0. Thank You for Your Hard Work. It Was a Beta Test!
Blood drizzled down from a sky billowing with fluffy clouds.
Howls and screams echoed here and there like songs; beside him, people died with shrieks, and in front of him, monsters charged with their maws wide open.
“You sickening bastards!”
A man squeezed out the last of his strength and bisected a monster charging at him with its jaws agape.
Having gritted his teeth and cut down the monster, the man immediately turned and ran.
It might have looked like he was fleeing to save his own skin while his comrades died around him, but there was already no hope left for this defensive line.
“Everyone retreat! Survive at all costs! Abandon the castle!”
He issued a retreat order, the best he could do.
He felt hollow knowing this was all he could offer the troops under his command, and at the same time, he found his end pitiful—having clung to life tooth and nail, only for it to come to this.
It was miserable that the ducal house, which had once competed for the position of the strongest family, now faced the crisis of annihilation, but more desperate still was the fact that the entire North was on the verge of being overrun by monsters.
“I worked like a dog, and this is how they discard me? You pieces of trash.”
He had become the head of the ducal house despite his lacking talent, and that was precisely the problem.
He had tried to compensate for his insufficient talent with connections, but having no aptitude for either civil or military affairs, he had ended up being used by those smarter than him until he was reduced to this state.
“I shouldn’t have believed that dogshit about reincarnation from the start.”
He thought of the bastard who had led him here, but the thought was soon erased from his mind.
Because in a place where he couldn’t see an inch ahead, stray thoughts were a shortcut to death.
Ordinarily, he couldn’t afford such thoughts, but today they were unusually numerous.
“Is this to be my grave?”
The man let out a bitter smile as he looked at the monsters that had already surrounded him.
Befitting the strongest house in the North, it had possessed a sturdy castle, but it had long since been half-destroyed by monsters flooding in like a pack of wild dogs.
Even the inner castle, the final bastion, was not safe.
“Hoo… this isn’t my style.”
Sacrificing himself for others had never been his style, but with his body in this state, he was as good as dead anyway.
Then buying even a little time for those fleeing was the right thing to do.
“Come!”
With the thought of dying while cutting a fine figure one last time, the man raised his sword and roared; the monsters charged in unison at the prey that would not flee.
-We pay our respects to the courage you showed by fighting instead of fleeing in a desperate situation. As a reward, you are granted the Unique Title ‘Last Valor’.
-Last Valor: All abilities triple in moments of crisis.
“They give it to me when I’m already dying.”
He clicked his tongue, yet smiled at the effect of the first Unique Title he had ever obtained.
Feeling strength suddenly overflowing through his entire body, he unleashed power he couldn’t have even conceived of before.
Though he had been sent here under the pretext of it being a game of the gods, in this place devoid of status windows and skills, it was the sole power that made him feel different from the people of this world.
That was precisely Titles and Unique Abilities.
But even the effect of a Title couldn’t suddenly turn lacking ability into that of a Sword Master.
As if to prove it, when a Hell Cow surged forward in a surprise attack, the man was sent flying and crashed into the inner castle wall.
“Keuhak!”
His body was crushed at once, and the organs throughout his body ruptured.
Perhaps due to the intense shock, his consciousness gradually grew hazy.
“This is bullshit.”
The man muttered to himself as he looked ahead through a vision blurring from the blood flowing down his head.
In the distance, monsters were throwing a party with the soldiers’ corpses, and the monsters that followed were sniffing around to see if any bodies remained.
He knew that in this state, he would die the moment his consciousness faded, but seeing the monsters running toward him from afar, he thought it might be better to just die as he was.
Because dying peacefully was far better than being chewed alive.
Right then.
“What the hell….”
When a monster charging from afar froze mid-stride, he looked around with startled eyes.
Then the blood droplets falling pattering down and the people dying all around froze in place as well.
In that moment, as if the entire world had stopped, a lump of light formed in the air.
-Congratulations. ‘Lee Jeong-hu,’ you have survived until the end as a beta tester of God Game in the body of Jayden Leonhardt Dajan.
“Beta tester?”
The moment he blinked his eyes and stupidly asked back at the word beta tester, a mechanical voice rang out again from the lump of light.
-Generating list of quests completed during the survival period….
-Sub Quest: Survive Until the End.
-Sub Quest: Survive 300 Days in the Void Assault.
-Sub Quest: Acquire One or More Titles (King of Survival, Imperial Dog, Shame of the North, Last Valor).
-Sub Quest: Survive Until Age Thirty.
-Main Quest: You have failed ‘Protect the Continent’.
-There are no completed quests related to the Main Quest.
After the mechanical voice briefly paused, the lump of light began to brilliantly illuminate Jayden’s body.
Then, as his mangled body—like a lump of meat—slowly turned to powder and began to be absorbed by the lump of light, Jayden’s soul escaped from his body.
-The beta test has ended. You are now officially reincarnating into the Osria Continent. When you achieve your goal, you may return to your original world. The quest objectives are Preventing the Continent’s Destruction or Surviving Until Age Thirty-Five. However! Please note that in the case of mere survival, the scale of the reward may be small.
-As a special benefit for the final survivor, you will regress to a point ten years earlier than the other users.
-As a quest completion reward, you acquire the Unique Ability ‘Incomplete House Talent’.
-We salute you for your splendid survival as a beta tester. We hope you achieve your goals in the official game as well.
With the mechanical voice as the last thing he heard, he—who had existed in a soul state—was caught in a vortex of light and sucked straight in.
And so, the point in time at which he—who would play as both Lee Jeong-hu and Jayden—awoke again was precisely around the time he had first started as a beta tester.