◈ Mistaken for a Masked Monster
──────
Bugs (Not the Insect Kind)
"Goddamn trash game."
There's one hell of a trash game out there.
Gorgeous character design, a solid story, a world built by the book. It had everything it needed to thrive. And yet, there was a reason the word "trash" ended up slapped in front of it.
"Why are there so many bugs."
Bug. An error that occurs during the execution of a program.
A phenomenon you'll find in most games without looking too hard. All kinds of them, really. Wall clipping, item duplication, mid-air floating, stage skipping... You could say there are more types of bugs in the world than there are games. As long as games exist, so will bugs.
So what was the problem?'Ranne & Grandia Academy: The Märchen.'
Ngme for short.
This game had way, way too many bugs. Easily a dozen or more in every single stage, bare minimum. Despite all those strengths I mentioned, that was exactly why I called Ngme a trash game.
"But... maybe at this point, you'd have to call it part of the charm."
A stench that grows on you.
Sure, minor bugs were scattered everywhere, but none of them actually hurt the player. Most were funny, or outright helpful for players. The obnoxious ones had been weeded out. In short, it had crossed over into pure comedy gold.
That quality went viral in the community, and the game shot up in popularity almost overnight. The funny part was, the developers seemed to catch on, too, announcing they'd "stay true to their roots" and wouldn't be fixing a single bug.
'Just an absolutely insane game, honestly.'
I'd been gaming for years, but I'd never seen a developer come out and proudly declare they were going to keep milking their own broken product like that.
'Well... that was four years ago now, though.'
Four years since Ngme launched. The game had found its footing, and I'd been playing consistently for all of them.
I was fairly well known. Not for being particularly good at the game, or topping the server rankings. Just for playing it in the strangest way possible.
[Nickname: PlayingGamesToFindBugs]
[Total Playtime: 14,032 hours]
I deliberately went hunting for bugs. Finding them, mastering them completely, and then weaving them into actual gameplay. My unusual playstyle got me talked about in all kinds of circles.
[Who even is this person? Where do they keep finding this stuff??]
[Whoa, used a wall-clip bug to skip the entire stage lmao]
[This dude isn't just a veteran, he's fossilized lol]
[This person is literally the god of bugs fr]
[If the old guard had bug master Fabre, the new generation has BugFindingGamer...]
The guides I posted directly to the community drew a lot of attention. Maybe because of that, invitations from prominent streamers started coming in pretty regularly.
[BREAKING) YesKyung's channel announces they'll try to bring BugFindingGamer on as a special guest omg]
[For real? That channel with 3 million subs?]
[Is this finally when they make their real-life debut?]
[Probably not. ChabakNam tried the same thing and got nowhere]
[Same with Dabin, honestly. Tons of people have had their offers turned down]
I turned down every offer, of course. All I wanted was to play games in peace. Making a spectacle of myself wasn't really my thing.
Anyway, I was fluent in hundreds of bugs. From wall clipping to instant travel to specific coordinates, invincibility in certain states, guaranteed hit attacks, damage manipulation, and more.
"At this point, I'd have to call myself a living legend."
A hollow bit of self-talk.
I booted up the game today, too, to upload another guide.
'Come to think of it, this is my 1,000th playthrough, isn't it.'
One thousand playthroughs, already. That meant 14,000-odd hours of doing the same thing over and over. Not even playing normally. Just hunting bugs.
"Ngme..."
(Short for 'Ranne & Grandia Academy: The Märchen')
A moment of unexpectedly deep feeling. Even as a brief wave of "what am I doing with my life" washed over me, my hands just kept clicking away. Setting up the play configuration.
[Difficulty: Impossible]
-Challenges you with the highest difficulty.
[Additional Option: Hellpath (地獄道)]
-All spawned monsters maintain a berserk state.
-Difficulty of all hostile factions increases by 300%.
-All of the player's base stats are fixed at grade E.
[Story to Play: All]
-All character stories must be cleared to reach the ending.
-Story 'Alice's Nightmare' is applied.
-Story 'Carmilla's Night' is applied.
-Story 'Don Quixote's Daydream' is applied.
-Story 'Javert's Iron and Justice' is applied.
Settings locked. Let's get into it.
Just as I was about to move the mouse.
Ding!
[Hidden Achievement Unlocked!]
[You are the first player since launch to reach 1,000 playthroughs!]
[Ranked 1st on the leaderboard. A special reward will be granted accordingly.]
A message on screen. Skimmed through it. A reward for hitting the 1,000th playthrough, apparently. That caught my attention.
'A reward, huh... In-game currency, maybe? Or some kind of multi-playthrough package?'
What long-time player wouldn't get excited over content they'd never seen before? I took a screenshot of the achievement and moved the mouse along.
A prompt appeared.
[Would you like to receive your reward?]
Yes / No
Why would they even ask. Of course I'm taking it.
Click.
Without a second thought, I clicked the button that said [Yes].
And in the next instant.
Flash!
"Wh...?"
A blinding white light exploded from the screen.
***
The price of a careless click came back with a vengeance.
"......"
An unfamiliar sky. The words slipped out before I could stop them.
"Shit."
I let my guard down. Of all things, that was the buildup to a possession arc.
***
"Ah... and that was already a month ago."
A long sigh.
A month had already passed since I tumbled into the world of Ngme.
"Go figure."
Tap tap.
I knocked on empty air. A blue window floated up in front of me, looking exactly like a game UI.
Ding!
[Difficulty: Impossible]
-Challenges you with the highest difficulty.
[Additional Option: Hellpath (地獄道)]
-All spawned monsters maintain a berserk state.
-Difficulty of all hostile factions increases by 300%.
-All of the player's base stats are fixed at grade E.
Exactly the settings I'd chosen, right there in the status window. How baffled I'd been at first.
Ding!
[Base Stat Information]
-Strength: E
-Vitality: E
-Agility: E
-Mana Sensitivity: E
Every single base stat locked at grade E on top of everything else. A headache in every possible direction.
A short month, but a dense one.
"Well... somehow, I'd managed to stay alive until today."
What was today? The point where the original story begins. The day the protagonist and the main cast enroll in the academy.
A long month of holding on, and finally this day had come.
'Though the real thing starts now.'
I fidgeted with the academy recommendation letter tucked inside my clothes. Right. This was where the game truly began.
[Difficulty: Impossible]
-Challenges you with the highest difficulty.
The difficulty of this world was Impossible. As the name suggests, a brutally savage hard mode. One wrong step and the world ends, just like that.
'Have to stop it.'
Without knowing the guide, clearing Impossible difficulty was out of the question. Put another way, if I didn't intervene, the world ends. Never mind helping anyone else. I needed to stop it just to survive. That was why I was enrolling in the academy, too.
'First things first...'
There was somewhere I needed to stop by. A place to pass through before the academy entrance exam.
"This path is pretty eerie."
An isolated road. The spawn point where players appear at the start of each playthrough. Where the prologue takes place, too.
'I need to find Ranne fast.'
Ranne. The protagonist of this game.
On her way to the academy for the entrance exam, she would come across people in danger. A carriage attacked by cultists. The righteous protagonist doesn't hesitate, charging in to save them. That was the prologue.
"Why can't I find her? Don't tell me she went the wrong way."
Dense forest. Nothing but thick undergrowth all around. Just the one road, barely wide enough for a carriage. Fog so heavy that visibility was nearly gone.
Absolutely dreary.
"Tch. If I can't find her, I'm done for."
Walking along the path, grumbling to myself as I scanned the area. Then,
"Oh."
Found her.
Silhouettes flickering in the distance. An overturned carriage, people standing beside it. Something three times the size of the carriage. A girl was standing in front of the writhing creature, blocking its path.
"Bingo."
Closing in. The silhouettes sharpened, and a voice drifted to my ears.
-Everyone, run! I'll hold it off here somehow!
Ranne Kihano.
The protagonist of this world, called by the epithet "Don Quixote." True to her aspiration as a knight, she was clad head to toe in plate armor.
'She looks exactly like her illustration.'
Golden hair. Violet eyes with a gentle shimmer. A girl whose looks seized your attention in an instant. The only flaw, if you could call it one, was the deep scowl on her face.
Understandable. Anyone would scowl if that was standing in front of them.
'So that's the prologue boss.'
The gatekeeper of the prologue. A normal game would give you slimes and goblins, but Impossible mode was a different story.
-Grrrrr...
A grotesque cry. Hundreds of hands writhed, each clutching a grimoire. Its single head was swathed in a robe. Just the shape of it was enough to make the air feel wrong.
'Genuinely terrifying.'
Easily ten meters tall, on top of that. Bigger in frame than three carriages stacked together.
Ding!
[Name: The Reader]
-Race: Ghost
-Description: An enemy that cannot be defeated. It would be wise to flee.
Its name was "The Reader." A ghost that devours life and transcribes existence. Known among players as Jangbungi. Among ghost-type monsters, it sat at the very top of the hierarchy.
-Ugh, haah...!
Even against something like that, Ranne didn't yield an inch. How many times had they clashed already? Her pauldron was cracked, her body covered in dirt and grime. Yet her back remained turned toward the weak, shielding them still.
'Now that's the spirit of a hero.'
Exactly the cutscene I'd watched so many times in the prologue. The protagonist leveling her spear with confidence before a crowd of trembling people. Truly righteous.
'Well... separate matter, but she's not winning this.'
At this point in the story, Ranne had no way of beating Jangbungi. Not a simple matter of being weak or strong. Victory had been made impossible from the start, by design.
'A gimmick boss.'
You know the type. The ones put in specifically not to be killed. Bosses that can't fall by narrative design. You'll find plenty of examples in other games.
'Doesn't matter what you do. Can't be beaten.'
In practice, not a scratch had been left on Jangbungi. Ranne's spearwork was blocked every single time. Same as in the original. The standard approach was to evacuate everyone and escape alive.
'But I'll be taking the shortcut, naturally.'
I stepped forward. If anyone asked whether I had the strength to beat it, the answer was obviously no. Take one look at my stat window.
[Base Stat Information]
-Strength: E
-Vitality: E
-Agility: E
-Mana Sensitivity: E
Stats like these, I'd struggle to compete with a passing farmer, let alone an academy cadet. Bottom of the barrel, in plain terms. No power to beat it.
A method to beat it, though, that was a different story. Because there was a weapon that could bypass stats entirely.
'Bugs.'
What I'd memorized and memorized again in my past life. And they worked here just the same.
I picked up a branch at my feet.
-Grrr...?
Having sensed me, Jangbungi turned its gaze this way. I fiddled with the branch regardless. There was a bug that worked only on this boss.
'Been a while.'
Its defense stat was set to infinite. All physical attacks nullified. All magical attacks nullified. No weaknesses. None.
Its base HP, though, was exactly 1. Set thin on the assumption that the defense could never be breached.
'But force it through, and that's the end of it.'
The bug I was about to use exploited exactly that mechanic. I alternated the branch between my left and right hands. Three passes in the left, seven in the right. Repeating the process.
-Grrraaaaahhhh!!
Jangbungi locked me in as its attack target. It prioritized the enemy with the lowest base stats, and my average rating was E. The absolute weakest thing in the vicinity.
Rustle.
Hundreds of books flipped, filling the air with sound. Dark magical energy crawled through the surroundings.
"Hey, you! Pl-please, run...!"
Ranne's face shifted -- the expression of someone who'd figured it out just a second too late. Ready to grab her shield and sprint over at any moment.
Even so, I was perfectly calm.
"Hm."
There was one fundamental bug. A bug that guaranteed exactly 3 damage to any target, no exceptions. Didn't matter if the target had thick armor, resistances, or a god's blessing. If it had an HP bar, the bug applied.
'Dealing 3 damage... that's a hundred hits just to kill a slime.'
Easy to trigger, but rarely worth using. There was one place it truly shone, though.
"Hey there, Jangbungi-kun."
Right here. Keep picking up and setting down the branch, and something wrong would start to happen. A heat shimmer rippling along the branch, like the world around it was cracking.
The bug had activated.
-Grrrrraaaaahhh!!
Jangbungi let out a thunderous roar. All the intent in the world to melt the flesh from my bones.
Just as the dark energy was about to pour down over my head, I twitched a finger.
Thud.
A scratch through empty air, and a rustling leaf shot forward. The world distorted around me, like a glitching screen.
Crash!
Cracks spread across everything, like a shattered mirror. The world splintering into fragments. Through the gaps tearing open all around, only the void shimmered beyond, where nothing existed.
An error born from pushing the world's rules past their breaking point. Space tore and the distance collapsed, the leaf touching lightly against the monster's body.
"Got you."
At those words, the shadow shattered to pieces. The shimmer from the branch spread like sparks leaping to oil.
A single shriek.
-Grrr, grrrrr...!
Its body split into countless fragments. Breaking and breaking and breaking again, until there was nothing left the eyes could follow. The void consumed its existence, and all that remained was white blankness.
Like erasing graphite from a notebook page.
'Erasure (消滅).'
The massive form vanished as if it had never been there. The suffocating stench of dark energy dissolved. The thick fog that had swallowed everything lifted with it.
"Phew..."
The world suddenly bright. Sunlight breaking through the dark clouds, settling around me. An effect that only appeared in special circumstances.
Ding!
[Impossible Achievement Unlocked.]
-Prologue Boss 'The Reader' defeated
-Reward: Evil God's Mask x1, Evil God's Robe x1, Grimoire That Should Not Exist x1
A perfect performance.
A moment to bask in it, and then a voice came from behind.
"What is this..."
Violet eyes staring over here, blank. Golden hair catching the sunlight. Our protagonist had completely lost herself.
"How did you..."
Our eyes met. First impressions matter, always. I smiled, so she wouldn't be frightened.
Whoosh.
A gust of wind swept through, hair billowing.
"Good day."
The remnants of the bug still lingered at my fingertips. Shimmers teeming as if ready to warp the whole forest. Even as the backdrop cracked in layers all around me, I stood there perfectly composed.
The girl's violet eyes trembled, as though overwhelmed.
"Just a traveler passing by."
The most gentlemanly greeting in the world.