Today, everything would finally come to an end.
The game that had become such an important part of his life was shutting down.
He could still remember all the time he had spent messing around with his friends in-game. He remembered every one of their names, and even the personalities they had given the NPCs they created.
But as the years passed, fewer and fewer of them logged in. Eventually, he was practically the only one still showing up every day. Everyone else had their own battles to fight in real life, their own responsibilities demanding their attention.
No matter what, every story eventually reached its ending, and every gathering had to come to an end.
Maybe he had simply never learned how to handle goodbyes.
A skeleton sat upon a throne, staring across the empty hall with eyes filled with memories of the past.
He still remembered when he had first joined the game. Because he had chosen a heteromorphic race, he had constantly run into trouble and suffered harassment from human players. It was only after receiving help from the people who would later become his guildmates that he discovered the guild founded by fellow heteromorphic players.
From there, he had grown little by little. He adventured alongside his companions, and together they transformed what had once been a tiny guild into everything it was today.
And now, with the servers about to shut down, all of it would become nothing more than a memory.
He quietly waited for the end.
Once the game disconnected him, he would wake up back in reality, get some sleep, and return to the exhausting routine of everyday work.
Maybe after this game disappeared, he would find another one. Maybe he would meet new friends and begin another story.
And everything here would gradually fade with time.
Except...
As the seconds ticked by, something felt wrong.
The servers should have shut down by now.
So why was he still here?
Then, with growing disbelief, he realized that he could no longer open the game menu.
It was only when the NPCs standing nearby began to speak that he belatedly realized something impossible had happened.
Apparently, he had been transported somewhere else.
"The world of the Sorcerer King... It's not exactly an easy assignment for me."
Elsewhere, in a city straight out of a fantasy world, a young man dressed like a knight walked along the street with an enormous greatsword strapped to his back. The weapon was nearly as tall as he was and broad enough to resemble a slab of steel.
Naturally, he drew plenty of attention.
Anyone capable of carrying a weapon that massive while walking around normally, especially in full armor, was obviously no ordinary fighter.
"The Great Tomb's Guardians are pretty damn strong, and aside from a few Dragon Lords hiding in the background, almost nobody native to this world can really compete with Nazarick. That makes getting the higher mission rewards kind of annoying."
The young man sighed.
"I mean, sure, I hunt monsters for a living, but I'm much better against the huge ones. Fighting something roughly human-sized with a greatsword might feel a little weird."
As he spoke, his System suddenly chimed in.
["Host, there's another one of us in this world."]
The young man stopped walking.
A moment later, he pushed open the door to a nearby tavern, found an empty seat, unstrapped the enormous sword from his back, and set it down beside him. Then he sat on a thick wooden stool that looked as though someone had simply cut down a tree and hauled the stump inside.
The furniture was clearly meant for people carrying heavy weapons and armor.
He ordered a drink and a plate of fried snacks, casually eating while continuing the conversation with his System in his head.
"So what's the other System holder like? Please don't tell me it's another lunatic like the last guy who showed up out of nowhere and immediately demanded a deathmatch."
Just thinking about it brought back painful memories.
In the previous scenario world, he had barely arrived and was still trying to figure out where he was when another traveler tracked him down and challenged him to a fight to the death.
The man's reason had sounded ridiculously passionate.
He wanted to experience fighters from across countless worlds, challenge every kind of opponent, push martial arts beyond its limits, and eventually shatter the boundaries of existence itself with his fists.
The speech had been so enthusiastic that the young man had agreed on the spot.
And then...
The guy had failed to survive a single straightforward swing of his greatsword.
He had been crushed to death immediately.
At least dodge!
At the time, the young man had seriously suspected that his opponent possessed some sort of postmortem ability, something like the infamous Notorious B.I.G. He had even prepared one of the expensive emergency items purchased from his System.
Then the System notification arrived.
The other guy was genuinely dead.
That had left him completely baffled.
To this day, he still had no idea what that lunatic had been trying to accomplish.
["I can't accurately determine what kind of System the other person has," his System replied. "All I know is that it doesn't appear to belong to any raider or extermination-type category. You might be able to talk things out."]
"Hopefully they're reasonable. I'm not exactly interested in fighting people anyway. Monsters are more my thing."
As someone whose home world was built around hunting monsters, fighting other people had never been his specialty.
Massive beasts were another matter entirely.
["Although... something about the other System is strange."]
"What?"
["It's marked as three-zero."]
The young man nearly spat out his drink.
"Three-zero?! Holy shit, you're telling me that System already has three kills? Are you sure it isn't some kind of raider or extermination System?"
["Pretty... sure?"]
"Could you sound even slightly reliable?! I swear, what good is having a cat-brained System like you?"
["I am nothing like those useless Systems that spend all their time clinging to their Hosts and eventually turn themselves into cute girls just so they can crawl into bed with them!"]
"That's only because you can't turn into a girl and flirt with your own Host."
["You bastard! So you really have been lusting after your own System this whole time!"]
The young man sighed.
"If your instructor actually lets you graduate, I'm pretty sure their reputation in education is going to suffer permanent damage."
Elsewhere, Caelus walked across a stretch of soft grass.
He glanced up at an unfamiliar sky filled with unfamiliar stars, then quietly took in the strange energy patterns permeating the world around him.
There was no question about it.
He had arrived in an entirely new universe.
[Main Mission issued.]
[Main Mission: Correction]
[Objective: Correct the power that does not belong to this world.]
[Reward: 10,000 System Currency.]
[Note: Everything began with curiosity, desire, or perhaps a simple wish. That summoning may have granted this world tremendous power, but it also introduced an abnormal force that fractured its natural development. The distortion must be corrected. If left unchecked, the world's future will continue to deviate, eventually developing into something fundamentally unstable and producing severe consequences.]
["Host, this mission isn't just about removing the abnormal power from this world," the System explained. "While operating here, you absolutely cannot leave behind any seeds of your own power or cause any form of contamination. Otherwise, the future of this world could still change in completely unpredictable ways.
"There's also another traveler here. From what I can tell, they're not like the raider or destruction-aligned Systems we've encountered before. If you want, you can meet them. I already established contact with the other System, and it provided us with their coordinates."]
Caelus nodded.
"Looks like we finally found a normal System holder."
The ones he had met before had all been strange in one way or another.
Maybe this time he could actually sit down and have a normal conversation.
Otherwise, if every time they encountered another System they ended up killing its Host, sooner or later they were going to look more like raiders than the actual raiders did.
(To be continued.)
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◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)