Chapter 1

The Game’s Difficulty Went Crazy

Prologue

The nation’s MC Yoo Jae-suk, the Emperor of Terran Lim Yo-hwan, and the fairy on ice Kim Yuna.

These three, who live in completely different worlds, share one thing in common.

They all became number one by firmly walking their own path, without caring about the looks and words of those around them.

In other words—

“Even if you dig a well, dig only one well.”

Seong Yo-hwan muttered those words.

For some reason, today, those words felt especially heavy in his chest.

“Young Master Glen. Everything is ready.”

A low voice came from beside him.

Seong Yo-hwan… no, Glen Wordsworth slowly turned his head.

And there—

“Waaaaaah!!”

Countless people below the castle walls were cheering while looking up at him.

‘Life really is unpredictable.’

Who would have thought that a game he had devoted five years to since the age of twenty would change his life like this?

Chapter 1

With a thunderous roar, the entire world shook.

The sun burned a dark crimson color, and beneath it, the land had dried into blackened earth.

In the middle of that desolate scenery, the shadows of two men overlapped.

“H-how could this… happen…”

A tall man with horns on his head.

He spat out thick blood.

The black-haired young man who had pierced a sword into his heart pulled it out.

Fshuaak—

Black blood burst out like a fountain from where the sword had been removed.

“To think… that this body, which even attained ultimate power… would fall to a mere… human…”

Unable to finish his words, he died on the spot.

At the same time, the black-burning sun returned to its original form.

Soon, ending credits began to rise from the bottom of the screen.

“Hoo…”

Letting out a deep breath, the player Seong Yo-hwan leaned back against his chair.

Then he tightly shut his eyes and slowly stretched both arms.

“Ah, seriously, that was insanely hard.”

Out of all the challenges he had attempted so far, this was the hardest one.

‘Nightmare difficulty, the character was the weakest in the game, Cedric. On top of that, no cheat items, no skill used more than ten times, and so on.’

A veteran playstyle where he imposed countless restrictions on himself and still cleared the game.

There was only one reason Seong Yo-hwan had been doing this for five years.

Because he loved this game that much.

Grey Eden.

A single-player RPG released five years ago that was still popular to this day.

A vast world and story, dozens of playable characters, thousands of quests.

Grey Eden was a masterpiece that captivated Seong Yo-hwan, who had been exhausted by his monotonous daily life back then.

“Alright, let’s see the reactions.”

Seong Yo-hwan uploaded the recording of his playthrough to the Grey Eden community site.

After some time passed, users began leaving comments.

【역전용사콘만두】
That’s insane. You cleared Nightmare difficulty with Cedric, a trash character even the devs abandoned?

【소나무가삐지면칫솔】
He even banned all the items that help Cedric survive. He’s gone beyond being a veteran and straight into rot.

Seong Yo-hwan rested his chin on his hand and read the comments with interested eyes.

Then he started replying to a few of them.

【Saint725】
As soon as you start, run to the Autumnbone Mountains. Dodge monster attacks roughly while passing through, and around the mid-slope there’s a hidden cave. You can get a sword there. If you start with that, it’s manageable.

Saint725 was Seong Yo-hwan’s community nickname.

Once he replied, more comments began pouring in.

【맛있는키위】
?? Hyung, what are you saying? What do we do and how? You are speaking Korean, right?

【소나무가삐지면칫솔】
???? Are we even playing the same game? A hidden cave? Autumnbone has hidden content like that?

【아일러정실남편】
But seriously, is the game fun when you’re that hardcore? I’d be bored as hell if it were me…

Seeing the last comment, Seong Yo-hwan’s lips twitched.

‘Isn’t it boring?’

How could it be boring? When you play while imposing restrictions on yourself like that, everything feels new and thrilling every time.

A goblin that used to die in one hit suddenly becomes as hard to deal with as a boss monster?

From that moment on, a new world opens up before the player’s eyes.

Because he knew that kind of thrill, Seong Yo-hwan had cleared Grey Eden hundreds of times over five years.

But—

‘That’s all in the past now.’

Considering that the average lifespan of a single-player game without online mode is less than a year, it had done pretty well.

Still, after playing Grey Eden for five years and trying every bizarre veteran play imaginable, Seong Yo-hwan’s affection for the game was slowly cooling.

“Should I quit…?”

Seong Yo-hwan stared at the ceiling with hollow eyes as he sighed.

But Grey Eden was a game he had poured everything into.

It wasn’t something he could quit so easily.

At that moment, a message notification rang on his smartphone.

With indifferent eyes, Seong Yo-hwan checked the message.

It was an unknown number.

『Saint725님. 슬슬 그레이 에덴 질리시죠? 미션 하나 하실래요?』

Seong Yo-hwan frowned.

A mission? At three in the morning?

More suspicious than that was how they knew his number.

『Who are you?』

But the other side didn’t answer his question.

『There’s a way to play Grey Eden in a more fun and harder way. Interested?』

『I asked who you are. And how did you get my number?』

『If you clear it, I’ll grant you any wish you want.』

“Bullshit.”

Seong Yo-hwan tossed his smartphone onto the desk.

But the contents of the message kept lingering in his mind.

—More fun and harder…

At a time when even Grey Eden, which was like his whole world, was starting to feel stale, those words sounded incredibly tempting.

After a short hesitation, Seong Yo-hwan picked up his smartphone again.

『More fun and harder?』

A reply came quickly.

『Yes. And if you clear it, I’ll grant any wish you want.』

『What do I have to do?』

『Just press the “Enter” button below.』

A red button beneath the message.

Seong Yo-hwan stared at it suspiciously…

Then, after a brief moment of thought, he pressed it.

A reply immediately arrived.

『It’s an honor to play with you, Player Saint725. Then, please enjoy your time.』

Along with that message, the light from the smartphone began to grow.

Abnormally so.

Filling the small studio apartment completely.

“Huh? W-what is this?!”

With a panicked expression, Seong Yo-hwan threw the phone onto the bed.

But the light kept expanding.

Eventually, the massive light swallowed Seong Yo-hwan, and his vision was dyed completely white.

The first thing he felt was heat.

Intense heat, enough to make his face burn.

At the same time, a pungent smell assaulted his nose.

Then, the next moment—

“Kyaaaaaa! Y-Young Master!”

A sharp woman’s scream.

Seong Yo-hwan snapped back to his senses.

The darkness in his vision cleared away.

“Gasp…!”

Seeing the scene before him, Seong Yo-hwan involuntarily swallowed his breath.

There—

Fwoooosh—

A massive, ferocious flame was burning a small structure right in front of him.

“F-fire! The storage is on fire!”

“Water! Bring water, hurry!”

With a man’s shout, people gathered and began trying to put out the flames.

“W-what is this?”

Everything was happening so urgently.

Thinking it might be a dream, Seong Yo-hwan rolled his eyes around.

But the sight of countless people carrying buckets of water to extinguish the fire was far too vivid.

“What the hell is going on…”

While he was panicking, a group of people appeared at the scene.

Their ornate, old-fashioned clothing looked exactly like the attire of nobles from a medieval game.

“Who dared to start this fire?!”

A middle-aged man shouted from the center of the group.

“T-the second young master did!”

One of the men fighting the fire approached and bowed his head.

“The second?! Why on earth!”

“Well… the young master suddenly arrived and said that the impure things hidden in the storage must be burned with divine flames, then lit a torch…”

“This is madness!”

The middle-aged man looked around with a flustered expression.

Soon, his gaze landed on—

Seong Yo-hwan.

“Glen! How long do you plan to keep living like this?!”

“…Y-yes?”

Faced with the gaze of a man he had never seen before, Seong Yo-hwan was completely confused.

‘And Glen? Calling me by such a ridiculous name…’

At that moment, an unexplainable sense of discomfort spread through his entire body.

Cold sweat ran down.

Then, when he turned his head, he saw his reflection in an unbroken glass window.

“…Huh?”

A handsome boy with exotic features.

A completely unfamiliar boy was standing there.

With a panicked expression, Seong Yo-hwan touched his face, and the boy in the glass did the same.

“What is this…”

At that very moment, his pupils shaking violently, two men approached and grabbed his arms.

“What should we do, my lord?”

“Lock him in his room. I don’t even want to look at him.”

The middle-aged man glared coldly at Seong Yo-hwan.

“To think that thing is my son. Tsk.”

The man had called him his son.

Under that icy gaze, Seong Yo-hwan was dragged away from the fire scene by the men.

Five days passed after that.

“Haah, f*ck…”

After splashing water on his face several times, Seong Yo-hwan finally ended his long escape from reality and faced the truth.

He acknowledged that he had entered the world of the game he had been playing—Grey Eden.

There was no room for denial.

‘The place names, the names, the worldview—everything matches. How could I deny it?’

Of course, it took a full five days for him to realize that.

During that time, he had grabbed everyone he met and asked like a madman where this place was and what was going on.

By piecing together the information he gathered while being looked at like a lunatic, he finally understood the situation.

First of all, Seong Yo-hwan was no longer an ordinary twenty-five-year-old Korean man.

‘Glen Wordsworth.’

That was the name of the body he now possessed after coming to the world of Grey Eden.

Glen Wordsworth was a noble.

Not just any noble, but the youngest son of the Wordsworth family, a holy noble house famous across the continent.

‘Entering the game world and becoming a noble… but of all bodies, I had to end up in this hopeless one.’

Glen Wordsworth wasn’t a playable character or anything like that.

He was just an extra.

And that wasn’t even the worst part.

Glen was a figure infamous as a scoundrel, to the point of being called the disgrace of his family.

‘A complete lunatic obsessed with religion, committing every kind of atrocity!’

In the original story, Glen’s deeds included:

Stopping passing maids and forcing them to recite scripture.

Pouring buckets of livestock blood on servants who criticized him, claiming it was purification with holy water.

And—

‘Suddenly claiming that God whispered to him and ordering him to burn down the mansion’s storage.’

There were dozens of such insane acts.

Despite being just an extra character, he was a madman so infamous that Seong Yo-hwan couldn’t not know him.

Because of that, most of the people in the territory looked at Glen Wordsworth with cold eyes and called him this—

“An irredeemable fanatic madman.”

Seong Yo-hwan let out a deep sigh.

No wonder even the maids bringing his meals looked at him with disdain.

Here, Glen was practically a discarded child.

The fact that he was already seventeen but had received no proper knight training, leaving his body scrawny, proved that.

‘This is the worst. Seriously.’

Seong Yo-hwan ran a hand through his hair.

What good would more cursing do?

In the end, that hopeless bastard was now him.

Wasn’t it just spitting on his own face?

‘Self-pity won’t help.’

Hopeless or useless, Seong Yo-hwan had to live in this world as Glen Wordsworth.

That much wouldn’t change.

Then what should he live for in this bleak world?

At that moment, Seong Yo-hwan recalled the message he had received before coming here.

—There’s a way to play Grey Eden in a more fun and harder way.

The mysterious being who sent that message.

He didn’t know what it wanted or why it brought him to Grey Eden.

But at least, he knew what he had to do.

—If you clear it, I’ll grant any wish you want.

The ending of Grey Eden.

At the very least, the answer to all his questions would exist at the end of this game.

“…It said, if I clear it, right?”

He was a veteran among veterans who had cleared Grey Eden hundreds of times over the past five years.

He knew all the growth paths and hidden pieces of every character in the game by heart.

Which meant—

‘Seeing the ending will be easy.’

Seong Yo-hwan—no, Glen—immediately spread a map on the desk.

The smell of old paper filled the air.

『Complete Map of the Chrisus Continent』

That was written at the top.

As Glen scanned the map, his gaze stopped on one particular area.

『Land of Demons』

It was separated from the Wordsworth territory by nothing more than a forest.

Which meant only one thing—

‘This place is the front line.’

A strange light flickered in Glen’s eyes.

In the world of Grey Eden, the Papal Holy Kingdom built by humans and the Demon King’s Kingdom built by the demon race are locked in endless war.

A medieval fantasy story about the clash between the two forces that divide the continent into east and west.

The Wordsworth family’s territory lay right in the middle of that battlefield.

‘If this world follows the game’s story, this place will soon be destroyed by a demon invasion.’

The territory would burn, the castle would fall into demon hands, and all humans—including nobles and commoners—would become slaves.

Glen didn’t want to face that bad ending.

‘To prevent that, I need to grow this body as fast as possible.’

The demons would begin their full invasion of the Wordsworth territory in early January.

Fortunately, it was still September.

Which meant he had four months.

In that time, he had to gain enough power to face the coming demon attack.

Of course, someone might say that no matter what, a person couldn’t grow that strong in just 120 days.

But this wasn’t Earth.

This was a game world—Grey Eden.

In four months, a lot could change.

‘First, let’s check Glen’s stats and potential.’

Depending on a character’s innate potential, the growth path could differ greatly.

Fortunately, the Wordsworth family was a famous holy noble house even within the Papal Holy Kingdom.

‘If Glen is from the Wordsworth family, I can at least expect broken-tier potentials like “Inquisitor” or “Guardian of the Holy Spear.”’

Even if it wasn’t something that overpowered, it didn’t really matter.

As long as it was usable, he could design an extremely veteran-style growth route to match it.

‘There’s no way it’ll be something trash.’

Glen slowly took a deep breath.

Then, staring straight ahead, he wished in his mind—

‘Status window.’

Blue particles of light gathered before his eyes, and the familiar status window appeared.

But his expectations were short-lived.

As Glen checked the status window, his expression quickly stiffened.

“What is this?”

《Glen Wordsworth》
《Race》 : Human / 17 years old

《Stats》
§ Strength : 5 Agility : 10
§ Vitality : 8 Charm : -15
§ Holy Power : 15 Demonic Power : 10

《Innate Potential》
§ Demonic Power User

《Status》
§ Normal

“Demonic power… user?”

Demonic power, something exclusive to the demon race.

And it was clearly written as the innate potential of Glen, a human.

“What kind of bullshit is this…”

Glen looked utterly dumbfounded.

And at that moment—

A needlessly cheerful notification sound rang out.

Blue particles of light formed letters before his eyes.

《You have encountered a Lunatic Element.》

《Perk: High Risk, High Return》

《Explaining difficulty-based changes.》