#001
Crunch, crackle-crackle, crunch, snap…
‘Ah, this is disgusting. When will it end….’
I thought while enduring the goosebumps covering my entire body. That revolting noise filling my ears was the sound of my body being devoured by a crocodile monster. Whether my optic nerve was damaged when I hit my head, everything around me was already pitch black. I couldn’t see anything, but perhaps because my breath hadn’t been cut off yet, the sounds continued endlessly without stopping.
Being able to swallow a painless potion at the last moment was a stroke of genius. When I was first bitten and chewed like this without knowing anything, how horrifying it was. That vivid and raw pain still remains as trauma…
‘Don’t think about it.’
Just recalling that memory seemed to revive even my completely paralyzed tactile nerves.
‘By the way, if I’m going to die anyway, can’t this damn crocodile bastard finish it quickly….’
My thoughts cut off there. I finally seemed to have died. It was my 9th death since entering the game.
***
“Hueok!”
I gasped and snapped my eyes open.
As consciousness returned, a window flashed up over the black curtain. But I didn’t have the luxury to read and digest what was written in the window.
“Keok! Kek!”
The breath I took in couldn’t come back out and got stuck in my throat. My heart pounded like crazy. Just my heart? My head, temples, fingertips, toes – pulsations were going wild everywhere throughout my body.
I threw off the blanket covering my body and checked my lower half. Fortunately, my legs and pelvis that had been torn apart by the crocodile monster just moments before were intact. Nothing was torn or broken anywhere. Even though I knew they would be whole again, I couldn’t help but check with my eyes. The vivid sound of bones and flesh being chewed still remained clearly in my ears, making my body tremble involuntarily without realizing it.
‘Potion, potion…’
With trembling hands, I frantically felt around the mattress.
‘There it is!’
As soon as I grasped the small potion bottle in my hand, I uncapped it without even looking at the label and downed it in one gulp.
The potion that went down my throat spread throughout my entire body instantly, creating a tingling sensation. Fortunately, the effect was immediate. My heart’s beating settled down stably, and as the sensations throughout my body including my brain became dulled, the deathly fear and anxiety subsided. My breathing gradually returned to normal and the tension in my stiff neck and shoulders began to release.
“Whew…”
I let out a long breath. My entire body was soaked in cold sweat. After throwing off the shirt that was clinging to my body, I finally looked around my surroundings.
I saw the sickeningly familiar interior of the cabin. It was a small, shabby two-story wooden house. Confirming that I had returned to the starting point again, I was finally able to turn my attention to the blue window flickering before my eyes.
[Tutorial has ended.]
[From now on, this is the real situation. You can’t afford to die anymore. When you die in the main game, various potions like calming potions and painless potions will not work. This time it will be ‘real death’.]
“This is driving me crazy…”
After struggling through hell and only experiencing horrific deaths 9 times, all of that was apparently just the tutorial. And now it’s a real situation? I can’t die anymore?
‘This is my last chance to return to reality.’
It was absurd. For that to be the case, wasn’t the surrounding situation too extreme without giving me anything to hold onto?
I had entered into the game I used to play. And the system had publicly declared that if I cleared the main quest, they would send me back to reality (or more precisely, give me a wish fulfillment ticket as a reward). Since it was a game I’d already played, wouldn’t it be easy? To say that, this world had changed far too much from the original game.
Originally, this game was a farm management PC game that gained popularity for its beautiful scenery and illustrations, and quite natural conversations using artificial intelligence. In addition to farm management, it was designed so you could also enjoy performing quests by taking requests from resident NPCs as a side activity, or even romance simulation through building favorability. While monsters did exist, since combat wasn’t important in the game originally, they only appeared in extremely limited areas and weren’t very threatening.
Overall, the setting wasn’t complex either, and if you followed the initial guide, you could easily follow the flow, so there wasn’t really much of a tutorial originally. In short, it was a manageable and peaceful game.
But when I actually entered the game world, the situation was different. The environment even worsened more and more with each playthrough, and I found myself in the position of having to play not a healing game anymore, but a survival game.
“Since it’s a restart, how messed up has the world become this time.”
Thinking I should check outside first, I forced my listless body to get up. The two-story cabin was a small space the size of a palm. The low space under the roof served as a bedroom, and if you climbed down the ladder, there was a narrow kitchen, living room, and bathroom on the lower floor.
I grabbed the railing and put my legs over the ladder. My body was still trembling and my hands and feet had no strength, so I thought it might be a bit dangerous to use the narrow and steep ladder.
“What is this?”
Looking down below, an absurd mutter automatically burst from my mouth. It was a needless worry. Two-thirds of the ladder was submerged in water. Unless I planned to go swimming from morning, it wasn’t a situation where I could go downstairs.
“Ha…”
I was momentarily speechless. Through the murky water below, I could see what seemed to be the table where I had eaten breakfast normally just until the last playthrough. At least the heavy furniture was precariously maintaining their positions, but the light household items had become floating debris scattered here and there.
“Crazy…”
It seemed this playthrough had flood damage added to it.
When I dipped my finger below the rippling water surface and brought it slightly to my tongue, I felt an intense salty taste. It was seawater. I couldn’t help but frown. How could seawater rise all the way here? This isn’t just flood damage, is it? Isn’t this destruction-level?
Looking carefully at the murky underwater space, I could see several small fish coming and going through the broken, swaying entrance door and broken window as if it were their own home. Before I knew it, seaweed had even grown in the corner and was swaying gently.
“At this rate, I could dive and fish inside the house…”
I couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh at the absurdity. It was as if the house had become a giant fish tank.
Anyway, it wasn’t a situation where I could normally go out the front door and look around outside. While I could swim and dive to a manageable level, it wasn’t to the extent I could call it a specialty. It would take quite some time to acquire items that would allow me to move freely and breathe underwater.
I gave up on the plan to go downstairs and was about to turn around to go back up when something glittering in the corner caught my eye. It was a fairly large wooden box that seemed to have been carelessly thrown there.
“…Tool box?”
It was the box for storing farming tools like axes, sickles, pickaxes, and watering cans – the box given as basic equipment when starting the game. It was always placed right next to the door outside the house, but this time it seemed to have been pushed inside as water flooded in. Looking closely, there wasn’t just one but three scattered here and there.
‘What? Do I have to pick those up directly?’
Seeing them glittering like that, it seemed like I was supposed to salvage them and get them in my hands…
Ting.
As if noticing my question, a quest window promptly appeared.
[Quest: Acquire Settlement Support Boxes.]
[Salvage the settlement support boxes. They will help with survival.
[You can only choose one out of the three boxes. The boxes contain various randomly selected items that will help Raon-nim’s survival. However, you must salvage the box within 3 minutes from the moment you enter the water. If you exceed 3 minutes, you will face serious penalties, so keep that in mind!]
This was a quest that didn’t exist in previous playthroughs. That made sense, since it used to be given by default. But this time, seeing how they specifically made it a quest and emphasized the word ‘survival’, it seemed like something would go wrong if I got annoyed and didn’t bother to salvage them.
“Do I really have to go this far for something that was just given originally? Can’t you just give it to me?”
I grumbled, but I wasn’t really expecting an answer. I knew well from experience that the system consistently remained unresponsive to this kind of complaint. It was just a habitual soliloquy that developed after entering this world.
I looked around to see if there was a way to pull up the boxes without entering the water. I couldn’t spot any suitable objects. There was a rope rolled up and hanging on the wall, so I wondered if I was supposed to use that. I made a loop and tried throwing it, but…
“Hmm…”
I failed cleanly.
“I’m not a cowboy by origin, so that’s natural.”
Avoiding the awkward moment with mental victory, I looked down at the water below again with an uncomfortable expression.
“So you’re really making me enter the water with my bare body…”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
