Corrin was already speaking when he realized he was awake.
"—Welcome, adventurer."
The words left his mouth smoothly, practiced, carrying a warmth he did not feel. His jaw moved on its own. His tongue somehow shaped syllables without permission.
Stop it.
He tried to close his mouth. Tried to bite down. Tried to choke the sentence off halfway.
He couldn't. The next sentence came out in the same generic tone.
"Feel free to browse my wares."
His hands lifted, palms opening in a rehearsed gesture toward the stall in front of him.
A player stood on the other side of the counter.
Corrin saw him the way he used to see NPCs. A floating name tag, health bar, and equipment icons flickering faintly as the player adjusted his position.
He was dressed in basic clothes and had the standard rusty sword.
Tutorial equipment.
Which meant he was in the tutorial zone somehow.
The thought was stopped immediately when the player raised his hand.
A translucent box appeared in the air between them.
[Merchant Corrin
Sells Class-Based Goods]
The font was exactly the same.
That realization hit harder than the paralysis.
They can see this. They can see me like this.
The player didn't look at Corrin's face. His eyes were fixed slightly lower, the telltale sign of someone reading their UI.
Corrin's chest tightened.
Please don't click buy. Please just leave.
The player clicked Buy.
Corrin's body reacted instantly.
His posture straightened, shoulders squaring unnaturally. The tension in his neck vanished, replaced by unnatural smoothness. His face settled into an expression he recognized with a sick twist of familiarity.
The default.
"Everything here is priced fairly," Corrin heard himself say.
Inside, he was screaming.
The shop window opened on the player's end. Corrin couldn't see it directly, but he knew what was going on.
Item after item flickered through his awareness.
Bent dagger.
Cracked lockpick.
Frayed cloak.
Outdated map fragment.
Useless. All of it.
The player snorted softly.
"Trash NPC," he muttered.
He clicked Leave.
The UI vanished and he walked away.
Just like that, the pressure lifted.
Corrin's knees almost buckled.
He caught himself on the edge of the stall, fingers digging into rough wood. His breath came out in a shaky exhale.
But this time…he realized that it was his.
Slowly, carefully, Corrin raised a hand to his face. He could feel it. The skin. The warmth. The faint tremor in his fingers.
"How…did this happen?" he whispered.
Then, the memory resurfaced.
ZeroClear.
That was his UserID in Myth Online—the biggest MMORPG ever released. Game of the Year for three consecutive years. Millions of active players every single day.
A game known for its unique story, patches rewriting balance, and metas evolving weekly.
And he had mastered all of it.
Not slowly and surely, no.
He'd crushed the competition.
The name ZeroClear sat at the top of every leaderboard that mattered. PvE clears. PvP rankings. Seasonal events. World-first achievements. He didn't just play the game.
He no-lifed it.
He knew every shortcut, every exploit, and every invisible rule players didn't even realize they were obeying.
It had stopped being a challenge a long time ago.
He remembered leaning back in his chair after another flawless clear, staring at the monitor. Even posted the run to the forums out of habit.
Yet it brought him no adrenaline, no relief.
It was too easy.
He'd never had a vice— no drinking, smoking, gambling, nothing of the sort. Clearing new dungeons and inventing new metas had been the only thing keeping him sane.
Bored out of his mind, he'd typed the message half as a joke, half out of frustration.
ZeroClear: "Is there ever going to be real difficulty added?"
He hadn't expected a response.
But it came.
Not an automated or PR-filtered one.
Just a plain text reply.
Myth Online Dev Team: "The game feels easy because you're playing with the Player System enabled."
He'd laughed at that.
Everyone had the player system.
That was the point.
Then the second message arrived.
If there were a way to experience the world without it—
Would you want to try?
The only thing he remembered was how easily his mouse hovered over the confirmation box.
No hesitation, or questions.
Just a simple click.
"Yes."
The world had gone dark immediately after.
Corrin's hand fell slowly back to the counter.
He looked around the tutorial square again—the stone paths, the looping NPCs, the distant chatter of players passing by.
"…You bastards," he muttered, voice low.
This wasn't a harder difficulty, he realized.
It was real.
He wasn't playing Myth Online anymore. He was living in it.
And the cruel irony was that Myth Online had always prided itself on realism. Choices had consequences. Actions lingered.
There was one feature in particular he'd loved.
One he'd praised endlessly on the forums.
And one that he'd come to hate more than ever.
NPCs that were killed… never came back.
The first thought went to his head was: "Does that mean if I die…I'm gone in real life? Same as that one anime?!"
Corrin exhaled slowly and leaned back against the stall.
Panic wouldn't help. He knew that. Panic was the enemy to perfect runs, coordinated raid parties, and time-based traps.
Thinking did.
The dev's words surfaced again, uninvited.
If there were a way to experience the world without it—would you want to try?
Try.
Not survive or endure.
If this was some kind of condition, some twisted version of a challenge—then sitting here waiting to die wasn't the answer. The devs hadn't asked him to suffer.
They'd asked him to play.
The thought settled in his chest with uncomfortable clarity. There was only one way to play an MMORPG.
You cleared it.
Corrin drew in a slow breath, steadying himself.
"…Fine," he muttered. "Guess I'll see what I'm working with."
His eyes drifted back to the stall.
Immediately remembered the player who was looking at his wares.
He stared at them for a long moment.
Then his stomach sank.
"…Ah."
It clicked all at once, like recognizing a bad loadout the instant you spawned in.
This wasn't a general goods stall.
He wasn't a food vendor, or a supply merchant, or even one of those useless flavor NPCs that sold flowers or souvenirs.
He was a class-based merchant.
The kind that only existed for one purpose: selling starter equipment tied to a specific class.
Corrin leaned forward slightly, eyes moving faster now, cataloguing everything with the practiced efficiency of someone who had spent years reading tooltips and patch notes.
Then he swallowed.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
Even the fisherman down the street, an NPC that players barely glanced at, sold dried rations. Useless buffs, sure, but at least they filled the hunger meter. At least they did something.
Corrin's stall?
It offered nothing essential.
Because the class it supported was the one even no-lifers avoided, even himself.
Thief.
He almost laughed.
Of all the classes in Myth Online—mages with devastating AoE, warriors with huge amount of options, clerics that guilds fought over, even niche summoners that were monsters late game.
He'd landed the worst one, even guides labeled it as 'newbie bait'.
Detection skills were everywhere now. Guard NPCs had passive reveals baked into their AI. High-level mobs ignored stealth entirely. PvP builds countered invisibility by default.
Corrin exhaled slowly through his nose.
"A class built around not being seen," he muttered, "in a game that sees everything."
His gaze flicked back to the empty square.
"…I really am cooked," he muttered.
Corrin folded his arms, mind already racing.
Alright.
If this really was some kind of challenge, then he'd approach it the same way he always had, slowly and methodically.
First step: don't attract attention.
Second step: stay irrelevant.
Third—
A shadow fell across the counter.
Corrin froze.
No.
Slowly, dreadfully, he looked up.
A player stood there, already half-turned toward him, eyes unfocused in that familiar way.
The pressure hit instantly.
His posture straightened.
His mouth opened.
"Welcome, adventurer. Care to browse my wares?"
Inside his head, Corrin screamed.
"OH COME ON!"