Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: Silver Dragon
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Seon Woo-hyuk (Revised 25.07.09)
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Savior Quest was a pretty successful game fantasy novel. No, it was insanely successful.
It had even been adapted into a webtoon and a mobile game.
Of course, the mobile game got a ton of flak for its shoddy quality, but the original story spread overseas and built up a solid fanbase.
One of the most popular web novel sites in the West had even been created just to pirate-translate Savior Quest.
So yeah, it deserved to be called the grandfather of K-web novels, didn't it?
"Huck, we're throwing a party at my place tonight. You in?"
"Thanks, but I'll pass today. Got stuff to do."
"Alright, see you tomorrow then."
A blond, good-looking guy who could've stepped right out of a classic American high school movie waved at me as he walked off.
Rogers.
He looked like the type who'd roll with a posse, picking fights with nerds or pulling mean pranks, but looks were deceiving—he was just a solid guy.
Even in '90s America, where not calling East Asians "chinky" put you in the top 1% of decent people, Rogers went beyond that. He treated me like a close buddy, no prejudice whatsoever.
Nice personality, handsome, and a straight-A student to boot... Isn't that a bit unfair?
I packed my laptop from the desk into my bag, taking a moment to ponder life's injustices.
After grabbing my stuff and stepping out of the classroom, I spotted groups of students who'd left early, huddled in the hallway deep in conversation.
Thick glasses, slightly hunched necks and backs—one and all.
And their outfits looked like they'd been issued from the same catalog: plaid button-ups or faded long-sleeve tees with weird designs plastered on them.
This is more like it.
Seeing these familiar sights that reminded me of Nothing's dev team somehow put my mind at ease.
Caltech.
A tech university in Pasadena, California.
With the motto "The truth shall make you free," it wasn't just America's top school—it competed for the number one spot worldwide.
Getting in here basically meant you were in the global top 0.001% of talent.
"Damn it, this make any sense?"
A Black student was pounding the wall in frustration.
"I finally got lambda expressions down last week, and now they want us to code parallel computing and distributed systems?"
"I still haven't nailed recursion or DP!"
"Normal places teach arrays, then linked lists step by step, right? Here they're cramming array, linked list, tree, graph, and neural nets—all five—in two weeks!"
He was venting to his friends about the class.
The other students in the hall nodded in sympathy as they watched.
Caltech drew the world's top geniuses, so its faculty was stacked with them too.
Which meant no expecting a normal curriculum here.
Local "geniuses" became average students overnight, and if you slipped, you got called dumb.
Didn't they cover that in the last lecture?
No hand-holding intro classes like in Korean universities.
Professors assumed you grasped what they knew and dove straight into advanced stuff.
Keeping up was all on you.
Survive and graduate; fail and fade away—a brutal jungle.
But that's why, despite having only about 900 undergrads, Caltech stood shoulder-to-shoulder with MIT as America's premier engineering school.
"Huck! You keep acing everything, so the profs go off the rails!!!"
The grumbling Black student spotted me and turned his ire my way.
"Sorry, but I can't just ignore questions."
"Fair, but... save me, man! This homework is insane. Grads would struggle with it."
"Can't today. Stuff to do."
"What? That computer game again?"
"Yep."
"Waste of time. With your brains, you could skip undergrad and jump to a prof's lab. Give that genius to me instead of wasting it on games!"
"Eh, I have more fun making games."
He shook his head like I was some weirdo. Jason—a third-year EAS undergrad majoring in CS.
Despite griping about the pace, he had genius-level talent that'd shine outside these walls.
Just a game, huh... Well, it's too early for anyone to grasp gaming's potential.
I said goodbye to Jason and headed straight out of the building toward the dorms.
Caltech's dorm system was unique.
Like Harry Potter houses, freshmen picked their dorm. I chose Avery House out of the eight.
Each had its own culture and setup, but Avery was the most modern—which was why I picked it.
Plus, luck out and you could snag a single room. Best option all around.
The others didn't even have internet yet, so no real choice.
Yeah.
I'd come from 2025 to 1992.
The era when the WWW—the internet as we know it—was just starting to roll out.
Still doesn't feel real.
My last memory was finishing Savior Quest and crashing in bed. Woke up in a Caltech dorm room.
Thinking back to the freakout I had, a twin room would've gotten me reported for drugs by a roommate.
Once I calmed down, I accepted this was reality and started gathering intel.
The mirror showed a fresh-faced guy in his early twenties—more boyish than man.
Checking my stuff, I pieced it together.
Wallet on the desk: simple English ID—not Korean, but a Caltech student card.
The moment I touched it, memories flooded in.
Seon Woo-hyuk?
They were the life story of a guy named Seon Woo-hyuk.
Born and raised in Korea, moved to the US in middle school with his dad—like a movie reel.
Memories totally alien to my own life.
The world of Savior Quest?!
But I already knew Seon Woo-hyuk.
He was a character from the web novel Savior Quest I'd read.
In the story, he was the once-in-a-generation genius dev who created the first full-dive VR game, Savior Quest.
And the final villain who turned it into an inescapable death game with millions online.
Near the end, it came out why he'd trapped people in a game where dying inside meant dying for real.
Disillusionment with the world and hatred for humanity.
He'd poured years into perfecting VR, but society saw it as just a cash grab or dumb entertainment.
Seeing corrupt politics, greedy corps, and degenerate masses, he decided "humanity deserves judgment in the virtual world I built."
Savior Quest became the arena for that trial.
He met a bittersweet end after the protagonist's party cleared his final quests, ringing the curtain on the story. Impossible to forget.
In the book, he was late forties, so the timeline fits perfectly.
Hard to believe, but I had to accept I'd become that Seon Woo-hyuk.
-Genius scientist returns to Korea after graduating Caltech in the US!
That was one of the few story mentions of him, and here I was in his Caltech dorm. Denying it would've been weirder.
At first, I thought I'd lose my mind.
Me, the guy who causes the Savior Incident—the worst crime in history?
No, if you're gonna soul-swap me like some kidnapping, make me the protagonist, not the psycho dev!
I wasn't unhappy with my old life.
Climbing the ladder at Nothing, pegged as the youngest exec. Solid life, no regrets.
-Man, I wish I could make a game like this.
Muttering that before bed? Then it hit me.
They want me to make Savior Quest!
A full-dive VR game—pure sci-fi in my time due to tech and ethics limits.
Felt like a divine mission.
Calming down, I realized: this was a once-in-a-lifetime shot.
A death game killing real people? That's the original Seon Woo-hyuk's bitter choice.
I wasn't crazy enough to kill, and nailing full-dive VR? I'd be the world's richest, Korea or not.
Plus, it was 1992.
Like most Korean game fantasies, Savior Quest's world matched reality closely, minor diffs aside.
First thing I did upon realizing this was cross-check with my memories.
Real-world figures and companies I'd known? All here intact.
This world was my reality plus the novel's characters, like the Seon Woo-hyuk I possessed. Shockingly identical otherwise.
With my future knowledge? Failing to succeed would be the real shock.
Right then, I vowed to make the VR game I'd dreamed of since childhood—in this world.