Song of Fantasy

Song of Fantasy.

It was a game that checked every last box for being a complete dumpster-fire piece of garbage.

And yet it survived — all thanks to the desperate ass-kissing campaign I'd waged in my previous life, just to keep it from dying so thoroughly that nobody would even mention it, vanishing without a whisper or a trace.

Thanks to that, churning out promotional posts and quality-of-life mods for newbies had become my hobby.

More precisely, it had started with achievement hunting.

Getting [Greeting] and [Disappointment] from ten thousand other players.

After scheming with another achievement-obsessed freak in the community, we'd written our first promo posts and dragged newbies in.

Of course, they all rage-quit — not in a few days, but within a single day.

Still, seeing a glimmer of hope, I made a Korean language mod while the achievement maniac stirred up chaos everywhere with his advertising, and little by little, newbies started dipping their toes in.

YouTubers known as dumpster-game sommeliers tried sampling it, and I even threw donations at them just to get them to tell people you needed mods installed simply to start playing. But the moment they went for the romance build, got stuck below double-digit levels, and had their characters explode back-to-back from eok-kka events, they fled.

Still, they were fun memories.

Making bug-fix mods, regularly putting out balance update mods and content update mods, even creating event mods together with the community users.

All of that was only possible because this game somehow never vanished without a trace and kept limping along — and because users who'd once tasted the event high refused to die alone, dragging everyone down with them like water ghosts.

If you really think about it, I wasn't much different from those water ghosts myself — buying a separate server for what was supposedly a single-player game just to make a [Multiplayer Mode].

So no matter how new the xianxia mod was, no matter that it had been reality-patched on top, I was confident.

How much time had I poured into this game, after all?

I just believed that after all those long years of rain-praying, the dumpster game had finally evolved into virtual reality.

The confirmed events and various bugs that remained exactly as I remembered them only strengthened my conviction.

This world is a game.

I'm not wrong.

It's a game, so killing a few NPCs is fine.

It's a game, so massacring a bit for efficiency is fine.

You're not going to level up?

It's a game, so self-harm and body modification are fine too.

This is just a game in the first place — isn't it weird to think about it so realistically? Do I really need to empathize that hard with NPCs?

Even if the reality patch makes it look like virtual reality.

Doesn't living like that just make you tired?

My consciousness, which had been focused solely on skill training in a state of selfless absorption, was suddenly steeped in endlessly negative thoughts.

Sensing that unnatural shift at once, the Reality Denial skill rose from its body in the Mental World.

A round, smooth squid shaped like an obviously manufactured anime character stretched out dozens of tentacles and wrapped them around me, as if protecting the version of myself seated at the center of the Mental World unfurled across the training ground by the erosion skill.

The power to assimilate reality through an inner Mental World manifested by the erosion skill was formidable — and demanded mental defenses to match. There was a reason the technique had been abandoned in ages past.

In the original Mental World, merely entering was enough for a heart demon to crush you to death. Out here in reality, an assimilated Mental World was an environment practically designed for heart demons to seep in.

Properly boring through would have taken far longer, but the mere fact that something could dig into the monstrous waves of Slaughter Tribulation at all was a testament to how capable heart demons were.

Even cultivators who had formed a Nascent Soul or created a Deity Transformation body sometimes fell to heart demons — which, all things considered, was only natural.

A heart demon carried nearly the same power as the cultivator it burrowed into, like a kind of doppelgänger. That made it all the more dangerous.

But still.

There ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was no way Reality Denial was going to sit quietly and watch a heart demon seep into its own domain — the Sea of Slaughter.

Dozens of tentacles shot out, seized the heart demon, hauled it up out of the Sea of Slaughter, and stuffed it straight into the squid's mouth with a wet slurp.

Because the heart demon held nearly the same power as I did — late Golden Core strength — its thrashing made the squid's round body bulge and ripple from the inside.

Before long, though, the struggling gradually quieted, then stopped completely. Of course it did. The squid had dived right back into the abyssal depths of the Slaughter Tribulation.

At best, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠heart demon had only been able to hitch a ride on the Slaughter Tribulation waves that were assimilating into reality.

A heart demon that would be crushed to death by Slaughter Tribulation the moment it showed itself directly in the Mental World had no chance of withstanding fourfold the pressure of that same force.

The heart demon became nothing more than nourishment for Reality Denial.

As Reality Denial's skill level ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rose, my spirit — which had been digging into the ground in pure depression — gradually returned to normal.

I'd been lost in selfless skill training, slipped into a heart demon, gone endlessly negative, and only then snapped out of it.

Reality Denial flicked a tentacle and swatted the system message away so fast that I never even realized I'd nearly fallen to a heart demon. I just saw a whole pile of skill levels climb in the skill window and was happy about that alone.

It was a consumable that Elder Togo and Cheon Nan-cho had barely managed to create together.

When they made it, Heavenly Tribulation had come crashing down from the sky, smashing buildings as it struck the elixir — a ridiculous spectacle of an effect. Surely the performance would be just as absurd!

...Or so I'd thought. The actual item effects weren't anything special.

Just a Limit Break item!

And the effect underneath? I was already a Transcendent being anyway! Unstable, sure, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but still!

"Forged in the lower realm, its effects are weaker than expected. Forgive me. I wished to make something finer for my newborn..."

"I'm fine! Just having something Elder Togo made for me is more than enough! Thank you, Elder Togo!"

Spamming the [Thanks] emotion expression, I tightly hugged Elder Togo's cold metal body.

Even with Cheon Nan-cho's assistance, he'd still been recovering — and crafting the elixir had clearly exhausted him. He couldn't even project a hologram, left only as a cold metal form. I held him for a long while, pouring out my gratitude, then immediately began preparations.

It was time to level up.

Of course, "preparations" just meant installing another training ground in a corner of the wide base, having Cheon Nan-cho run the spirit stone gacha to pull out a spiritual vein, and — following Elder Togo's advice that it could weaken the Heavenly Tribulation's power — slotting a Calamity Mountain tile right beside it. After that, it was nothing but infinite meditation until enlightenment arrived.

"Be careful not to fall to a heart demon, my newborn. You have slain so many cultivators that, from a heart demon's perspective, you are a most delicious morsel."

With Elder Togo's advice as the last word, I entered meditation.

Enlightenment. What was enlightenment, really?

I traced back the enlightenment I had nearly grasped before, only to lose it for lack of realm.

The paradox of self-negation. The repetition of thesis and antithesis. The process of endless circulation.

If that process itself was the state of reaching synthesis — then how was it any different from a wheel that never stopped turning?

Come to think of it, my Natal Dharma Treasure was a wheel.

A wheel that rolled and rolled was itself a symbol of circulation; a punishment device for chaining a sinner and rolling them; and for me, Tatar's Wheel, which killed everything larger than the wheel itself.

Then what was the standard for "larger than the wheel"?

What did the wheel measure itself against?

Not experience, not slaughter karma, not items — if I measured by the wheel, what exactly was my criterion for killing NPCs?

Simple fun? Or interest?

Steady the wavering heart.

Doubt and anxiety are nothing more than the mind.

Aside from the basic emotion expressions — [Greeting], [Anger], [Disappointment], [Thanks], [Rest] — I couldn't even change my blank expression. No matter how hard I tried to convey feeling through my inner voice or speech, nothing shifted.

That was why the ones who held my emotions, who held a heart, were the Humanity Clones.

Then perhaps the Humanity Clones were the thesis, and I — who couldn't even express emotion properly — were the antithesis.

That was the opposite of how I'd defined it before: myself as a cultivator, accepting this world as a game, as the thesis; and the Humanity Clones from my previous life, as humans crying that this world was reality, as the antithesis denying that thesis.

But what did any of that matter?

Whether I was thesis or antithesis made no difference at all.

The wheel that was the form of my soul simply kept turning in place, endlessly repeating its eternal circulation.

Turning death into Slaughter Tribulation, and turning life into death through Slaughter Tribulation.

Negating thesis into antithesis, and antithesis into thesis.

Just as the Sea of Slaughter in my Mental World regenerated through circulation — Slaughter Tribulation and Slaughter Tribulation killing each other, giving birth to new Slaughter Tribulation.