Chapter 1: Prologue

The man’s name was Yamada Kenichi. He was a thirty-five-year-old office worker, and he was single.

“It’s actually over? After only three years of service?” he murmured forlornly from within his 142-square-foot studio apartment. Despite it being daytime on a Saturday, Kenichi was at home. He was blankly staring at his computer screen, which currently displayed a fantasy landscape with “FIN” written in fancy letters in the bottom right corner. It appeared to be an online game, with numerous characters expressing their farewells in varying words and gestures.

“Man, that was just another game on easy mode. Like, the easiest of all easy modes. It’s probably best that it ended. Saves me from wasting any more time and money on it.”

Despite having spent much of his salary and bonus rolling for loot boxes and purchasing in-game items, Kenichi did not feel all that sad about the game ending. After all, during the three years since its launch, he had been rather dissatisfied with its simplistic story and low level of difficulty. The only thing that had kept him playing was the hope of it one day receiving an update that would add more engaging content.

But alas, reality was cruel. Perhaps it was due to stagnant player base growth. Or maybe it was something else. Regardless, the company servicing the game had announced that they were shutting it down.

“Hm? What’s this, they’re launching a new game?”

When Kenichi quit the game and checked the company’s site, he found a link to what seemed to be a page introducing a new title that they were releasing. He clicked on it.

“Let’s s— Huh?” Kenichi’s jaw dropped as he read the despair-inducing text that appeared.

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- Your character will level up even while you’re offline!

- Reset your class anytime you want!

- The AI will take care of all the battling for you!

- Join now, and receive three loot boxes with a 100% chance of obtaining legendary items!

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“Another hopelessly easy game. No, this isn’t even a game on easy mode—at this point, it’s just an AFK game. Since when have they sunk this low...” Kenichi covered his face with both hands and thought back to the titles from the golden age of gaming.

Back when he had discovered his first online game twenty years ago, leveling up was so difficult that taking a month to raise one level was considered normal. He could still remember the sense of achievement that he felt when he was finally able to promote his character to an advanced class after grinding for six whole months.

Every time his character died, he would drop all his equipment and lose twenty percent of his accrued experience. Boss monsters had such ridiculously large health pools that fighting them required fifty-player raid parties to dedicate at least an hour—some fights had even taken three whole hours. Kenichi had kept spare keyboards around because he kept breaking them from spamming the keys so much. And in spite of all that, the boss would only drop a single item, which meant that all fifty players would then have to fight each other in a battle royale right after the raid.

It was precisely because the game design was so unreasonable and unforgiving that the items and levels Kenichi gained actually meant something to him. He had poured tens of thousands of hours of sheer passion into this game, but it had ended service more than ten years ago.

Since then, Kenichi had tried multiple games, always seeking to relive the rush from back then. However, the times had changed, and players nowadays were no longer interested in games with intensive time commitments. As a result, both the major and indie game companies had shifted focus to making games as easy and accessible as possible. In those, leveling up was a piece of cake, and everything from weapons and equipment to skills was easily obtainable.

“Guess I’ll look elsewhere, then.”

Giving up on this game company, Kenichi went online to search for more of a challenge. He typed “game hell mode challenging” into the search engine then pressed Enter. To his surprise, the top result was not a game company’s website or even a game’s introduction site.

“What the—?! Let’s see... ‘You are invited to a game that will never end.’”

The on-screen text definitely grabbed Kenichi’s attention with promises of so much content that no single player could ever accomplish everything the game had to offer. His interest piqued, Kenichi decided to give the game a whirl.

“Hmm, so it’s a medieval-style world with swords and magic. Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. Hold on, what’s this? I set up my preferences on the website itself?”

As it turned out, before downloading the game, he needed to confirm some settings in the browser window. He started going through the fields.

“First, difficulty. There’s Easy Mode at the bottom, then Normal, Extra, and Hell. Not that I’m going to choose Easy, of course.”

Apparently, players could choose what difficulty level they wanted to play this game at. There were even explanations for each mode.

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Easy Mode

Gaining and leveling up skills will be 10 times faster than in Normal Mode.

You will have the opportunity to roll for three Extra Skills.

This mode is best for players new to gaming or those who dislike level grinding.

Normal Mode

This is the standard difficulty.

You will have the opportunity to roll for one Extra Skill.

This is the most popular mode and will allow for a limited amount of character development.

Select this mode if you are unsure which one to go with.

Extra Mode

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Gaining and leveling up skills will take 10 times longer than on Normal Mode.

In exchange, you will be able to develop your character more than in Normal Mode.

You will have the opportunity to roll for one Normal Skill.

This mode is best for players familiar with gaming who find Normal Mode too easy to be enjoyable.

Hell Mode

Gaining and leveling up skills will take 100 times longer than on Normal Mode.

There is no limit to how far you can develop your character.

The only skills you start out with are the ones tied to your class—you will not be offered an opportunity to roll for skills.

You may come to regret choosing this mode, but there will be no turning back. However, should you manage to overcome that despair, you will undoubtedly learn a Principle of the World.

This mode was created by the developers for fun.

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So, the higher the difficulty, the more difficult it’ll be to obtain new skills and level up. On the flip side, the higher the potential growth ceiling.

“Hell Mode, obviously,” Kenichi muttered with zero hesitation. “Next is...class.”

The following screen was for class selection. The MMO staples were all present: Swordsman, Fighter, Thief, Merchant, Mage, Sage, Sword Lord, Saintess, Archwizard. Each class also had a difficulty setting, and more details could be seen when clicking on each option.

“There’re a lot of options. Looks like the further down the list, the harder it is to master. Oh wow, there’s even Hero and Demon Lord classes.”

As Kenichi continued scrolling down, he saw the displayed classes grow in rarity and strength. At the same time, they were also assigned stars that indicated how difficult it would be to become proficient in them: Swordsman and Fighter both had only one star, Sword Lord and Archwizard both had three stars, Hero and Demon Lord had five stars, and so on and so forth.

“Hold on, if both Swordsman and Sword Lord are available, then it only makes sense to choose Sword Lord. What’s the point of giving that option?” Judging by the name, Sword Lord is a higher version of Swordsman, right? Why would anyone choose Swordsman, then?

Kenichi decided to click on Swordsman just to see what would happen. The screen proceeded to display the available social classes.

“There’s Commoner, Baron, and Count. Whoa, there’s even King. Okay, so my character’s social class gets randomly selected from these options. Is it different for Sword Lord?”

Quite a few of the social classes depicted in light novels about otherworlds came up in the list. Kenichi recognized the terms almost immediately, having read a few series in his day. He pressed Back to return to the class selection screen and chose Sword Lord this time.

“There’s only Serf, Commoner, and Baron. I see, so the more powerful the job class, the lower the social class, which presumably will make it harder to level up.”

Just to be sure, Kenichi checked out the Hero class. Sure enough, the social class was set up as a random roll between only Serf and Commoner. The possibility of getting each social class was clearly displayed, indicating that the more powerful the class chosen, the more likely it was for the character to start off at a lower social class. Kenichi caught on pretty quickly.

“Which one should I choose? I’ve already tried playing as a sword user and mage in other games. It might be fun being a healer this time. Oh, wait, but I’ve never played as a Demon Lord before. A Demon Lord starting off as a Serf sounds pretty interesting. Hold on, there’s more?”

Still conflicted about which one to go with, Kenichi was about to choose what he thought was the option at the bottom of the list, Demon Lord, when he noticed that there was one more class positioned even lower.

“Summoner? Being a Summoner is even harder than Demon Lord?”

At the very bottom of the list of classes was Summoner, which was marked with eight stars. When Kenichi clicked on it, he found that the only associated social class was Serf.

“Summoner, huh. I’ve never really played as one before. Ooh, it’d be pretty cool if I could summon a divine dragon or something.”

As an avid gamer, Kenichi had of course played console games as well. He now recalled a certain nationwide hit game in which he had been able to call forth summons based on Greek mythology.

“All right, Summoner it is. Social class is Serf. And of course, Hell Mode for the difficulty. Is that all the settings?”

Kenichi examined every corner of the interface, expecting at least a gender selection screen by way of character customization, but found nothing. There was only the big “Launch Game” button smack-dab in the middle of the screen. With no other choice, he clicked on it.

<The Summoner class is still in testing and has no currently active users. Do you still wish to proceed? Yes / No>

“Huh? It’s still in testing? Then why’d you let me choose it? Hmm, but that sounds like it could be fun too. All right, I’ll test it for you!”

Without further ado, Kenichi clicked “Yes.” Light spilled out from the screen, leaving his apartment completely devoid of inhabitants.

Yamada Kenichi was no longer in this world.

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