Surviving Every Worldview

Chapter 1: Your Story (1)

It’s said that everyone has a need to tell their story in some way.

It could be a simple experience, a plot, a poem, or song lyrics.

The important thing is this.

Everyone has their own story, their own character.

“Every time I see it, I don’t know what it means.”

I quickly scrolled down past the first line, which I’d seen again and again.

What I’d just seen was the intro to a game I knew. I don’t know who said it to whom, or what the intent was.

The person who wrote it was none other than an internet friend of mine.

[Last episode dialog.docx]

I scrolled down quickly, checking out the content, and before I knew it, it was over.

It’s all wrapped up, and it’s time for the final showdown.

With neither side able to simply label the other as evil, the protagonist raised his weapon and opened his mouth to speak.

After that, nothing was written.

…I felt bad for feeling bad, but I could see why my friend had sent it to me.

It was a common occurrence.

He probably sent it to me because he was stuck in the first place.

I typed into the chat on my keyboard and asked the person who sent this document.

-Yoo Seon-woo: Can’t you think of a way for the protagonist to refute the final boss’s argument?

I was waiting for the next chat to appear.

-Dreams Dream: I’ve been stuck here for hours already, and I shouldn’t be stuck here.

Dreams Dream is a solo developer who is working on a massive turn-based RPG game all by himself.

I met him on the internet and have been in contact with him for a long time without knowing his name or age.

He sometimes asks me questions, like now, and I tell him my point of view.

When did it start?

When I joined a game development club and told them I was writing stories, so about a year and a half ago.

It wasn’t serious advice, I didn’t have the knowledge to do that.

It was more like a friend from school saying, “Hey, I drew a comic, would you like to see it?” and then giving them a review.

And even then, Dreams is always grateful.

“Um…….”

I thought for a moment and took a sip of the coffee I’d ordered.

Then, as I always do, I answered his question with my own flavor.

Yoo Seon-woo: Why do you have to argue? It was a confrontation over a question with no right answer.

-D.D: What then?

-Yoo Seon-woo: Can’t we just stop the final boss’s goal from being achieved?

-D.D: Is that so? Um…….

He seemed to think of something and stopped chatting for a while.

His answer didn’t come until about 12 minutes later.

-D.D: It’s not bad, but I’m not sure I like it as much as you said.

-Yoo Seon-woo: If you come up with something better later, change it.

-D.D: Mmm…….

It was not uncommon for him to be disappointed with my answer.

It’s understandable because he asked for other people’s opinions, not his own.

He may not even like my answer because it evades the intent of the question.

-D.D: No, I’ll stick with it.

But Dreams embraced my way.

Seriously?

There’s no way he’s going to like this.

-Yoo Seon-woo: Why do you like it?

-D.D: I just needed to decide this part. I’ll just finish it like this. I’m tired.

-Yoo Seon-woo: Already?

I was puzzled.

Dreams and I became friends two years ago, and he told me he had just started making the game.

But the scale of the game was not something a normal person could complete by himself in two years.

I can say this with confidence because I’ve received a demo version that is still in development.

From conception to development, he worked on the game alone without any sponsorship.

Two years is a very short period of time to complete such a game.

Even if a big company was making it, it would have been the same.

I don’t know if he realizes it or not, but he keeps insisting, so I don’t mention it anymore.

There are plenty of indie games that took five or ten years to make and became popular around the world.

But he finished it today?

In two years?

And the last thing he did was write character dialog?

That’s a lie.

You don’t have to be an expert to have common sense.

Yoo Seon-woo: You didn’t just finish it because you were bored, did you?

―D.D: That’s too much. If you don’t believe me, give it a try.

But Dreams attitude was so confident that I felt bad for doubting him.

If you say you’ll send it to me, I’ll be grateful.

-Yoo Seon-woo: What? I’ll pay for the finished product.

-D.D: Why would I take money from you? Just take it for testing.

-ping.

The notification rang before the chat was posted.

A message informed me that a large compressed file had been sent to my email.

-Yoo Seon-woo: Thanks, but I can’t check it right now because I’m not at home. I’m at school.

-D.D: Just open it right away.

-Yoo Seon-woo: I’m having a hard time right now because my laptop is not good enough.

-D.D: It doesn’t matter, just turn it on for a minute.

It was clear that the laptop was not capable of running the prototype.

Did he optimize it?

Or does he have any surprises?

-Yoo Seon-woo: Okay.

I minimized the message, got the file, and unzipped it.

It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, and it was done in no time and a folder was created.

Something still felt unnatural.

It can’t be that small because it’s not finished, right?

-D.D: Quickly. I’m running out of time.

Yeah, yeah.

You keep asking what’s so urgent, so I’ll give you what you want.

[New Game.exe]

I find the only recognizable executable file in the cluttered folder.

It’s called New Game. I’ve told him I don’t have a title for the game, and he still doesn’t.

I double-clicked the file to launch the game.

“Hmm?”

At that moment, I looked up at the sky in disbelief.

I launched the game, but nothing appeared on my laptop monitor.

Instead, I saw something strange outside a completely unrelated window.

What was that?

From the ground-floor cafe on the campus of my university, the sky seemed to turn a strange color, somewhere between purple and pink, magenta if you will.

It was the same color as when a bug occurs in a game and objects and backgrounds become monochromatic.

I didn’t get much sleep today.

I don’t know how I could have gotten so-

“Huh?”

“Dude, I just…….”

The people sitting next to me were also looking out the window and talking.

I wonder if they saw the same thing I did.

I was relieved to realize that my eyes weren’t weird, but then another thought occurred to me.

What if I didn’t just see something wrong?

[Capacity exceeded.]

[To secure large-scale capacity, we are carrying out the ‘Second Cognitive Revolution.’]

At that moment, an unintelligible announcement came from somewhere.

It was like a loudspeaker in a small town making an important announcement.

[The invasion of worldviews had begun.]

[Fictional beings will soon be on the loose, and those who qualify will be given ‘stories’ to prepare for them.]

[Use the ‘story’ to get through the crisis.]

No further notice was given after that.

However, when I tried to recall what I had just heard, the same words immediately replayed.

I tried to write down what I had just heard in my notepad.

It sounded like something I had heard before.

“Uh……?”

As I hovered my hand over the mouse, a few lines of text appeared in front of me.

It was the exact same notification I had just heard.

It was like it was saying, if you want to see it in text, I’ll show you.

“Wait, this…….”

As I thought about it, I got a strange feeling of recognition.

I realized that I had seen this before.

It didn’t take me long to realize when and how.

The wording is slightly different from what I’ve seen before, but it’s unmistakable.

The game that Dreams was making.

After the prologue, it was clear that it was a tutorial.

I didn’t remember it right away, because I’ve skipped it every time since the first day I got the game.

“What is this? Am I the only one seeing this?”

“No… I’m looking at it too.”

“Photo…wait, dude, this isn’t on camera!”

The cafe quickly descended into chaos.

The café, which usually whispers in common courtesy, quickly became a chattering mass.

Everyone else was looking at each other, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Wait, the phone…uh, why did you call? In front of me? Oh, that’s me…….”

I quietly eavesdropped on the conversation on the phone with the person next to me through the crowd.

As the person holding the cell phone stood up, the text followed suit.

He tried to move it away with his hand, but it went right through him like a hologram.

It took a few seconds before it disappeared on its own.

“Dude, so you’ve got a…Oh, yeah, I just got it, hang up.”

After confirming that my seatmate’s call was over, I begrudgingly pulled out my phone.

I realize now that this is not the time to be stupid and listen in on other people’s calls.

I alternated between looking at the sky outside the window and the screen of my phone, and checked the chat with trembling hands.

-Kang Hyunseok: Do you guys see anything strange in front of you?

-Yi Seorin: Is everyone okay?

As soon as I turned on the screen, notifications poured in.

Forty-two notifications.

Within a few seconds, the number increased to 46.

The group chat room was already chaotic with questions and answers.

I thought about saying hello, but stopped myself.

I had enough of the chat piling up already.

-Seol Do-yeon: Can you see it?

There was one question that came in a private message.

She wanted to ask about the current situation, but she left out the subject line because she thought it would make her look weird.

Since it was a private message, I decided to reply to it.

-Yoo Seon-woo: I thought I was finally the only one who had awakened to the status window, but after seeing your message, I was disappointed because it didn’t seem to be the case.

-Seol Do-yeon: You mean everyone can see it now?

-Yoo Seon-woo: Are you okay?

-Seo Do-yeon: Wait.

-Seo Do-yeon: What’s that outside?

What else is there this time?

I didn’t really want to look, but I slowly turned my head toward the window.

“Ah, shit.”

I unconsciously said to myself.

Then the person next to me followed my lead and looked out the window, and then another person followed suit.

Soon, everyone in the café was gathered by the window.

“…What is this?”

A giant slot machine had appeared in the middle of the campus.

It was big enough to be seen by everyone in the neighborhood, and it looked familiar.

Surely, that was something from the game.

Dreams game had a lot of random elements.

Everything from enemies to terrain was randomized in each episode.

And that slot machine was the object that determined the content of each randomized episode.

[Three days later, one of the fictional worlds materializes and invades reality.]

[Be careful not to let it take over your reality.]

Every single thing we hear next is also from the tutorial.

So what happens next is, obviously…….

[This is the worldview that will challenge humans in this episode.]

-Chirp!

The lever pulled itself, and the three reels began to spin.

On a normal reel, I would have seen fruit, but there was something else entirely.

To me, it was all unbelievably familiar.

…Should I go to a psychiatrist?

For some reason, I couldn’t help but think that I should be looking at the slot machine.

It didn’t occur to me to question whether what I was seeing with my eyes was real.

I felt like fear, terror, confusion, and all the other negative emotions were excluded by the other side so I could make a calm judgment based on the outcome.

And so the slot machine continued to spin, regardless of my situation.

Soon the first reel stopped.

[High Fantasy]

[The worldview furthest from reality comes to life.]

The reels stopped on a picture of a medieval castle, and the words appeared.

High Fantasy.

Swords, bows, elves, magic, and more.

A pure worldview that is the most removed from reality and contains only the things that come to mind when we think of fantasy.

In other words, one of the races in the fantasy world will appear in this world in three days.

At least, that’s what happened in the demo I played.

Immediately after the result was revealed, the other two reels started spinning together almost simultaneously.

[The enemies in this episode are fixed.]

[The difficulty level is fixed for this episode.]

I moved even closer to the window and watched the slot machine.

The episode difficulty is fixed, probably the lowest.

If the rules are what Dreams told me, that’s certainly the case.

However, even within the same tier, the detailed difficulty varied depending on the race, so it was important to know which enemies would appear.

-Zing!

Soon, both reels came to a stop.

[Undead, F]

[If you fail to clear this episode, this world will become a land where only the dead roam.]

Thank God.

I sighed, relieved for a moment.

They’re not the easiest of enemies, but compared to insects and ghosts, they’re just a normal race.

[Episode 1 begins in three days.]

[71:59:59]

The phrase appeared in front of my eyes and disappeared a few seconds later.

But the slot machine remained where it had appeared, as if to let me know that what had just happened was not a dream.

“…….”

Everyone held their breath and looked at each other.

The only sound in the quiet cafe was the distant honking of a bus.

In this silence, as my thoughts were organized, the most important thing came to mind.

“…Dreams.”

I turned my phone back on, reluctantly.

I should have checked this, not the other.

What’s going on with all this?

These are all things I’ve seen in your game, and I wonder if you did it.

If you didn’t do it, are you okay?

I had to ask all of that.

But Dreams had long since disappeared, leaving only one last word.

-D.D: There was no other way.

[The other person has left.]

Dreams is gone and all the files of the game I got a while ago have been deleted.

It seems that the text could not be deleted, so about two years of chats remained.

The mysterious one-man game developer had disappeared, leaving only a trace.

……Yes, I didn’t expect it.

It’s a cliché.

The person who started it all disappears and doesn’t get back to you.

I didn’t expect to get a satisfactory answer, not really.

“……What the hell.”

Nor was I worried about whether or not what I was seeing was a hallucination.

If everything I saw was a hallucination, I’d already be locked up in a mental institution.

On the other hand, if everything I saw was real, I had to accept that the story that Dreams created was expressed in the world.

[The headcount has ended.]

[From now on, the ‘story’ will be given to those who qualify.]

As I sat still and patted my bruise, I heard the announcement again.

Story, a word that refers to the superpower used by all the characters in Dreams game, including the main character.

The message was to provide it to some.

Yes, it’s a common trope for the chosen ones to awaken and gain their powers.

I also knew what the conditions were for getting the story in the ‘original’.

It was unusual and memorable, which must be why…….

…someone who has created a work that has been enjoyed by more than 10,000 people.

A condition that stuck in my mind because of its absurdity.

In the game, it was just a background setting, so there was no problem, but in real life, things are different.

Even in today’s world, how many people like this are around?

For example, I don’t think anyone in this cafe fulfills the conditions.

Except for one person……

[A total of 182857 people enjoyed your creation.]

[You met the eligibility requirements and were given your story.]

Someone who has a hobby of writing stories, and can also give Dreams comments on stories.

Someone who was dragged into a club by his seniors and has over 100,000 downloads on Zoology.

Yoo Seon-woo.

[Your story is ‘Text Thief’]