Sing the Fantasy

I sang the song of a shitty game.

The name of this game we all mockingly called a complete, unsalvageable piece of garbage was Sing the Fantasy — which I translated as Song of Fantasy. One look at it and you could smell the shovelware. A deeply suspicious medieval fantasy title that, to even launch for the first time, required mods the players themselves had built. A genuine, certified dumpster fire of a game.

It was so thoroughly a mod-dependent mess that you couldn't even play it vanilla — which already made it broken — and the only language support was English, Japanese, and German, which made it trash. And yet people still forced themselves to play it somehow?

Depending on each person's PC or laptop specs, a kaleidoscope of mod conflicts would butcher newbies without mercy. You had to push through every single mode that exploded on high-end machines and every mode that exploded on low-end ones.

Except for absolute lunatics like me, who built an entire custom rig just to play this garbage.

That was why the community that shared information mattered so much. The player base was tiny to begin with, the game wasn't popular, and even when fun mods existed, it was still a hyper-niche piece of trash that lived and died on taste.

It truly was a game that survived solely on the patches and mods its users created.

And among them, of course, I held the role of "Village Chief."

After all, among the many mods I'd made, the very first was the Korean Patch Mod — the pure distilled essence of grunt work, the absurd project of converting every English word and particle into Korean and making it stick. On top of that, every time a massive pack like Comprehensive Bug Fix Mod (For Real_For Real_Final_Final) ver15.8 got updated, I was the one diligently uploading the latest Comprehensive Bug Fix. That was how I became something like the tutorial Village Chief of this game.

Of course, at the start I'd only wanted to somehow grow the player count so I could grind the achievement for receiving ten thousand [Greetings] and [Disappointments] in the multiplayer mod I'd built. Even then, it still took me twenty years to unlock it!

And calling it a multiplayer mod was generous — it was really just a mod that made a non-functional multiplayer system actually work. Peak garbage game design: the only DLC was a set of emotes usable in multiplayer, complete with related achievements, while multiplayer itself was effectively bricked in the base game.

Until I built a mod and forced it open, that is!

So of course, ages ago, I'd already tested whether the multiplayer mod still worked — just to check if any other players had fallen into this hellhole with me.

Naturally, there was no answer. So I'd concluded that this world was the reality-patched version of that shitty game, and that of all things, the xianxia mod I'd downloaded last had become the core of the world I'd fallen into.

That was what I thought.

The first real crack in that theory came when I mastered the basic skills, chose a sect, and saw the name decided by special conditions: Hwanga-gongdong.

Hwanga-gongdong.

Illusion Song. Community.

The Song of Fantasy community.

A ruined sect I could enter only because I was a player — a sect that had already fallen.

The guess hit me immediately: the players who'd arrived before me through multiplayer had all died, and the sect had gone with them. To confirm it, I had to finish the sect quests and dig up its secrets.

So I'd thrown myself at the sect quests, trusting in the load function.

And of course I'd been completely wrecked.

Every single one of them was a nightmare difficulty that you couldn't even touch until you reached the Origin realm.

"Heave-ho!"

"Finally awake, Hee-ah."

"Ah. Cheon Nan-cho."

A cultivator who had taken root in a fragment of a golden core dropped by a cultivator from the upper realm, trained there, and become a field boss. And the information Cheon Nan-cho fed me was so useful and so varied you could practically call it a help menu.

Some of it was the kind of intel you were only supposed to get in the upper realm.

More than that — why didn't Cheon Nan-cho carry the "Hwanga-gongdong" prefix the way San Gi-yeon did? Was it simply a difference in grade? Or if not…

Maybe the owner of the golden core fragment Cheon Nan-cho had rooted herself in had already held the "Hwanga-gongdong" prefix.

"Hee-ah?"

Her voice snapped me back.

"You okay? For someone who just became a giant, you don't look any different."

"What? How did you know?"

"Transcendent species have a completely different presence. Yours just got enormous."

Hmm… that much, huh.

At her words I opened the Status Window and checked my race.

A baby giant who'd only just managed her first steps.

All experience gain increased by ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠50%.

Acquired the Law of Cheok.

What the fuck was that description? Baby my ass! Do you have any idea how tall I get when I use the Transformation skill?! I'm bigger than most mountains! Absolute bullshit! Judging me by a "young" appearance? And why the hell wasn't the Appearance Change Mod applying?!

I ranted myself raw on the inside, then ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tossed Cheon Nan-cho a question about the race window.

"My innate ability says I'm a Young Giant."

"Does it? Well, maybe it's a loophole for staying in the lower realm. If you'd truly transcended into a full giant, Hee-ah, you'd already have reached Nascent Soul and ascended to the upper realm!"

Aha — so my level was too low and my realm too shallow, and I'd hit a ceiling. Leave it to Cheon Nan-cho. No matter how I mangled the question, she always found a way to explain it so I could understand. There was something about her.

"They keep going on about transcendent species and all that, but the only new ability I got is one weird thing."

"What is it? If you're a giant, isn't it just gigantification or something?"

"It says Law: Cheok."

"Hmm. No idea on that one!"

You're the help menu and you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠don't know?! That's dereliction of duty!

After testing it, I determined it was a power that used pure mental force — not spiritual energy or slaughter energy — to freely expand and shrink the body. And during testing, two buildings got crushed under my enlarged form. A minor issue.

Wasn't this basically just the Transformation skill with a fancier name slapped on it?

"Skill Window!!!"

I yanked open the skill window in a panic, but thankfully Transformation still had its original name. Holy shit, that nearly gave me a heart attack. The delayed memory that a registered skill name collapsing into a single ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠character would crash the game sent a spike of terror through me — then it evaporated and left me hollowed out.

"Another episode?"

"Yeah. Pretty much."

What a piece-of-shit game, yanking a person's heart around like that.

I clicked my tongue and opened the absurdly long title this time.

It was written in long-winded grandeur, but stripped down it was just a god-tier title that halved the mental cost of using the Law.

"How's Yeona doing?"

"She's got talent. She should reach Foundation Establishment without much trouble."

I just nodded at Cheon Nan-cho's casual mention that common-grade captives had a level cap under 200. Did captives even have lifespans? With the reality patch, they probably should. And since the captive was a cultivator, there was the problem of her evaporating if she got eok-kka'd by the guaranteed Heavenly Tribulation event.

That would be… a lot… of a waste.

Cheon Nan-cho would find her own path, so I didn't worry about her — but San Gi-yeon was different. Even if she was a common-grade captive, the kind you'd discard or never pick up in the original game.

The existence of a friendly NPC who wasn't a quest NPC had, ever since the day I became a cultivator, managed to poke and wake whatever corpse-like scrap of conscience I'd had left, the one that had been lying dead and motionless.

"Just because you're a cultivator doesn't mean there's any real reason you have to stop living like a human…"

Yeah. All right. Decision made.

I opened the minimap.

Far off, in one of the farthest corners of this world.

The tutorial map: the Wasteland.

I was going back to the village where I'd been born and raised — the place I'd still believed was reality, before I understood this was a reality-patched game — the village I had destroyed with my own hands. Even if the corpses and the village designation itself were gone, and only eerie ruins remained.

I was going to tear up the remaining map tiles wholesale if I had to, and bring them to the base. Even if it was worthless. Even if it was a waste of time and a waste of routing.

"Heading out on the map again?"

"Yeah. Just going to bring my parents and the villagers to the base for a bit."

I watched for a moment as Cheon Nan-cho's face — already informed that I'd massacred my parents and the whole village on my way to becoming a cultivator — cycled through a hilarious series of expressions. Then I left the base.