[The Savior has died.]
As I stared at the character sprawled miserably on the ground, I slammed my desk without even realizing it.
“Aaaaargh!”
Several months of effort had just gone down the drain.
This was a character I’d worked so hard to raise.
This was supposed to be the Savior who would actually save the world.
And yet, to die this pointlessly......
“Fuck!”
I grabbed the energy drink beside me, downed it in one go, and looked back at the screen.
Seeing the character still lying there dead, unchanged, made a sigh escape me.
Last Savior, an open-world RPG notorious for its hellish difficulty.
Even after pouring more than five years into it, it was the one game whose final achievement I still hadn't cleared.
Full achievement completion rate: 0%.
That meant no one had ever cleared the final achievement.
The problem was that the final achievement was to see the true ending.
In other words, no one had ever actually seen the end of this game.
[Begin a new salvation?]
“Whew.”
It was a roguelike where you started over whenever your character died, and on top of that, the new character's Traits and starting location were randomized.
That only made me want to challenge it even more.
After all, no matter what game I played, I was the kind of person who couldn't be satisfied until I'd cleared every achievement.
It didn't matter whether it was mindless repetitive grinding or some complicated puzzle game.
‘What's impossible about that? You just keep going until you do it.’
With that mindset alone, I'd cleared countless games and even become fairly well-known in the community......
■ [I've forgotten how many days I've been achievement grinding]
-Failed.
└LOL
└Wait, you failed again this time too?
└You said this was the one, and you failed again LOL.
└Why does this headbutting dinosaur keep ramming its head every single time? Even AI doesn't know the answer.
Now I was famous for a different reason.
Namely, as a headbutting dinosaur with nothing but an absurd number of attempts.
└Still, doesn't this guy have the highest progress?
└Yeah, he cleared everything except the last achievement.
└Then why are you making fun of him?
└Because it's funny lol.
I was getting mocked for an absurdly simple reason, but anyway.
“Haa.”
What mattered was that I'd failed again.
There was nothing you couldn't accomplish if you put enough time into it.
Especially in a full-price game with no microtransactions.
‘There was a time when I believed that.’
Were there things in this world that simply couldn't be done no matter how much time you sank into them?
Considering I'd poured more time into this game than any other, it was a question worth asking.
I'd calculated efficiency to get the best possible outcome and challenged it again and again, yet I still failed.
The biggest problem was that there were far too many ways for the world to end.
Just among the ones I'd personally confirmed, there were four destruction endings, and according to the community, no others had been discovered.
First, the indiscriminate war of conquest waged by the Central Empire.
The summoning of an evil god by those southern fanatics.
The corpse uprising caused by the western necromancers.
And finally, the great invasion of demons that began in the North.
Stopping all of them was only the minimum requirement for reaching the true ending.
‘If you don't stop them, the game itself ends in the first place.’
I'd at least managed to stop the first three before, but the biggest problem was the great demon invasion.
“How the hell am I supposed to stop the North from getting half wiped out right from the start?!”
That was the biggest reason this game was such a fucking piece of trash.
They should've moved the starting point earlier or, at the very least, pushed the invasion event back.
“Fucking trash game.”
I knew saying that wouldn't change anything.
All I could do was press the start button.
Because even when something was this shitty, I was still the kind of person who wanted to overcome it.
“Haa, whatever. Please, just this once, give me an insanely overpowered Trait and let me start as the First Imperial Prince......”
Seriously, if I failed to see the ending again, I was either going to hunt down the developers or leave a 5,700-character review.
[Savior, you are the first to complete 10,000 attempts.]
The moment I thought that, a message popped up along with a fanfare that sounded as if the game were mocking me.
As I slowly read it, I felt the back of my head tighten on its own.
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
I was grinding my teeth, but just as I forced myself to endure it and tried to start the game—
[Even after ten thousand failures, do you intend to challenge it once again without yielding?]
Another message appeared as if to mock me.
Before I knew it, I was gripping the monitor.
There was no way this wasn't making fun of me.
[Do you truly wish to challenge it again?]
“Of course I do!”
As I looked at the final message and reached to click the mouse, I immediately noticed something strange.
‘The screen......’
A cluster of light flared bright for a moment as though a flash had gone off.
I shut my eyes, then opened them again, and what I saw was......
“What the hell?”
An old-fashioned room I'd never seen in my life.
Stunned by the sudden situation, I slowly sat up and looked around.
‘Why am I......’
Here?
My original bed had been replaced by a luxurious one.
The room itself was far larger, and the furniture had changed into the sort of things you'd only expect to see in a medieval noble household.
‘Medieval?’
Come to think of it, Last Savior was set in a similar era.
My last memories surfaced naturally.
Thinking about hunting down the developers and leaving that review.
No way. Right?
“Ugh.”
The moment I thought that, a faint pain struck me, and memories belonging to this body surfaced.
‘Ian Rashid.’
The second son of the Rashid Family, a man who had fallen into despair after losing both parents at a young age.
He had shut himself away in his room for an entire year, while his one remaining older brother handled all matters great and small as the head of the family.
As I skimmed through those memories, I became certain at once.
“I'm fucked.”
This was the world of Last Savior.
***
The Rashid Family.
‘They weren't anything special.’
In the game, they were practically an unimportant noble family.
If they had any significance at all, it was that they were destroyed by the Northern Great Invasion, one of the game's early events.
“I'm screwed. Just completely screwed.”
The one saving grace was that this point in time was exactly five years before the game's starting date.
The problem was that I'd been dropped into a damned game world that could end at the slightest misstep.
‘Five years until the Great Invasion.’
When the Great Invasion began, the North took a devastating blow, and most of its territories fell into the hands of the demons.
It was practically an impossible event to prevent.
To reach the true ending, I'd usually focused on retaking the North afterward rather than stopping the invasion itself.
“Five years. Five years, huh......”
That was enough time to work with.
Maybe I could do more than simply survive.
Maybe I could even reach the true ending.
‘Besides, the North respects the strong.’
As long as I had strength, I'd be recognized to some extent, which would make it much easier to maneuver from then on.
If I didn't start growing stronger immediately, I'd effectively be a dead man in five years.
And even if I survived somehow, whether by running away or anything else, I had no chance of living through the countless events that would follow.
“So I've got to get stronger somehow.”
If I wanted to survive in the North, and if I wanted to avoid destruction, I needed strength.
While I searched for a notepad and wrote down the major events that would happen in the future one by one—
“Young Master, are you awake?”
A voice came from outside.
It was one I remembered.
The butler who had taken care of me since I was little.
“I left your meal outside......”
“Yeah, I'll be out soon.”
“......Pardon? Ah, yes! Understood!”
CLATTER-
I heard something fall, followed by the sound of someone quickly running away.
‘Well, I have been holed up in my room for a whole year.’
It was only natural for the butler to be surprised.
Anyway, what mattered right now wasn't their reaction but finding a way to get stronger as quickly as possible.
‘Since I was born into a noble family anyway, I might as well use everything I can.’
No matter how insignificant the family was, nobles were still nobles.
If I wanted to stop the events that were coming, I had to try everything I possibly could.
‘This is going to be hard.’
I absolutely had to grow stronger if I wanted to survive.
After all, in a place like this, the voices of the weak were ignored all too often.
“Then......”
I calmly stepped outside and followed behind the still-shocked butler.
When we arrived, one person was waiting there.
“Ian?”
“Brother.”
“Ian...... It really is you.”
The man slowly approached and touched my face.
‘He's handsome.’
It was a familiar face.
Of course it was.
He'd even appeared in the cinematic for the Great Invasion.
At first, his looks had made him a hot topic.
But afterward, something else had drawn attention to him.
‘There were all kinds of people.’
Lords who fled, nobles who simply gave up, and even those who became servants of the demons.
Amid all that, Cain Rashid led his soldiers into battle and fought fiercely, before meeting a heroic death.
It was the kind of scene that stirred something in a man's heart......
‘Haa. If I'd had to become someone, I wish it'd been him.’
For a moment, I thought things might've been much easier if I'd become Cain instead of Ian Rashid.
“Brother, that's enough now.”
“Ah, forgive me. I was wondering whether my eyes were deceiving me......”
“I'm hungry. Shall we eat first?”
“Ah, you're right! When the butler told me earlier, I was so shocked. The finest feast......”
Listening to my brother, I began eating.
He had clearly put a great deal of care into it, because the food was delicious.
The problem was that I didn't have the leisure to care about the taste.
‘Ian Rashid has no foundation at all.’
Losing both parents at a young age was tragic, but afterward, this body had never practiced either swordsmanship or magic.
To be honest, purely in terms of physical condition, this was close to the worst possible starting point.
In Last Savior, where you started as a random person, beginning without having learned a single Skill meant your character was basically trash-tier.
‘And that's me?’
At least I was a noble.
My relationship with Cain Rashid didn't seem bad either.
Partway through the meal, I waited for the right moment and spoke.
“Brother, would it be all right if I used the training grounds?”
“The training grounds?”
Cain Rashid looked at me with slightly widened eyes, clearly surprised by the sudden question.
Ian had spent every day shut inside his room, practically waiting to die.
“I've been thinking about it constantly lately. I can't keep living like this.”
“......”
“I felt that I had to do something.”
“And?”
“I think the right place to start is by training my body.”
After saying that, I watched his reaction.
For a moment, I saw emotion well up in Cain Rashid's eyes.
“Yes. I always believed in you. If that's what you want, you may use it freely.”
“Thank you.”
Watching Cain leave first after saying that, I felt strangely awkward.
Seeing how genuinely moved he looked made me feel needlessly self-conscious.
‘Either way, I got what I wanted.’
This was five whole years before the game's original starting point.
A lot of events had undoubtedly changed, but there should still be plenty of things I could obtain.
Of course, most events required at least a minimum level of combat ability, so I'd have to grow stronger first......
‘I can do that.’
Nothing changed if you just sat still.
***
“Whew......”
And so I arrived at the training grounds.
Naturally, I'd never had any reason to hold a sword even back in the modern world, so it felt unbearably awkward in every way.
‘Still, I've got to try.’
The moment I gripped the sword with that thought—
-Finally, you're holding me!
I heard a voice.
I looked around at the sudden sound, but after realizing there was no one there, I slowly lowered my gaze.
-Swing me just ten thousand times.
-I want to be used again after so long. My body's itching.
“A sword?”
-Hurry!
“What the......”
At the urging voice, I slowly tightened my grip around the hilt.
At the same time, text appeared before my eyes.
[Swing the Worn Training Wooden Sword(-) within One Day]
[0/10,000]
A quest?
I'd thought it was an auditory hallucination, but if I could see this in front of me, apparently not.
‘An Ego Sword?’
No, why would something like that be sitting in a training ground?
While I was still utterly bewildered, the sword added one more thing.
-Complete the pact, and I'll give you something good!
A pact?
That was something I'd never seen even after playing Last Savior for so long.
“Something good?”
-I'm sure you'll be able to grow even stronger.
Grow.
The moment I heard that word, my gamer brain kicked into gear.
‘I'll get stronger just by swinging a sword?’
And the number was only ten thousand.
Just ten thousand.
I'd played this game ten thousand times.
‘There's no risk besides my arms hurting.’
So why would I refuse?
“Whew.”
I let out a short breath and swung the sword.
[1/10,000]
The count went up immediately.
“Hah. So it really is a quest.”
A hollow laugh escaped me at how ridiculous the situation was, but my body was already moving on reflex.
Repetitive grinding was something I was more familiar with than anything after clearing countless games.
Once, twice, again and again, the number began climbing rapidly.
“Huff, huff......”
But that only lasted at the beginning.
Ian Rashid's untrained body was weak enough that simply swinging a sword was enough to exhaust it.
‘This cursed body is even shittier than my original one, isn't it?’
I'd thought it would be easy because it was only ten thousand swings, but this grind wasn't simple at all.
“Urgh......”
Maybe I'd been gripping the sword too tightly.
Pain throbbed through my hands.
Even so......
[677/10,000]
‘The number's going up.’
The thought made the corners of my mouth rise on their own.
“Um......”
“Isn't Young Master pushing himself too hard?”
The gazes of several servants and their whispered voices brushed past my ears.
I ignored them.
[Swing the Worn Training Wooden Sword within One Day]
[2,954/10,000]
The posture that had been decent enough when I first started swinging had long since collapsed.
My entire body felt as though it were screaming.
If I didn't drop the sword right now, I felt like I might collapse.
‘More. Go up more.’
With this much sunk cost, there was even less chance I'd give up.
Whenever my body hurt, I corrected my posture instead.
That was the only way the count rose properly.
‘If I quit here, I'll just be a guy with aching arms!’
What mattered now wasn't the pain.
It was the reward for whatever this quest-like thing was.
[6,109/10,000]
The sun had been rising when I first gripped the sword, but before I knew it, I could feel it slipping away.
As the sun disappeared and the bitter wind of the North began to blow, I paid it no mind.
[8,308/10,000]
Blood continued to seep from my hands, which had been torn completely open.
By now, if I didn't concentrate, even the count itself wouldn't go up properly.
‘Almost there. Just a little more. Just a little more.’
[9,360/10,000]
“Ian, there's no need to push yourself this hard on your first day.”
“Haa, I'm f-fine......”
“I didn't allow you to train so that you could overdo it like this. Why are you going this far......?”
Cain's worried gaze passed over me.
“The number...... because the number keeps going up.”
“......”
Shock and concern flashed through Cain Rashid's eyes, but I didn't have time to care about that.
[9,999/10,000]
[10,000/10,000]
Ten thousand.
I swung it ten thousand times......
[Training successfully completed.]
“I did it!”
The words burst out of me on their own.
I raised both hands, drenched in blood, and savored the sense of accomplishment.
-Wow! You really swung me ten thousand times right away!
-Thank you. I'm happy to be used again after so long.
-But your form was kind of a mess.
‘This bastard?’
The voice sounded almost like it was teabagging me.
Just as I was about to be dumbfounded by it, more messages appeared one after another.
[A Trait has awakened.]
[Pact (盟約)]
[Rank : Mythic]
[Description : You can form pacts with swords, fulfill their wishes, and receive rewards. Depending on the Savior's Standing, you can form pacts with higher-tier swords.]
[The Savior's current Standing is ‘Trainee’.]
A Trait had suddenly appeared.
Unlike Skills or stats that could be developed in the game, Traits were innate abilities fixed from the very beginning and normally never changed.
‘A hidden Trait......?’
I'd thought I knew almost everything there was to know, but I'd never seen this Trait before.
And on top of that, its Rank was Mythic.
‘It's even growth-type?’
The reward was absurd.
But the messages didn't end there.
[You have successfully completed your pact with the Worn Training Wooden Sword.]
[You have acquired ‘Northern Swordsmanship (F)’!]
“Huh?”
I stared at the window before my eyes with my mouth hanging open.
A Skill.
Unlike in other games, Skills were the hardest part of a Last Savior character's build to flesh out.
You couldn't even learn them in the first place without a teacher, a limited Skill Book, or a rare artifact.
‘This is completely......’
Broken, isn't it?