You Have Been Selected as the Only DLC Beta Tester
"Is that stuff really so good? Good enough to drop your guard and come running?"
The gray cat, which normally bolted somewhere out of sight the moment our eyes met, came up to me and shoved its head forward as soon as I took out the Churu.
TL/N: Churu is a creamy cat treat sold in squeeze tubes, famously irresistible to cats.
And this wasn't even a regular thing — it was the first time I'd ever offered any.
To think the little brat that always acted so prickly would approach me first and act cute just because of a Churu.
Churu really was amazing stuff.
How great would it be if I had an ability like Churu?
When a customer who was obviously a pain in the ass walked in, I'd hand them a Churu.
Then the customer's face would brighten, and even if I messed up their cigarettes a few times, they'd patiently repeat the order.
When a female customer I liked came in, I'd hand her a Churu then too.
Then maybe she'd bring over two drinks from a buy-one-get-one-free deal and say, "Here, have one."
And maybe there'd be a phone number written on the back of the drink she gave me.
"Would that be too great a power to use on such small stuff?"
Maybe I'd be better off just selling the Churu for 100 million won and quitting my convenience store part-time job.
-Meow?
"What, you already finished it?"
While I was lost in those delusions of grandeur, the cat had licked the opening of the Churu clean.
I slowly pushed more Churu up from the bottom of the tube, like squeezing toothpaste.
"Slow down. Eat it slowly."
Apparently unhappy with the dribbling portions, the cat bit into the Churu with its fangs.
The new hole made the Churu run out much faster.
Whether it meant to or not, it lapped up the leaking Churu with its tongue, lick after lick.
I'd hoped it would keep the cat occupied for ten minutes, but it seemed to finish in under three.
Shamelessly, the little thing started grooming itself right in front of me.
Then it came back to me.
-Meooow.
As if it had somehow noticed I still had three tubes of Churu in my pocket, the cat rubbed its black-striped body against my leg and pleaded.
No matter how pitifully it cried, no meant no.
"If I don't bring Churu tomorrow, you'll just run away again."
Like my parents, who said they'd come back and then ran off.
If I'd had a Churu in my pocket back then, would those two have come back to me too?
"Tch. Now I'm in a bad mood because of you. No more Churu. That's it!"
Even at my pointless outburst, the cat turned on the charm.
-Mrrrow? Purrrr~
But I had already made up my mind.
No matter how much it purred, I absolutely would not give in.
***
"Damn it."
I casually tossed the two remaining tubes of Churu beside the keyboard.
I'd thought one pack would last a week, but it looked like it wouldn't even survive two days.
"Why is something the size of a squeeze-yogurt tube so expensive? I eat discarded food, and a stray cat gets to eat better than me?"
I said that, but I already knew.
Having seen how cute the cat looked eating Churu, I was going to end up buying more.
I put the triangle kimbap I'd brought from the convenience store in the microwave and turned on the computer.
The desktop had nothing but a few portal site shortcuts, the Recycle Bin, and a single game icon labeled "Potion Forest."
I clicked the game icon to launch it, then went to get the heated kimbap.
When I came back and sat down, the game was still loading.
Even though my studio apartment was so small that the round trip took no time at all, that was still more than enough time for a 2D pixel game to open.
"If a ten-year-old game takes this long to start, I can't even dream of running anything recent."
It was a used computer I'd lucked into through a free giveaway, so honestly, I was grateful it worked at all.
Probably because of those specs, Potion Forest was about the only game I could run, and my playtime had long since passed ten thousand hours.
"I love the game, but the content's starting to run dry."
Potion Forest was a game about brewing potions through alchemy and selling them to the Beastfolk living in the forest.
You accepted quests and made potions with the requested effects, which raised the Beastfolk NPCs' Affection, and when their Affection rose, they provided potion ingredients.
Then you used the new ingredients to make more potions and clear new quests — that kind of game.
The core content and the fun of it lay in the trial and error of figuring out potion recipes, but....
The more seasoned you became, the more that fun faded.
Because the recipes were the same on your first playthrough and your hundredth.
It felt like solving a riddle when you already knew the answer.
Of course, there had been times when solving a riddle with the answer in hand was fun.
Since I also knew the correct dialogue choices, NPC Affection shot up as if I were using cheats.
"But the problem is, I got so seasoned that I went beyond knowing the answers and memorized even the quest-giver's lines."
Dopamine comes from the unpredictable, right?
I'd literally memorized everything about the game, so there was nothing left to give me that dopamine rush.
To the man who had to fish out his own cigarettes like a claw-machine prize because I couldn't remember the brands—I'm sorry.
Because of this game, I didn't have the brain capacity left to memorize cigarette names.
I'd even tried speedrunning with that advantage.
I achieved the feat of clearing a game with an average clear time of thirty hours in one hour flat.
"Well, after I cut the record down to where second place couldn't even compare, I dropped speedrunning too."
The last update had been ten years ago, and with no DLC and no news of a sequel, I was the only one still hanging on to the game.
With no rivals to compete against, losing interest in speedrunning wasn't strange.
It was also hard to shave off any more time.
Even after I finished my idle thoughts, the game was still loading.
"At this rate, it'd be a problem even if a sequel came out. Would the game even run?"
Thinking about the recommended specs of recently released games scared me.
The future where a game came out and I couldn't play it.
The future where I could only watch streamers play it.
But upgrading my computer wasn't an option, because after paying living expenses my bank account was completely empty — I had no savings.
Eh, as if a sequel would even come out.
While I was deliberately ignoring my worries with that complacent thought, a mail notification chimed.
"Mail? Who'd send me anything?"
I had no friends I kept in touch with, and I'd blocked every single spam message.
So what was it...?
[A new DLC has been released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Potion Forest.]
At the unbelievable subject line, my mouth fell open on its own.
Wondering if it might be spam, I searched the sender's email address, and it really was the company behind Potion Forest.
"Holy crap."
Clutching my pounding chest, I clicked the mail and read through the contents.
The DLC hadn't been officially released yet; the message said they were recruiting beta testers.
But there was one word that caught my eye.
"...The sole beta tester? Me? Seriously?"
Whether it was because I was first in speedrunning,
or because of the affection for the game evident in my playtime,
or maybe just because I was the only user still playing the game — I didn't know.
But it said I alone had been chosen.
To think I was the only beta tester.
There was an indescribable thrill in being the only one to enjoy something.
"Anyway, what's this? The Potion Forest DLC is a hell mode for veterans, and you only have one life?"
I understood the hell mode for veterans part.
Since the game was old, there were bound to be seasoned players like me, and raising the difficulty to satisfy them was entirely plausible.
But the one life part made no sense.
What reason was there to stake your life on a management game?
In a game with no combat content, no less.
"Ah, is that it? It means there's only one save file. Well, if there were save files, it'd be too easy."
It seemed they were guarding against the playstyle of saving before making a potion and reloading after a failure to retry multiple times without losing ingredients.
Since I just had to keep the recipes in my head anyway.
But I had no intention of using something like that in the first place.
Why would I use a cheat that made the game boring?
Besides, my pride wouldn't allow it.
In exchange for having one life, there was something called a beta user perk.
They must have been worried the sole beta tester wouldn't be able to see the ending.
"Tch, this is kind of insulting. Can't I turn the perk off?"
Who did they think they were dealing with? I was a veteran who'd spent ten years playing the same game.
I was so seasoned that just seeing an NPC's face let me rattle off the entire quest contents.
"The perk unlocks when you play the newly added content. It doesn't say what effect it has."
So they wanted me to feel the fun of discovering it by playing myself.
I was a little worried the perk might make the game too easy, but...
"If it's too overpowered, I can just choose not to use it."
At the very end of the mail, a download file was attached.
The mouse cursor heading for the download button hesitated.
It was because of the number written next to the file name.
"22 gigs? The base game isn't even 1 gig, and the DLC is 22 gigs?"
Compared to recently released games, it wasn't that large a file size.
But that was exactly the problem.
The fact that it was on the same level as a brand-new game.
"My point of comparison here is a ten-year-old game! Ha, shit.... It'll be fine, right?"
What was I going to do if it wasn't?
Was I going to give up the chance to be the first user to play the DLC?
Or was I going to let down the game company's expectations?
"Win or lose—no, even if it kills me, I'm going for it. Hang in there, computer!"
I downloaded the game and launched it immediately.
When the loading window appeared, the computer's fan spun violently, then went quiet.
At the same time, the monitor turned off.
"No way...?"
Denying reality, I hammered the power button.
But my PC—a widow that had spent ten years clinging to a dead game with no updates—couldn't survive a taste of a young, vigorous game (and a big one at that).
"Ah......."
The grief of losing my PC and the emptiness of not being able to play the DLC swirled in my chest.
But being swept up in those emotions lasted only a moment.
My vision, too, went dark like the black monitor.