Prologue

The party gathered around me in the corridor just outside the final room of the dungeon. We kept our voices low, going over the strategy one last time. I crouched down and traced a few rough arrows and symbols into the dust, sketching out the plan.

Up ahead, faint shafts of sunlight spilled through cracks in the ceiling—just enough to hint at the dragon’s lair beyond. We stayed quiet, doing our best to remain unnoticed as we wrapped up the last of our preparations.

“I’ll draw his attention. You flank left.”

I pointed to Brannoch, the stout dwarf leaning against the wall with his massive sledgehammer resting beside him. He gave a small nod—a permanent scowl carved into his face—and folded his arms as he calmly stroked his thick, braided auburn beard.

“And I go right? Right?”

Sira practically shouted in my ear, her voice buzzing with excitement. The only Beastfolk in the group was leaning over my shoulder, peering to get a better look at the sketches.

“Yes… If you get confused, just find Brannoch—and go the other way,” I shot her a playful smirk without turning.

The red-furred berserker let out an exaggerated “Tch,” shoved my shoulder, then stood up and drew one of her daggers. She started spinning it idly in her fingers, half-listening as the rest of the plan unfolded.

“Elric stays at the back, giving support and healing where it’s needed. I’ll be drawing most of the heat, so keep your focus on me.”

“I shall do my utmost,” Elric said with a small nod, offering me a kind smile as I glanced up at him.

The human healer stood calmly, leaning on his scepter as he listened intently to the plan taking shape. Loose strands of blond hair fell across his face, partially veiling his soft blue eyes.

“Thess will stay close to Elric and fire from range,” I continued, glancing toward the blonde girl with the side braid, her longbow nearly as tall as she was.

“I’ll cover anyone who needs to fall back,” the ranger added, her tone level, eyes focused.

“Once he starts charging for his fire breath is when he’s exposed,” I said. “That’s Elaine’s cue to hit him with everything she’s got.”

The young mage was kneeling over the crude battle map. She looked up, tucking a strand of silky black hair behind her ear.

“Then rinse and repeat?” she asked, giving me a playful wink with those big amber eyes—one that made me swallow hard.

“Right… everyone ready?” I asked, forcing myself to focus as the group stood and readied their gear.

“Let’s go.”

The dragon stirred as we stepped into the chamber. Towering stone columns flanked the room, stretching up to a domed ceiling where a gaping hole let in shafts of sunlight—illuminating the massive beast as it rose. It sniffed the air, then let out a thunderous roar that made the entire party flinch. The fight had begun.

I rushed forward to draw its attention, activating my taunt and raising my shield just in time. The first strike came fast—its massive claw slammed into me, nearly knocking me off my feet.

Arrows and spells streaked past overhead, and I heard the deep thonk of Brannoch’s hammer landing solidly against the lizard’s scales. Another swipe tore through me, carving a huge chunk off my health—but Elric was right on cue, a green flash bathing me in warmth just before my knees buckled.

Behind me, Sira zipped past with a wild laugh, blades flashing. An ice spike from Elaine followed a second later, crashing near the dragon’s snout.

It was almost time.
The dragon reared back, lifting its massive head—a clear sign. I refreshed my taunt, locking its gaze on me.
Flames began to gather in its throat.
I braced myself and activated my defensive stance...

And suddenly, the world around me started to stutter.
My companions froze in place—T-posing lifelessly, as they ran into the walls around the room.
The dragon locked mid-animation, its chest swelling for a fire breath that never came.

“Come on!” I shouted. “I cleaned that FX in the last update!”

Removing the VR headset, I slumped back into my chair and stared at the ceiling. The room was pitch dark, lit only by the faint glow of the monitors in front of me. I rubbed my forehead, letting my eyes adjust to the sudden change in lighting, then rolled the chair forward toward the desk.
I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, and that bug was still kicking my ass.

I grabbed the now lukewarm can of soda from the desk and drained it in a few gulps, tossing it into the trash pile on the floor a few feet away.
I couldn’t afford sleep—not yet. I was already behind schedule, and if I let another weekend slip by, I’d miss the deadline for sure.

I’d been pouring every spare second—and my savings—into creating this damn game for nearly a decade. The finish line for the alpha build was finally in sight.
And yet, every time I got ahead, some bug, hardware failure, or unexpected expense came out of nowhere and threw a wrench in my schedule.
It was like the universe couldn’t stand the idea of me actually finishing this thing.

If it weren’t for my full-time job, I could’ve finished the game years ago.
But lately, even the scraps of time I used to carve out were dragged away—swallowed by the rising tide of responsibilities and relentless overtime.
Living off my art now felt like a distant dream, one I’d been chasing for most of my life.
I knew I’d set the bar too high—but I was unable to compromise. I couldn’t scale things down.
I had to make it the best game I could… even if I had to spend my entire life building it.

“Back to the debugging we go…” I let out a weary sigh, stretching my arms before resuming my work.

But a few minutes in, as I looked down at the keyboard—blood was slowly spreading across my fingers and the keys underneath. I raised my hand to my upper lip and felt a thick liquid dripping quickly from my nose. My vision blurred as I started to drift out of consciousness. Looking once more at the screen, I whispered to myself:

“God-damn shaders…”

I was expecting the void. Instead, I awoke in a white room—spotless, silent, sterile. Except for the reclining chair I was lying on, the place was completely devoid of furniture.
As my senses caught up, the lights gradually brightened.
I looked at my hands. No blood.
In front of me hovered a massive screen, my name stamped across the top. Dozens of lines scrolled upward in silence—personal stats, one after the other:

“Liters of coffee ingested: 5,761”
“Days of genuine happiness: 26”
“Missed career opportunities: 12”

I squinted to read more when the door opened suddenly. A man in a black-and-white suit appeared beside me, holding a tray.

“Welcome back! Did you have fun?”

He looked like a lawyer or an investment banker. Hair like glass. Smile like plastic. Everything about him made me want to punch something.

“Fun?” I muttered. “What was fun?”

“The game, of course!” he said brightly. “Terra Velum™ is one of our most popular simulations. Full sensory immersion. Lifetime compression. Authentic emotional variance. It is the highest-rated Earth Realism package currently available.”

“So wait a minute… This was just a fucking game?” I pointed toward the screen.

“Look at this crap. ‘Missed love-interests: 57.’ What kind of cringe game even tracks that?”

My head was throbbing. What a waste. All those years chasing a goal that turned out to mean nothing. And now a giant screen was scrolling away—taunting me with my own shortcomings.

“Most users appreciate performance feedback—what they accomplished, what was missed,” the man said without looking up. “Maybe you will get a better run next time.”

“Why would I even choose to go back to something that depressing?” I snapped. “The balance was completely off. Some people are born with talent, money, and fame—they coast through life without a care. The rest of us drones? We claw and scrape an existence from the few crumbs we’re given, stuck doing menial tasks that don’t mean a damn thing.”

I started ranting, my frustration spilling out, but the man in the suit remained motionless and expressionless, still holding the tray he came in with, unflinching.

“Our analytics indicate that Terra Velum™ owes its popularity to the realism with which it depicts societal dynamics from our previous era,” he said flatly. “It offers users an immersive sandbox where they can explore and become anything they desire.”

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “I’m surprised anyone keeps coming back after seeing how rigged it really is. Not when there are worlds full of magic, superpowers, or high-tech science-fiction they could be playing instead…”

Most people in our world chased escapism — books, movies, video games, even drugs — anything to make life a little less dull. Hell, I was no different. Making a game felt like the highest form of escape, a way to build a world I’d want to live in day after day.

“If that is what you are looking for,” the man said, with a renewed smile, “we do offer a wide range of programs—some based on media you may have even encountered during your previous life.”

Something in the way he said that made me pause. A hint of possibility—manufactured or not.

“What if I don’t want to play anything else? What if I just want to get out of here?”

“Most people choose to stay,” he replied. “The outside world is largely automated now—optimized to provide citizens with a relaxing and immersive experience. If the previous program wasn’t to your liking, feel free to browse our available selection.”

He set the tray beside me. A pitcher of water and a single glass.

“I will return shortly to check on your progress. I am confident you will identify a program more suited to your preferences. Once you have made your decision, simply select the program. The system will handle the rest.”

And just like that, he turned and left—without waiting for a response.

Silence settled over the room once more. Still trying to process everything, my gaze naturally drifted back to the giant screen in front of me. I tried to resist the urge to look—but curiosity got the better of me. I scrolled through more of the statistics at random. Some were pretty stupid.

“Paper cuts: 57.“

Others were downright sad.

“Faded unresolved friendships: 31”
”Abandoned projects: 82”

One final line made my heart feel a little lighter.

“Times cheated on: 0“

The tiniest smile tugged at the corner of my mouth as I sighed. “Well… at least there’s that.”

I leaned back in the chair—and as if reading my thoughts, a new interface materialized in front of me. It looked like one of those digital content platforms I was used to—except instead of movies or music albums, the titles listed were simulation programs you could actually live in. Terra Velum™ sat at the top, flashing like a recommended title I had no intention of clicking again.

I started browsing through the catalog, scrolling past countless categories. The selection was extensive—overwhelming, even.
Confirming what the man had said previously, I recognized many familiar titles—games I loved, stories I’d gotten lost in, or works that had even inspired parts of my own.
The sheer volume of options created a kind of choice paralysis. Suddenly, the popularity of their “main title” made a lot more sense. Given too many options, most people would default to whatever sits at the top.

I must have spent an hour looking at previews and synopses.
I skimmed through fantasy worlds, sci-fi epics, even lingered a little too long on a sub-category labeled Eroge.
But I couldn’t bring myself to choose any of them.
As thrilling as they looked, living in those worlds as a nobody would be just as bleak as the life I’d just left behind. Without plot armor or a protagonist’s fate, most of them were just different flavors of misery.

And let’s face it—I was a powerless nobody with zero agency in my previous life. Odds are, I’d be a nobody in the next one too.
Living in a space opera might sound amazing on paper—But ending up as a no-name desk jockey stationed on some barren rock would probably be the norm rather than the exception.

A lack of balance and excitement had always been my biggest gripe with Terra Velum™. I needed a place where you didn’t have to be rich—or handpicked by the gods or fate itself—just to live a decent life. A place where anyone, regardless of where they started, could carve out meaning or happiness, whatever path my future self might choose.

In the end, the best candidate would be a world I’d balanced myself.
If you want something done right, do it yourself.

“How about…”

As if reading my mind, the interface opened the search bar and began typing: Nirellion.

My eyes widened in surprise.
It was listed—no mistake about it.

The world I’d spent over a decade meticulously shaping was available as a simulation.

But my work was unfinished. The alpha was still far from functional… Would I end up trapped in a buggy, half-complete mess?

Then again, the man in the suit had been clear—these simulations weren’t like games. They were immersive realities. There were no “bugs” in the real world, only phenomena we hadn’t figured out yet. It stood to reason the same logic applied across their entire catalog.

The previews on screen showcased the program’s content—cameras panning across sprawling cities and breathtaking panoramas, adventurers battling monsters, and spectacular magic in motion.
It was clearly my world, but something felt… off. Everything looked grander, more polished. The cities I recognized were vastly expanded, and there were many places I didn’t even recognize.

If anything, it was closer to the vision of Nirellion I’d carried in my mind—unrestrained by the limitations of the medium I had used to build it.

Before being translated into code, most of this world had come from my imagination—years spent brainstorming, shaping every corner of its history to make it feel real and alive. Entire regions, factions, and stories that were only hinted at as distant mysteries in the game could now exist fully in this iteration.

Excitement started taking hold, surely this was the right choice for me—the only choice.

But a question lingered: did I really want to live in this world? What if I ended up a nobody farmer in the middle of nowhere? Or worse—enslaved, begging, or crippled?

Corruption and inequality made for good flavor in game lore. But living through them firsthand? That was a different story. I could easily end up in a brutal, unforgiving corner of the world.

And that was before factoring in the monsters and world-ending threats—many of my own design—that filled this world.

Still, I was confident in what I’d built—my world was balanced, designed so anyone could rise through bravery and sheer force of will. Being born in the right place, with the right family name, might give you a leg up, but only hard work and perseverance would let you make a name for yourself. Those were the true keys to success in Nirellion.

Even the stats, the economy, the magic system—they were built around merit. No shortcuts. No paying your way to greatness. Unlike real life, nobody climbed the ladder in Nirellion just by being born rich.

At first, I was hesitant. But the more I thought about it, the more excited I became. Worst case scenario? I’d die quickly and get sent back here. Surely, a world full of magic and secrets couldn’t be worse than the plain, boring, and endless slog that was my last life.

Selecting the program, a confirmation screen popped up.

“Warning: To enable full immersion, all current memory data will be permanently purged. This process is irreversible. Upon initialization, user awareness of the simulation environment will be suspended. Manual exit is disabled until simulation parameters reach completion.”

The warning made sense. In hindsight, it actually sounded like a good deal. My previous life had left a bad taste in my mouth, and wiping away that disappointment to start fresh felt like a welcome prospect.

“Can’t be much worse than the last pile of garbage,” I muttered with a skeptical smile, watching my choice lock in on the screen as I laid back into the chair.

My vision dimmed, my thoughts scattered, and slowly, I slipped back out of consciousness.