Am I Not Playing a Single-Player Game?!

[New readers, be sure to read the note at the bottom!]

[Blurb]

Ji Guang recently found a new single-player game.

A fantasy wasteland setting, with swords and knights, gods and magic.

Best of all, the graphics were incredibly realistic, and the game offered an astonishing degree of freedom. As long as you were willing to reload a save and try things out, there was almost no plot or fate you couldn't change. The enormous amount of text contained no repeated details at all, which left Ji Guang stunned.

Ji Guang: Holy crap, I thought the ad was bluffing when it called this a huge AAA game... It's free, and there aren't even any microtransactions. Is the developer really not going to lose every last cent they have?

He immediately started a new account and began his first playthrough.

At first, he thought he was playing a Souls-like game or I Wanna Be the Guy.

Deaths +1 +1 +1 +1... He got beaten so badly he started questioning his life.

Later, he thought he was playing Don't Starve or Minecraft.

He starved, collapsed from exhaustion, and died of thirst. After finally building a little wooden cabin, a monster kicked it in the very next day. Despair.

Then he decided to treat it like a life sim or Stardew Valley for a while, to improve his mood.

Ji Guang running around and chatting with NPCs be like:

Ji Guang: Hi, got any quests? Any quests? How about now?

Ji Guang: Reload, reload! As long as I can reload, there's no quest I can't beat!

Ji Guang: Raise affinity, interact, interact, interact... Huh? What! The NPC I've been raising affinity with this whole time is dead!? Reload! I have to reload! What? I have to kill the BOSS to save the NPC?

Ji Guang, a plot enthusiast, looked at the NPC in front of him, then at the terrifying BOSS: ...

...As long as it's not a scripted death, there's nothing we players can't handle.

...As long as it has a health bar, there's no monster we players can't kill.

Ji Guang (picking up the controller, looking serious, ready to fight the BOSS to the bitter end): Here I go.

At last, after overcoming every obstacle, Ji Guang: Why did my save get corrupted after the final BOSS fight? Why can't I control anything or reload? Why can't I even start New Game Plus!?

I haven't even gotten all the platinum trophies yet!

Wait, I just like playing games. I never wanted to transmigrate into one!?

.

This is a world on the brink of being overrun by demons.

Across the fantasy continent of Orlanca, the Seven Curses spread through every kingdom and every race.

Corpses lie piled high here. The survivors drift through life in a daze. The beleaguered knights wage a futile struggle against the demons, and before long, even the once-glorious gods fall one after another.

Little by little, people stop hoping for a brighter future.

Until one day.

A young knight arrives after traveling a long way from some unknown foreign land.

Wearing a dusty traveler's cloak, plain armor without a crest, and carrying an ordinary straight sword, he faces the monsters that terrify everyone without a trace of fear, cutting a path through every obstacle with nothing but himself and his sword.

In this wasteland, do-gooders don't live long.

But this foreign knight is a do-gooder through and through.

He never hesitates to help, and never turns away anyone who asks.

He enters a monster's lair and returns, covered in wounds, with a girl's father's keepsake.

He goes to a desolate battlefield and rescues a knight who somehow survived. Then he carries the helpless knight on his back, carving a path through every obstacle with nothing but himself and his sword.

He enters a silent forest and brings home the last surviving seeds and a new sapling from the long-withered Mother Tree of the elves.

The knight is ridiculously strong, and ridiculously kind and gentle.

Some say he'll eventually die because of his own foolishness.

But the knight has never lost.

He shines like the dawn itself, rekindling the faith of those who had lost it.

In the end, the king of a fallen kingdom begs him to take the key to the Demon Realm: "Unbeaten knight, become the hero who saves us all. Defeat the source of the curse and return the world to what it once was!"

And so, the calamity is driven back, and the entrance to the Demon Realm, from which the ever-spreading curse emerged, is sealed.

No more demons appear, and no more endless curses spread.

The devastated continent slowly flourishes once more.

But the undefeated hero, the savior chosen by fate, is left behind as the gate closes, trapped in the world of demons to fight an endless horde of monsters.

.

The legend of the undefeated knight is sung for generations.

Some wait a hundred years for him.

[Reader's Guide]

1. The protagonist is the bottom. This is mainly plot-driven, with a beloved-by-all protagonist. There are all kinds of familial, platonic, and romantic relationships directed toward the protagonist. The main pairing is set: Chimera, one-on-one, happy ending.

Since the pairing wasn't confirmed during serialization, I'm fine with readers shipping other characters with the protagonist in the comments, especially since the advance notice already said the protagonist is the bottom and beloved by all.

The story is mostly plot. The protagonist won't return anyone's feelings until the main story is over, so it's all NPCs falling for the protagonist. Only after the main story ends, when he comes out of the Demon Realm as described above, will he return their feelings. This is a long story, so I recommend reading a little at a time. If it's not to your taste, feel free to stop.

2. The protagonist is a sentimental idiot who would reload a hundred times for an NPC he likes. There are both everyday scenes and battles. Many things that may seem unreasonable are foreshadowing, so please don't take them out of context.

3. It's a controller game, though a lot of it looks like virtual reality. There's a reason for that in the story, and it's not a bug. I've explained it many times, but readers keep missing it and asking, so I decided to put it here in the blurb.

4. This is a true fantasy wasteland with a great calamity as its backdrop. The demons are truly evil, and the tone is like a Souls game. The main themes are solitary courage, duty, legacy, and sacrifice. There are heartwarming moments and heavy ones, and exploring the map has some horror and sanity-draining elements. This isn't a lighthearted story, but a fairly traditional fantasy tale.

(The world is a wasteland struck by a great calamity. Though there are heartwarming scenes early on and the ending is happy, the overall setting is not lighthearted, and its established history won't be erased. As the blurb says, the protagonist struggles through countless hardships and cuts a path through every obstacle. If you can't handle a heavy setting or want a purely romantic story, this probably won't be for you. Please don't force yourself to read it if it's not your thing!)

5. The blurb was screenshotted and archived on October 31, 2023.

Theme: Hope, legacy, faith, and love.