chapter 1
1 – National Foundation Day – (1)
A close-up of the sobbing knight’s back was slowly followed by a black screen.
And.
[ Ending – #100 / 「Entourage」 ]
> clear
“Finally it’s over… … !”
I cheered and stretched out my arms.
I almost threw the mouse away, but I managed to endure it.
Shoulders that had been shrunken for a long time crackled.
It was worth investing nearly 500 hours in two months and hours.
The one I’m playing right now was a breeding simulation game.
The title of the game is 「Empress Maker」
My favorite invention in Korea is ‘raising an empress’.
It was a hot indie game that was released two months ago.
breeding simulation.
As for the genre itself, there were many works that had already been preoccupied, such as Prince X Maker, but despite this, this game enjoyed cult-like popularity and promoted itself.
The reason was simple.
This is because the main character in the game, the Empress, who is controlled by the player, has died in all kinds of ways.
The goal of this game is simple. It is a very simple story in which all you have to do is raise an inexperienced empress into a full-fledged emperor and go through a coming-of-age ceremony.
However, there was a hardcore feeling that should be called a roguelike rather than a training game.
First of all, the number of endings in this game is 108.
And 100 of them are dead ends.
Starting with the assassination of a pseudo-church, poisoning by political enemies, beheading by rebels, burning at the stake for being accused of being a witch, having your heart pierced by someone close to you, or dying from a contagious disease.
And the fact that the production company’s perverted tendencies are revealed is that they put CG in all these dead ends. This is almost madness.
However, thanks to the publisher’s obsession with shadows, word of mouth made the game a hit.
I also started playing this game after hearing rumors, and fell in love with Raising Empress due to the hardcore difficulty level and emotional dot graphics.
And for two months, I stopped eating and drinking and immersed myself in this game.
And in the end, I saw the 100th dead ending, which is no different from the last dead end of this game.
Shockingly, the last dead ending was that the knight who had been supporting the empress betrayed her, and it was a reversal worthy of raising an empress.
look at the screen again The ending scroll that you have already seen hundreds of times is scrolling up on the monitor.
When I pressed the enter key to skip it, the main screen, which I have seen hundreds of times, came into my eyes.
It was a simple main screen with only refresh, continue, and reminiscence against the background of the imperial castle, which is the stage of the game.
Soon after, a notification window popped up with a ringing sound.
[ Achievement Completion – 「100 Ways of Death」 ]
“Five.”
Seeing the notification window in front of my eyes, I almost shouted for joy again.
With this, you have seen all the endings of Raising the Empress. It was a result obtained at the end of a bloody vacation.
“World’s first… is also not.”
Looking at the acquisition statistics, it was stated that only 0.001% of gamers had obtained this achievement.
Still, you could say it’s almost a first. It can’t be anything to be proud of. I captured the screen to share this joy with everyone. I was thinking of posting it to the community where I used to write strategy articles.
However, when I clicked the OK button in the notification window, another notification popped up.
belt ring.
[Notice – Achievement achievement rate 100% achieved. ]
> New game mode 「Death March」 unlocked
“yes?”
New game mode? It was the first time I heard it.
After all, how much information is there for this game that just came out? It was like hitting the ground.
“Is it like a bonus mode?”
By the way, the name of the game mode is Death March, isn’t it a death march?
It’s still a hardcore game. If it becomes more difficult here, how the hell am I supposed to clear it?
Hey, since it’s that difficult, it must have been included as a 100% achievement rate reward.
“… … .”
He sighed and straightened up again to sit down.
I can’t help it more than this
The moment I saw that phrase, the gamer’s soul inside me burned.
The plan to post achievements to the community has been put on hold for a while.
The pride comes after clearing this.
I pressed the shiny Start New Game button on the main screen.
On the difficulty selection screen, a new button was added that said ‘Death March’ in red letters that looked ominous at first glance.
Without hesitation, I pressed the button and started playing.
Without even dreaming that he would regret that choice forever.
[Notice – Welcome to the world of Raising Empress. ]
The dialogue was output and the game entered the prologue scene again.
At the same time, a deep depression took hold of me.
*
――It rattled.
Suddenly, I woke up with my body shaking a lot.
As I lifted my heavy eyelids in a drowsy state, I saw a room where the dim lights swayed here and there.
“Yes?”
It wasn’t my room.
a place you don’t know
My mind is hazy.
I must have sat down in front of the monitor and started a new level of difficulty in raising an empress.
Then, I think I fell asleep for some reason.
Oh, is it a dream?
I guess I’m sleeping and looking at nothing.
Maybe it’s natural since I’ve only been playing games for two months.
The moment I let out a yawn and was about to rub my eyes, the touch of cold metal hit my face.
I woke up to the icy feeling.
“f*k, what is it?”
When I looked into my hand, I saw a platinum gauntlet that I would only have seen in a fantasy game. Looking down a little further, I see plate armor, from pauldron to breastplate, glistening in the light. It didn’t take long before I realized that the armor was all over me.
Thoughts do not follow reality.
Who’s been playing with my body?
Just as I was thinking about that, someone tapped me on the back.
“Hey, Fred. It’s not like you to fall asleep all of a sudden.”
“Yes, yes?”
“What is that expression that looks like you saw a ghost? Did you have a nightmare?”
Sitting next to me was a giant wearing huge armor like me. The giant was wearing a pointed helmet, and blue eyes twinkled between the gaps.
Occidental?
Why are there Westerners here?
what is that armor? What else is this armor I’m wearing?
Questions come to the surface one after another.
I shook my head. It wasn’t just that that was disconcerting.
What he said was neither Korean nor English. It was a language I had never heard of before. However, I was able to understand his words naturally as if I were speaking my native language.
As I pondered on that fact, I remembered the title the giant called me.
He obviously called me ‘Freed’.
Freed. Guardian Knight Fried.
Could it be that you don’t know
It was a character in Raising the Empress, a game I had just been playing like crazy.
In the end, he is also a bad bastard who puts a knife through his master’s heart.
“No, no way—”
I stretch out my trembling hand and touch my face.
You can feel the face shape with sharp straight lines. Gray hair slicked down and flowed down his forehead. When I touched the corner of my mouth, I touched the long scar between my lips.
All in all, it was a feature that matched the Freed we saw with the 128-pixel graphics.
“Nonsense.”
I muttered blankly.
If my current hypothesis is correct…
I hurriedly asked the giant next to me.
“Hey. Who am I? Where are you?”
“… what?”
Geohan seemed to examine the true meaning of my question for a moment, then laughed as if he was dumbfounded.
“It seems like you really had a dream, Fried. It’s a big deal.”
The giant put his huge hand on my shoulder and continued.
“Your name is Fried Iscobal. One of the six Guardian Knights of the Empire. And as you can see, we are dispatched for the purpose of guarding the imperial family for the National Foundation Day event.”
The giant’s hand patted me from the shoulder to the back of my head.
“Are you done now? Stop waking up from your dreams and focus on your mission.”
The giant removed his hand from my shoulder and pointed over there. When I followed the tip of the finger, there was a window, and through the window I could see a plaza with a large number of people.
The sight seen through the window proved that this place was absolutely not Earth.
All of the people were dressed in costumes that you would only see in a fantasy movie, and the style of the buildings standing tall in the background was the same.
It was only then that I realized that I was sitting in a rocking wagon.
“Damn it.”
I also had to admit that I possessed Freed, a character in Raising an Empress.
It was because he had seen the scenery out of the wagon window before.
over the monitor.
That foreground is the prologue scene of Raising the Empress, a game I literally poured all my time into.
The story of Raising the Empress begins with the National Foundation Day festival.
An empire that has been around for thousands of years.
In commemoration of the founding day, a week-long festival is held in the capital of the empire.
The festival was held grandly, and the empire was relaxed in the peaceful era that had been going on for hundreds of years.
On the fifth day of the National Foundation Day celebration, the emperor stands on the podium with only a few knights without any safety measures and begins to address the people of the empire.
And at that very moment, a tremendous explosion occurs and the whole area becomes a mess.
It is a terror caused by the bastards of the Church of Evil.
As mentioned later, it was said that the bomb was so powerful that the capital square was blown up.
In the aftermath, the emperor and all his relatives were killed, and the emperor’s guards were also destroyed.
Truly an empire in front of a flashlight.
The only survivor was the 4th princess, Lyncia Ayrn, who was far removed from the right of succession to the throne.
The main point of this game is that she, who ascended to the throne at a young age, will struggle to survive until her coming-of-age ceremony two years later.
“wait for a sec.”
The moment I thought about that, I remembered what I had been missing all along.
prologue?
National Day?
Cult of Evil Gods?
terror?
Isn’t that what’s happening right in front of my eyes?
ㅡㅡㅡ Kwawagwang
At that moment, the carriage overturned.