Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The quiet sound of typing filled the room.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The rhythm continued for hours, broken only by the occasional click of a mouse.
Kai Shen sat hunched in front of his computer, his eyes fixed on the screen. Empty coffee cups, snack wrappers, and testing reports covered his desk. His back ached, his neck felt stiff, and his eyes were burning, but his fingers continued moving across the keyboard.
Another line of code appeared.
Kai stared at it, struggling to focus.
"Come on..."
The program began processing the data. A loading symbol appeared on the screen.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three.
Nothing.
The loading symbol disappeared.
PASS.
Kai stared at the result for a moment before finally relaxing in his chair.
"Good..."
He leaned back and let out a long sigh, rubbing his face with both hands.
"Haaaaah... That was tiring."
His gaze drifted toward the clock in the corner of the monitor.
"...It's that late?"
He glanced at the dark window and sighed again. He had promised himself he wouldn't stay up this late tonight.
He had broken that promise.
Again.
Kai turned his attention back to the game running on the screen.
Blessed by Heaven.
The title appeared in elegant golden letters above a familiar fantasy landscape.
Originally, it had been designed as a fantasy romance game, complete with magic, noble families, royal kingdoms, handsome male leads, and beautiful female leads. Players could attend royal balls, explore flower gardens, uncover ancient secrets, and eventually fall in love with their chosen character.
It was supposed to be a peaceful fantasy world where romance and adventure went hand in hand.
Somewhere during development, however, things had taken a rather different direction.
The kingdom had become a world on the brink of destruction. Wars spread across the continent, the Church fell into ruin, and corrupted magic gave rise to terrifying monsters. Cities that had once hosted festivals and romantic events became battlefields, while characters who had once worried about love and noble gossip struggled to survive.
Then came the Great Collapse.
Calamities descended upon the world. Outer Gods appeared, kingdoms fell, and entire cities vanished from the map.
By the end, nearly seventy percent of the world's population had been wiped out.
Kai rubbed his forehead.
"What the hell were those developers thinking?"
He wasn't entirely serious. The darker story had its appeal, but completing some of the routes had been an absolute nightmare.
He glanced at the thick guidebook beside his keyboard. It was filled with bookmarks and handwritten notes, the pages covered in information about hidden quests, secret items, and easily missed events.
"Seriously, how are normal players supposed to clear this?"
The game was full of conditions that could affect events hundreds of hours later. Even seemingly meaningless choices could lock players out of entire routes.
And the path to the original happy ending was especially ridiculous.
The protagonist had to sacrifice nearly half his party to seal the Witch of the Void.
Kai had complained about that more times than he could count.
Still, he wanted to see the ending again.
He clicked through the final sequence.
The ruined battlefield disappeared, replaced by a clear blue sky and a town slowly recovering from the devastation. Buildings were being repaired, shops were reopening, and people were returning to their everyday lives.
The surviving members of the protagonist's party stood together in the streets. They looked exhausted, their clothes torn and their bodies covered in scars, but they were alive.
And they were smiling.
After everything they had endured, people could finally look toward the future without fearing what the next day might bring.
The scene shifted to a church decorated with white flowers.
The protagonist stood beside his lover as the surviving companions gathered around them. They exchanged their vows, and the crowd erupted into cheers. One companion began crying, while another laughed at them for being so emotional.
For the first time in the entire game, everyone was happy.
The screen slowly faded.
HAPPY END
Kai stared at the words, a faint smile appearing on his tired face.
"...Not bad."
He leaned back in his chair.
"After all that, they really earned it."
The final scene continued playing as the newly married couple walked through the rebuilt city. The music softened, and the screen gradually faded to black.
Then something flickered in the corner.
Kai's smile disappeared.
"...Huh?"
He leaned closer, but the flicker was gone. The scene had ended, and everything appeared normal.
He moved the mouse. The cursor responded without any problems.
"Probably nothing."
Kai rubbed his eyes. He had been staring at a screen for far too long, and his brain was probably playing tricks on him.
He returned to the desktop and opened a folder labeled BUG REPORTS.
Several files appeared, most containing ordinary problems: misplaced characters, broken animations, and dialogue triggering at the wrong time. Nothing particularly serious.
Then his eyes stopped on one file.
His finger hovered over it.
He didn't open it. He already knew what was inside.
This bug was different from the others.
Kai had discovered it himself, and despite spending hours investigating it, he still couldn't explain what was happening.
Events appeared that shouldn't exist. Characters sometimes reacted to information they had no way of knowing, and certain scenes changed without any identifiable trigger.
During one test, something had even appeared that wasn't supposed to exist anywhere in the game.
Kai had searched through the character data, event logs, scripts, dialogue, and maps. He had checked everything he could think of, more than once.
Nothing explained it.
Whatever was happening, he couldn't find its source.
He stared at the report for another moment.
He knew what he should do.
Report it.
That was his job, after all.
But his eyes were burning, and he was barely able to keep himself awake.
"...I'll deal with it tomorrow."
He closed the folder.
There was still time.
Kai shut down the computer. The monitor went black, and the room fell into darkness. He pushed himself out of the chair and stretched, wincing as his back cracked.
"Ugh..."
He suppressed a yawn.
"Enough work for today."
He turned toward the hallway but paused briefly to glance at the dark monitor.
Nothing was there except his faint reflection.
Kai shrugged and walked toward his bedroom, leaving the room in silence.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then the monitor flickered.
A faint white glow appeared beneath the darkness before disappearing again.
A moment later, it flickered a second time.
This time, a line of text appeared on the screen.
[ERROR: UNKNOWN ENTITY]
The message remained for a few seconds before the screen went black again.
Down the hallway, Kai's footsteps continued to fade.
He never saw the message.
He never knew it had appeared.
By the time he reached his bedroom, the monitor looked completely normal.
Almost.
A tiny green light glowed beneath the screen, steady and unblinking.
And somewhere inside the machine, something had just begun.