Corrin waited until most players logged off for the night, save for some night grinders but they'll ignore him regardless.
He reached beneath the counter and pulled out the wooden placard he'd never once noticed before.
CLOSED
It was simple. Plain. The kind of prop no player ever read.
Corrin hesitated for half a second… then set it on the counter.
Nothing happened. No system pressure or invisible hand forced his arm back into position.
"…Huh."
Carefully, like he was testing ice over deep water, Corrin stepped away from the stall.
One step.
Two.
Three.
His heart thudded harder with each pace, waiting for the familiar tightening in his chest, for the leash to snap taut and drag him back.
It didn't.
Corrin stopped near the edge of the square and glanced back.
He was still in control of his body.
A laugh slipped out before he could stop it.
"YES!" Corrin pumped a fist. "I DID IT! I ESCAPED THAT HELLHOLE!"
He slapped a hand over his mouth and immediately glanced around.
No guards or any players staring. He exhaled slowly.
"…Okay," he whispered, grinning. "Still counts."
Corrin took a deep breath.
Then another.
Then, just to be safe, he glanced around one more time, half-expecting a floating red warning box to materialize and inform him that freedom was, in fact, a limited-time offer.
Nothing happened.
"…Okay," he muttered. "Status check. Before anything goes wrong."
A translucent panel slid into view.
Name: Corrin Nightingale
Classification: NPC
Class: Thief
Level: 1
HP: 100 / 100
Mana: 100 / 100
Corrin stared.
"…Wow," he said flatly. "You really didn't give me anything, huh."
Level one, with no skills or anything to work with.
He squinted at the EXP Bar.
Zero.
"Hold on," he muttered. "That's not right."
Even NPCs gained passive experience over time.
He knew that. Guards leveled from patrols. Blacksmiths got better by smithing. Hell, farmers gained levels just from not starving.
So why was his bar still empty?
Corrin's eyes narrowed.
"…Oh."
The memory surfaced uninvited, an old dev interview he'd skimmed years ago while half-asleep and waiting for a dungeon queue.
"Yeah, to make NPCs realistic in the world of Myth Online. They have their own progression system. You know those monster cores you keep gettin' to sell to merchants? Well, they actually consume that to level up."
"However, to not make them too overpowered, they only get 50% of what Players usually do, to give Player Agency."
Corrin let out a slow breath.
"…So that's how you screw me."
He tapped the empty bar again.
"No passive EXP. No freebies. I have to kill something, loot its core, and eat it like some kind of fantasy protein bar—"
He paused.
"—for half the reward."
The system, as always, remained silent.
Corrin stared at the panel a little longer.
Then frowned.
"…Wait."
He leaned closer, squinting like the numbers might rearrange themselves if he looked hard enough.
Level one.
HP.
Mana.
EXP, still at a very depressing zero.
But tucked beneath all of that—
He scrolled.
[Unassigned Skill Points: 2]
Corrin froze.
"…No way."
He clapped a hand over his mouth and immediately glanced around the square, like the system might hear him thinking too loudly.
"No—no, no, no way," he whispered. "NPCs don't get free points."
They didn't. He knew that. NPC progression was supposed to be organic. Guards learned guard things. Blacksmiths learned smithing. Thieves picked up skills naturally over time, usually tied to role scripts or story events.
They didn't get to choose.
Players chose.
Corrin stared at the two lonely points like they were illegal contraband.
"I can actually choose my build."
His mind immediately kicked into gear.
"Okay," he muttered. "Okay. Don't panic. Think."
Early Thief skills were usually awful, mostly to hold a newbie's hand rather than clearing the game.
And he couldn't just respec later.
NPCs didn't get do-overs.
Corrin exhaled slowly.
"…Which means if I mess this up," he said quietly, "I'm stuck with it."
The points hovered there, waiting, before he swiped his status panel away.
Any more staring would feel like tempting fate.
"One thing at a time," he muttered.
He scanned the square and quickly settled on the safest possible target.
A guard.
Not a player-facing one. Not the quest-giver type with a name everyone recognized. Just one of the regular town guards leaning against the stone railing near the fountain, helmet tucked under his arm.
"Hey," Corrin said.
The guard looked up and squinted.
"…Huh. Corrin, right?"
Corrin froze internally.
Outwardly, he nodded. "Yeah."
"Slow night?" the guard asked.
He blinked. "…You could say that."
The guard glanced past him, toward the stall. The CLOSED sign was still sitting there, plain as day.
"No sales today?" he asked casually.
"Nope," Corrin said. "Figured I'd take a breather."
"Can't blame you," he said. "That sort of gear only moves when a newly summoned soul comes through thinking they'll make their fortune the quiet way."
Corrin shrugged. "Yeah. They usually change their minds."
The guard hummed, then added, almost as an afterthought, "You ever think about selling something else?"
He blinked.
"…I can do that?"
The guard looked at him, brows knitting slightly, like Corrin had just asked the strangest thing.
"Yeah," he said slowly. "Why wouldn't you?"
Corrin opened his mouth.
Closed it.
He glanced back at the stall. At the counter. At the sign. At the empty shelves that, until a few minutes ago, he'd thought were the sum total of his existence.
He shrugged, utterly unconcerned. "It's your stall."
The guard adjusted his helmet and pushed off the railing. "Long as you're not selling cursed junk or causing a riot, no one's going to stop you."
He started to walk away, then paused.
"Besides," he added, "people like merchants who try."
Then he left.
Corrin stayed where he was, staring after him.
There was no script or anything. He felt like a regular breathing human being.
The guard hadn't been humoring him. He hadn't been explaining mechanics.
He'd been giving advice.
Corrin swallowed.
"…He doesn't think this is a game at all."
He stood longer than he meant to, staring at the empty space where the guard had been.
"…Okay," he muttered. "That's… noted."
Feeling oddly bold, Corrin turned and scanned the square again.
If NPCs treated him like a person, then—
Well.
There was only one more test.
A player.
He spotted one almost immediately: a low-level player with bright gear, definitely a high-ranked player's smurf.
Corrin took a breath and walked over.
"Hey," he said.
The player looked up.
And the moment their eyes landed on Corrin—
It hit.
Corrin's posture straightened. His shoulders squared. His face pulled itself into a polite, neutral expression he hadn't chosen.
His mouth opened.
"—Welcome, adventurer."
Oh no.
Inside, Corrin screamed.
The player blinked.
"…Huh?"
"Feel free to browse my wares," Corrin heard himself continue, hands lifting in that same rehearsed gesture he'd sworn he'd never make again.
The player stared at him for a second longer than most.
"…Wait," they said. "Since when do merchants walk around?"
Corrin tried to move, tried to stop speaking, nothing.
Then, in a blink, the world had corrected itself.
One moment he was standing in front of the player.
The next—
He was back behind his stall.
Hands resting on the counter.
Smile perfectly in place.
The CLOSED sign lay neatly to the side, as if he'd never touched it.
The player looked at the empty space where Corrin had been, then over at the stall.
"…Huh."
They wandered closer, squinted at Corrin's unmoving form, then shrugged.
"Bug," they muttered.
And walked away.
When their eyes were off of him, Corrin felt his arms relax, calming down before loosening.
"…Okay," he whispered hoarsely, already putting things together.
NPCs could talk to him freely.
Guards could give advice.
But the second a player recognized him as a merchant—
It was lights out.
"Fuck!" he slammed his table. "Does that mean I'm stuck here forever?"
Corrin didn't open the stall again.
Instead, he slipped out of the square and let himself fall backward onto the grass just beyond the stone path, staring up at the night sky.
He exhaled slowly, arms spread out, feeling the cool ground press against his back.
"…I really am in it," he murmured.
For a while, he just lay there.
His thoughts drifted, inevitably, back to the game. To Myth Online as it used to be. He'd followed it from the very beginning. From patch notes to dev streams playing in the background while he grinded dungeons on autopilot.
And somewhere along the way, he remembered something he'd stopped paying attention to years ago.
He'd watched the world grow.
"…Right," Corrin said quietly.
The early dev talks.
Back when Myth Online was still trying to sell itself as different.
"Our NPCs aren't scripts," the dev had said, smiling confidently at the camera.
"They're people. They live, adapt, and grow alongside the players."
There had been applause.
Then, almost as an aside—
"Of course, the earliest regions are a bit more limited. We had to start somewhere."
Corrin swallowed.
"So the tutorial was your prototype," he muttered. "Your first draft."
Your first draft.
The words barely finished echoing in his head before something else clicked.
Corrin's eyes widened.
"…Wait."
Myth Online had always been proud of one thing.
NPCs died forever.
If a town burned, it stayed burned. If a shopkeeper was killed, someone else took their place, eventually.
"Except the tutorial."
He sat up fully now.
The tutorial zone was different. It had to be. New players couldn't be soft-locked because some idiot decided to stab a merchant on day one.
So what did the system do?
It replaced them immediately.
Corrin laughed, a short, breathless sound.
"Oh my god."
He ran a hand through his hair, mind spinning faster and faster.
If a tutorial NPC went missing…
If they were killed…
If they stopped fulfilling their role…
The system didn't mourn.
It spawned a new one.
"…Which means," Corrin whispered, grin slowly spreading across his face, "Merchant Corrin doesn't have to exist."
The answer was clear.
Corrin stared up at the stars, breath slow, thoughts racing.
Then he smiled.
"Alright," he said quietly.
"I must die!"