This Damn Game
"...Does this even make sense?"
Early-stage Qi Condensation. The first step on the path of a cultivator.
It was the goal I'd killed myself training for ever since I'd recovered my past-life memories after being born into this world — and yet my mood was foul beyond description.
It wasn't the shock of remaining conscious while my body moved on its own and took lives. No. What made me feel so filthy was that single word — NPC — that had popped up the moment I killed the village uncle who'd been the first person to ever worry about me... or maybe it was the complete absence of sensation in a body that moved however it pleased. Or maybe it was the corpses of the villagers and my parents vanishing without a trace the moment time passed, as empty and game-like as any despawn timer. Whatever the reason, one thing was crystal clear: this goddamn innate ability was to blame.
Ordinary cultivators accumulate Qi through training, extend their lifespans, and push their realms higher. They might lean on spirit medicines or all manner of rare treasures along the way, but self-cultivation is what matters most.
And me?
Slaughter.
Kill.
Tribulation.
Seize.
Because of my innate ability, the only way to raise my realm was to commit acts of slaughter-tribulation — to take lives and earn something called experience. And I'd trained myself half to death trying to escape mortality without even knowing that!
If I'd just killed a single village livestock animal with my own hands, I could have become a cultivator on the spot. But I hadn't awakened to my innate ability, so I never knew. The injustice of it sent me into a frenzy. I lost all control, and my body started moving as if the ability itself were puppeteering me.
"Not even a single tear. Goddamn it."
Emotion Expression has not been unlocked!
"Get lost!"
Looking at that Emotion Expression nonsense only confirmed it again — this was that absolute garbage game my past self had clung to, pathetic as it was, right up until the day I died. The truly shitty part? Emotion Expression had been a paid DLC — a communication tool for multiplayer chat that the devs had the gall to sell separately!
That was also why I couldn't control my emotions. The reason I'd lost it the second I saw this Status Window was simple: the interface wasn't just familiar. It was identical to that half-assed trash game.
"Of all the shit games to get stuck with..."
I could deny it all I wanted. One look at the Status Window interface and there was no question — it was the exact same UI from that godawful game I'd played for over a decade in my past life. Playtime alone had exceeded fifty thousand hours. I'd poured more of my existence into it than the years I'd actually lived after reincarnating. Not recognizing it would have been the weird part.
"A broken-ass game that doesn't even run without mods... wait. Status Window."
That was when something felt off.
The interface was definitely that absolute trash game. But that trash game, being the dumpster fire it was, only supported English, German, and Japanese. And yet my Status Window had classical characters stamped all over it.
I'd been the one who made the Korean language mod to pull in newbies, so Korean being there made sense. Classical characters did not.
"...Xianxia mode?"
Right before my computer exploded and killed me in my past life, I'd downloaded a massive multi-terabyte mod pack and thrashed around trying to get it working. The memory hit me all at once.
"It wasn't supposed to be a Chinese-made mod."
But a brand-new large-scale mod? I couldn't resist. Even if I went back to that moment, past-me would have installed it and fired it up.
"If all of this really is just that shit game's mod, then... Activate cheat mode?"
Insufficient permissions.
"So it's not completely locked out. Still, the fact that just having the Status Window answer me burns Qi is a bit much."
Now that I'd started walking the cultivator's path, I could feel it. Blood-soaked slaughter might have been how I began, but the spiritual root inside me — one steeped in the attribute of Slaughter — was vivid and unmistakable. And the energy flowing through that root was what powered my innate ability, the Status Window. The strange part was that innate abilities were supposed to form when a spiritual root you were born with got twisted by the forces of heaven and earth.
Did dying in a computer explosion count as being twisted from birth? I shook off the stupid thought, let out a long breath, and just sat down hard.
"Fucking trash game."
You have killed an NPC for the first time!
"Absolute garbage game."
You have killed an NPC for the first time!
"Worthless piece of shit."
You have killed an NPC for the first time!
Without the Companion mod installed, even other players got treated as NPCs in multiplayer — so the message itself wasn't surprising. And yet. I couldn't stop swearing, because I couldn't stand the version of myself who had killed my parents and every last villager with my own hands and still couldn't shed a single tear.
So Yu Hee, newly made cultivator, sat in the middle of what had once been a village of mortals — a place that had left behind neither corpses nor even bloodstains after becoming nothing but experience points — and stayed silent for a long, long time.
Why do people play trash games?
What makes someone keep coming back even while calling it a worthless piece of shit?
"Ah, fuck it. Great, now the swearing's stuck to my mouth..."
Before awakening my innate ability, I'd barely spoken a word — just trained. Now my body was one that could never cultivate the way an immortal was supposed to.
"Must've been a weird dream. Sigh."
I couldn't stay here alone forever. One way or another, I'd already set foot on the cultivator's path, and now the only direction left was forward. Normally, after reaching Qi Condensation, you'd join a sect nestled in a spirit mountain where heaven-and-earth Qi was easy to draw in and train there. But...
"Is this really a game?"
Experience only went up when you killed something. That was basically a fundamental law — which meant that as long as I had the Status Window as my innate ability, I would have to keep slaughtering my way forward for the rest of my life.
"Time to go."
This had been a village of mortals from the start. The outermost fringe of the outermost fringe, with almost no spiritual energy worth speaking of for cultivation. The only things around worth killing would be wild beasts at best.
I walked slowly, taking in the surrounding terrain. It was my first time leaving the village, but now that I was a cultivator, things I never would have noticed before started catching my eye.
"Oh, come on."
It was vast.
This world was far too vast.
More precisely: I'd become a cultivator, so I no longer needed food. And thanks to my innate ability, I didn't even need spiritual energy the way ordinary cultivators did. And yet I'd still been walking nothing but wasteland for days.
"I'm... lost? Minimap!"
Minimap has not been unlocked!
"You won't even show me the unlock conditions, and you're pulling this crap?! Absolute trash game! A dumpster-fire game that won't even let you move to another region without surveying the terrain first!"
Even the big difficulty-boosting overhaul mods never blocked regional travel like this! Convenience mods came with a basic terrain-survey feature by default!
Nothing but wasteland no matter how far I walked. What the hell was I even supposed to do out here?!
"Squeak-squeak-squeak!"
"You little beasts think this is funny?!"
"Squeak?"
"Kyaaaaah!!! Get lost! I said get lost!"
"Squeak-squeak!"
Now the little bastards were sitting there laughing at me!
"Auto-Battle!"
Entering Auto-Battle.
Current Realm: Qi Condensation, Early Stage (12)
Current Total Stats: 46
Enemy Total Stats: 26 × 12
Commencing Auto-Battle.
I trusted my innate ability and threw myself into Auto-Battle against those tiny, sneering yellowish-brown rat bastards!
You have been defeated in Auto-Battle!
You have been taken prisoner...
And I lost like absolute garbage.
Twelve of the little rat bastards piled on me at once. No matter how hard I'd trained past the limits of a mortal, I was still only early-stage Qi Condensation — and I'd been wandering the wasteland for days. I'd completely overlooked that.
The rats climbed onto my body as I lay limp in the dirt, celebrating their victory. Then they started tapping my head, tilting theirs in confusion, sighing, and finally backing off.
Disappointed by a worthless prisoner, the enemies release you from captivity!
Your well-trained body made them think you were a cultivator. Unable to accept a mortal's tantrum, they rededicate themselves to their own training and clear a path for you.
Minimap has been unlocked!
You may view the map for areas where terrain surveying is complete.
"...Fuck."
They weren't ordinary rats. They were spiritual beasts. Ones that hunted cultivators, no less! They'd probably written me off as a mortal because I was a cultivator with zero spiritual energy.
"You damn NPCs! How dare you! Status Window!!!"
I was going to get my revenge!
Wait. I lost in Auto-Battle and my level still went up...?
"Combat Experience mod...!"
The convenience mod that still let you earn experience even when Auto-Battle normally gave zero XP and shredded your loot. The second I recognized it, I shouted at the top of my lungs again.
"Auto-Battle!!!!"
Experience had driven me completely insane. That was the only explanation. With ordinary cultivation — drawing in the primordial energy of heaven and earth to raise my realm — completely blocked off by my innate ability, all I had left was the ability itself!
The opponent has refused combat!
Auto-Battle has been cancelled!
"Are you kidding me?!"
Why the hell was Combat Avoidance mode applying here?!