Prologue: One Day Left
"One day left, huh..."
I clicked my tongue as I typed my ID and password into the familiar login screen.
The end of service. The announcement had gone up months ago, but now that today was truly, finally the last day, a hollow ache settled in my chest more sharply than I'd expected.
Rakironia Saga, or RASA for short, was the RPG I had been hopelessly addicted to since my school days — a game I had poured more than eight years of my life into. With its stunning graphics, a story that swallowed you whole, vast maps and worldbuilding, and a relatively original slate of systems, it had once enjoyed a decent run of popularity.
These days it had long since been branded a relic, with only the most hardcore of the hardcore still hanging on. But a game I had sunk nearly a third of my life into was, whatever anyone else thought of it, indistinguishable from my everyday existence. And now that game had finally announced it was shutting down.
It wasn't as if there hadn't been warning signs. Honestly, it wouldn't have been strange if they had pulled the plug at any point. Even so, I couldn't help the emptiness — or the sense of betrayal.
I moved my character to the warehouse and pulled every stored item up onto the screen. I opened the inventory beside it, too.
A mountain of items accumulated over nearly ten years of play. Some were merely decent. Some were extraordinarily good. A handful were treasures even the game itself would have counted on one hand. Looking at them all together like this, there really were a filthy lot of them.
I didn't stop there. I opened the character info window and the skill window as well.
RASA's leveling system made each successive level exponentially harder to reach. From level 80 onward, you needed not just experience but a gauntlet of fiendishly demanding achievements, which was why those heights had become a badge of the true veteran. Level 99 was the game's unofficial cap — no player had ever gone beyond it — and yet all I felt now was regret that I was one level short.
I really wanted to hit 100, at least.
Sky-high stat values, skills of every kind, and equipment so dazzling it left nothing to be desired scrolled down the screen one after another. It was a character spec so lavish that even reasonably veteran players wouldn't have dared show their faces next to it. Now, though, it was all worthless. What had I been thinking, pouring so much effort into gathering and enhancing these scraps of data?
"Let's get started."
Even so, I felt a flicker of interest and anticipation as I moved the mouse. I had pulled all of this up on screen for the sake of one last curiosity. The cursor drifted toward a box-shaped item wedged in a corner slot of the warehouse.
A box of chaos capable of fusing all things in existence.
Items, gold, skills, stats — anything the character possesses, or anything that constitutes the character, may be designated as material.
Compared to most other RPGs, RASA was a game of unusually high freedom and a fiercely distinct personality. Hidden pieces were scattered all over the world in considerable numbers, and this Chaos Box was one of them — an item I had picked up in a dungeon I'd stumbled upon by chance.
The effect alone, as the description made plain, was fascinating. Even in a game overflowing with bizarre skills and items, I had never seen anything stranger than this. Ordinary item synthesis wouldn't have been anything special, but the Chaos Box could fuse not only items but a character's skills and stats as well. In short, there was no limit whatsoever on the type or number of materials you could set.
Setting aside how fascinating it was, the thing was all flash and no substance.
I had only ever used it for a bit of fun right after I obtained it. There was a reason I had left a 9-Star item — one of the few that even existed in the game — sitting in storage.
The efficiency was bad. Worse than bad — it was practically nonexistent.
When you fused something, you generally expected something of higher value to come out. With this, though, the result didn't just fail to improve — nine times out of ten, the value actually dropped. What was I supposed to do with a shameless item that shafted you on nine fusions out of ten? Of course, the fact that you could throw anything in as material, and that you had no idea what would come out, made it a decent toy to mess around with. That had been the extent of its worth. Until now.
But now was different. For decorating the final moment of a playthrough, what item could possibly have been more perfect?
Please set the materials for fusion.
I activated the Chaos Box and moved the cursor. Items, gold, stats, skills — I clicked them one by one, all of it. The items I had spent countless hours and painstaking care to create. The skills I had obtained through nothing short of heaven-sent luck. I set every last one as material without a shred of hesitation.
By the time the fusion was done, I would be no different from a freshly created level 1 character. So what? It was the last day anyway.
If I fuse every last thing without leaving a scrap behind... I wonder what would come out.
Material configuration complete.
Do you truly wish to proceed with fusion?
At last, the preparations were done. I clicked Yes without hesitation — and in that same instant, I winced.
"Ah."
I'd been sure I had selected everything. One skill hadn't been set as material.
The supreme dignity of an emperor dwells in the soul, unshaken in any circumstance. Grants complete immunity to all mental-type debuffs.
Every word and action is imbued with a ruler's dignity and oppressive presence. Greatly increases the probability of holding the advantage in conversations with NPCs.
Grade: ★★★★★★★★★ (9-Star)
Type: Passive
Level: 1 (Max)
A 9-Star skill or item — RASA's unofficial highest grade — was vanishingly rare, and every last one of them was broken in the best possible way. Emperor's Soul was one of those 9-Star skills.
Well. Close enough.
Leaving one out by accident took a little of the wind out of it, but it hardly mattered. I watched the Chaos Box as it poured out a dark aura, vibrating violently on the other side of the screen. The effects seemed far more extravagant than usual. Was that because I had thrown everything in?
A few seconds later, a brilliant light burst through the darkness wrapping the box, and a notification appeared.
Fusion complete.
You have acquired Instant Kill (Skill).
I blinked at the skill that had tumbled out of the fusion. And then, under my breath, I let out a sound of pure disbelief.
"Oh, fuck."
What the hell was this?
Not 9-Star. 10-Star? The fact that a 10-Star grade even existed in RASA was news that had never come to light until this moment. I honestly hadn't been expecting much, and something that completely defied imagination had come bursting out. Reading the skill's description only deepened the shock.
Ignores every kind of effect and inflicts instant death? And no cooldown, no target restrictions?
An instant-death skill with no target restrictions. Did that mean it worked not just on regular mobs, but on bosses too? Those vicious bosses you had to grind against for hours just to scrape out a kill — this thing would proc instant death on them as well?
No way that's possible... then again, this is a skill of a rank that never even existed until now.
A completely bewildered look on my face, I let out a hollow laugh and moved my character. There was no point sitting here thinking about it. I could just check for myself. Never in a million years did I think I'd get a skill this absurd with one day left before shutdown.
If I'd known, I would have tried the fusion a little sooner—
A sickening lurch.
"...?"
In an instant my vision shimmered like a heat haze, and the world sank into darkness. I tried to scream, startled, but I couldn't hear my own voice. My body wouldn't move. There was only a strange ringing that stabbed at my ears, and a dizziness as if heaven and earth had been flipped upside down...
I will not give up.
Slowly, my consciousness slipped away into the distance.