Mode Installation Complete
Mode installation complete.
"Young Master! Young Master Offen! Snap out of it! Young Master!"
"Uh... wha—?"
Someone seized my shoulders and shook me hard enough to jolt me awake. An ornate wooden ceiling carved with antique patterns swam into view above me.
I shifted my gaze slightly to the side and found a face I had never seen before... no. A face that was somehow familiar.
"W-Where am I?"
"Right outside the door to the patriarch's office. You collapsed the moment you heard the tragic news."
"Ah... right. That."
Looking at Head Maid Rina's face and hearing the word "tragic news" made the hazy memories snap back into sharp focus.
"Young Master, the Lord, the Young Lord, and even the Second Young Master... all of them have passed. The only remaining blood of the Termin family left in this world is you."
Yes. That was it.
A few days ago, ten Great Rifts had torn open across the world. One of them—the Abyss of the Army—had appeared a mere 150 kilometers from our Termin territory. A subjugation force had been assembled to close it.
My father, my eldest brother, and my second brother had led the family's private soldiers into that force. Dozens of knights, thousands of troops, and even the Benos Kingdom's latest weapon—the magic cannons—had marched proudly toward the Abyss of the Army in a grand expedition.
And just moments ago, word had reached the Termin household that the entire subjugation force had been annihilated.
"Young Master, let me say it again. You are now the patriarch of the Termin family. You don't have time to lie there like this! For the sake of the house, you must pull yourself together!"
To become patriarch overnight because my father and brothers had all fallen in battle... that was the shock that had knocked me out cold.
"Haa... yeah. I need to... get a grip."
I took Rina's hand, rose to my feet, and opened the door to the patriarch's office.
Inside stood the desk where my father had always sat. On the wall behind it hung the Termin family's crest—the Flame Emblem.
"You must formulate a plan at once, Young Master. The beast army that wiped out the subjugation force is already advancing on Termin territory!"
I stood there staring blankly at the patriarch's seat—a place I had never once imagined sitting—until Rina, unable to contain her frustration any longer, pressed me for a solution.
"A plan... a plan... Rina, how long did you say until the beast army reaches us?"
"About... thirty minutes."
"Thirty minutes..."
Thirty minutes. In half an hour, the same beast army that had obliterated a subjugation force large enough to rival a full wartime host would arrive at Termin Territory.
"Rina, give me a moment to think. Step outside, would you? I'll call if I need you."
I needed time to sort through the situation.
"Ugh... understood, Young Master."
Rina seemed to realize that nagging wouldn't magically produce a plan, so she finally obeyed and left.
Creak—click.
The door to the patriarch's office shut, and at last I was alone. Only then could I truly face reality.
"This fucking insane game. Is this for real?"
The reality that I had been transmigrated into the world of a game.
Crack Kingdom.
A defense game in which you must protect the kingdom from ten Great Rifts that open across the world.
A bleak dark-fantasy setting elevated by an outstanding story, spectacular presentation, and gameplay to match. It swept every award the year it launched, and if anyone ever asked for a defense-game recommendation, Crack Kingdom was always the first name that came up.
Put that way, it sounded like a flawless masterpiece. But the game possessed one overwhelming flaw that swallowed every single one of those virtues whole.
That flaw was its highest difficulty: Rift Mode.
That goddamn Rift Mode was so brutal that the moment you started it, every previous playthrough of Crack Kingdom suddenly felt like arm-wrestling a newborn. Every beast came equipped with a learning system, mixing off-beat and on-beat attacks at will. High-tier beasts that should only appear in the late game would drop in as early-game surprises and turn your territory into a wasteland. Let the commoners go hungry for a single day and they would revolt. A character you had poured all your love and effort into would catch some random plague and die. Just when you thought you had finally overcome the bullshit, a bomb would go off in the capital and the game would end. Random encounters that could theoretically happen were all crammed into Rift Mode without mercy.
The vast majority of Crack Kingdom players tried Rift Mode once, then wisely never looked at it again.
But a handful of idiots whose brains contained nothing but "all-clear Crack Kingdom" kept throwing themselves at it.
Yeah. I was one of those idiots.
We even founded a Rift Mode gallery so the idiots could gather and research strategies. Our passion was legendary.
But even idiots whose heads were filled with nothing but all-clears were still human. After hundreds of people put their heads together, burned thousands of hours refining the optimal, highest-efficiency route, and still failed the hundredth run in the most spectacular fashion imaginable... of course your spirit breaks.
So in the end I installed the forbidden method—a mod—muttered, "Crack Kingdom, you piece of shit, you're dead today," and started the 101st run.
"Why the hell is this real?"
When I opened my eyes, I was Offen Termin, third son of the Termin family.
"Why the fuck did it have to be the third son of the Termin family...!"
Any player who had ever touched Crack Kingdom knew the Termin barony. The game opened with the line that the subjugation force for the Abyss of the Army had been annihilated and the Termin family destroyed. Their sole purpose was to die at the very start and set the grim tone of the story.
"Why the hell the Termin family?! There were so many other places! If you're going to drop me into the game, drop me into the protagonist! Or at least some extra standing next to the protagonist! Why—why did it have to be Offen Termin?!"
The first time I played Crack Kingdom, I had watched the Termin territory get trampled into a wasteland by the beasts and been impressed.
Holy shit, there are so many beasts it looks like a tidal wave.
Whoa, the walls are collapsing like sandcastles.
Damn, look at that blond guy getting his limbs ripped off. That's brutal as hell.
We're supposed to stop those things? This game's scale is insane.
Yeah. That was how I had reacted back then.
But realizing that scene was my future in thirty minutes made it so fucking miserable I wanted to die.
"And the only blond left in this territory is me. So in thirty minutes I'm the one getting torn limb from limb!"
Obviously I did not want my limbs torn off.
But wanting to keep my limbs attached didn't magically create a solution.
"Father took every private soldier with him. All that's left are five gatekeepers. The commoners are fifty old men and women. The only weapons we can use for defense are the piles of rocks stacked on the walls. How the hell am I supposed to stop a beast army with that?"
That was everything the Termin barony possessed.
No—wait. Add one more: Offen Termin, who had spent his entire life studying, and Head Maid Rina.
Yes. Me and Rina. That was the entire Termin barony.
There was truly no answer.
"Running away even now... is bullshit. The beasts advance faster than a horse at full gallop. How the hell do you run?"
Fleeing from the beast army pouring out of the Abyss of the Army was impossible. From a distance they looked like a rolling tidal wave, packed so densely they moved as one, and their speed outstripped a galloping horse. With only thirty minutes left until they reached Termin Territory, abandoning the land and running would only get me caught and torn apart moments later.
"And even if by some miracle I managed to escape... getting caught means immediate execution."
In the Benos Kingdom, the main stage of Crack Kingdom, nobles who neglected their duties were not tolerated. Territory granted by the king was as precious as a noble's own life. Abandoning the duty to defend it and fleeing was treason against the crown, and a traitor's end was always death by drawing and quartering.
In other words, even if I abandoned the family and ran, I still got my limbs ripped off.
"Fuck... every path ends with me getting torn apart..."
Just as I covered my face with both hands, about to sink into despair at the dismemberment that was already breathing down my neck—
Ding—!
The familiar notification chime every gamer has heard a hundred times when a download finishes rang out, and a translucent blue window appeared before my eyes.
Mode installation complete.
Mode Name: Red Button
Red Button.
The very mod I had installed to clear Crack Kingdom's Rift Mode.