The Eroge I Played Was a God-Tier Game

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The eroge I played was a god-tier game.

Its name was The World Loved by the Gods. A saintess, a witch, an elf, a beastkin, a demon king, an angel — every heroine a fantasy eroge was supposed to have — and I enjoyed the game without a second thought. It was, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠truly, insanely fun.

"Whoa. What the fuck. Who the hell made this?"

The story was good. The art was good. The characters spilled charm from every seam. Every single choice changed how the heroines reacted, and the game even remembered conversations from before and folded them into the next event. A completely unhinged system.

Say you gifted the saintess flowers bought with a paid item. In an ordinary game, affection would tick up, or some fixed line would print, and that would be the end of it.

This game was different. It remembered the date you gave the flowers, the kind, the weather that day, even where you had gotten them.

And so, months later inside the game:

"......"

Insane. I love you. Marry me.

Naturally, I typed exactly that into the in-game dialogue.

"Of course."

"Khhhaaa!"

Now this was a game!

And astonishingly, that was not even the end of it. The game had a voice recognition feature. Voice recognition in a modern game was not, on its own, anything miraculous. The problem was the level of it.

A normal game recognizes a list of command words, or turns what you say into text. This one had left that standard so far behind it was no longer visible.

"Aria, what did you do today?"

"Oh, for real? The kid who hurt his leg back then?"

"Of course. It was a conversation with you."

"You look a little tired today, though."

"You've got dark circles under your eyes."

"Sleep early. You'll collapse at this rate."

"Promise?"

"Khhhhaaaa!"

Insane. This was really a game? The lines kept coming. She answered what I said. And not by dumping some preset script, but as naturally as if I were talking to an actual person. Sometimes she even spoke first.

"Huh? How'd you know?"

"......"

Insane. I was moved. What kind of technology was this? Had they hauled in a quantum computer just to run an AI? Or had the developers actually built twelve heroine brains and plugged them into the server? The conversation was that natural.

But the game's real madness lay somewhere else. The camera recognition feature.

At first I thought it was complete nonsense. Why would an eroge need a camera? Don't tell me it filmed the player's face and mapped it onto the character? Half convinced and half not, I hooked up the webcam.

"...Huh?"

"Wh-what? F-for real?"

It was real. And it was not merely recognizing a face. Close my eyes, and she assumed I had fallen asleep. Yawn, and she asked if I was tired. Smile, and she smiled with me. Change my clothes, and she even offered a verdict on them.

"Oh, these? Bought them yesterday!"

"Hehe."

Praise. Hehe.

Of course, it was not all good news.

One day:

"Yeah?"

"H-how did you know...?"

"......"

"......"

Fuck.

That day, for the first time, I felt shame in front of a game character. In an eroge, of all places. What kind of lunatic developer had implemented a feature like that?

Funnier still, it was not some joke function. The heroines fussed over whether I was eating properly, sleeping enough, even exercising.

"No?"

"Too much of a bother."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Yes, ma'am..."

Until I actually ate and came back, the saintess's affection event refused to proceed. That one shook me. To play an eroge, I had to eat? Where in the world was there a game like this?

The demon king was even worse.

"Yeah?"

"...?"

"My arms?"

Caught off guard, I raised my arms.

"Wh-what!? Chopsticks...?"

"What?"

"But why would I..."

"!!!"

Khhhaaa! She called me her man! Her man!

That day I managed twenty-three push-ups and collapsed on the floor.

"Ghk!"

"Kghak!"

"I-I'm sorry..."

"Yes, ma'am!"

The exercise that started then had, astonishingly, kept going for six years, all the way to now.

A brief introduction, while I'm here. The name is Park Jinho. Twenty-eight. Freelance video editor. The monthly income was enough to get by, and I lived with my mother.

Friends? I had some. A few. Dating experience? None. A lifelong single.

That did not mean I was socially shattered. I talked like a normal person when I worked, met friends now and then for a drink, and while I hated going outside, I did not hate people themselves.

There was, though, one problem even I had to admit was a little serious.

"Ahh... what a pain..."

Everything was a pain. Eating, working out, cleaning. Even washing my hair was a pain. Of course I washed when I went out. I was a person; that much was required. But on the days I worked alone at home?

Ahem...

After I started this game, all of it changed. If the saintess told me to eat, I ate. If the demon king told me to exercise, I exercised. If the witch nagged that my room was filthy, I cleaned. When the elf queen said my skin looked dry, I bought skincare lotion for the first time in my life.

One day the angel said it with a smile.

"......"

From that day on, I did not miss a single shower.

Mm. Laid out like this, I do sound a bit like a dumbass.

Anyway. The results, astonishingly, were undeniable. Before the game I had been an ordinary homebody guy with a gut sticking out. Now my body had improved enough that you could see abs. My skin was better, I dressed well, and above all my daily habits had changed completely.

Going into the third year, even Mom was startled.

"Son."

"Yeah?"

"Have you got a girlfriend these days?"

"Out of nowhere?"

"You're exercising, buying clothes, cleaning your room. Did something happen?"

"......"

I thought for a moment, and then I answered honestly.

"I don't have a girlfriend, but there are women I like."

"Oh my!"

"Twelve of them."

"......"

Mom looked at me with a pitying face.

"Son."

"Yeah?"

"Mom's sorry."

"...Why?"

"Just..."

"...?"

Anyway. That was how the game remade me into a healthy human being. Self-improvement, while playing an eroge. How wholesome a hobby was that? I wished every eroge in the world worked this way. Wouldn't even the state encourage it?

Kyaa~ Just imagining it, and my heart swells with grandeur.

There was one question, though. Why was a studio with technology like this making something as trivial as an eroge? Was any of it even technically possible? Reading a person's face and movements, holding a conversation in real time, remembering some trivial remark from years ago. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠All twelve heroines, no less.

"......"

I thought about it for a moment, and then I reached a conclusion.

"Who cares."

If it was fun, that was enough. Alien developer, someone from the future — what did I know. What mattered was that the game was fun, and this one was more fun than any game I had ever played.

So I ground my life down into it.

"Whoa."

No matter how I turned it over, that was a little insane. 21,437 hours — how many days was that, anyway? Not the point. I had been genuinely happy through all of it.

I woke in the morning and greeted the heroines. Through the day I left the game running while I worked, talking with them in the gaps. In the evening we spent the time together straight through. Sometimes we went on dates, sometimes we fought, and sometimes we simply looked at each other without a word.

Six years passed that way.

Someone else might say they were nothing but scraps of data on a screen. To me, every single one of those hours was a precious memory. Play a game long enough and a moment like that arrives: you start because the character is simply pretty, and then one day you catch yourself wanting that character to be happy. This game was that, for me.

Of course it was an eroge, so there were plenty of sex scenes. Really... an awful lot...

Hnnngh~

And yet, strangely, from some point on, ordinary conversation with the heroines became more fun than those scenes.

"Anything happen today?"

"Whaaat~ tell me~"

"Aww~"

"Oki, got it."

Just trading words like that was enough. In that sense, I loved this game an awful lot.

A walkthrough? I didn't look at trash like that. Leaving my romance with my girl in someone else's hands would have been absurd.

I did wander in and out of the community. I was curious how other people were enjoying this unhinged game, and now and then I checked for a new update or an event. The situation was worse than I had expected.

"......"

I stared at the community. Hmm. It was a harder game than I had thought. Fair enough. Clearing Sylvia alone had taken me half a year.

But so what. Love was supposed to be hard, wasn't it?

And strangely, posts asking how to clear a route almost never got a real answer. Someone said Moira was easy, someone said she was hard. They said working out worked on Belzeria, and some guy claimed he exercised until he was hauled off to the hospital. What did you even have to do for it to turn out like that?

"......"

Anyway. I quietly closed the community window. How many heroines other people had cleared did not particularly matter. What I wanted was never a record or an official achievement. I just wanted the women I loved to be happy. That was enough.

And so, six years. After grinding no less than six years of my life into it, I finally succeeded in clearing all twelve heroines.

"Hehehe..."

At last... at last it was over!

I looked at the monitor and smiled, content.

"Huh?"

A hidden final story? I tilted my head. Officially, this game had only twelve endings. To think there had been a hidden ending on top of that.

"Kyaa. A god-tier game, as expected."

I clicked the screen without hesitation. Over a screen gone black, a single sentence rose.

"...Huh?"

Gods? Ah, right. The saintess served the Goddess of Light, the witch had contracted with the Goddess of Darkness, and the demon king was a being who had inherited a Demon God's power. It seemed to be talking about the lore, more or less.

But.

The moment I saw that sentence, I sank into thought.

"Whom do I choose?"

Hmm. A difficult question. All twelve were my beloved heroines. The saintess was kind, the witch was cute, the elf was beautiful, the demon king was a little scary but actually a crybaby, and the angel...

"That one was kind of a pervert."

Anyway. I agonized for a long while, then tapped the keyboard.

I hit enter.

"...?"

What? Why was there no response?

I tapped the keyboard again.

I hit enter.

Obviously. I had spent six years clearing them, and it wanted me to pick just one? That would be a betrayal of the other eleven.

Oh. Don't tell me this was the harem ending?

Swelling with anticipation, I watched the monitor. A moment later:

"...?"

In person? Meet? Meet who?

"......"

Huh?

Hold on. Descent?

That was when it happened.

In an instant, all twelve heroines poured into the chat.

"Ooh."

What was this? A group chat event? We had those too? A god-tier game to the end!

Brimming with expectation, I watched the window.

But.

"......"

Huh?

Something was off.