Is This Really a Game?
From the crimson Sea of Slaughter in the Mental World, tentacles thick as pillars surged upward. A squid with round, alien eyes — so thoroughly wrong it set the teeth on edge — thrashed into view, scrambling to do its job.
But even through the brutal eok-kka event of the Classic Combo, Yu I-seong — who had ignored Yu Hee's cries for help and stayed silent in the Mental World — stepped forward with her golden spear and pinned the squid in place.
"Stop denying it already and just accept it, will you?!"
A radiant aurora bloomed from the tip of the golden spear.
Rippling veils of aurora light didn't merely block the squid's pillar-thick tentacles — they coiled around them, locking them down. The squid's round eyes narrowed into half-moons, seething with indignation. But against Yu I-seong, who had once again achieved a dramatic transcendence by devouring a cultivator's Heavenly Tribulation with a soul no better than a mortal's, it meant nothing.
True to the ideal of her transcendence, the aurora of reason denied reality itself and succeeded in sealing the squid that had been covering Yu Hee's eyes.
Even so, she couldn't destroy it.
A squid made of Law could only be erased by Law — and as someone who was not a cultivator, she had none.
Still, the fact that she could now hold it back on her own was comfort enough. Yu I-seong turned her gaze beyond the screen.
To Yu Hee, still blankly spacing out amid the ominous thrashing of the Abyss.
The Abyss is annoyed!
The Abyss is enraged!
The Abyss is utterly furious!
Only under the cascading misfortune events, the howling of the Humanity Clones, and a full-force guilt trip did Yu Hee finally come to her senses. True to form as Yu Hee's own Nascent Soul, the little thing had somehow already slipped out and was grunting and straining as it scooped up drop items into the inventory. Yu Hee reeled the Nascent Soul back in through the Slaughter Gate the Wheel had left open, sweeping the slaughter energy in with it, and slammed the door to the Mental World shut.
As if they'd been waiting for exactly that, the dark violet walls crowding in from every side crashed down all at once. Yu Hee swallowed the slaughter energy whole, shoved her hand into her still-regenerating upper body, and pulled out the barcode scanner.
"Beep! Beep! Beep!"
She punched a hole through the Abyss wall, tore free of the Abyss's tantrum, and in the same breath glanced at the minimap. No red dots nearby. She immediately drew out a Law.
"All things are bound to cycle, and I am no exception — so now, in this very moment, it is time I return to where I belong!"
The tiny Nascent Soul in the form of a newborn infant turned the Wheel once in the Mental World, matching her restriction. The vast Sea of Slaughter churned into a whirlpool, and from within it a Law rose and took effect.
[Base Recall]!
Empowered by the Law, the function yanked her out of the Abyss's belly in an instant and dumped her back at the base.
She ignored the flood of event messages cascading up the screen and, by pure instinct, went looking for warmth — for Elder Togo. Without a word of explanation she ran straight into his arms and clung to him.
"Baby?"
"Just— just a moment, Elder."
It was a fake body of holograms, and Elder Togo's actual Nascent Soul was housed in cold metal machinery — so why could she still feel warmth?
Held in Elder Togo's silent embrace, Yu Hee glanced at the multi-chat room.
If I die, do I just "log out" like that guy who clocked out?
Or is death just death?
Is this world I believed was a game really nothing more than a game?
I've already soaked so deep into this place that calling it a Reality Patch and denying it feels pointless.
Pass along my regards? To whom?
The innate talent born from the corruption of my spiritual root — the foundation of every ability I have — the Status Window. According to Cheon Nan-cho's explanation and Elder Togo's confirmation, it was given by a star watching this place from the upper realm.
Not something I have because I'm a reincarnator.
So the one I'm supposed to pass WageSlave's regards to… is the red star watching me from above?
"Are you all right, baby?"
"Yes. Thank you, Elder Togo."
She bowed her head, then lightly took to the air and flew toward a corner of the base.
To the graveyard she had made long ago — the whole village she'd torn free and transplanted after slaughtering its people and her parents on the day she first raised the slaughter energy and stepped onto the cultivator's path. She opened her inventory.
She pulled out a corpse, withered like old wood and half-melted into something hideous.
Whether from the Abyss's power or sheer stubbornness, the body had survived being crushed under the Sea of Slaughter — and the Nascent Soul had thoughtfully brought it along.
She carefully stripped away the residual slaughter energy and breathed spiritual power into the corpse, restoring its form.
Even at the Nascent Soul realm, she couldn't fully revive a cultivator's body with spiritual power alone — but as she'd guessed, this had been a mortal's flesh. Spiritual power was enough to bring the shape back to a reasonable degree.
Still, a body whose soul had already fled did not come back to life.
"So you spawned as a male character, WageSlave."
Damn it, why am I stuck as a girl?
The one she called WageSlave was someone she knew from the community. Twenty years in the same community meant you remembered most of the regulars — and WageSlave had posted clock-in and clock-out threads every single day without fail.
Every. Single. Day. Without rest.
Whatever crime he'd committed in a past life, he wrote those commute posts like a corporate slave even on weekends, unless it was a holiday or Christmas. Of course he stuck in the memory.
At least he didn't seem to do overtime — but he spent those free hours glued to this garbage game, so that was something.
Come to think of it, he'd always been obsessed with melee characters and overflowing with knight fantasies. Being a black knight made perfect sense.
She dug a neat rectangular hole, laid a few spirit stones on the bottom, set the corpse inside, covered it with more spirit stones, and piled up a burial mound. A simple grave, done.
Her parents and the villagers hadn't even left bodies behind, so she'd had to tear out the whole village and turn it into a graveyard. At least this one got a proper plot.
◈ Type: Armor
◈ Restriction: Knight, or a Knight's Oath
◈ Increases all Defense and Resistances.
◈ Immune to 40% of damage received.
◈ Reduces all damage by 50%.
◈ Durability automatically recovers equal to damage reduced or nullified.
Born a mortal, he lived as a knight. To keep his oath he cut down a Golden Core cultivator — yet in the end, Nascent Soul cultivators struck him down. Even so, the armor alone is said to have remained whole, as unbroken as the oath the knight had kept.
More than the absurdly broken options on this ridiculously overpowered Ancient-grade item with no level requirement, it was the flavor text underneath that snagged her eye.
WageSlave had beaten a Golden Core cultivator but died to Nascent Soul ones — which meant he'd picked the Knight class instead of Cultivator and hit the level cap at 500.
He'd probably hated the default cultivator robes and picked Knight just so he could wear armor. Classic.
And if that item description wasn't some AI-generated fluff slapped onto a user-made mod item — if it was a record of the life WageSlave had actually lived…
"…This isn't a game?"
There were hidden dungeons. Events. Terrain scouting. Hit detection, bugs — game elements everywhere. But what if it wasn't a game at all? What if the Status Window had just made her see everything through a game lens?
What if it wasn't a texture pack — what if this was just reality, and every game-like element she'd perceived was a distortion forced by her Status Window?
She looked up at the sky.
They said a red star was always watching her. She'd never seen it even once, but it was definitely up there somewhere. Who the hell was that red star?
Someone she knew. That much was certain.
Don't tell me it's that ironman-only freak? No — that guy would have locked out save and load entirely.
Then the gay guy who only does restriction runs? But he'd never leave alone a trash game where misfortune always follows fortune and fortune always follows misfortune. That kind of pattern would drive him insane.
So who is the red star that's supposedly watching over me?
What do you even want from me?
Without doing it yourself.
"Hey, can you all shut up for real?"
The moment she tried to do a little thinking, the Humanity Clones in the Mental World started coffin-dancing like their sole mission was to wreck her concentration.
And the one with the Gahi class — job bonus or not — was generating BGM with nothing but her mouth, which made it even more infuriating!
The newborn Nascent Soul, either thrilled or just vibing to the song, sat on top of a coffin made of conscience and grinned ear to ear.
At the Humanity Clones' shouting she looked closer — and found one of them slumped dejectedly in a corner of the Mental World.
The one with the Gravekeeper class.
"…Ah."
The moment Yu Hee came to her senses, she was hit with a barrage of scathing lectures and scolding about putting on airs for no reason — and had no choice but to quietly dig the corpse back up.