I was eight when the car crash took them. Both my mom and dad died in that accident. Gone in an instant, leaving me with nothing but fragments of memories and a hollow ache that never quite went away.
My uncle took me in. For eight years, he gave me something resembling a home. Then a serial killer took that too. I was sixteen, standing at another funeral, staring at another casket, feeling that same hollow ache expanding until it consumed everything else.
The worst part? Is that, the bastard who killed him escaped. He had connections with higher officials, they said. Money changed hands, evidence disappeared, and justice became just another word for whatever the powerful decided it meant.
I was sixteen years old, and I had never felt so utterly helpless in my life.
That's when something inside me crystallized into a single, burning purpose: revenge.
I needed to survive first, so I found work with the mafia. They didn't ask questions about the cold look in my eyes or why a kid my age moved like he had nothing left to lose. They taught me to fight, to kill, to become the kind of person who could do what needed to be done. I took every job, did everything required to move forward. Morality became a luxury I couldn't afford.
Two years. That's how long it took me to find the killer and put a bullet between his eyes.
But my thirst for revenge didn't die with him. It spread like poison through my veins, targeting every corrupt official who'd helped him walk free. For two more years, I hunted them down, one by one, crossing names off a list written in blood.
During those years in the underworld, I saw things that would break most people. Human trafficking. Torture. Children sold like cattle. I saw it all and felt... nothing. No urge to help, no righteous anger. Just cold, focused determination to complete my mission.
It wasn't until I'd killed the last name on my list that something changed. The revenge that had sustained me for years suddenly evaporated, leaving behind a void I didn't know how to fill. For the first time since I was sixteen, I looked around and actually *saw* the world I'd been moving through.
I saw the victims. The broken. The helpless—people just like I'd been.
I decided to help them. To kill the rot in society the way I'd killed the rot that destroyed my life. If the system wouldn't provide justice, I would.
By twenty-three, I'd built my own organization. My influence spread through every corner of the underworld like a spider's web. I became powerful, envied, targeted by those who wanted what I had. I rescued people the officials ignored. I did the work they were supposed to do but were too corrupt or cowardly to attempt.
Money, power, sex—anything I wanted was mine with a snap of my fingers.
And yet…
By forty-eight, I had everything and nothing. No friends. No family. No one I could trust, no one who knew the real me beneath the legend. Most days, I didn't think about it much. I'd tried everything life had to offer and grown tired of it all.
Everything except one thing.
A game called, "Become the God of Eden."
I'd been playing that game for twenty-eight years. The most difficult single-player game ever created. You played as a nobleman conquering a world filled with dungeons, gates, monsters, kingdoms, and different races, all to ultimately become God. It was the only thing that still made me feel something.
I was sitting in front of my PC, deep into a campaign that had lasted ninety-seven in-game years—a goddamn miracle in itself—when the notice appeared.
**NEW EVENT STARTING**
My pulse quickened as I read the rules:
1. Player must clear all 5 L-rank gates.
2. Failure to clear the gates leads to end of game.
3. Reward: 50% control of the world.
4. Hidden reward (based on clear rate): ? ? ?
L-rank gates. I'd never even seen one before. My hands moved across the keyboard with practiced precision as excitement. An actual excitement, flooded through me for the first time in years.
A week passed in a blur. I cleared the third gate, then the fourth. The moment I emerged from the fourth gate, I knew something was wrong.
The land was burning.
**DUNGEON BREAK**
The notification flashed across the screen as monsters poured into the world, destroying everything in their path. My empire, the one I'd built over ninety-seven years, burned to the ground. My people, my knights, mages, soldiers, every race I'd united… gone.
**THE END**
"WHAT THE FUCK?!"
I slammed my fist into the keyboard, then the desk, cursing at the top of my lungs. There was no time limit mentioned! I didn't even get to attempt the fifth gate! Ninety-seven years, and I had to start from scratch because of some bullshit hidden mechanic?
Outside my door, I heard my bodyguards shift nervously. They probably thought someone was about to die. They weren't wrong to worry.
Then the screen changed.
**CALCULATING HIDDEN REWARD…**
I leaned forward, anger mixing with confusion.
**CLEAR RATE: More than 20%.YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO ENTER THE WORLD: EDEN**
"What?"
Before I could process what, I was reading, a blinding light erupted from the screen.