Chapter 1
[Searching for a new world seed.]
[Discovered the ruined world of Yeoulrim.]
“A game where you grow things from cells… I wonder if it'll be fun?”
Milky Way
It was the game I’d just started playing.
It was a game where you grew everything from cells to the universe. When I moved my mouse around the main screen, the stars onscreen were sucked in like they were entering a wormhole. It looked pretty convincing.
“The main screen passes.”
I started the game with high hopes.
It had been discontinued and abandoned, but as long as I could have fun with it for a day, that was enough!
Chasing small joys was my mission.
Let’s enjoy it to the fullest.
*
“Why can’t I get to spaceeee!!”
How many months had passed?
I watched civilization develop while playing, even eating my meals and right up until I fell asleep.
The elements of evolving from cells with traits of your choosing, as well as the fantasy elements like magic, were right up my alley.
But there was one hurdle I couldn't overcome.
“Those damn aliens!….”
Invasion.
When you moved from civilization to space, overwhelmingly powerful enemies invaded and destroyed your world.
To put it simply, I got hard-reset.
Everything I'd raised was wiped out in an instant.
I repeated that dozens of times, and every time, the world was destroyed because it couldn't withstand the invasion.
“Is this really the right difficulty for a game??”
It was an abandoned game, so there was no one I could complain to.
All I could do was sit there and agonize over it by myself.
But if I couldn't do it, I'd keep trying until I could!
37th extinction.
96th extinction.
247th extinction.
666th extinction.
After countless experiments and retries, I finally managed to repel the invasion.
Though my civilization was in tatters.
“Heh heh. A new era.”
At last, the space age.
Just then, I saw a civilization building and launching a spaceship onscreen.
I watched, utterly focused and silent.
At long last, the world that had been destroyed hundreds of times…
Ding!
[Congratulations. The will of World Yeoulrim has recognized you as its master.]
[An update is required to access this authority.]
[Would you like to proceed with the update?]
“Huh? An update?”
Just as my immersion reached its peak, a mysterious message appeared.
It was an abandoned game, so why was it suddenly asking me to update? And what did it mean that Yeoulrim's will recognized me as its master?
Could it be…
Some kind of DLC the developer had hidden away?
And they were giving it away for free?!
“How could I say no to that?”
Click.
I accepted the offer.
I understood it instinctively already.
There was a 99.99% chance this update would unlock a power as mighty as a god's.
Of course I was going to accept.
[You have accepted the offer.]
[Yeoulrim's will is being inherited.]
[Become the master of Yeoulrim, build a civilization, work miracles, and revive the fallen world.]
My guess had been right.
This was an event where I gained the power of a god.
The miracle was probably some convenient power, like changing the terrain or controlling the weather.
Hidden content in an abandoned game, huh?
I knew it was a god-tier game.
But… I never expected the patch to apply to reality.
[Update complete.]
[Beginning inheritance.]
“Huh?”
Fwoosh!-
Suddenly, light appeared from my body.
I was just about to mutter, What is this? when a tremendous shock surged through my entire body.
“Kgh!?….”
Thud.
My vision turned pure white.
After that, I remembered nothing.
Ding!
[Congratulations.]
[You have become the master of Yeoulrim.]
[Your body cannot withstand the will of the world. Reconstructing a body befitting your rank.]
[50% of World Power consumed.]
Ding!
[Clash with Earth's system detected.]
[Offering World Power to Earth as tribute.]
[Generating a status window and forcing an awakening.]
[A total of 2,863,125pt of World Power has been consumed. Make your species prosper and gather faith.]
Unread logs slid past in a blur.
It was the moment my life was forcibly changed.
*
“This can't be real.”
What had happened?
I couldn't help wondering if this was really reality.
And for good reason: I'd passed out and woken up in a woman's body.
I looked in the mirror.
A girl met my eyes.
Even when she frowned, she didn't look intimidating.
She was so cute that if I ran into her on the street, I’d want to scoop her up and hug her tight.
And that… was me.
“There's no way.”
Blank stare~
I touched my cheeks with both hands.
The sensation beneath my fingertips was vivid.
Then an indescribable shock surged up in waves and struck my head.
“No waaay!!?!”
My face contorted as I held my cheeks.
No matter how much I yelled and flailed, my changed body didn't go back to normal.
In the end…
“I-it's a dream, right? It has to be a dream.”
Smack!
I slapped myself.
I mean, this was ridiculous.
It had to be a dream.
But…
“Ugh.”
If it was a dream, it shouldn't hurt.
What was this pain??
Had I woken up already, maybe?
I lowered my head and looked at my hands.
They were small.
Small hands.
A little girl's hands.
“Why won't I wake uuuuup!!?”
I screamed again.
Unlike before, my dainty, cute hands opened wide at my will.
And then…
I'm hungry.
I'm drowsy.
I'm warm.
Clear sensations.
The sensations were too vivid to be a dream, so I had no choice but to accept it.
“Why is this real?”
I had a breakdown over the fact that I’d passed out while playing a game and woken up as a little girl.
“How am I supposed to live from now on?….”
I fumbled around.
I touched my own body.
Soft skin.
A delicate voice.
The unreal feeling of touching my slightly rounded chest and long hair.
How could something like this happen?
Suddenly, one possibility crossed my mind.
“Could it be an awakening?”
That would explain it.
Sometimes people Awaken as Hunters and change species, so changing gender wasn't out of the question.
“I became a Hunter? Me??”
Yes, that had to be it.
I Awakened and became a little girl.
People who suddenly gain powerful abilities or change their appearance because of some unexpected trigger.
We call people like that Hunters.
“Hmm….”
I’d always thought it had nothing to do with me.
They were just people I envied.
And to think it was actually my story all along.
Still, to have it happen so abruptly—and in a little girl's body, no less?
Isn't that insane?
“Status Window.”
Let’s check right away.
They say Hunters can see a status window. All I had to do was check it.
Then maybe I’d be able to accept it, at least a little.
『Player Information.』
Name : [Register]
Species : ???
Strength : 6.
Agility : 6.
Intelligence : 6.
Mana : 6.
Divinity : 1.
(Special) World Power : 7,836pt
Skills : (Transcendent) Yeoulrim.
“What is this?”
Instead of making sense of things, I was even more confused.
At a glance, the status window was strange.
Uniform base stats.
A Transcendent-grade skill.
My species listed as question marks.
A stat name I'd never seen before.
There were so many strange things that I almost forgot I’d just turned into a little girl.
I could accept that my stats were lower than an ordinary person's.
I could accept that my species was marked with question marks, too.
“Divinity? World Power??”
What were those?
One was low, and the other was high.
They didn't seem related to strength, which only made me more curious about them.
Maybe…
Flick.
I shifted my gaze slightly downward.
There I saw a skill called Yeoulrim.
My instincts were telling me it might be related to this.
[(Transcendent) Yeoulrim.]
[Govern everything in Yeoulrim.]
[The development of Yeoulrim will become your power.]
Yeoulrim.
My one and only skill.
But why was this a skill?
Yeoulrim was the name of one of the worlds in Milky Way, the game I’d been enjoying so much.
A world I'd worked hard to raise.
My world, filled with affection.
A world that was destroyed by invasions every time.
A world I reset countless times.
Right.
The name of a world in the game.
That was Yeoulrim.
“Why is this registered as a skill?”
I went straight to my computer.
My smaller body made the chair uncomfortable, but I raised it and logged into the game.
[Data does not exist.]
The game failed to launch.
After that message appeared, the game's executable file was automatically deleted.
“What? Can that really happen?….”
Blink, blink.
Even when I closed my eyes and opened them again, nothing had changed.
The game I’d worked so hard at was gone, and the world I’d raised had been registered as a skill.
I thought about it for a while.
Soon, I reached a conclusion.
“Did I… Awaken because of a game?”
Awakening while playing a game.
That summed it up in a single phrase.
Awakened with the frail body of a little girl and a mysterious skill called Yeoulrim.
I had Awakened.
*
One hour.
Two hours.
How long had I agonized over it?
I finally managed to reach a conclusion.
“Phew… It can't be helped.”
I should adjust to my new life.
Screaming would only make my throat hurt.
Even the status window couldn't tell me why I’d become a woman, and complaining wouldn't change me back.
I had no choice but to adjust to my changed body.
“I’ll just think of it as a game.”
Once I’d made up my mind, I felt better.
It was like I’d started a new game of life.
“So, how should I live from now on…?”
I know games inside and out.
I mapped out a direction, like planning a build.
I had no intention of working as a Hunter right away.
I didn't want to go around in a body like this, and I didn't even have the proper ID for it.
Besides, I knew nothing about this sort of thing.
And this body was so frail, too.
“How do I use Yeoulrim?”
Next, I tested my ability.
You never knew. Plenty of people had made a life for themselves with a single skill, even if their stats were weak.
I could only hope I was one of them.
I wasn't greedy, but I couldn't just let something I'd gotten slip through my fingers, could I?
“Yeoulrim!”
Calling out the skill's name was no use.
I looked it up, and apparently Hunters instinctively learned how to use their skills. At first, simply thinking that you wanted to use a skill was important.
Tap.
I sat still and closed my eyes.
I thought of the skill and focused.
I kept repeating to myself that I wanted to use it.
And the world I'd raised.
The moment I pictured it rising from a ruined world and marching forward as a new civilization…
“Huh!?”
Whoosh!!!
I was so startled that a gasp escaped me.
My entire field of vision shifted.
Yeoulrim spread out before my eyes.
It was as if I had become the world of Yeoulrim, with everything in the world visible to me.
“This is….”
The sea.
The land.
Fish, plants, and animals.
Cliffs, mountain ranges, and grasslands.
If I wanted, I could even see the smallest cells.
In that moment, I instinctively realized something.
This place, which I'd thought was a game until just now…
It was real.
And the world I'd raised in the game was an illusion; this place was the ruined world itself.
It dawned on me like a mission.
I could feel what I was able to do.
[Use World Power to perform miracles.]
Those cells were my building materials.
I had to build a civilization once more.
I am…
the god of Yeoulrim.