[Loading….]
[….20%....loading will take approximately….3 minutes.]
[….Would you like to customize your game while waiting?]
"Yes"
[…..Okay.]
[….Customization Menu loaded.]
[…Select Difficulty: Easy, Normal, Hard, Extreme]
[…Note: Extreme difficulty unlocks a new potential romance interest. However, the interest is only unlocked if certain parameters are met.]
[…Please proceed with caution as there is no restart option for Extreme Difficulty.]
"Extreme."
[….You have selected Extreme difficulty. Please confirm.]
"I confirm."
[….Thank you. Next, please choose whether to play or skip the tutorial.
Note: Tutorial will offer valuable clues when in Hard and Extreme modes.]
"Play."
…You have chosen to play the tutorial. Please confirm.
"I confirm"
[…Thank you. Next, we should probably let you know that you have died.]
"...huh?"
As if finally snapping out of a trance, the girl shook her head. She brought her hands up to her line of vision, the ghostly transparent limbs and fingers covering the floating pink system screen in front of her.
"W-what do you mean? But I'm playing a game?" she questioned, suddenly terrified.
[….Is this not what you wanted, Yuna Han?]
[….You threw yourself off a bridge, didn't you?]
[…You wanted to die, didn't you?]
[….Or do you want to live?]
The messages flew across the floating pink screen rapidly, making the girl flinch each time. Suddenly, her memories were revived.
Her hair flowing in the breeze on a cold night, the only light coming from the moon illuminating her face in a puddle. The moment before she fell into oblivion.
How cold she was, gasping, thrashing, the water filling her lungs to the brim.
Yuna gasped as she was brought back to the present again, still staring at the pink screen as the typing dot blinked at her. She inhaled.
"Why am I in a game if I died?"
[….Because it was your dying wish.]
"It was?"
[….To finish all routes of the game.]
".....finish…" Yuna's brows furrowed in confusion and distress. She took it all in for a moment, wracking her brain. Suddenly it came to her.
"Wait...Is this game...Dragon Heart: Requiem?" She realized, recognizing the distinct font of the game system she came to be obsessed with in solitude. She had picked up the habit of dating sim gaming since her life fell apart, unable to bear leaving the house.
The game had been her escape. She first fell in love with Luke Aubert, a knight love interest with curly blonde hair and green eyes. He was her bias and one of the more difficult characters as he was very abrasive and closed off. She had played his route many times before even being able to reach a good ending.
Over the past 10 months she had played so much that she unlocked all routes for all love interests, bad endings from poor affection points, good endings from high ones, perfect endings from having 100 affection will all love interests, family, and the public- everything.
Until the epilogue.
Upon finishing her perfect games within those 10 months, she became heartbroken over the end of her favorite pastime. She scrolled for hours in forums laughing at memes and chatting with other players of the game to satiate her obsession- before coming across a popular otome game influencer's post.
'The True Route - How to unlock the true storyline of Dragon Heart: The Requiem'
She fell deep into the lore.
There was a secret character love interest- hidden in plain sight and locked until certain requirements were met. The developers confirmed it to be true- stating that since no one had found him yet- they'd tell players how to do it.
The conditions for unlocking the exclusive character were:
-Player must select Extreme Mode
-Player must maintain no more and no less than 1 affection point by 12am each day on days 1-7 of the academy
-Player must find clues within that time frame that ultimately reveal where to first meet the interest and unlock the true route.
But even knowing all this, no one had found the exclusive character yet. Many had tried and got very close, but ended up dying due to various reasons.
The most common reason was maintaining such a low affection point with all male interests for 7 whole days. It meant dying at any moment from reaching 0 and few made it past day 3. If you avoided love interests altogether the affection point would reset to (stranger) meaning you still didn't succeed in maintaining that single point.
The only person who had come close to revealing the secret love interests' identity was a streamer called GigglyBarbie who passed all requirements after 2 months of grinding day and night, but discovered the death sentence of the true route- once it began, all male interests for some reason had all their affection go to 0. This meant the player- in one day, would have to gain at least 25 affection points with each interest to avoid a death flag.. GigglyBarbie was so distraught that she rage quit the game.
Yuna had struggled too. She had struggled hard to fulfill the requirements. It would always end in her death for 0 affection. Particularly she had died at least 50 times at the hands of her own bias, who was the most ruthless.
The game was both her salvation and her reckoning. Because on her last attempt playing prior to her suicide, prior to the text message that ended things for her, she was almost there.
She had maintained 1 Affection Point for 6 days. But in the game on day 7, just a few minutes to 12am and the end of the challenge, she had been feeling good in the game, deciding to have her character sneak out her academy dorm for a snack- something she did not do typically, fearing she would run into a love interest and accidentally provoke them and die.
But it was the first time she made it this far. Feeling like the game wouldn't dare spring a last minute encounter with another interest this late, especially because she had not triggered the true route yet, she had gone to get the snack in the game when the option came up.
She should have known it was a mistake.
She ran into her bias, Luke Aubert, stumbling upon his conversation with a professor's assistant that was clearly classified. And without so much as a second glance, he had killed her on sight as his affection reached 0 just by seeing her eavesdropping. Game over.
It had thrown her off the edge in frustration. She had to start over completely from the tutorial to have all the same progress and storyline, since Extreme mode did not allow you to revive from a saved point. If it hadn't happened just before she got that depressing text, she may not have ended things.
But no matter how frustrated, one of her final thoughts was about how she wanted to try one last time.
Now here she was.
[….Yes. This is the game Dragon Heart: The Requiem of the Empire.]
[….We want to give you the opportunity to fulfill your dying wish, and clear the true route of the game.]
[….If you succeed, you can return to your real life, or stay in the game world.
….Do you wish to proceed?]
Yuna thought about it. Her life in the real world was….catastrophic. Sure if she really put her mind to it, she could fix it. But everyone hated her. She didn't want to…no, couldn't go back.
"Would I be at risk of dying if I stay in the game after clearing it?"
[….If you clear the game in extreme mode and choose to stay, you can either restart the game, or you can live out life as if it were real life in the game until dying of old age or natural causes. The game will ensure your protection upon clearing.]
[….As a gesture of goodwill and appreciation for playing the game so much, we will offer the player extra perks. Would you like to see them before making your decision?]
"I…..yes please."
[….Okay.]
A new color window popped up. It was green, sparkly, and read "Game Shop".
[….This is the game shop. You can bring it up by saying "shop". Here, you have access to several items that can aid your journey.]
The rest of the window loaded up.
[….The shop items will generate 5 at a time and will refresh once every 6 hours in game time. ]
[….There are items like amulets that allow the player to see people's thoughts, or predict what will happen after taking a certain action.]
[….or bracelets that allow for a head start of affection points upon meeting certain interests.]
[….or clue packs about the secret interest?...]
[….We think these will be useful for the player.]
Yuna was now excited. Cautious and in disbelief, but excited. This was a straight up cheat. A hack. But with these perks- she could definitely win the true route. She knew she could.
"I…I think I want to proceed."
[….Certainly. Then, since the player is already customized and the game has loaded, we may start. Is the player ready to proceed?]
"Yes- but also if I fail do I just die?"
[….That's a great question.]
The tone shift did not sit well with her, and an uncomfortable feeling rose in her chest, a feeling like she was talking to…someone, not something. Colette didn't have time to consider it further, her choice already made, and the system already working, choosing not to answer her.
[….Loading game….]
Yuna's eyes widened as the window completely disappeared. But before she could even panic, her vision went black.
…
She could hear chatter before she saw anything. It sounded like children playing. She felt the breeze of a brisk Autumn afternoon. She could smell the cool air as it blew through her hair.
This was so immersive. The air tickled her cheeks and smelled of petrichor.
"Colette. Stop napping and go play. I won't tell you again."
The voice was familiar. She had heard it a thousand or more times by now. Every time she played her favorite game.
Madame Delores.
She was the main caretaker of the orphanage tutorial. Though not the manager, she was an important character who could help the player during the tutorial, or hurt her. Her dark hair was tied up into a modest bun low on her head. She wore a drab but durable brown dress with a white apron and simple loafers. On one hand she was clearly not very wealthy, nor a noble. But insisted on being referred to as Madame, and while the clothes were simple and boring they were very pricey.
She was around 40 with wrinkles setting in but not overtaking her sharp features just yet- her nose coming to a scary point but her red lips still holding onto their more plump shape. She looked like a scary French lady with those dead looking dark eyes. Colette, who had been born and raised Korean in her past life- reeled back just because she had not really seen anyone like that up this close, to the point where she could see her freckled past a layer of makeup. Her sunset red eyelashes fluttered.
Colette. Right. Madame had called her Colette.
"Colette" shook her head as her eyes snapped open after squeezing them shut briefly, the ginger tendrils of her hair falling into her line of vision now.
Ah, she really was Colette now. The innocent beauty. The main character of this game
Yuna was gone..
She examined her hands, small, about the size of a 7 year old, pale, frail, and delicate for an orphan.
"Colette!" Madame called again. Colette turned her pale blue eyes to the woman and suddenly gathered herself.
"I-I am sorry Madame. I will go play." She spoke. Her voice…it was her own. She tried to keep her reactions to a minimum even as she stood up, brushing off her rag sewn skirts, and walked towards the yard where the other orphaned kids were playing. It was so much to take in. Everything felt more real, like playing sims in the first person.
The children all played as if they wouldn't be fighting over the largest loaf of bread later. They ranged in appearances and age, some were white, others appeared to her old reality's equivalent of Asian, black, or other races...but the majority were older in age up to about 14. Younger children were adopted quickly. As of right now, the two youngest were Colette and…Manon , both 7.
The children avoided the little girl named Manon. She was small even for her age, even more frail than Colette and malnourished. Because all the children were faster and larger than her. They also found her very odd looking because of her hair and eyepatch. Colette…She could never remember what Manon really looked like, but she did remember her eyes, because they also unsettled her- though for a different reason. Perhaps it was why she kept playing the tutorial game, hoping to see them again just one more time.
Manon's eyes were…her distinguishing feature. One was normal- a cool dark chocolate brown. The other was a mystery until the end of the tutorial. She usually wore some sort of eyepatch over this eye, and she was always alone. The only way you could really get a look at Manon was through her hair since it was always in her face. But her other eye was reportedly so offensive to Madame Delores and the other children that it had to be covered up.
Colette watched Manon as she approached her, playing alone in a sandbox, carefully filling her bucket with the fine grains. Just before she reached the girl who hadn't noticed her yet- a window popped up, stopping Colette in her tracks.
[….Tutorial Task 1: Introduction]
[….It is your 1st day at the Orphanage. There is someone you should befriend. Find and befriend the correct character to proceed to the next day.]
Of course, the correct character to befriend was Manon. She obviously knew this as she had played the game.
[….You are choosing to befriend the character 'Manon'. Confirm by interacting.]
Colette wasted no more time and approached the girl once more, meeting her gaze just as she stepped into her sandbox.
"Hi Manon. I'm Colette. Our beds are next to each other." Colette recited the lines she knew by heart. Manon looked up, her face mostly covered by her hair, but her brown eye visible. Of course, she was wearing the dirty white eyepatch supplied by Madame Delores over her other eye.
[…Affection Points for character "Manon" have not changed and remain at 1. Please raise affection before the target's affection reaches 0.]
This status window was blue. It was always a different color than the usual hot pink tone for non-romantic interests- but only Manon, a side character from the tutorial, had a shimmery blue status screen. It only made Colette feel an even stronger sense of guilt and reminder of what she had done in her past.
Manon did not speak and went back to filling up her bucket.
Colette knew what to do next. She sat down and helped Manon fill the bucket.
[…Affection Points for character "Manon" have increased to 5. Please raise affection.]
Manon stared at her curiously as they worked, scooping sand in their hands to fill the wooden bucket. Sand embedded itself in their nails and got all in their clothes, but they worked hard and eventually filled up the bucket in record time. The ends of their hair, black and red respectively, were coated in a layer of the debris. Madame would be so upset. But that was just another predetermined scene that would solidify their bond.
[…Affection Points for character "Manon" have increased to 10. Manon is now an acquaintance. Out of the immediate danger zone.]
"Want to flip it?" Manon said right on cue. Colette grinned and nodded, helping Manon to tip over the bucket quickly upside down. The action made more sand fly out and smack them in their faces, covering their heads in the sandy dust. There was a brief moment of silence before they both erupted into delicate giggles.
[…Affection Points for Character "Manon" have been increased to 15. Manon is now friendly.]
[…..Task 1 Complete. Rewards will be issued at 12am.]
Colette smiled.
...