Why Am I the Only One Who Lagged?
"...What the actual fuck is this bullshit..."
"Tsk. Hee-ah, no matter how foul your mood is, can you please watch your language? The higher a cultivator's realm, the more weight their words and actions carry. I'm not asking you to take a vow of silence, but you've reached Golden Core now—there's power in what you say. Keep spitting curses and something genuinely terrible is going to happen."
"Fine, fine, I get it..."
This is such absolute garbage. A world where the higher you level, the more just swearing out loud spikes the odds of a misfortune event? What kind of deranged unfairness is this?
And the reason I was sprawled out at base mid-map-clear, seething and cursing until Cheon Nan-cho chewed me out, was simple.
I'd been mindlessly bulldozing the map when I got completely wrecked by a pure Eok-kka event and had no choice but to crawl back to base and rot.
What kind of event?
A massive misfortune event that slaps you with a random Stage 4 debuff had rolled Meaningless Effect—and the problem was that my body, currently running Auto-Battle, had Master Skill Chopsticks fully deployed at the time.
The instant every gaudy, migraine-inducing multicolored effect in existence stacked onto the halo of countless chopsticks spinning behind me like a backlight, matching the wheel of light above my head—
the world started slowing down, stuttering, as if a thousand pounds had been hung from every joint. I couldn't move a muscle. In short:
I lagged.
I'd always wondered what would happen if you lagged, crashed, or broke the game after a reality patch. I never wanted to find out firsthand!
Once the lag hit, I literally couldn't do anything. Moving my slaughter shell, moving my body, even opening my mouth to speak—everything crawled. And the real kicker? Only I was lagging. The monsters I was fighting on Auto-Battle were completely unaffected!
Does that make any sense?! Are you kidding me?!
Why just me?!
"Calm down, Hee-ah. Your killing intent is leaking everywhere."
Cheon Nan-cho's scolding barely dragged me back together.
Canceling Chopsticks and fleeing with a base return took forever because of the lag, so of course the perfectly functional monsters beat the absolute hell out of me!
And since I'd been mid-map-clear—terrain recon, no less—the base return hit me with a double penalty. Now I was a patient sprawled on the base floor, too wrecked to even train in the training grounds...
Why didn't the monsters lag? If Meaningless Effect caused the lag, shouldn't everything in this reality-patched dumpster fire of a game lag equally?!
Gyaaaaaah!
This is so unfair!
Why! Only! Me!!
Only me...?
If the other monsters were fine and only I lagged—does that mean this world is a game only for me? Is that it?
"...Hee-ah?"
"This dumpster-fire game... isn't it?"
I'd thought I'd fallen into a reality-patched game. But if that assumption was wrong—if everything I'd been treating as a game was just a delusion caused by my innate talent, the Status Window—
if the Status Window had simply been blinding me with the concepts of mods and systems, and this model-garden of a world was truly reality—
then I, I—
All skill levels temporarily increase by 1.
"There's no way. Am I an idiot?"
The event message hit me like a bucket of cold water. My mind snapped clear.
I'd fallen into a reality-patched xianxia mode. Without that, there's no way a dumpster-fire game's systems would still be sitting here intact.
Every bug and mod I remembered. Every broken system from that garbage game—tweaked here and there, sure, but still fully functional.
So this world is not reality.
It's just the reality-patched, godawful trash game I know.
"What a complete piece of shit garbage broken game."
That free-falling feeling—like tumbling off a cliff, then barely catching an updraft on a parachute and clawing back uphill—was so foul I couldn't hold it in and swore again.
"Hee-ah."
I wanted to vent, but Cheon Nan-cho's voice—whether she was monitoring me or nursing me while I lay there wheezing under the double debuff—was enough to settle me again.
Nursing, right?
Because of the penalty for base-returning mid-terrain-recon, plus Meaningless Effect still running with plenty of duration left, I couldn't move my slaughter shell—which registered as an attack hitbox—so I literally couldn't do anything but lie still. Cheon Nan-cho had taken over base management in my place.
Which meant right now, while I wasn't running the base, she was soloing the invasion events using the base decorations.
"How the hell are they even getting through?! I blocked everything perfectly!"
"Heh heh. It's an invasion event, remember? Unless you destroy the warehouse you built, or use a difficulty-lowering mod, you're getting invaded no matter what!"
"Why are you saying that like you're proud of it?!"
A tiny hand bonked down on my mouth, forcing it shut. Using spiritual energy to seal the mouth of someone already wheezing from penalties is a little much, don't you th—
Invasion Commander Tutuka of the Crushing Dimension reveals itself and takes the lead.
"Guuuuuuuuh!"
Look at that ridiculously long name. And of course what popped out wasn't a field boss or a dungeon boss—it was a full-blown raid boss.
I tried to yell something at Cheon Nan-cho at the appearance of a raid boss monster from the low-probability Great Fortune event inside an invasion, but she clearly had no intention of listening—my mouth was still sealed with spiritual energy.
And of course, one body-slam from the beetle-looking raid boss monster obliterated every last decoration Cheon Nan-cho had been managing in a single hit.
In a panic, Cheon Nan-cho frantically gestured, and the only two Epic decorations—the robot and the death knight—fired eye-beams and charged wreathed in black light alongside a spectral steed. But—
the raid boss tanked the robot's beam attack with its body, smashed the death knight first, and as its health ticked down smoothly, Phase 2 triggered. The warehouse at the base detonated.
◈ 90% of items stored in the warehouse have been plundered!
◈ 90% of currency stored in the warehouse has been plundered!
◈ Over 50% of base decorations have been destroyed.
◈ Base value has dropped drastically.
The raid boss monster had its minions diligently scoop up the warehouse items and currency, slung a fat bundle over its back, shot a cheerful wink complete with a teabagging-tier taunt animation, opened a dimensional gate, and vanished. Cheon Nan-cho flopped straight over backward.
It wasn't quite full Eok-kka—more like a misfortune event wearing a fortune's face—and watching a newbie try to tank it head-on end in total catastrophe, I could only click my tongue inwardly. My mouth was still sealed shut.
Almost everything in the warehouse got cleaned out, but whatever—Cheon Nan-cho was the one who'd stocked it! The spirit stones hurt a bit, sure!
Most of my stuff was in my inventory.
The higher I leveled and the higher my realm climbed, the stronger the mods got, so Inventory Expansion Mode scaled right along with them. Even with weapons treated as consumables and crafting materials crammed in until it was tight, I could still stash a decent amount.
Of course, that was only possible because I'd dumped all those godawful spirit stones—the currency that doesn't stack and eats an inventory slot each—into Cheon Nan-cho's prisoner bag.
Still, with the warehouse looted, materials and spirit stones for building base structures were critically short, and even repairing the smashed decorations was going to be a nightmare. That was... a pretty big problem!
"Aaaagh! All my effort! All my suffering!"
The second she came to, Cheon Nan-cho shrieked, scrambled over, and started thrashing and rolling around on top of my stomach. I closed my eyes and left her to it.
Cultivators don't actually need sleep, but in this exhausted, worn-out state I applied Rest and just shut my consciousness off entirely. The process felt so much like falling asleep that, for the first time in a long while, my head even felt peaceful.
I was resting fine—until the rest got forcibly canceled. What? Most events get completely blocked by Rest and can't even trigger—
This isn't a normal event, is it?!
My scalp prickled. I bolted upright. In the same breath I confirmed Meaningless Effect wasn't firing—meaning I'd rested long enough for the debuff to wear off—and then:
"Hee-ah! Wait! Stop!"
Cheon Nan-cho tried to stop me, but half on instinct I turned toward the gray neutral-NPC dot that had entered the base on the minimap, applied a transformation skill, hauled out one enormous arm, and brought it down like I meant to kill—
You cannot attack prisoners!
"Urghk!"
"Kyaah!"
Cheon Nan-cho threw herself in the way with everything she had, and we both went flying.