[Title earned 'Heaven's Fool']
The air was hot.
The land looked like it had been painted in blood.
Not a sound. Not a breeze. Just stillness—and a battlefield full of corpses and rusted swords.
My head turned toward one sword among thousands. In its blade, I saw a reflection that wasn't mine. White hair, stained with blood. Dim golden eyes. Wounds everywhere—jagged cuts, torn flesh, a literal hole in the torso.
This body wasn't mine.
It was Aureus's.
I was just an assistant.
Just a passenger in his skin.
'Another bad run… I'll get it right next time,' I thought.
And then…
"No more."
My—his—lips moved again.
'…Is there something else left?'
Usually, a "Retry" option would pop up by now.
But it didn't.
Aureus grabbed a nearby sword with his one remaining hand and raised it to his throat.
'Stop. Don't—'
I couldn't move. I couldn't stop him.
The blade dragged across his neck, slow and deep. Blood sprayed out, but something was different. The wound didn't try to close.
Because a skill had been activated.
[Using Skill: "Killer"]
One of the most broken skills in the game. A weapon in the form of a skill.
It killed anything—permanently. Didn't matter if you were undead, immortal, divine, or one of those OP reincarnators. If you took a fatal blow under the conditions… that was it. Game over. Forever.
But why the hell was he using it on himself?
The screen faded to black. Until text appeared.
[GAME OVER]
[Retry: Unavailable]
And then it hit me. A permanent game over.
[Game deletion commencing: 1%]
'What?!'
[4%]
[9%]
Still I didn't want to accept it.
'No, no—!'
[13%]
'I was so close…'
[16%]
My heartbeat spiked. Dangerously so. I could feel it.
All of this… years of playing this accursed game over and over. It couldn't just vanish.
"No. This has to be a joke."
It was a garbage game. Nobody cared about it anymore. But…
I cared.
I played it. I played it like it meant something.
Every day. Every night. Every run. I wasn't just playing for fun anymore—I was trying. Trying to change something. Trying to save him. Even if I didn't know why anymore.
To give him a way out.
To rewrite the world's ending.
To change what seemed etched in stone.
I knew Aureus wasn't real. But after 165 playthroughs, his pain had felt as real as mine.
[84%… 86%… 89%… 9– iERR0R!]
'…Huh?'
[Are you confident?]
What?
[Are you confident you can change fate?]
Before I could answer—
[Prove it.]
Reality
The breeze slipped in through the hospital window.
A nurse sat beside a comatose teen, peeling an orange.
He had a VR headset strapped to his face. He always did.
"He should wake up in a few minu—"
The monitor spiked.
Beeping turned into frantic alarms.
"Code Blue!"
Doctors rushed in. Beta-blockers. CPR. Shock paddles.
Nothing worked.
Then—
One long, flat beep.
"Time of death: 14:00."
The boy who'd survived off a virtual world for nearly a decade… had logged off for the last time.