Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Prologue
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Sometimes in life, you come across a game that feels like fate.
A game you can play for thousands, even tens of thousands of hours, and never get tired of.
It's hard to explain to others what makes it so fun, but even so, whenever you have time, you find yourself booting it up steadily.
You might wander off to chase trendy games now and then, but inevitably, you always come back to it—like returning to your hometown.
I had one such fateful game.
A sandbox game called [Celestia Maker].
This obscure indie title was something I stumbled upon by chance in a shop during my childhood.
In it, you play as the administrator running the "Celestia Phantasm Library," crafting magic tomes to stock a massive magical library.
But while it sounds simple from the description, the true value of this game lay in its difficulty.
The spell formulas for the magic tomes have to be crafted by the player themselves, a process that's incredibly finicky, obscure, and tedious.
Each spell demands precise calculations and countless trials and errors.
It was one of those maniacally hardcore games, as they say.
As a kid, I spent a full three weeks just to cobble together a single crude spell—anyone can imagine the difficulty from that alone.
So, after all that grueling work to create a spell, was that the end of it?
—Yes.
That was exactly the problem: it really was the end.
And that was the biggest reason this game never gained any popularity.
Its core flaw was that there was no real use for the spells players painstakingly created.
I even thought something like this once or twice:
"Aren't there any mods out there making monsters or NPCs?"
There were no monsters to blast with your powerful spells, no NPCs to praise your magnificent creations.
No achievements or challenges to unlock with your spells.
Even the game system itself offered zero feedback on completed spells.
It was a game where you repeated boring, complex drudgery purely for self-satisfaction.
That was all there was to it.
In the end, I had to compromise and craft new formulas myself.
"Sigh... Fine. No monsters? I'll just design formulas and make my own."
A monster-generation spell, complete with a virtual HP system and behavior patterns.
Driven by a conviction that even the appearance had to be perfect, I shaved off mana to sculpt an ambitious masterpiece in the form of a dragon.
After pouring my heart into it for so long, the spell came together with astonishing perfection—but alas.
No one ever knew of its existence.
The game was so unpopular that there wasn't even a community for it.
Unable to brag, the spell devolved into mere self-gratification, serving faithfully afterward as a sandbag for testing new spells.
So, yeah—that's the kind of game it was.
One where you couldn't show your creations to anyone, played in solitary self-satisfaction.
And yet, it was a game I played obsessively for years.
With the mindset of crafting every spell in existence single-handedly, I'd invested nearly a decade up to now.
A game I truly loved.
So why was I thinking of it now?
"Ugh... Urgh..."
Because I was dying, flashing back through my life.
Of all the things to pop into my head at life's final moment, this garbage game.
What a utterly futile life.
Damn this life.
* * * * * *
Seo Yo-han, 24 years old.
Born with the name of one of the Twelve Apostles, honoring my devout Christian parents' wishes.
Unfortunately, my personality didn't match in the slightest.
To be honest, I don't think my brainpower is anything to scoff at.
I got into a decently named school and a top-ranked department, after all.
My grades were top-ranked too.
Family was well-off, home life harmonious—I lived a life with little to envy.
But a life that cruised through the top ranks was doomed to end in a top-rank slot too.
Of all things, a truck barreling through a red light smashed into me, sending my body flying far off.
"Gahk... Kek... Khuh...!"
Blood kept pouring from my mouth as I lay crumpled on the ground.
Cough, cough—
Each cough sprayed more blood, and I instantly grasped my situation.
Ah. My organs are wrecked.
Arms aching, legs numb—it looked impossible even to move.
Hit by that damn truck, my body was a mangled rag on the brink of death.
"Ugh... Ngh..."
My groaning flesh was telling me time was running out.
They say no one's perfect.
Heaven gave me a wealthy family, good looks, genius intellect—but in exchange, a short lifespan and this trash game.
My smooth-sailing life was already nearing its end station.
Or maybe that proverb held true: geniuses die young.
Anyway, in my fading life, I watched the life-flashing montage play out before my eyes.
"Ah, not yet... Hah... The... library... Ugh, I haven't... filled it...!"
And flickering before me was the library I'd built over a decade.
Monster-generation spell.
Multi-purpose barrier spell for firepower testing.
Wide-area bombardment spell.
Library cataloging and sorting spell.
All the countless spells I'd created flashed through my mind.
Along with them, spells I'd only dreamed of but never implemented began unfolding before my eyes.
"Grk... Guh..."
So many spells I wanted to make.
Tons of designs I'd sketched but never brought to life.
Yet here I was, leaving without even finishing them.
Was there anything more pathetic in the world?
My chest ached as I pictured the "Celestia Phantasm Library" losing its master today.
The dream of a lifetime crumbling before my eyes hurt too much.
"......"
Thus, with blood on my lips, I stretched my hand toward the sky as hard as I could.
Plop.
And then consciousness went black.
* * * * * *
Where do people go when they die?
Heaven? Hell?
No, all wrong.
The correct answer: a library.
An impossibly vast one, too big even to fathom.
"Ah......"
When I came to after blacking out, I was alone inside a colossal library.
Majestic, ornate facilities.
A sight that would draw gasps of awe from anyone.
Antique bookshelves stretched endlessly across each floor, stacked layer upon layer up to dizzying heights.
Spiral staircases connected the floors in a continuous loop, leading all the way to the rooftop garden at the pinnacle.
The entire massive cylindrical structure existed solely to house books.
It was a library so beautiful it evoked a work of art.
"To think... a library like this exists in the world."
A masterpiece beyond reproach.
A dreamlike place you couldn't believe existed in reality.
Gazing at the stunning library, I wondered if it might be a dream and reached for my arm.
To pinch it and check.
"Ow."
The sharp pain was vivid when I pinched.
My finger stung fiercely where I'd pinched.
But somehow.
I still couldn't shake the feeling that this was a dream.
Even the pain felt artificial somehow.
In the end, there was only one way to confirm the truth.
"Guess I'll check out some books from the library. It can't be some afterlife ledger, right?"
I'd examine the contents of the books here directly.
With that thought, I approached a nearby bookshelf.
Swoosh—
And pulled out one of the tomes slotted there.
If I checked a randomly selected book's contents, I'd know if this was a dream or not.
With that in mind, I flung the tome in my hand wide open—
And soon found myself staring at it with a grave expression.
"......"
Rustle, rustle—
With each page turned in the luxurious-bound book, my face grew stiffer.
No wonder—its contents were all too familiar to me.
The game I'd been playing until last night, [Celestia Maker].
The magic tome I'd authored in that game was replicated here word for word.
Flipping pages with a stunned expression, I soon set it down and headed to another bookshelf.
Maybe this was just coincidence.
Maybe the books on other shelves would be different, I thought.
"......What the hell are these?"
Flutterflutterflutter—
The pages of the book in my hand flew by at high speed.
But the contents on those pages were just as vividly etched in my memory as before.
These were unmistakably the magic tomes I'd crafted in the game.
I checked the tomes on the shelves one by one.
Every single one was the same—no exceptions.
The shelves held only contents from my memory.
Even ones so old they'd faded from recollection were inscribed here crystal clear.
What kind of coincidence could explain this?
One tome might be chance, but every book here? The conclusion was clear.
As I confronted these familiar magic tomes, possibilities flashed through my mind.
This entire space being intimately tied to me.
And me having directly influenced this space far longer than I'd realized—
"No way......"
In other words, what I meant was simple:
—My magic library is alive.