Chapter 3

‘Ugh! What’s with these effects…’

A blinding light that felt like it would blind him.

Suppressing the nausea rising in his throat while trying to remove the goggles, Yuseong froze at the sight that appeared through his blurry vision.

His room full of clutter was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, what he saw was an unfamiliar room filled with beautiful and antique furniture and decorations that looked like something from a medieval Western movie or drama.

While confused, Yuseong noticed a small message window floating in the corner of his vision and realized his situation.

[Synchronization in Progress]

[Engraving User Basic Skills]

‘Has the game started?’

A bed so huge you could play soccer on top of it.

A bookshelf filling an entire wall, packed densely with books.

A massive wardrobe and plush-looking sofa.

While looking around in wonder at the elaborate chandelier and decorations, Yuseong noticed there was a huge mirror right behind him and carefully raised his head.

‘…Wow.’

Shoulder-length gray hair and skin so white it seemed transparent.

Gentle-looking eyes and a tiny frame that barely seemed to exceed 150cm.

A faintly protruding chest and subtly curved figure.

A beautiful young girl in a pitch-black dress that looked like it was woven from darkness itself stared back at him from beyond the mirror with golden eyes.

‘Ahem.’

The corners of the girl’s lips in the mirror turned up slightly.

It wasn’t at all due to any unsavory intentions or twisted sexual desires that he chose a game with a female protagonist.

But since he was playing a VR game anyway, wouldn’t a pretty female character be better than a dark male character?

While leering and admiring the beautiful girl moving according to his will, Yuseong cleared his throat and casually moved his hand toward his chest.

‘This is absolutely not with impure intentions. I’m just checking how much attention they paid to even minor details in this game…’

-H3ll&*%@o!

“Yikes! What’s this? Why are the characters broken?”

A message window suddenly appearing before his eyes.

When he pushed away the mysterious message window that kept popping up no matter how many times he dismissed it, he realized something strange.

“Ah, aah… ah?”

The delicate voice that clearly came from his own throat.

Though they say recent VR technology has developed to the point where it’s almost indistinguishable from reality, that’s only possible when all sorts of auxiliary equipment is properly set up.

But right now all he’s using is just goggles, no headset or microphone, so how is it possible to hear a different voice?

Once he noticed one discrepancy, other oddities began to surface one after another.

A faint unpleasant smell.

The slight chill rising from his exposed arms and legs.

The strange sense of discomfort every time he moved.

Something was off.

‘This isn’t a VR game, it’s more like…’

Thump! Thump! Thump!

A sudden sound.

Seeing the door on the opposite side of the room shaking, Yuseong froze as he remembered what he’d forgotten.

Though he needed to move to find somewhere to run or hide, what he was doing now wasn’t a PC or mobile game controlling a character through a monitor, but a VR game.

There’s no need to run at full speed – taking just a few steps in reality would make him crash into walls or furniture and fall over.

‘How do you move in this thing?’

Neither marching in place according to his amateur knowledge nor flailing his arms like swimming made his body budge, and shouting words like settings or pause to check for controls didn’t bring up anything either.

“This is really unfriendly. Shouldn’t they teach you the controls first?”

Unlike his thought that he’d naturally figure out the controls once he started, he felt completely lost when he couldn’t even get a grasp on how to move right away.

‘I need to learn the commands or controls first.’

Crack!

Yuseong stopped moving as he was raising his hand to remove the goggles when he saw the door breaking.

It’s a game he’ll have to restart from the beginning anyway.

Before leaving, curiosity struck about what exactly that entity beyond the door might be.

And moments later, when he confirmed what appeared through the broken door, Yuseong couldn’t help but let out an impressed exclamation.

“Wow.”

It was a monster.

Though its face and body were that of an ordinary adult male you could see anywhere, its green left arm was abnormally large and thick enough to rival its body size, while its right arm was covered in thick fur like that of a beast.

The reverse-jointed legs covered in scales needed no further explanation.

“Keeeeeeek!”

“Whoa, is this really a game? It feels completely real!”

Yuseong showed no reaction even while watching the monster charge at him.

He was planning to die anyway, but from the start, the monster’s speed was so unimaginably fast that resistance would have been impossible.

Look, it’s already right in front of him after just one blink.

‘One hit and it’s game over, right? Wow, up close it looks even more…’

Crack!

The floor shoots up and the ceiling caves in as the surroundings begin spinning wildly.

At first, he thought it was a device error or game bug.

But something felt off.

‘This isn’t the world spinning…’

He had no idea what was happening.

As if something was stuck in his throat, he couldn’t breathe, and his chest felt like it was on fire.

When he looked down with trembling eyes, Yuseong’s thoughts stopped.

Torn clothes and ripped flesh.

Blood spurting with each heartbeat from the organs and heart exposed beyond.

“Kh… ack?!”

Like a patient whose anesthesia had worn off, the pain suddenly began flooding in.

Gurgling and spewing bloody foam in pain more terrible than he’d ever felt in his life, Yuseong desperately tried to raise his arm.

Following the judgment of his faintly remaining reason, he tried to remove the goggles to escape this game somehow, but his vision went black before he could.

“Grrrrrk!”

When he raised his head at the sound of choking, the world began spinning again.

And when the spinning stopped, he saw the headless body of a girl in a pitch-black dress and the monster with its entire body dyed red from the spurting blood.

Only then could Yuseong understand what situation he was in.

‘My neck was cut. No, was it torn off?’

He understood his situation, but that was all.

He couldn’t think anything more.

And just before his consciousness faded, numerous messages appeared through his blurry vision.

[Synchronization with ‘Alice’ is complete]

[You can now use ‘Alice’s’ skills]

[User basic skill engraving is complete]

[You have acquired Primal Language: Babel(S)]

[You have acquired Status Window(C)]

[You have acquired Appraisal(C)]

‘What is this…’

[Failed to meet clear conditions for ‘Please, Anyone, Help Me!’]

[0 retries remaining. Quest resolution failed]

[Beginner’s benefit applied]

[Retry count will not be deducted]

[Starting ‘Please, Anyone, Help Me!’]

—-

Flash!

“Ah… aah?”

Letting out a thin groan, Yuseong blankly looked around at the suddenly changed viewpoint.

The exact position where the game had first started.

When he turned around, there was the beautiful girl without a single wound in the mirror.

‘What was that just now? Could it be that the game was so real my brain mistook it for actual pain…’

“…No way!”

There’s no way that could happen no matter what.

No, even if it was all his imagination, there’s no way he could continue playing the same game after experiencing that.

However, when Yuseong raised his arm to remove the goggles he was wearing, he froze.

Nothing could be grabbed.

No matter how frantically he rubbed and felt his face, all he could feel was a soft sensation and the warm heat from friction between flesh.

“……”

He moves his trembling hand, independent of his will, toward other places.

Smooth skin instead of rough stubble.

Long silky hair that feels like stroking silk instead of shortly cut hair.

Thin arms and legs with no trace of muscle.

Slightly protruding chest.

And below that…

-Wh^4t&ger%h?&!

Incomprehensible broken characters began appearing again, but this time they were immediately followed by another message.

[Primal Language, Babel(S) is activating]

-P-please don’t do strange things with my body!

More like a voice echoing in his head than a message.

Though Yuseong was trying to dismiss it as his imagination or hallucination, he decided to try responding to that voice just in case.

“…Could this be directed at me?”

-Ah, can you hear me now?

“…Sort of.”

-Haah, what a relief. I was worried that some evil spirit had taken over my body since you weren’t responding no matter how much I called out…

“Wait! Who are you? No, more importantly, where is this and what’s going on? What was that monster earlier? That pain? Is this really a game? No matter how I think about it, it feels real! Did I just die? If all this is real, did I just die and come back to life?”

Questions chaining one after another.

However, the answer was utterly disappointing.

-Um, I’m Alice. I also found myself in this room when I opened my eyes, so I don’t know where this is or what’s going on. I don’t know what you mean by ‘game’, but this isn’t some illusion magic – it’s definitely reality. Rather than asking if you died and came back to life, I want to ask you that. How did you do it? Is it necromancy? No, rather than reviving the dead, this seems more like time reversal, but how can you have such an ability…

“What on earth are you talking about?!”

-I-I was just answering your questions…

“You brought me here, right? Whatever your purpose is, send me back to my original world right now! I’m just an ordinary person with no abilities! Stop! Pause! Quit! Damn it, why doesn’t anything work!”

-W-wait a moment. You seem really agitated right now, please calm down first.

“How can I calm down in this situation? I just died to a monster! By having my neck torn off!”

Crack!

The broken door and the monster beyond it.

He could no longer joke about it feeling real rather than like a game.

Because this wasn’t a game but actual reality.

“Keeeeeeek!”

“…Damn it.”

He quietly cursed at the monster that had reached him in the blink of an eye once again.

And that was the last thing.

[Failed to meet clear conditions for ‘Please, Anyone, Help Me!’]

[0 retries remaining. Quest resolution failed]

[Beginner’s benefit applied]

[Retry count will not be deducted]

[Starting ‘Please, Anyone, Help Me!’]