He clenched his fist, staring at the 'Game Over' message on the monitor.
The moment his character, which he had nurtured with all his heart, disintegrated in mid-air.
His anger was so intense that it was a miracle he didn’t throw the mouse.
But he quickly calmed down, as if it were a familiar routine, and put a cigarette in his mouth.
"Already, I've been clinging to this one game for over five years. My life is a legend too."
He lit the cigarette and looked out the window.
Well, am I in a position to call something trash?
My name, Park Hyun-myeong, was given to me by my parents, who wanted me to live wisely. But I have been living anything but wisely.
Outside the window, the sun was already high in the sky.
It was a weekday, not a weekend. The time when everyone is working hard.
I, a jobless bum, was immersed in the game without even washing up.
"It's time to quit."
Pangenia, a game that gained a brief popularity five years ago.
It was heavily criticized as a crazy game when it was released.
When a character dies, everything evaporates, and the player has to start the game from the beginning.
Moreover, it boasts an unprecedentedly extreme difficulty level, with no one having cleared it.
That's why, perhaps,
its brief popularity quickly faded.
Now, it's questionable whether anyone other than me is still playing the game.
The number of concurrent users recorded on the homepage server is always 0 or 1.
0 when I'm not playing, 1 when I am.
... A game with only one concurrent user, yet the server is still running. Impressive, but whatever.
I had plenty of time.
I had quit my job, and my girlfriend, who used to nag me every day, was gone.
"Damn."
He closed his eyes, a sudden memory surfacing.
-You're a good person, but... I'm sorry. I can't keep dating someone with no future. I'm at the age where I need to think about marriage.
His girlfriend of five years had dumped him.
It seemed he was the only one who had envisioned a future together.
-My friends are all dating and marrying people from famous large corporations. You... sigh. It's over. Let's break up.
She left, having made up her mind. What a bitch.
Thanks to her, I quit my job with no future. What should I do now? Maybe I should learn a skill.
Click. He picked up the mouse.
The screen soon displayed the message, "Do you want to create a character?"
"Life is a true grind."
He had the same thought when he created his previous character. But the last of the last is always the real last.
Of course, there were already many characters in the game, not just the one he had just deleted.
Some had reached the maximum level, and some were adorned with all kinds of treasures, but he was confident that none of them had the specs to clear the game.
This crazy game has an absurdly high difficulty level at certain points.
Bosses that seem to be there just to be broken, villains who suddenly stab you in the back, named NPCs who come to kill you when a bounty is placed on you, and so on...
For example, the character 'Brainbreaker' created by the game company to test the game had reached the maximum level and had quite a few treasure-grade items, but due to the many outrageous deeds he had committed, a special bounty was placed on him by named NPCs, and he was immediately killed upon logging in.
Some of the strongest named NPCs in the game world surpass the player's maximum level, so if you get targeted by them, your character is as good as deleted.
That's why I can't even log in.
Anyway,
"Let's play, let's play."
The character he had risked his life to create for the sake of clearing the game was ultimately deleted.
Thinking about the items he had equipped made him almost cry. He had gathered all the unique items from other characters...
There are a total of 15 unique items that have been revealed in Pangenia so far. He had poured all eight of them into one character.
It was a gamble of epic proportions. If he died, five years would be lost.
But he died. The character was deleted, and all the items were lost. Damn...
"Soul Points 1.6 million? Sure enough, unique items give a lot of points."
But when you lose something, you gain something too.
Pangenia has a Soul Point (SP) system.
When a character dies, the value they had is converted into points.
Players can use these Soul Points to give advantages to new characters.
Over the five years, he had accumulated about 80,000 SP from deleting hundreds of characters. But when the character with eight unique items was deleted, he gained 1.6 million Soul Points.
Not only the unique items, but the character also had the highest chapter progress, making it a near-clear spec.
"10,000 Soul Points for one talent? That's a lot."
The most common use of Soul Points is for 'talents.'
When creating a character, you can invest points in the talents you want, and the higher the points, the faster the growth.
The upper limit is also 10,000 Soul Points.
For reference, 'Miracle Conan,' who invested 10,000 Soul Points in swordsmanship, died as a master of swordsmanship.
"Normally, I would invest in the most straightforward lightning magic talent..."
There are a few set routes. The most straightforward is the lightning magic talent.
However, this game has hundreds of talent types to invest in. With 1.6 million points, you can max out a significant portion of the talents.
"If I invest more than 3,000 points in each of the five elements, the Void attribute will open. If I invest 5,000 points in the Void attribute, I can get the Voidless trait."
Talents can spawn other talents. It's a kind of hidden piece. There are countless such 'designs' in Pangenia. Even I, a veteran, couldn't grasp them all.
"Having the Voidless trait allows you to use opposing magic. You can also stack light and darkness affinity, so I have to get it."
In this game, a character cannot use conflicting attributes simultaneously unless they use tools or other mediums.
But with the 'Voidless trait,' you can use such opposing magic or attributes together.
However, it costs 10,000 points just to get the Voidless trait, leaving no points for other talents.
The game is already difficult. If a character dies, the invested SP is lost. It's hard to start with a clear talent.
"But the true joy of the game is randomness. Let's go, all random!"
Planning out the route only gives you a headache. If you truly want to enjoy and quit the game, nothing is as sure as all random.
All attributes and everything else, completely random!
It's a destructive choice, but a smile crept onto his face.
The purpose of the game is not to clear it but to enjoy it.
He decided to invest all 1.6 million points randomly.
"I can't clear it anyway."
He had tried every possible way to clear the game.
To put it bluntly, this game was not released to be cleared.
When Pangenia was released, the developer made this declaration to the users:
- I will grant one wish to the person who clears the game.
Grant a wish. Whatever it is, the developer promised to grant it. Many people challenged and were disappointed.
Even after five years, the game has not been cleared.
There were a few people until about a year ago, but now it's a game I play alone.
But I want to properly enjoy the game for the first and last time.
"Should I press it?"
I had tried randomizing the appearance before, but choosing 'all random' was a first for me. The 'all random' button is notorious for being highly inefficient and pointless.
It wasn't easy to make the decision to choose everything, the essence of my time.
I closed my eyes.
And.
Click!
I pressed it.
Firmly. The dice began to roll, and everything started to be decided randomly.
But that wasn't the end.
A message I had never seen before appeared on the monitor.
"Hidden Piece?"
【Brighter than light, darker than darkness, in the whirlwind of creation and destruction, may you be happy in Pangenia.】
The game intro also appeared.
Just as I was about to press the skip button as usual,
"Wha...?"
The words on the screen started to spill out and blur.
At that moment,
-You dog of a god! I will burn all the worlds you have created!
A grating voice echoed.
At the same time, a hellish scene unfolded before my eyes.
The Pangenia continent was falling and collapsing over the Earth.
The quality was so high that it looked like a real situation, not a cheap graphic.