’re telling me... my body is here? My actual, physical sexy self is in a basement filled with bone-dust and purple moss?"

A wave of fresh, raw terror rippled through the entry of the catacombs. For two weeks, they had lived with the cold weight of the "Death Game" reality, the knowledge that if their HP hit zero, they’d never wake up. But there was always a tiny, flickering hope that they were still "plugged in." That somewhere, in a sterile room on Earth, their real bodies were being kept alive by IV drips and desperate doctors.

That hope had just been vaporised.

"There is no IV drip," Mirra muttered, her lion ears pinned flat against her skull. Her usual predatory boredom was replaced by a sharp, jagged edge of panic.

[Tool Tip: Combat Synchronicity - ACTIVATED]

The "Protective Circle": The [Secret Fan Club] has formed a tight perimeter around Liam’s party. While they pretend to be checking their gear, any Ruby Eyed member looking at Liam with hostility is currently being targeted by 40 different ’Lock-On’ spells.