Chapter 1
“If you’re so upset, why don’t you just show me how well you play the game?”
The man once revered as the God of Games, Kim Ganghan.
He had simply typed one wrong comment and somehow ended up trapped inside the world of a game fantasy novel.
***
“Son, you have to grow up healthy.”
The father had named his long-awaited son Ganghan for this very reason.
Kim Ganghan.
He had hoped the name would bring him health and strength.
Thanks to that hope, he had indeed grown up healthy.
Though not as robust as his name suggested, he was no weakling either.
Instead, another talent had blossomed.
Games.
“Hey, Ganghan, you’re really good!”
As an elementary student, he had easily beaten older and middle-school kids at the arcade.
“How does he do that?”
By middle school, he dominated the PC bang.
Once Kim Ganghan started playing, people from kids to old folks would gather just to watch.
And then, when he entered high school…
[South Korean youth, aged as a high-school student, won second place in the World Gaming Cyber Cup.]
[Kim Ganghan, rewriting history in RPGs.]
Kim Ganghan had announced the beginning of a legend.
‘Am I supposed to become like Lim Yo-hwan or Faker?’
His peers, not to mention the pro gamers everyone admired, were left speechless by his talent.
The rest of his life would be a straight path.
Kim Ganghan had predicted his own future with certainty.
There was no other way.
He was one of the top players in Korea, and arguably the world.
‘Maybe I can become a legend.’
At twenty in the boiling blood of his youth, ambition burned inside him.
It felt like it would definitely come true.
Until twenty-five, right before he was dragged into military service.
***
One wing spreads out to cover a city.
The other wing stretches across the sky and casts the mountains into shadow.
A dragon.
A supreme being so vast that no human could ever challenge it.
A tyrant appeared before the knight.
Clutching a white lance that gleamed faintly under the sunlight, the knight charged forward.
It looked reckless, almost suicidal.
The dragon lowered its eyes with contempt as it roared, mocking the fool daring to challenge it.
Anyone watching would have called it a foolish fight.
A single wing beat would shatter towers.
A single breath would turn forests to ash.
No matter how noble the knight, he would be nothing but an ant in the face of such a beast.
Yet the battle stayed perfectly balanced.
The white lance filled the battlefield.
The knight moved with surprising agility and an almost miraculous precision.
He dodged and blocked the dragon’s attacks with impossible ease.
The dragon’s body was so enormous that its volume and surface area far exceeded anything human could handle.
The knight’s strikes were beautiful, almost artistic.
The fight grew fiercer.
Even as the city crumbled and the mountains shook, the knight never lost focus.
He chased the retreating dragon without slack.
The dragon grew exhausted.
The knight remained as straight-backed as he had been at the start.
‘This is it.’
Beyond the visor, the knight’s eyes shone.
The white lance blazed with even brighter light.
Quah!
The dragon finally collapsed to the ground.
Between spurts of blood, the knight stood victorious.
“Haa.”
The knight removed his visor.
The quest window floated before his eyes.
[Quest]
[‘Defeat the Dark Tyrant Valatioros.’]
[Cleared.]
[Time: 00:07:41]
[SS Rank achieved.]
“Wow, that was insane.”
The knight, or more precisely Kim Ganghan controlling the knight, muttered behind the VR goggles.
The Dark Tyrant Valatioros.
The highest-difficulty quest in the VR action game Dragon Hunter.
It was so tough that one clear attempt and a single revival would earn SS Rank.
But Kim Ganghan had never died even once.
‘If I clear it in under ten minutes, am I the world’s first?’
Kim Ganghan grinned and searched his MyTube channel.
Indeed, he was the first.
“Hell yeah, views are gonna explode!”
He tossed the VR goggles aside and danced wildly on the floor.
Soon he felt embarrassed and collapsed onto his back.
He had challenged Valatioros hundreds of times just to capture this record.
Even though he had finally achieved his goal, all he felt was emptiness.
‘How did I end up like this?’
A few years ago he had only dreamed of becoming a pro gamer and leaving an immortal legacy.
After the military, reality had crashed down on him.
The PC-console video game market that had once ruled the world had completely collapsed.
Within just two years, VR games had taken its place.
Mouse-and-keyboard games were now antiques.
Pro gamers?
Of course there were some.
‘After doing service, the only thing I do is chase their tails. That’s the reality.’
Kim Ganghan had talent.
The problem was that he had poured all of it into PC online games.
VR games were different from PC online ones.
He had to move his body directly through brain waves.
But with his remaining talent, he could never compete with the young pro gamers who had spent years perfecting their reflexes.
Maybe it was just his age.
‘Fortunately, I still have the skill for single-player games to break records.’
Kim Ganghan was thirty-one years old.
His MyTube game expert channel had two hundred thousand subscribers.
For a record-focused gamer, that was huge.
He lived comfortably and had no money problems.
But the hollow feeling wouldn’t go away.
‘I wanted more than this.’
He was good at games.
Honestly, his control was absolute.
Dragon Hunter.
The legend of fantasy.
The Black Soul.
He had broken every record in countless VR games released over the past few years.
All of them single-player titles.
That was why he was confident in his control.
No other player could push records as high as he did.
So what?
Everything the public noticed was the so-called “in-game” titles with pro leagues.
Kim Ganghan was just an amateur powerhouse, respected only by fans.
‘I haven’t failed at anything… or have I?’
Kim Ganghan sighed and logged into the legendary VR gaming league.
His tier was Grand Master.
He wasn’t bad.
Top 0.4 percent of the world.
But Kim Ganghan knew.
This wasn’t enough to be a pro gamer.
‘Last year I got Challenger tier just by playing, but my skill is steadily dropping.’
His mind had nothing but games now.
It was too late to start a new path.
How many times had he watched his former pro-gamer friends waste their money on businesses and stocks that went nowhere?
‘The grasshopper must eat the leaves.’
Tsk.
Kim Ganghan turned on his smartphone.
His head hurt.
He would edit the video later.
Work was done, so it was time to cool off.
[Cocoa Page]
A web novel platform.
This was perfect for reading without moving a muscle.
‘Everything I like is here.’
His favorite, registered novels glowed on the screen.
Kim Ganghan’s expression slowly darkened as he read.
‘I never expected this kind of runaway success.’
A championship trophy.
The one thing a pro gamer like him had always wanted.
‘I’m not some fuel.’
Back when PC games were still shining, Kim Ganghan had almost reached world number one.
Every time he got that close, the same person had blocked him at the very end.
Tricker.
That guy, five years younger than Kim Ganghan, was a true genius who had been born into the gaming world.
‘If I had started a little earlier, maybe I could have beaten him.’
Well, that was old history now.
Even that guy who had been winning left and right had gotten trapped in a coin gate and taken every curse thrown at him.
He had just wanted to beat him once properly…
‘Time changes things.’
Kim Ganghan opened the last novel he had read.
The game fantasy titled “Game Overlord by Luck.”
The protagonist became the game’s top player by lucking out and clearing countless hidden pieces and quests.
It was a common cliché, yet the smooth story and solid setting had made it popular.
‘Here it is…’
This time the protagonist had met a legendary boss monster.
Thanks to luck, he had spotted the weakness, and that was the story up to yesterday.
‘So how does he take down that guy now?’
In Kim Ganghan’s mind, he already had more than fifty ways to defeat the boss.
With eager anticipation, he scrolled down.
Suddenly his expression changed strangely.
“Why is he just running away?”
After the protagonist discovered the weakness, he escaped safely and went to gather the items needed for the strategy.
That was where the novel ended.
“What the hell?”
Kim Ganghan immediately sat at the computer, opened the comment section, and started typing furiously.
-I’ve been reading this novel since the beginning.
Today I’m leaving a comment because I don’t understand something.
Clack-clack-clack.
Kim Ganghan’s typing was so intense it could silence even the cicadas outside.
-The protagonist always seemed like the type who would boldly challenge when he could.
But now he’s running away, which doesn’t match the character I’ve seen before.
If there’s a weakness, you should believe in luck and charge in anyway.
Why did the author create a character and then make him destroy himself?
Is he going to do the same to every character?
After a while, Kim Ganghan hit enter.
Over five thousand eight hundred characters of a long comment completed.
He took a deep breath and pressed F5 repeatedly.
Soon the replies started coming in.
-Boungeosa: The author must have thought about it all.
Don’t leave comments like this.
-Solarion: Hahaha, hipster much?
Haha, haha.
Did you even play a virtual reality game?
Proofreading something that doesn’t even exist to flex your skill is just nerd behavior.
Most comments criticized Kim Ganghan.
But as time passed, the tone changed.
-Fkdhahxh: Damn, this is ridiculous, but there’s truth in what he’s saying.
-Iwantd: Hahahahah, the author is about to piss himself right now, isn’t he?
The author is drafting a rebuttal inside his head, but according to the setting, what he wrote is right.
-Pyopyo: I’m from a web novel cafe.
Charge!
-Drumbase: Even so, comments that provoke fights like this are a bit…
But the content itself is persuasive.
If you sent it as a private message, it would have been better.
Thirty or forty comments agreed with Kim Ganghan.
Other replies said you couldn’t just keep insulting.
It made sense.
Actually, every single one of his comments had been the result of running simulations in his head.
In other words, the words were persuasive enough when spoken.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Kim Ganghan smiled smugly.
Then he froze.
‘Wait, what am I even doing right now?’
His limbs went limp.
‘I shouldn’t force my experience on other people.’
He always aimed his sight at himself.
A bad habit he still had.
‘I should delete it before it causes more trouble.’
Kim Ganghan walked toward the computer to delete the comment and noticed a notification on the screen.
‘Is this all the reply comments?’
One push would be better for mental health.
As he thought that, his eyes widened at the top notification.
[Title: Hey, do you really play games that well?]
Author: suez
suez.
The author of “Game Overlord by Luck” had sent him a private message.
‘Oh no, I’m too late.’
From the title, he could tell the author had already read the comments.
‘If I don’t reply with an apology…’
Kim Ganghan sat down and clicked the message.
At that moment, the unread content unfolded.
[Content: Then why don’t you just try it yourself!]
Eh?
What did he mean by try it himself?
Games?
Kim Ganghan tilted his head.
“No way, how am I supposed to play a game inside a game novel…”
At that instant, light exploded from the computer.
No, a thunderclap struck the ceiling of his rural house where Kim Ganghan sat.
A bolt of lightning from a clear sky.
When the lightning vanished through the antenna, Kim Ganghan’s body could not be found anywhere in the house no matter how he looked.