Chapter 1
Dungeon and Soul.
Once Korea’s number-one MMORPG, it was a doomed game on the verge of shutting down after pushing microtransactions too hard and running the game like absolute maniacs.
But just as there are people who would plant an apple tree even if they knew the world would end tomorrow...
Even now, with just one hour left before the servers shut down, someone was still beating up the few remaining players in the Arena.
The veil, woven in harmony from black and white, whipped violently.
Then a steel fist slammed into the Berserker’s stomach.
The matchup between an Infighter and a Berserker was 4:6.
Against a Berserker, the strongest class in a straight-up damage race, the Infighter was at a disadvantage.
But there was one way to overcome that gap in class matchups...
The player’s skill.
Despite the unfavorable matchup, the Infighter in a nun’s habit easily dodged the Berserker’s attack and immediately threw a punch.
Crack. The sound of breaking bones rang through the Arena.
The poor Berserker collapsed completely.
[ViolenceSuperWarrior : Ah, you f***ing piece of shit.]
[Zion : EZ]
[ViolenceSuperWarrior : You piece of shit. But what now? All I did was eat and play this, and now I can’t even do that anymore.]
[Zion : Shut up]
The man was enjoying a beer and the sweet taste of victory on the other side of the monitor, but his expression crumpled like a sheet of paper.
He wasn’t exactly pleased to have taken a hit from the likes of ViolenceSuperWarrior, who always got utterly wrecked by him in duels.
But instead of firing back, he checked the time on his phone.
It was 11:30. There were roughly thirty minutes left until shutdown.
[Zion : Want to go another round?]
[ViolenceSuperWarrior : Screw you. I’m done with this shitty game. Later.]
[Zion : You’re only quitting now, with thirty minutes left before shutdown? What a brain-dead move.]
[ViolenceSuperWarrior : 🖕🖕]
“What a quitter. A true fighter should keep queuing for duels until the servers shut down. You’ve got a long way to go.”
Once again disappointed by ViolenceSuperWarrior, who never failed to disappoint, he queued up for a match.
But of course, there was no way he’d get matched with anyone.
After all, he was ranked number one in the Dungeon and Soul Arena.
Even on a normal day, it took over thirty minutes to find a match.
With only thirty minutes left until shutdown, there was no need to say more.
“...Still, I’ve been playing this game for over twenty years, ever since I was in elementary school... Now that it’s really shutting down, I’m a little sad.”
Looking at his nun character standing alone and proud in the Arena, the man took another sip of beer.
Amazingly, he was a veteran player who’d been playing nonstop from the game’s first day of service right up until now, just before shutdown.
A lot had happened.
There’d been plenty of shitty times, too...
But looking back, even those were memories now.
“I was really happy when I reached number one in the Arena rankings. Winning the official tournament wasn’t bad, either...”
Dungeon and Soul pushed microtransactions extremely hard, but surprisingly, PvP wasn’t all that bad in that regard.
That was how the man had managed to reach number one in the PvP rankings without being a whale.
Even that would soon be nothing but a memory...
The man sighed.
He’d had his fill of fun, and yet, strangely, he couldn’t bring himself to click the exit button.
“I’d like to play just one more duel before shutdown... But this shitty, dead game won’t find me a match until the very end.”
The man downed the rest of his beer.
Maybe it was because there was only about a minute left until shutdown. The beer tasted bitter.
People would say this to the players of this game.
Why keep wasting your time on such a piece of trash instead of quitting ages ago...?
Yeah, they were right. Objectively speaking, it was definitely a shitty game.
But... even if everyone else thought it was a shitty game...
“It was the best game in the world to me.”
[Would you like to continue into your next life?]
“Yeah, thanks for all your hard wor—Huh? What did that just say?”
Maybe it was because he was getting old.
Just as his eyes were about to well up over a game like this, he sensed something was off.
At first, he thought it was just a forced shutdown prompt.
But on closer inspection, hadn’t it said something a little different?
However, he had no way to check the message again.
The moment it appeared in front of him, he’d reflexively clicked Yes.
“What is this? A virus? But what kind of virus even exists in the world...”
At that moment, a dazzling light poured from the monitor and engulfed him.
Fortunately, the light didn’t last long.
But when he opened his eyes again, he was in a ruin.
Along with an unwieldy nun’s habit and veil.
◇
Her silver-white hair, a stark contrast to her pitch-black nun’s habit, fluttered in a beautiful arc.
There was something strange about her eyes.
Her gray-tinted eyes held distinct cross-shaped irises.
Along with those strange eyes, her white skin and tightly closed lips made her look less like a person and more like a doll.
“...No matter how I look at it, this isn’t a dream.”
The girl raised a hand and pinched her cheek.
It would have been better if this were a dream steeped in lingering regret... but even that wasn’t the case.
That didn’t mean she could simply accept reality, either.
Could anyone accept becoming a game character overnight?
But the harsh reality remained unchanged.
Even as she struggled to make sense of things, it offered her no reprieve from its cold demands.
Grrr-
“I’m hungry.”
For any living creature, taking in calories was a necessity, not a choice.
And game characters were no exception.
In the end, the girl sighed and forced herself to stand up.
That was enough pointless denial of reality for now.
At the very least, she needed food and water to deal with her hunger and thirst.
She could think about everything else later.
Clank.
“...”
The sound of metal clashing seemed to bother her.
The girl frowned.
She was unquestionably human.
And yet, where her shoulder should have held soft flesh and bone, there was a cold metal prosthetic arm.
It didn’t interfere with her movements, but...
Having a perfectly good arm turn to metal overnight wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.
‘At least I won’t be completely helpless if some creep shows up.’
Trying to forget her miserable reality by focusing on the positives, the girl started walking.
First, she needed to scout the area.
They say that even if a tiger carries you off, you’ll survive if you keep your wits about you.
All she could do was hope that saying applied to her situation, too.
After wandering around and doing her best to ignore the irritating metallic scraping,
the girl realized this place was an abandoned church.
‘The cross, the half-collapsed ceiling, even the mostly destroyed pews... No matter how I look at it, this has to be a church.’
The ceiling and walls would protect her from the wind and rain to some extent, and the intact pews could serve as a bed.
The problem was that she couldn’t find any food to satisfy her hunger.
In fact, it was getting worse by the minute.
The girl was a little flustered by the intense hunger she was experiencing for the first time in her life.
She’d only skipped one meal. How could she be this hungry?
‘Could this body really be the reason?’
In her previous life, she’d been a light eater.
She’d even gotten by on one meal a day.
She did like drinking, though...
Compared to that, this body she’d unwillingly ended up in kept complaining as if it were about to die just because she’d missed a single meal.
After wandering around the church for about ten minutes,
the girl finally concluded that she had no choice but to leave the church.
‘I’ve searched high and low, but there’s no food, or even a single usable item. I have no choice but to go outside.’
Of course, both in her previous life and now, she’d always strongly avoided going out unless it was absolutely necessary, like going to work.
But this was far beyond the realm of personal preference.
Without a word, the girl lifted her small chin and looked at the sky.
Beyond the hole in the ceiling, countless stars glittered across the night sky.
And... there was a moon. Two of them, in fact.
‘No matter how I look at it, this definitely isn’t the Earth I know. What if I go outside and get into danger?’
If Earth had two moons, the news would have been in an uproar ages ago.
She’d never seen a single article about that.
In other words... this wasn’t Earth.
And since there was no status screen, it couldn’t be the world of the game, either.
She was inhabiting a game character, so she probably wasn’t weak, but she had no desire to go looking for danger.
Grrr-
“...”
Grrr-
“Ugh.”
But in the end, she couldn’t overcome her survival instincts.
At this point, she felt like she could eat a piece of wood lying around.
What the hell was this body made of that it kept growling like this just because she’d skipped one meal?
It was already in this state after missing one meal.
She didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if she skipped breakfast, too.
“What could possibly happen if I just take a quick look around?”
Trying her best to look unfazed, the girl started walking.
◇
- Was that a Cataclysm just now?
- Wasn’t that over way too quickly for a Cataclysm?
- No new area appeared. An abandoned church you don’t normally see showed up on Floor 1.
- Any NPCs there? Maybe we can pick up a quest.
- I’m going to investigate now.