Prologue
Prologue
—Find you! La! Oh-eh-oh!
"Ugh, fuuuuuuuuck."
Another day has begun.
I guess this is what it feels like to die and come back. How the hell do zombies get back up after they've been knocked down? I forced my unresponsive arm to move, killed the alarm, and barely hauled my upper body upright.
This isn't a bed, it's a goddamn coffin.
"Ah."
I'm so fucking tired, seriously.
Right up until I got discharged I swore I'd wake up early every single day and live a diligent life, but now that I'm actually out, sleeping and getting up like I did in the army has turned out to be a hell of a lot harder than I thought.
I don't even have a night watch shift, so why am I this exhausted? Come to think of it, is today my one-year anniversary of getting discharged?
Whether it is or not, I've got to go to my part-time job later. Then I'll come back, study a little, play a game, and crash. The daily life of a discharged guy in his early twenties is incredibly busy, okay.
Anyway.
I reached for my phone on autopilot and opened the community site I log into every day. BC Inside. Once I'm awake, I have to scroll through the galleries, check the popular posts, and use that to actually wake up.
If I don't do this, I literally can't get out of bed.
What kind of stuff got posted overnight?
The second I thought that and tapped the popular-posts section of the gallery I always visit.
- ★Academy's War Hero DLC is out??? (388)
Holy shit, three hundred eighty-eight comments already this early in the morning? It was such an overwhelmingly massive post that my eyes locked onto it instantly. Hell, it even had over a thousand likes.
I clicked straight in.
[Show All Hidden Images]
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- IT'S OUT YOU GLORIOUS BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was greeted by enormous, screaming-red bold Gothic text and a spastic muscle-frog GIF charging forward, spewing crimson beams from its eyes.
The comments were pure worship, too.
"Academy's War Hero?"
I know that one. It came out a while ago.
Two years, maybe?
That's pretty old, I think. I remember it coming out when I was in the army.
It always looked really popular, but I've never been into that genre, so I never played it. Still, seeing absolutely everyone losing their goddamn minds over a DLC announcement, it was obviously a masterpiece-level game.
"Is this shit fun? This is the seventh time I've asked."
I dropped that pointless comment as I climbed out of bed, then walked straight over and turned on my computer.
I didn't really have anything to play after work lately anyway. Should I give it a go?
"Viral marketing, totally."
I'll download it now and shower while it installs.
I paid for it instantly, hit the download button, and headed to the bathroom. While I brushed my teeth I searched the game's name on the wiki and skimmed a bit of info.
—Scrub-scrub.
—Splash-splash.
So, what kind of game is it? A game where underage superhumans enrolled in an academy fight beings like monsterkin and monsters.
You raise characters, live the academy life, follow the story, gather allies, and then later you fend off some huge invasion by otherworldly species.
That's the genre.
Basically, you train your main character and hone your control skills until the end of their third year in the game's timeline, then butcher the final boss that invades, and that's how you get the ending.
Reading further, there's so much stuff to do that the playtime is absurdly long. It says there are multiple branching story paths, too, so clearly once you start, you're stuck with it until you've seen every single ending.
"Why the hell do kids these days live so damn hard?"
You can really call this the ultimate Korean-style game. It's all about grinding as much as possible, growing stronger, and smashing everything to pieces. If even kids are living this intensely, what the hell am I doing?
I skimmed through the characters' general profiles, then turned off my phone.
Now I had to wash my hair and my face.
When I play games, I usually glance through about five percent of the info beforehand and then go in blind, figuring the rest out on my own without guides.
That amount is just right for a casual, fun experience.
I didn't even check what the actual DLC was—the DLC that made me download the game in the first place. Even if I looked now, it'd just be spoilers. I'll save it as something to look forward to later.
"Oof."
After I finished washing up, I walked back to my computer.
"Done already."
The download was complete.
I'll launch it once, then get dressed and head out. The rest I can play after I get back from my part-time job, study a bit, and before I go to bed.
I'm actually kind of looking forward to starting a new game for the first time in a while.
—Click.
That was the moment I sat down, finished the install, and launched the game.
Suddenly.
"Huh?"
—Stagger.
"Wha?"
A seriously intense dizziness hit me. Like sleep paralysis... What the hell is this? I was trying to move, but I couldn't! Oh, fuck!
"Whaa?!"
What is this!?
—WHOOOOOOSH!
A pure-white flash burst out of the monitor! I couldn't run away...!
"Oh."
Don't tell me I'm having some kind of sudden seizure or something!
"Guhk...!"
I have to let someone know...!
I-I can't die like this!
I live alone, so if I collapse right now, I'm utterly, truly screwed!
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH!!!!!!"
Hoping that someone would notice, I screamed with every last ounce of strength I had.
And just as I felt all the strength drain from my entire body.
I closed my eyes.