A rhythmic beeping pulled Dylan out of the darkness.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
“…Mm.”
The first thing he noticed was the smell.
Disinfectant.
The second was the mattress beneath him.
Soft.
Far softer than the dungeon floor.
“…Hospital?”
His eyelids fluttered open.
White ceiling.
Fluorescent lights.
Curtains drawn around neighboring beds.
For a long moment, he simply stared.
“…Huh.”
“So hospitals look the same across worlds.”
A voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Oh.”
“You’re finally awake.”
Dylan turned his head.
A nurse stood beside his bed, a tablet tucked neatly beneath one arm.
She looked to be in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, dressed in a crisp white uniform.
Chestnut hair was tied into a tidy ponytail, framing a face that was effortlessly beautiful calm amber eyes, delicate features, and the kind of smile that could probably lower a patient’s blood pressure without medication.
She regarded him with a composed, professional expression that made it painfully obvious she had dealt with far stranger patients than him.
She noticed him staring.
“…Is something on my face?”
Dylan blinked.
“…You’re real?”
“…Excuse me?”
“I mean…” He cleared his throat.
“After everything that happened, I wasn’t entirely convinced I hadn’t died again.”
The nurse raised an eyebrow.
“I can assure you, you’re very much alive.”
“…Good.”
A beat passed.
“…You have really pretty eyes, by the way.”
The nurse looked at him for several silent seconds.
“…You’ve suffered a concussion.”
“I was trying to compliment you.”
“And I’m trying to determine whether the head injury affected your judgment.”
“…Fair.”
She couldn’t help the tiny smile tugging at the corner of her lips before returning to her professional expression.
“I’ll inform the doctor you’ve regained consciousness.”
She turned and walked out.
The door clicked shut.
Silence settled over the room.
Dylan let out a long breath.
“…Still got it.”
Another pause.
“…No, I absolutely do not.”
He covered his face with his good hand.
“…That was awful.”
His ribs protested immediately.
“…Ow.”
As if summoned by the pain, memories resurfaced.
The Wretchling.
Its scream.
Stone exploding beside him.
His body moving on instinct.
Refraction.
A translucent distortion had rippled through the air just before the monster’s claws reached him.
The impact had bent away at the last possible instant, buying him a heartbeat.
One heartbeat.
That was all he’d needed.
He ran.
Not fought.
Not won.
Ran.
Blood trailing behind every step.
His lungs burned.
His vision narrowed.
The dungeon exit.
Voices.
“Survivor!”
“He’s still breathing!”
“Get a stretcher!”
Then…
Nothing.
“…So they actually dragged me out.”
He stared at the ceiling again.
“…Good.”
His expression slowly soured.
“…Actually.”
“What kind of garbage worldbuilding is this?”
Silence.
“What kind of author writes rescue teams that don’t actually rescue people inside dungeons?”
He pointed accusingly at himself.
“…Me.”
“I wrote that.”
He groaned.
“If someone is bleeding to death inside a dungeon…”
“…Go inside.”
“It’s called a rescue team for a reason.”
He rubbed his temples.
“No.”
“Apparently teenage Yoo Hajin thought standing outside the entrance and waiting for survivors was somehow a perfectly acceptable emergency response.”
“…Peak fiction.”
His eye twitched.
“And don’t even get me started on Wretchlings.”
“E-Rank.”
“They’re supposed to be the monsters rookie Hunters cut their teeth on.”
He held up his fingers, counting each complaint.
“Abnormal speed.”
“Enough strength to shatter stone.”
“Nightmare fuel anatomy.”
“Creepy camouflage.”
“And a face only cosmic horror could love.”
He sighed.
“…Why?”
A long silence answered him.
“…Because I thought it looked cool.”
He buried his face in the pillow.
“I was such an edgy teenager.”
His muffled voice drifted through the room.
“…This novel sucks.”
Another pause.
“…”
“…I have to live in it now.”
The realization hit him harder than any monster ever could.
“…What a joke.”
He let out a dry laugh that quickly dissolved into a cough.
“So this is my reward.”
His gaze drifted toward the hospital window.
Morning sunlight spilled through the glass, bathing the room in a warm glow that felt strangely foreign.
A world he had created.
A world he now had to survive.
“…How did it even come to this?”
His thoughts wandered.
Back.
Back to a cramped middle-school bedroom lit only by a desk lamp.
Back to lined notebooks filled with terrible ideas and even worse dialogue.
Back to the beginning.
Leveling Up As The Player.
He’d started writing it in secret during middle school.
At first, it was just an escape.
A place where effort always meant something.
Where hard work could be measured.
Where numbers didn’t lie.
Its protagonist, Ethan Walker, was an orphan.
No family.
No connections.
No talent.
Everyone told Ethan he had no future.
No potential.
That no matter how hard he struggled, he’d always remain beneath those born gifted.
So Hajin gave him what reality never had.
An infinite leveling system.
A miracle that ignored talent.
A chance to grow stronger forever.
“…”
“…Funny.”
His lips curled into a bitter smile.
“I wasn’t writing Ethan.”
“I was writing myself.”
Yoo Hajin.
His father had died while he was still young.
After that…
Life became a series of empty apartments, colder relatives, and classrooms where being the quiet kid painted a target on his back.
His School life became unbearable due to bullying.
During around that time he started writing as Writing became his world.
Every chapter he’d uploaded felt like another day survived.
Another reason to keep going.
“…Looking back…”
He sighed.
“It really wasn’t a very good novel.”
The beginning had promise.
The worldbuilding wasn’t terrible.
But somewhere along the way…
“Ethan turned into an edgelord.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“As Story progressed i wrote terribly and made Ethan into an edgelord with enough trauma to make five psychologists retire.”
Every arc somehow ended with betrayal.
Every victory came wrapped in another tragedy.
“If someone important appeared…”
“They were either dying…”
“…or betraying him.”
He groaned.
“What was I even thinking?”
Despite everything…
He had wanted to finish it.
Not because he still loved the story.
But because of something his father had once told him.
“A man doesn’t abandon what he starts.”
Simple words.
Words that had stayed with him long after his father was gone.
So he’d kept writing.
Chapter after chapter.
Year after year.
Until…
“…Cancer.”
Terminal.
No miracle treatment.
No last-minute recovery.
Just hospital walls.
Weakening hands.
And a cursor blinking on an unfinished chapter.
“…Pathetic.”
His fingers unconsciously curled into the bedsheet.
Then another memory surfaced.
A voice.
Playful.
Mocking.
“Call me God—Capital G. I earned it.”
The smug tone alone made Dylan’s eye twitch.
“…Go to hell.”
He glared at the ceiling.
He let out a breath and shook his head.
“…Whatever.”
With a thought, a familiar blue window unfolded before him.
“…Huh.”
A genuine smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“So it worked.”
The memories came back in scattered fragments.
The Wretchling lunging.
His Refraction barely deflecting its killing blow.
His hand grazing the creature’s grotesque arm.
The System’s notification.
Then…
Running.
Not fighting.
Running for his life.
“…Of course I ran.”
He snorted.
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“I’m not some goddamn protagonist.”
“I had a broken body, three shattered ribs, one useless arm, no weapon, no armor, zero combat experience, and I was bleeding so much I was practically painting the dungeon floor red.”
He counted each point on his fingers.
“No skills.”
“No equipment.”
“No mana worth mentioning.”
“And an E-Rank monster that I’d made absurdly stronger than it had any right to be.”
He shook his head.
“Only an idiot would stand there yelling about friendship and determination.”
“The objective wasn’t to win.”
“It was to survive.”
A bitter smile crossed his face.
“And somehow…”
“I did.”
His gaze returned to the status window.
Unique Skill
[Plagiarize Lv.1]
Slots Used: 1 / 3
Copied Skills:
[Camouflage] (E-Rank)
Bends light around the user’s body, reducing visibility for a short duration.
The effect is strongest while stationary and weakens significantly during movement.
“Lucky.”
His expression softened.
“E-Rank monsters rarely possess skills valuable enough to copy.”
“The fact that the Wretchling had Camouflage…”
He exhaled slowly.
“…I seriously hit the jackpot.”
For an escape skill, there weren’t many better options.
At least…
Not for someone whose greatest talent at the moment was knowing when to run.
He dismissed the window.
His gaze landed on the bedside cabinet.
Resting neatly atop it was a black student identification card.
NEXUS ACADEMY
Dylan Harrow
First-Year Student
“…”
He picked it up between two fingers before letting out a defeated sigh.
“…School.”
“I hated school in my first life.”
“I hated writing school arcs.”
“And now…”
He stared at the card with open disdain.
“…I have to attend one again.”
“…Fantastic.”
Dragging himself out of bed, he wandered toward the window.
Hands tucked behind his back, shoulders slumped, he stared into the distance with the expression of a man who had already attended his own funeral.
The door slid open.
The same nurse from earlier stepped inside, followed by a middle-aged doctor carrying a clipboard.
The nurse stopped the moment she saw Dylan.
He was standing before the window with his hands clasped behind his back, staring into the distance like a tragic hero who had lost everything.
I mean he did lost everything.
But for the nurse who knew nothing about him he looked like a bit too dramatic.
Silence settled over the room.
She slowly turned toward the doctor.
“…Doctor.”
“I think our patient is mourning the loss of a wife and three children.”
Dylan turned around with the enthusiasm of a man attending his own execution.
“…I’m seventeen.”
The doctor adjusted his glasses and glanced down at his clipboard.
“Hm.”
“What is it?” Dylan asked.
The doctor looked back up with complete seriousness.
“Remarkable.”
“…What’s remarkable?”
“Despite your injuries, you’ve retained enough strength to be dramatically melancholic.”
The nurse pinched the bridge of her nose.
“I told you the concussion wasn’t the biggest problem.”
“…I don’t have a concussion.”
The doctor made another note on his clipboard.
“Patient is in denial.”
“I am not in denial!”
“Good,” the doctor replied without looking up.
“His vocal cords are functioning perfectly.”
The nurse let out a quiet sigh.
“…This is going to be a long recovery.”