The Final Login
In a cramped studio apartment barely large enough to be called a one-room flat, a computer and a single bed took up most of the space. Trash lay scattered everywhere, clearly untouched for weeks. Right in the middle of it all, Seunghwan sat buried under a blanket, staring at the monitor with such intensity that one might worry he was about to climb inside it.
Seunghwan was still young, with his whole life ahead of him, yet he had no job and put in the bare minimum effort. There was a reason for that. After studying like hell to get into a decent company, he’d been fired over a scandal. No one had stepped up to help him. He didn’t even know what his parents looked like, and he had no siblings. Friends? Even less so. He’d never been the sociable type, and during his school years he’d been too busy studying to bother with relationships. As a result, he lived like a ghost—hoping to die the same way. Without anyone even noticing he was gone.
“Not bad, I guess.”
Life wasn’t much. Neither was death. Once you made up your mind, there wasn’t anything you couldn’t do. The reason he’d stopped trying was simple: he had already decided to die.
Seunghwan, who now treated death like a minor inconvenience, focused on the monitor as usual. What pulled him away from reality was a game.
Fantasy of Pangea.
A single-player RPG where the player traveled the world, grew stronger, defeated the final boss, and saved the realm. It was a classic fantasy title. When it first launched, its incredible freedom and massive continents had made it wildly popular.
But now?
“Maybe a hundred concurrent players, if we’re lucky?”
Seunghwan had cleared that very game hundreds—no, perhaps thousands—of times. Just yesterday, he had slain the final boss and saved the world once again.
The only real regret he felt about dying was that he wouldn’t be able to play Fantasy of Pangea anymore. To him, the game was more than just a game. It was everything.
Setting that small pang of disappointment aside, Seunghwan moved the mouse to start a new playthrough. He clicked Play, and a message greeted him: Create a new character.
This was the part he always spent the most time on.
“What kind of character should I make this time?”
The first choice was obviously race. From the standard fantasy races to the unique ones found only in Pangea, Seunghwan had played them all. Picking a race had become boring. No matter what he chose, the race alone no longer excited him.
Most people would pick human in situations like this, keeping their options open and removing any limitations. But not Seunghwan.
He was the type who always chased uniqueness in every game. Humans were too ordinary—everyone played them. He wanted to stand out. An orc priest? Excellent. An elf berserker? Also great. But humans? No matter what you did, they felt average.
With that thought, Seunghwan clicked on the Random Non-Human tab and moved on.
“Now this is what matters.”
It was time to customize the most important part of character creation. In Fantasy of Pangea, nothing influenced a character’s growth and power more than their Traits.
Traits provided unique advantages based on their grade and were the key element that turned the player into the protagonist. However, the higher the grade, the harsher the penalties. Some prevented you from setting your character’s height above 160cm. Others were far worse—your character could be given a limited lifespan. It felt like playing with a timer on your back.
That was why simply picking the most broken traits wasn’t always the path to clearing the game.
“A combination I’ve never tried before… Absorption and Release, huh.”
Both were S-grade traits. Using them together would require accepting an absolutely brutal penalty. Normally he wouldn’t even touch an S-grade and S-grade combo, but the regret he felt made him want to try it at least once.
Yet there was one penalty he absolutely had to accept if he wanted both.
“Lifespan.”
It was the heaviest penalty of all. It hurt, but he didn’t want to give up on the traits he had chosen. In the end, Seunghwan set his lifespan to the absolute maximum he could afford and created the character.
“Five years. I’ll grow strong quickly and take down Lucifer.”
Even five years felt long to Seunghwan in game time. With all the know-how he had accumulated over countless playthroughs, he didn’t want to think of five years as short. In real time, assuming he only played the game, five years would equal about twenty-five days. His previous fastest clear had taken just five days. He had defeated Lucifer in a single year of game time.
“Five years is more than enough to fall in love, get married, and even raise a kid.”
It was so much time that he let out a dry laugh.
With that thought, Seunghwan clicked the Play button without much emotion, loading his new character.
The screen changed.
And then, an unnatural light burst from the monitor.
The brilliant glow clashed with the darkness of the unlit room and slammed straight into Seunghwan’s face.