Chapter 1:Death by Tutorial
> "You have died."
Kaito stared at the screen in confusion, then blinked. Except… he wasn't in front of his laptop anymore. He was lying on a dirt road, staring up at a sky too vibrant to be real.
Pain shot through his ribs. He groaned and sat up—except his hands were… rough? Tanned? And his clothes looked like they'd been stolen off a medieval scarecrow.
Then came the popup.
[ERROR: Tutorial NPC has gained self-awareness.]
[ERROR: Player data corrupted. Creating Hybrid Entity…]
"What… the hell?" Kaito muttered.
The last thing he remembered was staying up too late. The new MMORPG, Chronoverse: Legacy of the Fallen, had launched its final beta. He was testing it. Reporting bugs. Then blackout.
Now?
He looked down at himself. A status window floated beside him.
Name: Reyl
Role: Wounded Villager #3
HP: 2/30
Level: 1
Quests Given: 0
"…I got isekai'd as a tutorial mob," he said, deadpan.
Then the ground shook.
A hero party crested the hill, swords raised. A fireball exploded nearby — and the dialogue box he was supposed to say popped up in front of his face.
> "Please, brave adventurers… my village… it's gone…"
Kaito blinked. "Oh hell no."
The words floated in his vision like subtitles he couldn't turn off. Worse, his mouth moved on its own.
"Please, brave adventurers… my village… it's gone…"
The line came out stiff, robotic.
Kaito slapped a hand over his mouth. "Wait, stop—don't auto-play me like an NPC cutscene!"
But the hero party wasn't paying attention to his panic. The armored knight at the front — generic blonde hair, generic handsome face — gave a dramatic nod.
"Worry not, villager. We'll slay the beasts and avenge your home!"
Behind him, the cleric girl raised her staff, light shimmering. The mage adjusted his hat, eyes glowing faintly blue. They were the standard-issue tutorial squad. Characters every beta tester mocked for being as interesting as wet cardboard.
And now they were standing right in front of him.
"Oh crap," Kaito muttered. "I know what comes next."
The ground rumbled. From the treeline, half a dozen boar-like monsters — the low-level fodder meant to teach newbies combat — charged onto the dirt road.
In the game, this was supposed to be simple. The heroes slaughter the boars. The NPC (him) gives some sad lines. Cue experience gain. Everyone claps.
Except there was a small problem.
Kaito wasn't coded to just watch anymore.
[WARNING: Hostile encounter initiated.]
[HP remaining: 2/30.]
[Recommendation: Run.]
"Oh, that's fair," Kaito muttered. "Real supportive, system."
The first boar barreled toward him, tusks gleaming.
"WAIT—time out! I'm not supposed to fight you!"
Instinctively, he reached for anything — and a flickering, half-broken menu popped open in front of him.
> [ADMIN COMMAND: /kick Entity]
[ADMIN COMMAND: /spawn Potion?]
[ADMIN COMMAND: /??? ERROR]
His eyes widened. "Wait. No way. That still works?"
The boar lunged.
"Uh—/kick boar_001?"
Reality glitched. The monster squealed like someone had yanked its code out by the roots, then blinked out of existence in a shower of broken pixels.
The heroes froze mid-animation, clearly not scripted for that outcome.
The knight turned slowly toward him. "…Villager… what sorcery was that?"
Kaito laughed nervously, hands raised. "Uh. Divine intervention?"
But the system wasn't done with him.
[ERROR: Unauthorized Command Detected.]
[Cost Applied: -10 HP.]
His chest tightened. He coughed blood onto the dirt.
"Oh come on! That's my whole health bar!"
The popup blinked again.
[HP: -8/30.]
[Status: ALIVE (Glitched).]
Kaito blinked, wheezing. "…I should be dead."
The knight drew closer, sword lowered. "Villager… what are you?"
Kaito met his gaze, still spitting blood, and gave the only answer that felt right.
"…Bugged as hell."
The cleric gasped. The mage whispered something about "an anomaly."
And somewhere far away, a pair of unseen eyes — a presence outside the code itself — stirred at the irregularity.
Chapter 2: The NPC Who Shouldn't Exist
The boars were gone. The hero party was staring at him like he'd just sprouted wings. And Kaito? He was trying not to pass out.
"Okay… okay… think. If this is running like the beta, then I've got… what? Maybe five minutes before the next quest trigger?" He coughed. "Except I am the quest trigger."
The rogue squinted at him suspiciously. "Villager, you wield forbidden arts. Are you… a spy for the Demon King?"
"Wow," Kaito deadpanned. "Ten seconds of dialogue and already accusing the brown-skinned NPC. Classic."
The knight raised a gauntleted hand. "Peace, Ryn. This man is wounded, not wicked."
"Uh, correction: dying," Kaito muttered, pulling up his broken status screen. His HP was still a ridiculous "-8/30." The bar blinked red, refusing to reconcile the math.
Then, like a cruel joke, another system notification popped.
[NEW QUEST ACQUIRED: Survive the Tutorial.]
[Reward: Continued Existence.]
"Ha. Ha. Real funny," Kaito grumbled.
The cleric knelt beside him, glowing staff in hand. "Hold still, villager. Heal—"
Light wrapped around him. His HP ticked up.
And then errored out.
[ERROR: Healing spell failed.]
[Reason: Target entity flagged as "Nonstandard."]
The cleric's eyes went wide. "My magic… it doesn't work on him."
"Cool, so I'm literally unhealable. That's reassuring," Kaito said, forcing himself to his feet. His ribs screamed in protest. "Note to self: exploit potions instead."
The knight frowned. "If magic cannot mend him, then what sustains you, villager?"
Kaito thought fast. He couldn't just say "Oh, I hacked the game's root commands." He needed a cover story. Something vague, mysterious, and—
"I… made a pact," he lied, lowering his voice dramatically. "With the world itself."
The party stiffened. Perfect. Every fantasy game ate that kind of cryptic nonsense right up.
The mage adjusted his hat, studying him intently. "A pact… with the weave?"
"Sure. Yeah. The weave. Totally that."
Before they could interrogate further, the ground rumbled again.
"Oh no," Kaito groaned. "Right. Wave two."
From the forest, larger shadows emerged—Dire Boars. In the beta, these mobs were a bugged spawn: stronger than intended, capable of wiping low-level parties if RNG went bad. Kaito remembered reporting the bug.
He hadn't expected to be the collateral.
The knight drew his blade. "Stay back, villager. We'll—"
"Nope," Kaito interrupted. "You'll die. I've seen this play out."
The rogue sneered. "Empty words from a coward."
"Oh, I'm a coward, yeah. But I'm a coward with insider knowledge."
He yanked open his broken menu again. His finger hovered over another glitchy command.
> [ADMIN COMMAND: /spawn Potion?]
"Please work," he muttered, pressing it.
Pop. A glowing red potion materialized in his hand, labeled [Dev_Test_Heal_Prototype].
The system, however, was quick to punish.
[Cost Applied: ???]
[Warning: Instability Increasing.]
Kaito's vision warped at the edges, colors smearing like wet paint. He staggered, clutching his head. "Ghh… I can't keep abusing this…"
The Dire Boars charged.
He shoved the potion into the knight's hands. "Drink it. Trust me."
The knight blinked, then downed it. His body glowed—stats skyrocketing.
The rogue's jaw dropped. "His strength—!"
The knight swung once. A Dire Boar exploded into polygons.
Kaito grinned weakly, collapsing back onto the dirt. "Hah. Still got it."
But then—
[ALERT: Entity 'Reyl' flagged as Priority Anomaly.]
[Notification sent to: System Overseer.]
Somewhere beyond the code, the presence stirred again. Watching. Calculating.
Kaito groaned, eyes closing. "Great. I've got devs breathing down my neck now."
Darkness claimed him.
And the tutorial was no longer on rails.
Chapter 3 – The Flag That Shouldn't Exist
When Kaito came to, the first thing he noticed was the ceiling.
Wooden beams. Straw roof. A drafty breeze that smelled faintly of medicine and smoke. Definitely not his apartment.
He groaned, sitting up on a hard straw mattress. His ribs still ached, but the real shock was his HP bar.
[HP: -4/30]
[Status: Alive (Glitched)]
"Still negative, huh? Great. I'm literally playing life on credit."
The room was small, lit by a single lantern. An elderly woman in a headscarf sat beside him, wringing out a cloth. She froze when his eyes opened.
"Oh, merciful heavens… you survived."
Her voice cracked. Not like a scripted NPC line. This sounded real.
"Uh," Kaito said, scratching his cheek. "Yeah. Lucky me."
She touched her chest, trembling. "But… you were supposed to…"
Kaito leaned forward. "Die? Yeah, I get that a lot lately."
Before she could respond, the door banged open. Villagers crowded in—faces he half-recognized from the tutorial. Fishermen, farmers, children with dirt-smudged cheeks. But instead of bland smiles and repeated lines, they were staring at him like he was a ghost.
"Kaito—no, Reyl… you're alive."
The words weren't dialogue. They weren't part of the script. They were real reactions.
"Oh crap," Kaito muttered. "I broke them."
Then, as if to rub salt in the wound, a system window blinked into existence:
[NEW QUESTLINE UNLOCKED: Survivor's Path]
[Description: The Villager Who Lived. The story changes with you.]
[Rewards: ???]
Kaito blinked at the glowing text. "Survivor's Path? That wasn't in the beta build."
And then, the kicker:
[Warning: Narrative Divergence detected.]
[Adjusting world difficulty to compensate.]
The lantern flickered. Somewhere outside, wolves howled—too close, too many.
"Oh, for—really? I survive one scripted death and now the world scales up? Is this Skyrim with mods or Dark Souls with rabies?"
The villagers didn't understand his ranting, but they felt the fear. One whispered, "The beasts… they grow restless…"
Kaito sighed, dragging a hand down his face. "Congratulations, me. You just triggered hard mode for everyone."
He swung his legs off the bed, ignoring the protests of the healer woman. Standing hurt like hell, but lying around wasn't an option. He needed to confirm just how broken things had gotten.
Pulling up his corrupted status screen, he scrolled past the useless HP bar. There it was—newly added at the bottom:
Narrative Significance: 12
"…What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
A memory stirred from the beta testing days. The devs had joked in patch notes about an internal "importance score" that determined whether an NPC mattered to the story. It was never meant to be visible.
And now it was his stat.
The higher his significance, the more the world would bend around him.
Kaito's stomach dropped. "Oh no. Oh no. That means the harder I matter, the harder the mobs hit."
As if to prove him right, another popup flashed.
[EVENT TRIGGER: Beast Raid Approaches the Village.]
[Recommended Level: 15.]
[Current Party Level: 5.]
"Yep. Called it," Kaito muttered. "We're screwed."
The villagers started panicking, voices overlapping. Someone yelled to bar the gates. Another cried that the guards weren't enough.
And then, through the chaos, a familiar armored figure strode in—the knight from the tutorial hero party. His blonde hair practically sparkled in the lantern light, the bastard.
"Reyl," he said firmly, as though they were old comrades. "The fates have bound you to us. Stand with us against the coming horde."
Kaito stared at him. "…Bro. I'm a level one villager with negative HP. What part of me screams 'raid boss helper' to you?"
The knight gripped his shoulder. "You are alive when destiny declared you should perish. That alone makes you vital."
"Yeah, that's not destiny, that's bad coding," Kaito muttered, but the knight clearly wasn't listening.
The system dinged again:
[Quest Updated: Defend the Village.]
[Mandatory Participant: Reyl.]
Kaito buried his face in his hands. "Fantastic. I didn't just break the tutorial. I am the tutorial now."
And outside, the howling drew closer.
The first raid of Reyl's unwanted new life was about to begin.