With the Saintess Who Always Dies
With the Saintess Who Always Dies
3:47 AM.
Six monitors bathed the dark room in a blue light. On the center screen, the results window for a friendly match of the game <Apocalypse Core> had just popped up.
WINNER ㅡ RAVEN.
On the side screen, the number of spectators was displayed. 8,700 people.
At three in the morning on a weekday, that was the number of people who had gathered just to watch a single match. World Rank 1. The undefeated Raven. Rank 2, 3, and 4 had ganged up on him simultaneously.
Everyone had hoped that, no matter who he was, his ego would be bruised at least once. And the result was yet another victory for Raven.
The chat poured in like crazy.
[Winning 3v1. Is this for real?]
[Raven, this cheater bastard, definitely used hacks.]
[Because of you, this game's image is stuck as a game for veterans.]
[A crazy bastard who turned a dating sim mech game into just a mech game...]
[Watching from overseas!]
On the map, three robots lay as wreckage.
Rank 2 'Dominant', who finds a solution in any situation, had his entire upper body blown away.
Rank 3 'Aliyaman', who corners opponents with unrealistic maneuvers, was kneeling with his characteristic reverse joints broken.
Rank 4 'Jack-o'-lantern', who pushed live-fire defense to the limit, was slumped over with his armor ripped clean off by a pile bunker. His thickest front armor had been pierced in the most gruesome way.
The three of them were still in the voice channel.
"...Hey. We went in as a trio, right?"
It was Dominant. His voice wasn't filled with anger, but rather a mix of disbelief and laughter.
"Right. We drove him into the canyon to cut off his path, Jack-o'-lantern pulled back, I went for the flank, and you went for the front." "We went in at the perfect angle. Why are we all dead?"
Aliyaman didn't answer for a long time. The words that finally came out were neither a complaint nor a question.
"...That guy, he saw through our plan from the start. He knew exactly where we'd retreat. And while stepping on Flicker/Gang-Quick seven times in a row, he just... passed right through the middle of the formation we set up."
"I've lived and breathed this game, and even I can't use that more than three times in a row. Is that even humanly possible?"
"That's why he's Rank 1."
Center of the screen. A pitch-black machine without a single scratch stood quietly among the wreckage. It was so composed that it was hard to believe this was the person who had caused such massive destruction.
{Good work, everyone.}
Raven.
Three years since the server opened. It was a name that hadn't dropped from first place even once. Some had even written serious posts claiming he was a hacker or an AI that had learned the game.
...It would have been better if he were a hacker.
But those who had played this game more than anyone else could be certain. That man was human. He was just a human who happened to be stronger than anyone else. Finally, Jack-o'-lantern added a word. In a voice that was strangely relieved for someone who had lost.
"Raven-nim. We lost miserably, but... honestly, I'm happy. To have fought on the same screen as you."
And, as if genuinely curious, he asked.
"...Is there a specific reason you became so strong?"
No one could laugh at that question. Because everyone there believed that if it were Raven, there must be some incredible story behind it.
On the other side of the screen, Kim Min-ho was buried in his chair, staring at the ceiling. The sensation of winning had long since vanished. Matches like this were like brushing one's teeth. A victory that was meaningless and hollow, just repeating over and over.
The reason I became strong, huh.
With his hands resting on the keyboard, he rolled the words around in his mouth. The answer was already decided. It was a reason too embarrassing to say out loud, one he couldn't possibly type into the chat window. In the corner of the six screens.
There, instead of the results window, another window was open. It was a screen that had been left on for so long that anyone could tell he had been staring at it for ages. A woman with ivory-colored hair was there.
'Earl Grey Twining.'
I actually hate the mecha genre.
The first reason is the genre's inherent barrier to entry, where they dump unfriendly settings like residual light effects and Covenants that only they understand.
The second reason is that they all look the same. White metal lump A hits red metal lump B with a beam saber. Then the red metal lump explodes. Watching that, men get all worked up, arguing about output and power-down and whatnot.
Honestly, to my eyes, they all looked the same.
Above all, there were no people in it.
Can you date a metal lump?
Can you connect with a metal lump?
Absolutely not.
If there's anyone who answered yes to that, they should probably go to a mental hospital.
What I truly loved were dating sims.
The result of spending time crafting strategies and walkthroughs. The moment when that aloof heroine suddenly calls my name. When she looks at me through the screen and smiles, that sweet delusion that makes me believe that smile is for me.
It wasn't rare for me to spend hundreds of hours just to see one happy ending. A conclusion where the person I like smiles happily. That alone was enough.
The reason I started this mecha game was purely because of a friend's message.
[Hey, this heroine Earl Grey. Isn't she totally your type?]
In the photo that bastard sent along with that message, there was a blonde beauty who was exactly my type.
A beauty who was elegant without being extravagant. Her fine, milky-blonde hair and softly curved eyes were adorable and gentle. Her face possessed a neatness befitting a noble lady, coexisting with an atmosphere that made you want to hug her.
...Yeah, let's admit it.
I got hooked.
Thirty minutes after turning on the game, I realized. This was a hardcore mecha simulator disguised as a dating game.
To hold hands with the heroine once, I had to slice through dozens of enemy machines in a disgustingly difficult battle, and to go on one date, I had to succeed in a mission that took dozens of minutes in one go.
One mistake, and it was back to the beginning.
[GAME OVER]
The face of the robot I hated so much filled the screen. I tried to refund it immediately. My mouse hovered over the refund button for a long time.
At that moment, the woman on the screen smiled once more.
Earl Grey Twining.
...It was strange. Seeing that smile, a corner of my heart ached. That was why I continued to play the game. The story began as I met her before the prologue battle started.
The woman in the game was crushed by her family, buried under duty. Yet, she was a woman who, until the very end, took care of others first. Why did she shower others with such kindness, when she herself had never received any?
I wanted someone to take care of her. I wanted her to be the one on the receiving end for once. Instead of just smiling like that, I wanted her to lean on someone's shoulder and cry sometimes.
It was closer to that than romantic love. When I saw something precarious, my hands would reach out; I just couldn't leave it alone.
As I played the game, the desire to refund it disappeared. I closed the refund window and opened the manual instead.
...At first, I died a hundred times just in the tutorial. It took a month for the controls to stick to my hands, and another few months to dissect the replays of top rankers frame by frame. I wrote down and memorized values I had never cared about in my life, like output distribution and impact angles. I cut back on sleep and stopped contacting my friends.
Others would have called me crazy.
But that madness made me strong. To the point where I, Kim Min-ho, rose to Rank 1 in the world under the name 'Raven' in a game I had turned on just to play a dating sim.
With the single-minded obsession of wanting to make this woman beyond the screen smile. ...But, there was one problem.
[Earl Grey Twining has been assassinated.]
[Earl Grey Twining has drowned.]
[Earl Grey Twining has died from a fall.]
[Earl Grey Twining has been executed.]
Earl Grey kept dying. In this game, the heroine's fate depends on how well the protagonist performs the mission and which choices are made.
There are six factions. Southern Cross, Kyungdanryeon, Pan-Africa, Europa, Arab, and the Continental Army. The core of this game was to choose one and conquer the heroine of that faction.
...The other heroines survived easily if you paid them a little attention.
But Southern Cross's Earl Grey Twining. This woman alone had never been observed on a survival route. No matter what I did, she died. And she didn't even die peacefully; every time it was a different way, every time it was gruesome.
Still, I didn't give up. The creator officially stated there were hundreds of thousands of endings per character. I had seen 90,000 of them. I had watched Earl Grey die 90,000 times, but I hadn't even seen half of the endings yet.
So, there was still a long way to go. Among the countless branches I hadn't been to, surely there must be at least one future where she survives and smiles. Somewhere among these countless possibilities, there had to be one line of her happy ending hidden away.
I still hadn't given up on that hope. As I continued to play the game, determined to see that one ending, I had become this strong before I knew it.
World Rank 1.
The guy who hated mecha so much had become better than anyone at handling mecha, or rather, Advents, because of one woman in another dimension. Now, I was so well-versed in the settings that I could tell the difference between machines just by the shape of the backpack in this game.
I remembered every single sentence of the world's lore.
But even after becoming this strong and gaining all this knowledge, I still hadn't achieved my initial wish.
"Hoo..."
Having finished the friendly match against the top 4, I returned to the computer screen and entered story mode. Earl Grey on the screen was smiling faintly, as always. I, too, whispered while looking at her.
"I hope I can find it today."
It was something I said every time. And it was a statement that didn't come true every day. I opened the menu.
[99,999th run.]
So it's already been that many.
[Would you like to start the game from the beginning?]
Without hesitation, I pressed 'Yes'.
At that moment—
The world turned white.