This Goddamn Trash Game

"Mod Tool! Mod Manager! Check mods! Mod hook! Come on, Status Window, give me something!"

I couldn't even check which mods were currently active. The pitiful little spiritual root forged from the lives of a few dozen Mortals was apparently being drained not only to keep the Status Window running, but to keep the mods applied at all times.

In short—

"So it really is just a level problem?! This fucking trash game!!!"

Even for someone like me — a veteran so deep into this game I'd practically turned into crude oil rotting inside it — having the entire basic structure twisted beyond recognition rendered everything I knew useless. Every event, every quest, every skill and class I remembered would have been rewritten by now.

"Not everything will have changed… but yeah, the foundation is still pure trash."

I'd become a cultivator. I had a Status Window. That meant the only thing left to do was level up — and leveling up meant slaughter.

There was just one problem.

"This place is seriously fucking huge."

Even opening the minimap only showed rock mountains, wasteland, and sand. The Mortal ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠village I'd come from had been held together by talismans left by immortals and the occasional cultivator who showed up once every decade or so — I'd had no idea the world outside was this barren.

Maybe I should have chased those rat bastards earlier. They'd looked like spiritual beasts that hunted cultivators, so following them might have led me to one. The fact that I was even thinking that told me how desperate I was getting.

Whether it was my innate ability or simply having left the Mortal realm behind, walking for days without food or water didn't tire me physically. Mentally, though, I was bored out of my skull.

"No mobs. Nothing."

I'd have killed for something — anything — to jump out at me. Whatever the problem was, even the random events that were supposed to fire every in-game day thanks to the mods refused to trigger, which only made the monotony worse. If I remembered right, the vanilla game without mods had random events every ten to fourteen days.

"What a complete piece of shit."

If it weren't for this useless innate ability, I'd already be a proper cultivator by now. When the next one came around to maintain the village, I could have followed them into a sect, gotten support, and cultivated in peace up in the mountains.

A wall of red message windows flooded my vision. This was the warning that only appeared during random events when the recommended level gap was more than double — a bare-minimum safeguard against eok-kka. And now that this was reality, there was no clicking a button to skip the event.

"What the fuck is that."

The wasteland split open. Something enormous erupted from below, and all I could do was sink to the ground and spit curses.

They were throwing an event like this at level thirteen?!

A colossal spiritual beast — one that had apparently been sleeping underground, siphoning the spiritual energy of heaven and earth until the entire region withered into wasteland — wrenched open its jaws in fury. Even my early Qi Condensation eyes could make out the massive wounds raking its body. Black carapace armored every inch of it; the thing was the size of a mountain.

And then the sky itself tore open above it.

A pillar of light vast enough to swallow the beast whole began its slow descent. If I'd been an ordinary cultivator, just looking at that thing would have made me cough blood and drop dead from the sheer density of spiritual energy. The moment I witnessed it, I couldn't even get a curse out — I blacked out on the spot.

A classic negative event outcome. In the trash game I remembered, these events would slap you with one status ailment at a time — map lock, stat reduction, that kind of thing.

"Cough… almost fucking died."

And when eok-kka hit during a negative event, there was a low chance your character just died. In Ironman Mode, a negative event left you with nothing but prayer. Peak trash-game design, really.

"First time seeing one, but… so that's a Heavenly Tribulation."

The trial cultivators supposedly faced when breaking through to a new realm. Kind of like a character-delete-on-fail class-change quest. Cheap way to put it, sure — but framing it like that was the only thing keeping me able to move.

The wasteland spiritual beast killed by the Heavenly Tribulation vanished without a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trace. The only reason I, a mere early Qi Condensation cultivator, could be sure it was dead was the minimap: a single shell fragment overflowing with spiritual energy, lodged in a corner of the cracked wasteland.

Thanks to the item filter mod, high-value items showed up on the minimap — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and now that this was reality, that was basically cheating. Ohhh, even a fragment, and the name on the info window is purple. Looks high-grade as hell.

Heart racing, I dragged my critically wounded body across the wasteland for days, half-crawling the whole way, and finally managed to pick it up.

"Fuck."

Level two hundred restriction. Are you serious.

My early-game dream of free-rolling epic gear shattered instantly. Getting an epic material from an early event was already absurdly lucky for a trash game this bad, but critically wounded and stuck with an epic material I couldn't use? More than enough, thanks.

Not dying was already a win, and I'd gotten something out of it — so I'd been feeling pretty good about myself. And then—

"Squeak-squeak-squeak!"

—while critically wounded, I found myself face-to-face with an overwhelmingly superior opponent.

A single yellowish-brown rat from what looked like a scouting pack of spiritual beasts was grinning at me. I opened the minimap. Inside it, only one gray marker — the color for neutral NPCs — existed. I clenched my teeth.

Should I dump my remaining stat points? But certain events only triggered if you barely spent any of them. And with the critical injury debuff reducing me to Mortal-level physical ability, the situation was even worse. The rat's total stats were 24. Mine, critically wounded, couldn't have been more than 20 on a generous day.

Auto-Battle was a quality-of-life mod — meaning it wasn't allowed to break the balance. Manual combat could handle enemies above your level, sure. But would Mortal fighting techniques help me kill a spiritual beast that, rat or not, had clearly gained intelligence?

I was still deliberating when a message window filled my vision.

"Thank you so much for checking on me!!!!"

I dropped flat and bowed. I hadn't missed it — the spiritual beast didn't seem to have recognized the epic material, and probably wasn't going to attack me — but keeping my head down and staying unremarkable was still the play.

The Yellow Rat's presence faded, but the black dot on the minimap didn't disappear. It just kept its distance. That thing was suspicious of me. I was already under surveillance.

The moment I saw that, I knew I had to decide.

"Hate to waste the remaining stats, but… Status Window."

Critical injury had tanked every stat by a flat amount, so I dumped every remaining point into Body — the only one that might help in a fight. I took a slow breath, pushed myself upright, and opened my mouth.

"…Auto-Battle."

The meager, ominous spiritual power seeping from the slaughter-forged spiritual root — built from the lives of Mortals — activated my innate ability. My body began to move without any input from my consciousness.

An extraordinary killing intent erupted from what had looked like a mere Mortal.

Among the Yellow Rat clan, this one had been the fastest on its feet, which was why it had reached the site of the Heavenly Tribulation ahead of its fellow cultivators. There it had found a living Mortal. The body was clearly wrecked by the tribulation's aftermath — and yet, up close, the Mortal was moving without any real trouble. Something beyond an ordinary human. Suspicious. It had hidden itself to watch.

And then, from the body of a small girl who was staring directly at its hiding place, a killing intent exploded outward — so dense the rat couldn't even tell where she'd been concealing it.

When it had been with its brothers, the aura had clearly been a Mortal's killing intent. Alone now, feeling it with its full senses, that same killing intent was enough to crush even a cultivating spiritual beast like itself.

"Squeak!!!!" (It was a wicked demon all along!!!!)

The Yellow Rat recoiled in terror and wrenched its spiritual energy upward to defend — but the energy collided with that ominous killing intent and simply burned away, consumed on contact. Stripped of its defenses, it could only watch as the demon, wreathed in slaughter, closed in barehanded.

Hide and flesh tore under those hands. In the midst of that hideous agony, the demon grinned — and as it dug through the Yellow Rat's body, the last thing the beast felt was its own soul being ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ripped free. Then its consciousness went dark.