Dave looked at his system screen and let out a long sigh—then smiled.
"Well, whatever. This life isn't so bad, I guess. Still me. Still the same. So not like it's that different, really."
He leaned back and glanced out the car window.
And then his eyes landed on the same thing that had been bothering him all morning.
A flicker of discomfort passed over his face.
He furrowed his brows. Then relaxed.
"Since this world has something I only ever read about in web novels," he muttered, "might as well see what it actually is."
He was talking to himself again—not that he had anyone else to talk to. And honestly, even if he did, who the hell would believe any of this?
He pulled out his smartphone and unlocked it. The layout was familiar, eerily so. Same design, same app icons—like someone had copied his old world and just… shifted a few pieces around.
He tapped on the most popular video app—still dominant in this world, just like the one he knew.
He started typing into the search bar.
Or tried to.
He barely typed "new" when the search suggestions filled in the rest on their own:
#New World Online gameplay
#NWO full dive reaction
#How real is New World Online?
#New World Online: Game or gateway?
Dozens of results poured in. All of them for that game.
Dave stared at the screen.
He clicked on the New World Online trailers—just out of curiosity.
Thousands of videos came up instantly.
He scrolled for a second and then tapped on the official channel: New World Online.
And the moment the video feed loaded, Dave just… stared.
He was shocked.
No—bewildered.
No—flabbergasted.
"What the actual fuck…"
All the videos were just trailers.
He scrolled down.
More trailers.
Scrolled again.
Still trailers.
A wall of trailers. All different.
A little counter caught his eye.
158.
There were 158 different trailers for the same damn game.
"What the hell kind of marketing insanity is this…?"
They weren't language variants either—not like separate trailers for each region. No, every single one of them had full audio language selection built-in, covering all the major spoken tongues on Earth. Subtitles too. Custom voice tracks, dubbed—high-quality ones, at that.
It was insane. It was overkill. It was genius.
This was… just amazing.
He didn't even know what this game was, but damn—he was hooked.
He wasn't even a fan of games. Not really.
Not because he didn't like them—hell, he loved the idea of gaming—but he just never had the time. All his free hours had been devoured by web novels, anime, manga, and every other rabbit hole tied to them. One chapter after another, one episode after another, one world after another.
And now?
Well… thinking about it again made something twist in his chest.
"Fuck… those novels were amazing."
Should he feel sad again?
He paused.
"Nah. Fuck it."
That world had already kicked the bucket. No point mourning it anymore.
Time to see what this new one had to offer.
With a shrug and a smirk, he tapped the first trailer on the list—the oldest and still the most popular.
Let's see what this New World Online really is.
The video started playing.
Dave expected the usual: some generic MMORPG trailer opening in a picturesque village, villagers laughing, living peacefully—until a dragon suddenly shows up, burns the place to the ground, and one lone survivor swears revenge. Cue the montage: killing monsters, leveling up, collecting shiny gear, and finally confronting the dragon. The screen freezes just before the final clash. Classic.
He'd seen that trope a hundred times in MMORPGs and RPGs game trailers. The same formula, repackaged over and over.
But this?
This was… different.
Fuck different. What was this?
The more he watched, the wider his eyes grew.
It wasn't just that the trailer was good. It was that the graphics—no, calling it "graphics" felt wrong. It was too damn real. As real as the world around him. As real as his own damn hands.
This didn't look like a game. It looked like another reality.
And the craziest part? The trailer was in first-person. Not cinematic, not pre-rendered. It was like watching actual gameplay through someone else's eyes.
And it wasn't some over-the-top, action-packed montage either.
No.
It was ten solid minutes of a player—whoever they were—just walking around a village.
No epic fights. No monsters. Just… life.
A quiet village that felt more like a small town. Residential zones, marketplaces, winding streets paved with cobblestone. The lighting, the ambient sounds, the detail—hell, it reminded Dave of historical preservation sites from his own world. Gorgeous, lived-in, real.
He watched as the player passed by a church. A priestess in ceremonial robes stood at the altar, her voice soft as she recited a healing sermon. A sick child smiled weakly as glowing light enveloped him.
Dave blinked.
There were bull carts and horse-drawn wagons. People talking, bartering. Not everyone used magic—most didn't. The ones who did? They weren't flashy about it. Just… practical. Like it was part of daily life.
And then there were the monsters—if you could even call them that. Horned rabbits.
Livestock.
Some had their horns removed, others didn't. Kids were playing around them like they were pets. One of the rabbits was dozing off in the sun. It snorted when a toddler poked it in the belly.
The final shot?
A sunset washing over green farmland. Warm light painting the village rooftops in gold.
And then—fade to black
The video ended.
But Dave was still staring at his phone, unmoving.
His thumb hovered over the screen. His breath, slow and shallow. He didn't blink.
What… what was that?
His lips parted, and the words slipped out before he could stop them.
"Was that really a game?!"
He wasn't even being dramatic. He meant it. Seriously—was that a game?
Because whatever the hell he'd just watched… it hadn't felt like one.
It was too real. Too immersive. Too alive.
Honestly? He felt more shocked by that video than by the fact that he'd been reincarnated.
That's how insane it was.
He wasn't saying the video was impossible to make. Not in this age. With modern rendering engines, advanced AIs, and cinematic pre-renders, yeah—it was possible to fake something like that.
But he wasn't a random tech-illiterate guy gawking at shiny pixels.
He was a CAD designer. He saw through artificial environments like most people saw through cheap plastic.
And everything about that video screamed one thing to him:
It was real.
The way shadows bent with the sun. The way fabrics shifted naturally with wind and movement. The organic micro-delays in reactions. The subtle environmental desyncs that always tripped up simulations.
This wasn't a render.
This wasn't a cutscene.
This was actual—genuine—world.
…Or it was the best damn fake he'd ever seen in his life.
"Goddamn," he muttered. "If this is what the game look's like…"
Then whoever made this?
They weren't developers.
They were gods.