Chapter 0 Prologue
Prologue
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 0
Chapter Title: Prologue - Neofront Cybercity
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Welcome to the Neofront Cybercity Bulletin Board.
— Anonymous (123.456) Title: New Update Dropping??? It's out, so I'm posting!
Alright, let's dive into the DLC!!!!!!!!!
=================== Neofront Cybercity.
A cyberpunk action RPG set in the near future of the late 21st century.
Thanks to its solid polish and genre-defining flair, the game had earned a solid cult following among gamers.
And today marked the release of its first DLC—two years after launch.
Jian, sitting in front of his computer right now, was one of those Cybercity players who'd been counting down the days to this moment.
Friday evening. He was fully geared up for an all-nighter the second the patch dropped.
But when the clock struck the exact hour...
What faced him was an overwhelming wall of download data.
'What the hell is this file size... My hard drive's gonna explode, right?'
Enough data to install two or three whole new games.
Which meant the estimated time-to-complete had ballooned well past a few hours.
For someone hyped for the new content launch, it was a total buzzkill.
Even the usual game communities were full of fellow lost souls wandering aimlessly and venting their frustration.
Wondering what to do while he waited, his hand drifted on instinct to another game icon.
An open-world RPG set in a medieval fantasy world: Cinder Knights.
He'd already seen multiple endings, but it was plenty good enough to kill time during the download.
Firing it up. He skipped past the fully powered-up save files and picked a fresh save slot.
'Been a while—might as well start a new playthrough.'
The customization screen unfurled, and he paused for a second to think.
Appearance, class, traits. Standard safe picks were always knight or hunter origins.
But this time, he went for something different—Saintess, a class he'd never touched before.
No matter how you built it, the attack power was pathetically low, making it a punchline for comedy runs or masochistic vet challenges. But hey, whatever. He wasn't gunning for a serious ending run. Just a quick diversion while the download chugged along. He slapped together the rest of the traits and hit start.
But—
⚠️ CRITICAL CRASH ⚠️ Critical Crash Detected: The game has encountered an unrecoverable error and must shut down immediately
'What?'
A loading icon flickered briefly, then some bizarre error code popped up.
The monitor screen faded to black.
Or... was that my vision going dark?
That was the last memory Jian could recall.