Chapter 307: Game System
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 307: Game System
I spent the time until sunset watering the barley and beans and chasing away pests. When night fell, I caught minnows using a disposable fishing rod I’d fashioned from twigs gathered during the day.
The rod snapped every time I caught a fish, but that was fine. I’d stuffed my backpack full of twigs just for this.
During the thirty minutes that constituted a full day in the game, Dot Iwol didn’t rest for a single second.
As soon as the morning sun rose, I did an "open run" to the supermarket to sell the minnows. With that money, I bought fertilizer to spread on the fields and then hauled water by the bucketload. After watering the crops, I gathered twigs around the farm and went back to chasing birds.
And there was so much to do at night. Once I realized I could catch fish more expensive than minnows if I was lucky, Dot Iwol became like a water ghost, unable to leave the riverbank after dark.
To buy better fishing rods, corn seeds, and sprinklers, Dot Iwol worked tirelessly without ever letting his back touch the bed.
Then one day, a week later, the Village Chief came to visit Dot Iwol just as he was about to harvest his first batch of beans.
『Yiwol, how was your first week at the farm? Why don't you start introducing yourself to the villagers?』
Greetings, my foot.
I don’t need that! I’m busy!
Get out of the way, I have beans to harvest!
A quest window appeared, but I closed it, practically ignoring it. Why on earth should I give away my precious minnows to the villagers just to say hello? They should be the ones looking after a young man who just moved to the countryside.
Don’t you feel sorry for me, buying seeds by selling minnows? Don’t you feel pity seeing me haul water in buckets while you guys drive tractors on your hundred-acre farms?!
Fuming, I repeated the cycle of digging into the earth and planting seeds until my fingers felt like they would break.
I was planting barley while simultaneously chasing away both the crows and the Village Chief when I heard the door open.
“Hyung, what about dinner…? Hyung, are you still playing that game?!”
Jeong Seong-bin gasped in shock.
“It’s been four hours! Doesn’t your head hurt?”
“It does. But no matter how hard I try, I don’t think I can buy the sprinkler within the second week.”
“I told you, this is a healing game!”
Due to Jeong Seong-bin’s intervention, Dot Iwol’s Farm Revival Project came to an end after just one week.
At the same time, I received a warning usually reserved for elementary schoolers: I was only allowed to play games for one hour a day.
I quietly watched as Jeong Seong-bin saved the game record. Along with the prompt ‘Would you like to save?’, the play time and progress stage appeared on the screen.
“If I save it like this, I can continue from Day 8 next time, right?”
“Yes. You can even restart from any date you want. You could go back and replay from Day 6, which you’ve already passed.”
Jeong Seong-bin clicked the calendar tab to show me the saved records. The calendar displayed the pittance I had earned each day.
“My earnings were low on Day 4. If I were to restart, I’d probably start from there.”
“Hyung, that’s just game money…”
Jeong Seong-bin spoke in the tone he usually reserved for Jeong Seong-jun. I must look pretty pathetic right now.
“But the germination rate of the barley was bad that day, too. If I start over, isn’t there a chance the germination rate will change?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know if the germination rate is a fixed value or a variable one.”
Just as Jeong Seong-bin was about to hit the quit button, saying it would probably stay the same, something flashed through my mind.
“So, some elements can be restarted, but others can’t?”
“Right. For example, if you start the game over from the beginning, your money will reset, but your character name and design won’t change. Neither will the village terrain. And your total play time will keep accumulating.”
“But my money goes back to the start, and I have to listen to the Village Chief’s explanation all over again.”
The more I heard, the more familiar this structure felt.
A virtual world where the areas I could control and the areas I couldn't were clearly divided. NPCs giving orders to the player.
“Did you say this was a healing game?”
“It doesn’t seem to have healed you at all, Hyung… but I heard the original intent was a change of pace for modern people exhausted by urban society.”
And a clear sense of purpose.
“Seong-bin.”
“Yes?”
“Then, what if…”
I chose my words carefully, picking terms that would convey my meaning as clearly as possible.
“What happens if a bug appears in the game? For instance, if barley that’s supposed to take two days to grow suddenly grows in one, or if a bug occurs where the Village Chief is suddenly listed for sale at the supermarket, ruining the natural flow of the game.”
“Hmm…”
Jeong Seong-bin thought for a moment before answering.
“There are two main ways to handle it. Either the game company redistributes a version with the bug fixed, or they perform a rollback.”
“A rollback?”
“They can’t just ignore it, right? A bug like that would be fatal to the game’s progression.”
I’ve never particularly wondered about the existence of a god in my life.
“I suppose so.”
But it felt like the time had come to wonder. Very seriously.
When night fell, the members returned to their rooms one by one. I lay in bed, pretending to sleep with my eyes closed. My mind was busy organizing the "updates"—the things that had changed since I returned to the past.
Starting from the cancellation of my university admission and the acceptance of UA’s casting offer, I traced back the timeline of events to the scars on my back and my unfamiliar real name.
Seeing the size of the scars, I had considered the possibility that my sister’s existence might be uncertain, but I had tried to deny it. Now, however, I had to accept it.
‘Things that happened before I was even born might have changed.’
The age gap between my sister and me, or her personal details.
Even the faint traces of her that remained in my memory.
I couldn't know how far the System had intervened in my surroundings. That was all the more reason to constantly doubt my memories.
Even if I obtained information about my sister from the memory data, there was no guarantee it would still be valid in the present. I had gained another reason to follow the System’s instructions.
Conversely, things that hadn't changed included my grades and college entrance records, the deposit of 15 million won, a few relationships like the one with the Class President, and my high school.
‘Is there a common thread here?’
I thought the most likely candidate was the presence or absence of external intervention. The high school I chose and the grades I earned through my own studying hadn't changed at all.
It meant the System didn't intervene in parts that I decided and worked for ‘from start to finish.’
This was similar to the nature of the behavioral guidelines the System gave me.
The System urged me to do things; it never told me not to do something or to avoid it. Even if the instructions were vague, it clearly wanted me to move.
The fact that it left no room for me to use dirty tricks behind the scenes or rely on others' strength proved that.
Talking about professional ethics, setting a PR score, and imposing penalties for violations—all of it clearly meant I was expected to take the lead and act.
‘But the 15 million won bothers me.’
The 15 million won wasn't money I asked for. My sister lent it to me. This part kept me from being certain.
But since there were no further clues, I decided to sort it out later if anything else came to mind.
Next, I speculated on the extent of the System’s intervention.
A developer can induce a player’s actions. At the same time, they can increase or decrease the player’s level of freedom.
The System was also inducing my actions using KPIs and final rewards. It controlled my freedom through rewards and penalties, and it had the authority to provide records that ‘failed to normalize’—data no longer visible to ordinary users—as a reward.
And yet, while the System wanted to prevent my death, it couldn't fully protect me. It could warn me about the appearance of people like Yu Han-su and Hong Un-seop, but it couldn't control the unpredictable events they might cause.
To summarize, the System is ‘omnipotent in areas transcending human reach, but cannot control individual humans.’ Just as one can add or disable specific functions but cannot change the basic settings of a game.
It could drop my reputation to rock bottom or make the company atmosphere grim, but it couldn't suddenly make someone like Song Min-il like me.
The only person this System could manipulate like a puppet was me. I was the only one whose memories could be erased, whose emotions could be adjusted one by one, who could read others' minds, and who possessed inhuman recovery abilities.
At this point, I had to ask. Why me, of all people?
And the hint for that was…
“They can’t just ignore it, right? A bug like that would be fatal to the game’s progression.”
…I had already received it from Jeong Seong-bin.
I don’t know why or what I did wrong.
But it became certain: I had touched something in the System’s world, and the System, wanting to clean up the mess, had rolled back my life by nine years.
Fuck, so it treated a human being like a parasite living in its utopia.
My blood began to boil. As if waiting for this, the System responded.
+
[SYSTEM] A work order from the ‘Person in Charge’ has arrived.
▶ Assistant Manager Kim, you’re finally showing some of that office experience, aren’t you? You’re starting to get how the company works, right? Keep it up. But don’t neglect your main job. This is all to help you adapt to the company. Got it?
[SYSTEM] ‘Party B’ is notified of the ‘Member Resume Access’ function.
▷ As you have gained partial access to internal company secrets, ‘Party B’ is granted the opportunity to view ‘Member Resumes.’
▷ ‘Member Resumes’ can be viewed at any time, but since they contain information classified under ‘Confidentiality Matters,’ disclosure to outsiders is prohibited.
▷ If ‘Member Resume’ information is disclosed directly or indirectly, ‘Party B’ may be subject to disciplinary action according to the regulations for ‘Violation of Confidentiality Agreement.’
+
Right, this is how personnel information should be managed.
No wonder they wouldn't just show me the resumes. I’ll give them credit for this much.
I wanted to tear into the resumes immediately, but I held back. A reward that appeared out of the blue wasn't a priority.
Instead, I stayed up all night, reflecting on whether I had committed a sin great enough to reverse the flow of time—something no one is supposed to be able to defy—in my twenty-nine years of life.
The only thing that came to mind was fighting with my parents at my sister’s funeral. But even if that really was the trigger, I decided not to dwell on it, knowing I would have done the exact same thing all over again.