Scenario developer, design director, character illustratorâŚâŚ hundreds of names flickered as they moved across the monitor. I simply stared at the screen vacantly. The names entered my line of sight, but none of them reached my head.
How long have I been here?
My thoughts werenât flowing properly. It felt as if my brain were still wandering about.
I turned my stiff head. The clock on the wall was pointing towards the number 9. Was it 9 in the evening or in the morningâŚâŚ? Now that I think about it, the world outside the window was bright. It was 9 in the morning.
I had confirmed that it was 9 oâclock at least 3 times ever since I sat at my desk. In other words, it has been, at the very least, 36 hours since I started playing this game.
âHaah.â
I couldnât help but smirk.
âThatâs a serious gamer for you.â
I was about to say something more, but I stopped myself. The cola I had drunk straight from the plastic bottle last night had dried up and was stuck to the side of my mouth. Once I opened my mouth, which had not uttered a single world for at least 36 hours, an unpleasant sensation washed over me. This was bad. If people could smell my breath right now, then there would definitely be a petition to revise a special law for bad breath. I would most likely be made to stand in court and make a counter-argument about it being an unfair trial, but the judges would pass out because of my bad breath and I would be imprisoned without a trialâŚâŚ.
I probably held out by having cup ramen and boiled eggs for three to four meals.
The oiliness of the cup ramen was stagnant on the bridge of my nose, my cheeks, and my skull. I felt like my entire body had become a large plastic bag for food waste. The comparison isnât completely wrong. If you exclude the fact that food waste is collected by someone and Iâm not.
âHah.â
I scoffed again. I turned my head back.
Finally, the status screen of the player character appeared on the monitor.
I leaned my head back. I buried myself into my chair and quietly gazed up at the ceiling. My brain had left my head and went inside the monitor, so I only had a skull right now. Thatâs how I felt.
The highest stats which a player could possibly reach.
âHow manyâŚâŚ? The last one was the 16th run?â
I was so out of it that my words came out as individual words and not as complete sentences. My thought process wasnât going in a straight line. It was hopping around here and there as if it were going across some stepping stones. I started to murmur to myself in order to force my line of thought together.
A dungeon RPG, .
This game was infamous for its extreme difficulty curve. You couldnât even defeat the mid-boss on your 1st playthrough, nor could you possibly dream about reaching the last boss. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and eventually, after painstakingly going through 17 playthroughs, I barely managed to beat the last boss, the Great Demon Lord Baal.
The Great Demon Lord Baalâs army was powerful. However, there was a gap between them and myself. The gap known as multiple playthroughs.
Since ancient times, nothing could beat grinding. I beat his forces after having accumulated experience and knowledge as a player. From Baalâs perspective, it probably seemed like I was cheating, but what can you do? Thatâs the difference between a player and the NPC system.
Nevertheless, the emotion I felt after the moment of victory wasnât happiness. No.
It was a sense of futility that was more sticky than the oily residue that had settled on my face.
âSo this yearâs summer break is over as well, huh?â
A single room.
Iâm not sure when this room was last cleaned as there were clumps of hair rolling around. My major textbooks were piled up here and there, creating several Leaning Tower of Pisas. At the end of my leave of absence, I made the resolution to get first place in my major. The self-improvement book I poured my allowance into in order to purchaseâŚâŚwas currently making up a low hill of dust.
This wasnât it.
I was filled with ambition when I started to live apart from my family.Â
ââŚâŚ.â
I looked around my room.
This was my world.
Even this small, shabby, and worthless room was a world of its own. Like a dried-up ball of used tissue, only the residue of a personâs once overflowing desire remained without having accomplished anything.
Ha! Was this not completely different from the world inside my monitor?
That world doesnât lie. If you do something, then it will always be accumulated. It wonât disappear for no reason. Leveling up once will always be a level up. You wouldnât drop from level 90 to level 80 or lose your stats just because you did nothing for a while. If it exists, then it will continue to exist! For some reason, everything in this world dissipates without leaving anything behind. Which one exactly is the real world? \nââŚâŚDamn it.â
I grabbed my mouse.
ăWould you like to save your data for your next playthrough?ă
I naturally clicked the ăYesă button that had appeared on the screen. I then shut my laptop temperamentally.Â
I felt like I couldnât help myself for some reason. I left my house.
* * *
Late summer.
I was welcomed by the humid air. In other words, the warm air was the only thing that would possibly welcome me. My lungs felt as if they were filled with steam. I entered the convenience store just outside my house and bought a pack of cigarettes. I paid using the card my mother had given me.
âThank you for your patronage. Please come again.â
I half-heartedly received the convenience store employeeâs words as I left. I occupied an empty alley before I pulled out a cigarette from the pack and smoked it.
My phone suddenly started to ring. My mother was calling me. It seems the fact that I had bought some cigarettes with her card was sent to her phone as soon as I made my purchase. I quickly threw out my cigarette.
âHello? Is something wrong, Mother?â
My mother talked brightly through the phone. Of course, my motherâs voice was always bright, but I could tell there was a tinge of sad affection in it as well right now.
ăNo. I just wanted to know what my son was doing.ă
It was time for me to start lying from this point on.
âI was studying for a while, but I came outside to get some air. Iâm not sure if itâs because of the heat, but my head feels a bit fuzzyâŚâŚ.â
This sounded funny even to me. It was only natural that my head would feel fuzzy. I spent many hours staring at my monitor and partying all night with the electromagnetic waves that came out of it. If my head were fine after all that, then that in itself would be amazing.
âYeah, thatâs right. Yes.â
Referentially, my voice currently had no strength whatsoever in it. This wasnât because I felt sorry for lying to my mother, it was in order to make my lie seem even more convincing. If thereâs one thing that Iâm confident in, then itâs my ability to lie. Iâm not joking. If the Olympics had a mental category for lying, then I would have been exempted from military service a long time ago. (TL note: In Korea, if you are an Olympic athlete, you are exempt from military service.)
As I predicted, my mother took her sonâs voice as a red signal that his stamina was down. Her voice became gentler as she asked about how I was getting along. I continued my weak act. Yes, Iâm doing fine. Of course. Iâve been studying fairly well. I truly had quite the fluent tongue.
ăEat whatever you want. If thereâs something you need to buy, then buy it. If youâre going to drink some coffee as well, then drink those expensive and good ones. If you have to, why not go into a refreshing cafe and study there? You know that our family isnât as unfortunate as to be unable to support our sonâs spending habits, right?ă
I smiled sincerely and answered.
âYes, Mother. Then Iâm going to head back inside to continue studying.â
\n-Richya: The mental ward is always accepting patients.
GodRumBlade: Is this the mental ward that I only heard about in the rumors?
-Yulberia: Iâm here for the mental ward. (2)
-JungYookJjum: Hey, how did you capture the mage Roumei? I did what the pinned thread said and beat Gaapâs dungeon, but the affection points cap didnât go up.
-MrTrashKim: Youâre still just a shut-in gamer.
Click.
I stopped scrolling down my mouse wheel. My gaze stopped at that reply.
âYouâre still just a shut-in gamer.â
Below that reply, there were a bunch of other sarcastic responses saying that everyone here was a shut-in gamer. The other members had taken my side.
I was grateful. However, I knew. I knew that what that person had said was true. I truly was nothing more than a shut-in gamer.
More importantly.
âI donât care much about it anymore.â
Even though I realized that I had turned into a shut-in gamer, I didnât have the resolve to stop. This fact made me less than a shut-in gamer and into a person who was like food waste. Food waste that had a good enough head and tongue to use his motherâs card to buy a cup of cafe mocha that was âŠ6,500.
At that moment, another thread appeared on the bulletin board.
VenusPanties, this person was a site member that I would frequently get into arguments with.
He had more knowledge about the game than anyone else and because his view on Dungeon Attack was different from mine, we collided often. We were the two shut-in gamers that had been acknowledged by the entire community.
If someone were to ask how to beat a dungeon, then the two of us were capable of immediately writing down 17 different ways to beat it. In other words, VenusPanties and I were individuals who had devoted their lives to Dungeon Attack.
Referentially, in the case of VenusPanties, they were also knowledgeable with inside information which only the game developers should know, so some people have started to suspect that they were also a developer.
âWhat does this person want now?â
***
TL note: As you can tell, the start is very different compared to the LN. I guess it was changed a lot because the author had a firmer grasp on how he wanted the MC to be by the time he started writing the LN.
Anyway, Iâm not sure how I intend to announce these releases on my Discord server. The DD WN has a lot of chapters so pinging everyone for all of them would probably be excessive. I might just put a post in #announcement without a ping whenever I finish a chapter. Maybe Iâll ping for the first chapter of certain segments. Weâll see.