NABC Chapter 1
Chapter 1
There was this mobile game.
It was called Battle of Summoners.
Like many others, it was a typical collection-based RPG.
You summon creatures, build a team, strengthen it and fight against other players, climb towers and do raids...
Popularity?
Not much.
It had a brief spike in popularity because of the AI, but it quickly faded.
Not only were the in-game purchases quite aggressive, but the difficulty level was insanely high.
There was nothing easy to obtain in the game, and it was extremely difficult to grow your summoned creatures.
To make matters worse, there were too many different types of summons.
To the point that people joked, "Is the AI making these up on the fly?"
With such an unfriendly game, it was only natural that it failed!
The casual players all left, and only the true die-hards remained.
The so-called "veterans".
***
Baek Jin-woo was one of them.
He was twenty-four years old.
He had been playing the game since his first year of middle school.
This made him a ten-year veteran player.
He had achieved a lot in this game.
- He was ranked 1st in Player vs. Player (PvP)!
- Ilcheon (一天, A Day Without a Loss)!
- Conqueror of the 99th floor of the Trial Tower!
- Free-to-play Ranking Master!
- World Time Attack Record Holder for all Daily Dungeons!
- Holder of the fastest time to complete the Chaos Demon Dragon (47 seconds)!
To the uninitiated, these achievements may sound confusing, but to anyone who has spent any time in the game, they are breathtaking.
A god among gods!
The idol of veteran players!
This was Baek Jin-woo, known by his nickname JinuGod.
Of course he was.
When you've spent ten years immersed in such a difficult game, how do you think your real life would turn out?
It was a disaster, of course.
His grades at school - whether in class, the national exam or essays - plummeted.
He couldn't even get into college, so he scraped by with part-time jobs and manual labour.
It wasn't because he was stupid.
If he had been, he wouldn't have been able to reach the rank of #1 as a free-to-play user.
Baek Jin-woo was just obsessed with the game.
When he looked at the letters in the books, all he saw were summoner statistics.
Even when he tried to focus on something else, all he could think about was the auto-farming that was probably happening in the background.
There was no avoiding it.
His mind and soul were already consumed by Battle of Summoners.
That's right.
His real life was a shambles, a stark contrast to the glamorous world of the game.
If his parents were at least well-off, he wouldn't have had to worry so much, but neither of them were well paid.
Of course, he had no complaints.
Why did his mum and dad have three different jobs and run around all over the place?
It was all for Jin-woo and his little sister, Baek Ah-jin.
They were very responsible people.
In fact, they were incredibly kind.
So kind that it was almost foolish.
Although they had every reason to scold their useless son, they just cheered him on...
Ah, what a pathetic piece of garbage.
Jin-woo swallowed his tears.
I know. I'm an ungrateful idiot. A damn bastard.'
For someone who grew up in such a warm and caring family, it was a shame that he was still stuck in the virtual world, drowning in it!
Jin-woo cursed the friend who had recommended the game to him in middle school.
While cursing, he found himself in a nearby garden, tapping away on his mobile phone.
He climbed the tower, communicating with the dazzling summoned creatures equipped with fancy 'runes' and using skills as he climbed.
'Please.
If I can just get to the 100th floor...
I'll stop there and come back to reality, Mum.
It's unfair, you know?
I was the first veteran to reach the 99th floor.
I can't stop now!
It may be a meaningless game in the real world, but for Jin-woo this game was his life.
It had accompanied him through all his school years.
It was everything to him.
Even though the creatures were controlled by AI, he felt a deep connection to them and respected their lives as if they were real.
And it wasn't just that.
He had studied a lot.
If you didn't study, you wouldn't even make it past the lower floors of the tower, let alone develop your summoned creatures properly.
Jin-woo's knowledge of 'Battle of Summoners' was vast, surpassing that of most scholars.
Just a little more.
Tap, tap, tap!
His fingers tapped faster and faster on the phone screen.
You know these things.
The concept that often appears in novels.
Where the real world becomes a game and the game becomes reality.
[MoscowMan: Idiot.]
[Zenos: How long are you going to stay pathetic?]
[Sugoi: You read too many novels, haha]
As usual, the veterans made fun of the youngsters.
They had no idea.
There was no way they could have predicted this.
That Baekcheon's words would become reality.
***
Two weeks later.
On his way to work.
"I... I did it!"
A man walking down the street, tapping furiously on his mobile phone, shouted.
"Hahahahahahahaha! Finally! Finally!"
His voice full of joy, the man jumped up and down in excitement.
His name was Baek Jin-woo.
Nicknamed JinuGod.
"What the..."
"What's wrong with him?"
"He must be crazy."
Passers-by frowned in disgust, but Jin-woo didn't care.
Finally!
Finally!
He had conquered the 100th floor.
He had defeated the monstrous boss and seen the end of the tower.
How hard had it been?
He had sacrificed his real life for this moment.
"Hahahahahahahaha!"
He was so happy that he was in tears.
[You have cleared the 100th floor of the Trial Tower.]
The golden status window flashed, tickling his senses.
As he took screenshots to show off to the veteran players.
"Huh?"
"What?"
"What's that?"
The murmurs around him grew louder.
Jin-woo felt something strange as well.
[You have cleared the 100th floor of the Tower of Trials.]
This sentence, which should have been on the screen of his phone, was somehow floating outside the screen.
Why was it floating in the air like a hologram?
Standing on the crosswalk, Jin-woo furrowed his brow.
Ah.
Had he gone from being obsessed with the game to actually losing his mind?
But it didn't seem like he was the only one seeing things - everyone else around him seemed to be looking at something as well.
[The beta test has ended.]
[A new world is opening up]
What?
Beta test?
At this very moment.
Flap!
Red paper started to fall from the sky.
It was a shape that Jin-woo was all too familiar with.
"This..."
There was no way he wouldn't recognise it.
He had seen it countless times.
"A low level summoning scroll?"
An item that could summon any monster from F-rank to D-rank. One scroll fell into the hands of every human.
"What is this...?"
And then.
- Hooooonk!
A deafening lorry horn blasted into his ears.
He locked eyes with the panicked truck driver through the windscreen.
"Huh, huh?"
He tried to swerve, but his body wouldn't move.
And then.
Slam!
As Jin-woo was hit by the truck and felt a heavy impact, a single thought crossed his mind.
This damned game.
One thing was certain.
His life had been ruined by "Battle of Summoners".