The Ruined World Was Mistaken for a Game

Translator: Dreamscribe

The view outside the large warship was beautiful.

The Inspector General couldn't take his eyes off the display.

He prided himself on having conquered countless dimensions in his youth and having seen a great deal, but he had never laid eyes on scenery this beautiful.

Even through a display, it was beautiful enough to leave his mind blank. It made him think this was a world a god had crafted with meticulous care. The Kalsus Dimensional Empire was the center of the dimensional realm, yet he was even struck by the irreverent thought that perhaps this place was the center instead.

"Ah...."

The Inspector General kept staring at the display, unable to look away. The soldiers on the bridge, and the knight-ranked inspectors who formed the Inspectorate's core strength, were no different.

But that sight was soon shattered.

KA-BOOOOM!

The ship they were aboard lurched violently.

The ship had arrived in the skies of Arkia. Having lost its engines and suffered hull damage, it began to plunge straight toward the ground.

KRRRRRRRK!

The shields were already long gone. The protective plating, torn away in ruins, served no function whatsoever. The entire ship glowed red-hot as explosions large and small rippled through it.

"Guh!"

As the ship tilted until it was hard to stand, the Inspector General hurriedly took a seat and fastened his safety harness.

"A, aaagh!"

"Ugh! S, save...."

In that instant the side of the bridge was ripped away, and the soldiers trying to brace themselves were sucked out into the open air. Several knights couldn't hold on either and were flung out. The Inspector General watched knights get struck by debris and torn in two.

KRAAASH!

The ship broke apart into several pieces and fell toward the ground faster still. It came down like a meteor, setting the sky of Arkia ablaze.

No miracle came.

KABOOOOM!

It slammed straight into the ground, and what little of the ship had kept its shape was wrecked beyond recognition. The Inspector General was caught in the impact and lost consciousness on the spot.

And so the Inspectorate, the Crown Prince's faithful servants and one of the pillars of the Empire, arrived in Arkia.

As if it had all been planned.

* * *

Everything was proceeding smoothly, exactly as planned.

Jinwoo nodded with a satisfied smile.

Naturally, they hadn't actually passed through the Wall of the Abyss. Jinwoo had formed a space within a faint dimension he'd discovered among the Bubble Dimensions, and implemented RL there.

Since it lay outside the dimensional barrier, he could use Sacred Power and Authority without restriction, so it hadn't been difficult.

'Of course, I couldn't implement all of Arkia, RL's setting....'

Still, he had fully implemented the "Black Forest", the setting of Episode 1. And since he'd synchronized the Avatars, monsters, and environment currently connected to RL with this place in real time, the result was a world that was fake but moved and breathed like the real thing.

"Your ships are pretty nice."

Jinwoo stored the Inspectorate's ships, loaded with new technology, in his subspace, and crashed the large warship carrying the Inspector General. He staged the whole thing with nail-biting tension, and everyone connected to RL was able to watch it happen.

The scene of the ship crashing appeared as a small window at the bottom of their screens, and if they steered their Avatars to look up at the sky, they could see the fragments of the ship falling like comets.

-Is that a ship?

-No way, from the homeland?

-Looks like it came down somewhere near the Black Forest....

-Come to think of it, I did hear tell the Inspectorate had been dispatched. I thought they'd never cross the Wall of the Abyss, yet somehow they've arrived.

-You call that state "arriving"?

-Regardless, methinks we ought to go check for survivors.

Plenty of chatter was going back and forth.

If even a little of the ship's cargo remained, it would fetch a decent price on the exchange. And rescuing survivors would be a heroic deed they could broadcast across the entire Kalsus Dimensional Empire.

Scharnhilde and the various princes' factions started moving with exactly that in mind.

'It's a fair distance.'

It would take them time to get here.

That, too, was exactly as intended.

Jinwoo looked over the surviving Inspector General, the knights, and a handful of soldiers. Jinwoo had deliberately spared those on and around the bridge.

It was so he could teach them what kind of place Arkia was, and how horrifying the enemies they'd have to face were.

The goal was to have the Heroes recognized as a third power on par with Erosion, to push RL's importance further into the spotlight within the Kalsus Dimensional Empire, and to stir up chaos. Which meant he had to show them terror comparable to Erosion's.

"Ngh, ugh!"

Jinwoo looked at the knight who came to first, groaning. When Jinwoo walked over and looked down at him, the knight opened his eyes and flinched.

"W, who are you...?!"

"You'll do nicely."

Jinwoo grinned and waved his hand, and a Black Swamp formed beneath the knight as dozens of hands rose out of it.

"Ah, aah...! Hurgh!?"

The countless hands clamped over his mouth before he could scream and dragged him down beneath the Black Swamp. The moment he sank into it, he was converted into data. Jinwoo copied his appearance exactly, generated a body, and settled into it.

Jinwoo snapped his fingers, and all the survivors woke with groans.

Jinwoo walked up to the Inspector General.

"Are you all right, sir?"

"Where is this...?"

"It appears to be Arkia, sir. It matches Arkia's characteristics one hundred percent."

The Inspector General remembered the crash right before he'd blacked out. Jinwoo played the part of a loyal knight and helped him up.

"Survivors?"

Jinwoo gathered the survivors together.

Four knights and nine soldiers, that was all. Every one of the Inspectorate's core members aboard the ship had been wiped out. The ship was destroyed, and there was no way off Arkia. For the first time in his life, the Inspector General felt despair.

"Sir, the Avatars of Imperial citizens playing through RL are here in this place, so linking up with them should be our first priority."

"R, right. RL!"

Arkia was real.

The Inspector General had no choice but to admit his instincts had been wrong. This was Arkia for certain, so the Empire's Avatars had to be here as well. If they could link up with them, things would work out somehow.

"Gather weapons and supplies. We're heading outside."

At the Inspector General's order, everyone began to move.

Their personal weapons were intact, but supplies like food and medicine had all burned. In the end they could only barely scrape together their weapons and step outside.

The Inspector General looked around.

The forest was so dense that the sky wasn't visible at all. Though it was broad daylight, it was as dark as night.

This was Arkia's Black Forest.

"The Black Forest..., I heard there was a hero who went near here. He served under His Highness Kaljest...."

The knight who normally enjoyed RL said this.

"Go on."

At the Inspector General's prompting, the knight continued.

"They say he died the moment he entered the Black Forest."

"Died?"

"Yes, the, the monsters...."

Monsters.

The creatures of evil that dwelt in Arkia.

Those beasts, as though made of malice itself, behaved as if they hated everything living.

At the word "monsters", the soldiers grew unsettled.

They played RL too, so they knew how terrifying those things were.

"Steady yourselves. We are strong."

The Inspector General drew his sword.

The blade, brimming with Dimensional Energy, had a cutting power that sliced through even thick steel with ease.

"Savage beasts like that are worth less than insects before our Empire's technology!"

He knew how to raise morale, as befit an Inspector General.

The soldiers raised their guns.

The Inspector General was surely right.

Thinking back on RL's monsters, they all carried primitive weapons. They'd be nothing before weapons infused with the essence of Dimensional Energy. Thinking that, everyone's morale rose.

Jinwoo watched them and laughed inwardly, then crooked a finger. The overgrown brush around them shook violently.

They flinched!

The soldiers jolted in alarm and scrambled to pull out their area-scanning devices. Red dots began to appear one after another on the crude displays.

"E, enemies! N, numbers are five..., no, more than ten!"

"Battle stations!"

SHIING!

The knights drew their swords in unison, and the soldiers leveled their guns at the brush.

KYEEEEEK!

A hideous monster burst out through the undergrowth. It was a Goblin holding a blade.

As the Goblins charged in like mad things, the soldiers pulled their triggers.

BANG! BA-DA-DA-DA-DA!

Bullets condensed with Dimensional Energy poured down on the Goblins.

The instant they touched Goblin skin, the Dimensional Energy scattered and vanished. The bullets, reduced to mere pieces of sharp metal, lodged in the skin but failed to punch through.

"O, our guns...!"

"Gaaaah!"

Several Goblins knocked a soldier to the ground and stabbed their blades into him over and over. His armor buckled, then tore open.

The knights cut down the charging Goblins. Bodies that should have split apart stayed whole. They had only sliced the skin.

"The, the Dimensional Energy...! Guh!"

With Dimensional Energy failing, their blades became nothing more than ordinary swords. The Inspector General moved swiftly, cutting down the Goblins as they lunged.

"Don't panic! Take them carefully!"

After a long, bloody struggle, they barely managed to kill every Goblin. But they lost three soldiers, and one knight died. Goblins that a single level 10 Avatar could handle several of at once had inflicted damage like this.

As if he'd been waiting for it, Jinwoo approached the Inspector General.

"Dimensional Energy doesn't seem to work on those monsters, sir."

"So it seems. We must report this to the homeland without fail."

The Inspector General's face went deathly pale.

Dimensional Energy was a powerful force that worked even against Erosion.

'Working nicely.'

Jinwoo nodded.

He'd already created an Authority that converted Dimensional Energy into Mana. It had burned through a huge amount of the high-grade Authority Stones he'd gathered, but he didn't begrudge it in the slightest.

Since he'd registered it with the Soul Moon, he planned to grant that power to the Heroes as well. There was still plenty left to research, but simply handing this information to the Kalsus Dimensional Empire would sow no small amount of chaos.

Beep, beep, beep-beep-beep-beep!

A warning tone rang from the scanner a soldier was holding.

"M, monsters! Numbers are t, twenty, thirty..., hrk! Over fifty!"

The display filled with red dots.

They couldn't fight this.

Taking on more than fifty Goblins was suicide.

"Secure a route out!"

The Inspector General barked the order.

"I'll cut a path!"

Jinwoo took the lead with his sword raised. He charged valiantly forward and cleared an escape route. Everyone followed behind him.

KYEEEEEK!

KYEK!

The shrieks of pursuing Goblins rang out.

It felt like their bodies would be hacked to pieces at any moment. Even the veteran Inspector General was too terrified to do anything but run.

"This way!"

Jinwoo led them all into a cave. Once inside, they held their breath, and thankfully the Goblins prowled around a while and then vanished. The Inspector General slumped to the floor, breathing raggedly.

"Arkia..., this place is hell."

That beautiful Arkian landscape now felt like an illusion.

It seemed impossible to escape this Black Forest crawling with monsters.

Just as they sank into despair.

It was nothing but a production to Jinwoo, but he decided to give them hope.

Beep! Beep!

The soldier's scanner chimed.

A green light was blinking a short distance away.

"A, allies! It looks like there are survivors."

"How many?"

"Quite a few, sir!"

The faces of the Inspector General and his knights brightened.

Thankfully, the distance wasn't far.

"We move."

If they rounded up the survivors to secure their strength and then linked up with the Empire's Avatars, that ought to do it.

That was the Inspector General's thinking as he set off.

This whole situation was being watched by the major factions through the Authority System.

Naturally, they had to pay.

One G per minute.

Since they were paying good money to watch, he ought to make sure they got their entertainment.

Jinwoo headed with the rest of them toward the source of the survivors' signal. Monsters gave chase, but he staged it so that every escape was heart-poundingly close.

"O, over there!"

"It's an escort warship!"

The soldiers spotted the warship that had been escorting the Inspector General's vessel. It was wrecked past the point of flying, but it looked relatively intact. It seemed to have managed a crash landing.

The Inspector General clenched his fist in joy and started forward ahead of the others.

The moment he reached the ship, though.

The Inspector General froze solid at the sight spread out before him.

"Uh, uuurgh."

"Ngh, uugh...."

The great knights of the Kalsus Dimensional Empire hung skewered on trees in ghastly shape. Their chests had been split open, their insides spilled out onto the ground. That they still weren't dead had to be the work of some supernatural power.

"K, kill me...."

"Kill me. Please...."

The knights impaled on the trees begged desperately.

What on earth had happened here?

The Inspector General turned his rigid face to the side and looked at the warship.

He saw a great heap of soldiers' armor piled up in front of it. The suits of armor, joined together by flesh and blood vessels, formed a hill. And atop that hill, an unknown woman sat as though on a throne.

"Hoo hoo hoo...."

The woman gave an eerie laugh as she looked at the Inspector General.

She crooked a finger, and an arrow formed, then

THUNK!

buried itself in the head of the knight standing beside the Inspector General.

"Ah, aah...."

The Inspector General's legs trembled violently.

The soldiers dropped their guns to the ground. The last remaining knight, not counting Jinwoo, lost all will to fight.

"E, Evil Kin...."

"A demon!"

A soldier spoke the name aloud.

Beings like that, which dominated Arkia the way the Skeleton Knight did, were called "Evil Kin", or "demons". The Inspector General thought it was a truly fitting name.

The demon rose to her feet, flew through the air, and alighted at the base of the hill of corpses. Where her feet touched down, blood welled up and stained the earth red.

"You look delicious."

She said, gazing at the Inspector General.

"Do show me those pink innards, won't you?"

The Inspector General took fright and tried to run, but it was already too late. Skeletons had burst up through the ground and surrounded them before he knew it.

The Gut Ripper, Haebyul, stretched out a hand, and the last remaining knight's body was dragged toward her as if sucked in. Haebyul drew a dagger and split the knight's body clean in half.

"Haah, haah!"

She let out a moan, savoring the way his organs scattered.

Jinwoo watched her and blinked.

Her true identity was an RL boss monster Jinwoo had created based on Haebyul's data. He'd entered and saved the information that went into her ego, but for some reason her personality had come out looking even crueler.

'Hmm....'

Jinwoo suddenly felt sorry for Haebyul.

Still, the Good Karma Points would accumulate to Haebyul, so it was a positive, win-win outcome for everyone.

'Even so, let's keep it a secret.'

Jinwoo nodded to himself at the thought.

"Ah, aaagh!"

"Gaah!"

The soldiers began to thrash. Chunks of flesh poured out through the gaps in their armor and swelled up. They had contracted the Evil God Disease. Now the only survivors were Jinwoo and the Inspector General.

"Sir! Pull yourself together!"

"W, we're finished..., we're going to die in agony. Aaaagh!"

The Inspector General lost his reason and screamed.

He wet himself, his trousers turning damp. Haebyul slowly advanced on the Inspector General. He fell backward and went rigid where he lay.

Haebyul raised a hand and pointed at the Inspector General.

He was going to die.

He was going to be split in half and die.

"A, aaaaaagh!"

Just as the Inspector General screamed once more.

WHFFT!

An arrow flew in from somewhere and struck the ground between the Inspector General and Haebyul.

BWOOOOOO!

The sound of a horn rang out.

Blank-faced, the Inspector General turned his head and looked to the side. Atop a hill a short distance away stood a great many people.

"Slay the demon!"

"For the great Imperial Princess! For Her Highness Scharnhilde!"

"For the Covenant of Light!"

Those cries echoed through the Black Forest.

* * *

Kaljest and Scharnhilde were still in the Golden Palace.

They were enjoying RL, sparing not even time for sleep.

The moment they saw the Inspection Corps' fleet crash, they rushed toward it. There they found a terrifying demon and the surviving few.

"Ha, hahaha!"

This was it!

Kaljest broke out in goosebumps all over.

The hype was surging through him.

He looked so incredibly cool, leading his faction and arriving like a savior.

"This, this is RL!"

Scharnhilde felt exactly the same.

And the countless nobles and soldiers following the two factions were seized by a thrill strong enough to make them wet themselves.

This right here was the great epic saga of heroes!

*****

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