There’s a famous would-you-rather game.
Living in your favorite game with a cheat skill
vs
Just living a normal life.
Whenever I was given the choice, I always picked the former.
I’d even cheekily ask why they weren’t sending me there right away.
Maybe that’s why I’m being punished like this.
“L-let’s stop now! Let’s end it!”
As I choked out the tear-filled words, his thrusts, which felt like he was trying to f*ck my brains out, finally stopped.
The man, who had a particularly broad frame even among the Varg, looked down at me quietly and asked.
“What do you mean.”
“J-just what I said… hngh!”
Perhaps taking pity on me as I gasped like a goldfish out of water, he obediently pulled out, withdrawing the member he had so painstakingly inserted.
I finally escaped being impaled on his c*ck and scrambled to a corner.
“Now, say it again. What do you mean by ‘end it’?”
Thorns were embedded in his sigh-laden words.
That was right.
I already had a history of running away, saying I was done with everything, and I had been punished severely for it.
That’s why I couldn’t give up now.
This time, I was going to end this losing deal for good.
“You promised to keep my identity as an Awakener a secret, and I promised to act as your mate!”
“Right.”
“But now that they’ve found out I’m an Awakener, our contract is over!”
The terms of the contract were simple.
Stay by his side.
As long as I was in Bahalgras, the land Karvan ruled, the Observer couldn’t find me, and as long as I acted as his mate, Karvan wasn’t bothered by the elders.
It wasn’t a bad deal.
That’s what I thought.
“I have no memory of promising to end it at any point.”
Until this shameless canine bastard flatly refused to terminate the contract!
Ah, ahh.
I grabbed the back of my neck, staggered, and leaned against the wall.
As I cooled my feverish body against the chilly rock wall, the man shot up.
His brow was furrowed, as if something had displeased him again.
His lower half, thoroughly angered by the interruption in the middle of his fun, reared its head in solidarity.
Bobbing like an angry snake, it looked more threatening than any legendary weapon.
“D-don’t come here!”
“…Don’t lean against the wall. It’s cold.”
As I pressed myself flat against the wall, my breath coming in ragged gasps, the approaching man stopped.
He seemed worried I might pass out again like a dead battery.
“Come here. I promise I won’t touch you.”
He covered that heinous legendary weapon back under the blanket and, sitting on the edge of the bed, patted the spot next to him covered by a white rug.
“Let’s talk here. You’ll catch a cold again.”
His voice, as he held out a palm as big as my head, was as soft as a spring breeze.
His face was that of someone worried to death about his mate pressing her back against an ice-cold wall.
His gaze was so tender that for a moment, I almost fell for it.
“…Snap out of it! You, you, you seem to have forgotten. I’m an Awakener! A Destroyer who drove your kind into the remote lands!”
I ended up saying the one thing that bothered him the most.
A thin layer of ice formed over his shimmering eyes.
“……”
Karvan was a man of action, not words.
Instead of a word of warning, he’d cut off your finger joints.
Instead of a contract seal, he’d mark you with his c*ckhead.
I thought I might die because of it.
As he once said, I was prepared for him to pierce my heart with a blade of ice, thinking what did it matter if he lost a mate he never had before.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I knew it…! What?”
“Does something like that matter now?”
Therefore, I couldn’t believe the man’s answer.
“Because of you Awakeners, we were exiled to the remote lands and forgotten from the Legacyth continent.”
The memory of his cool words, like the eternal snow on a mountain peak, and his hate-filled gaze was vivid, but his gaze now was even more terrifying.
The eyes of a beast, gleaming with a possessiveness that said no matter what, you are mine, that fact alone will not change.
“The you of now is my mate before you are a Destroyer. The past is just the past.”
Thud.
The throbbing truth tossed at my feet was hot.
His eyes, once like ice, melted and trickled down.
“Forget it. That’s all you have to do.”
“…No!”
Afraid of being drenched in that water, I curled up and flinched away.
“I-I won’t forget anything.”
I won’t forget, and I will go back.
Before I was a user with the nickname ‘Shinbi-jui,’ I was a person with the surname ‘Shin’ and the first name ‘Bi.’
“I’m different from you. Before being a different race, before being an Awakener… I’m ‘Shinbi.’ Bi! Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes, I understand perfectly.”
The man closed the distance in three strides and looked straight at me.
Beastly golden eyes, a scar running across them like a bolt, trapped my terrified reflection.
As if to say I would never leave his sight again.
“But it’s too late. You are destined to be my Bi.”
“My ass! I don’t want…!”
“If you didn’t want it, you shouldn’t have chosen me.”
The man, smiling languidly, whispered.
With a hand on the wall I was leaning against, he recited the truth into my ear.
“You were the one who chose me and imprinted on me, Bi.”
“It wasn’t imprinting, it was a stigma!”
How many times do I have to tell you it was a skill!
I finally screamed in frustration.
The man, as if expecting that very reaction, twisted his lips and corrected his words as if doing me a great favor.
“Right, a stigma. What’s the difference?”
“It’s completely different!”
Once again, I was the only one going crazy, pounding my chest.
The only thing that reacted to my frustrated cry was the status window.
[The skill <Stigma Theory> cannot currently be deactivated by a higher-priority skill.]
[Please remove the <Imprinting> status effect first, then retrieve the skill.]
The basic virtue of a so-called ‘God-tier game’ is close communication with its users.
[Q: Dear Awakeners, what kind of new race would you like to see added?]
In response, the virtual reality RPG ‘Legacyth Chronicle’ made a bold move from its early days of launch.
It announced that a new NPC race would be released based on a user popularity vote.
[Event] PICK Your Destiny! Vote for the race you want to see released as a new NPC!
Dark Lord Vampire <Empire>
VS
God-Devouring Wolf <Varg>
Who will become the ruling race of the neutral city of <Midvalen>, blessed by the gods? The fate of the two races rests solely in your hands!
(※ The race that loses the vote will be re-released later as a ‘Hostile Monster’.)
At the time, the new NPC race vote sent the entire community into a frenzy.
The wolf-kin ‘Varg,’ with their wild, muscular bodies and soulful eyes, and the ‘Empire,’ vampires with the graceful demeanor of elegant nobles and a formal speech pattern.
Both characters had designs and personalities that stimulated the aesthetic sensibilities of otaku, moving the hearts of users, but the reason the Empire was chosen was extremely realistic and cruel.
[Pack Hunt: When switching to ride a Varg, critical hit chance increases. Unaffected by ice-attribute skills. <Indomitable> buff persists without a cooldown. (※ Indomitable: A state of not retreating while halving enemy attacks.)]
[God-Devouring Wolf: Inherits the will of the Varg and goes berserk in beast form. During berserk, melee attack damage and movement speed increase by 300%. Does not take fall damage.]
The reason was, simply put, that the passive skills the Varg possessed were broken.
[Best Comment: The Varg must be released as a monster. You all know how sweet it is to use mob skill bugs, right? (UP! 3,438)]
└ Having the Empire as NPCs and plundering Varg skills is the optimal strategy (UP! 1,832)
└ Wolf riding release D-10 (UP! 2,543)
└ Thumbs up, Varg, thank you! We’ll tame you as a monster! (UP! 3,747)
[This comment has been UP-voted!]
‘The Varg are a bit more my type…’
The fluffy ears and tail, contrasting with the sturdy body unique to beast-kin, lingered in my mind, but in the end, I also cast my vote for the Empire.
[Awakener ‘Shinbi-jui’ has PICKED your destiny! The new race is <Empire>.]
(※ User votes are reflected in real-time.)
A few days later.
The face of the Empire’s lord, ‘Baalzeph von Bloddyhen,’ was plastered all over the homepage main screen.
[Vampire Race <Empire> Confirmed for New NPC Release!]
[The wolf race <Varg>, defeated in the user vote, will be re-released later as a ‘Hostile Monster’.]
However, the Varg’s humiliation didn’t end there.
As is common in popular games, users who tend to exploit system loopholes began using skill bugs with the Varg.
[Notice] There has been a sharp increase in Awakeners continuously abusing the new wolf monster <Varg> skill bug for personal gain. This is an act that disrupts server balance, so we earnestly ask for your restraint.
Was it because, unlike other mobs designed as monsters from birth, their framework had been planned for an NPC?
The Varg, unlike other monsters, had an unusually large number of bugs, and users, one after another, began to steal or duplicate the Varg’s skills and abuse them.
[Notice] The high-level wolf monster <Varg> will be changed to a ‘Non-Mountable’ monster after the next patch.
No matter how many times they patched it, new bugs kept appearing.
Threatening users with suspension for abusing skills was useless.
[Best Comments]
▷ There aren’t any suckers who haven’t used the Varg skill bug yet, right? (UP! 3,639)
▷ Honestly, at this point, the GMs probably used it too (UP! 4,287)
▷ I think it’s unreasonable to shift the blame to the users when it’s the management’s problem for leaving a system loophole. If I get banned for this, I’m quitting this game. (UP! 5,336)
▷ If you don’t like it, just delete the Varg character~ lol (UP! 2,952)
Most users were brazenly arguing that it was the developers’ fault for making it flawed in the first place.
[Notice] The high-level wolf-type monster <Varg> race will no longer appear in the field after the version 2.45 patch. They will also be permanently deleted from the monster codex and quests.
This measure was implemented due to the sharp increase in skill abuse related to the high-level wolf-type monster <Varg>, so we ask for the Awakeners’ generous understanding.
We will strive to be a Legacyth Chronicle that always accepts the opinions of our Awakeners and develops accordingly.
Faced with increasingly hostile public opinion, the Legacyth Chronicle management admitted their mistake and permanently deleted the Varg from the game.
That’s why unless you were a user who played from the very beginning like me, you wouldn’t even know of the monster’s existence.
Of course, I too had naturally tried using the Varg’s skill bug.
-Wow, you’re really handsome.
-I should have voted for you instead of the Empire.
I didn’t knowingly use it at first.
I was out hunting as usual with my main character, a Plunderer, when I happened to notice the Varg’s passive ‘Pack Hunt’ had entered my skill window, and unable to forget its sweetness, I just kept using it.
-Shinbi, you shouldn’t let that one go alive.
-Why not?
-There’s a skill debuff. If you leave it, it’ll chase you to the ends of the earth.
-I’m only going to be in Midvalen. Here, take this and don’t follow me. Got it?
It was the thought that ‘just one more person won’t hurt’ since everyone else was doing it.
“Shinbi-nim.”
That’s why what’s happening now might be me paying the price for my sins back then.
“Sob, sob, even so, it’s not like I was the only one who used it….”
[Farewell Event] Please say a final goodbye to the unfortunate race, <Varg>, who were exiled to the remote lands of the Legacyth continent due to the choice of the Awakeners!
Leave ‘Goodbye, Varg! Farewell!’ in the comments section, and you will be entered into a draw for 100,000 Legan.
└ [My Comment] Goodbye, Varg! Farewell!
“Shinbi-nim!”
“Ugh, yeah! Farewell! Varg!”
My eyes shot open at the feeling of being shaken violently.
“…Varg?”
In my hazy vision, a man in a formal uniform with dangling epaulets was standing there.
A deep frown was etched on his forehead, as if he had heard my sleep-talking mumbles.
“Varg are hard to come by since they were wiped out long ago, but if you want something similar, the prison is full of them.”
It was Loktis, the Vice-Commander of the Knights of the Empire, the ruling race of Midvalen.
His vampire-specific fangs glinted in the morning sun, making their presence known.
“If you need a beast-kin toy, shall I procure one for you to use as a s*ave?”
“No. It’s not like that…. Besides, what’s up? You came all the way into my room.”
“I knocked so many times without a response, I came in to see if something had happened.”
Judging by his reluctant expression, he must have knocked quite a few times, but I hadn’t heard him.
I must have been sleeping very deeply.
“I thought you might have passed out from drinking the wrong potion again.”
“That only happened once, just once!”
As I shrieked, Loktis covered his pointed ears with a familiar expression.
I grumbled as I fiercely brushed my hair with a summoned ‘Vivid Hair Comb.’
“You’d think you’d eat me alive if I overslept twice.”
“Awakener blood isn’t to my taste. More importantly, please get ready.”
“Ready for what? Ah, ahh, His Majesty. I have to go see him. Yes, I’ll be there soon.”
Loktis, who was about to leave, turned back to look at me, his hand on the doorknob.
It was the gaze one gives to a real troublemaker.
“…Hurry. He will throw a tantrum if you’re late.”
Click.
As the door closed, I dropped the comb and flopped onto the bed.
My long hair spread out over the bed, looking as if someone had spilled pink pastel paint.
Lying spread-eagled, I stared blankly at the ceiling.
“The fate of the two races rests in your hands.”
…Why did I suddenly have a dream like that?
That was so long ago.