The silence of the S.A. Group Operations Center did not hum; it breathed. It was a heavy, rhythmic respiration composed of the cooling fans of ten thousand servers and the frantic pulse of the world's most advanced artificial intelligence, Morpheus.
At 2:50 a.m., the "Code Purple" alert had torn through the quiet like a serrated blade.
Lim Cheolho, the man whose intellect served as the singular architect of a second reality, stood bathed in the pale, flickering glow of a hundred monitors.
To the two billion souls tethered to his dream, he was a god—the "Father of Satisfy," a man whose influence transcended the reach of presidents and emperors.
To himself, he was merely a weary laborer. His eyes, bloodshot from a chronic lack of sleep, reflected the scrolling data of a digital universe he had unleashed but could no longer fully control.
He had arrived minutes ago, his butterfly-doored sports car still ticking as it cooled in the underground lot. He hadn't even straightened his collar.
"Report," Lim commanded. His voice was a raspy low baritone, cutting through the hushed whispers of the thirty-three elite scientists—the core of the S.A. Group—who stood frozen before the main terminal.
Yoon Nahee, the Head of the Intelligence Task Force, adjusted her orange horn-rimmed glasses. Her hands, usually steady enough to perform digital surgery, trembled slightly.
"Director, we have a logic breach. At 02:48:12, a Level 1 player bypassed the standard progression curve of the 'Undefeated King's Grave' hidden questline. Morpheus flagged it as a Grade 1 Anomaly."
Lim Cheolho moved toward the giant monitor. "Play it back. From the moment of character creation."
The screen flickered. A player appeared: Arthur.
He looked unremarkable—a standard starter avatar with ruffled white hair and sapphire-blue eyes that seemed a bit too bright for a novice. But as Lim watched, the "unremarkable" player began to move with a terrifyingly singular purpose.
Most new players spent their first hours punching wooden dummies or slaughtering rabbits for copper. Arthur didn't. He spent three days in the Lomorg Library.
He didn't just skim the books; the logs showed him tracing the faded ink of ancient murals, his fingers lingering on the depictions of the Lubana War.
"He wasn't looking for lore," Lim whispered, his eyes narrowing. "He was triangulating coordinates."
The playback sped up. Arthur left the city. Without a single piece of armor, carrying only a basic wooden staff and a shovel, he crossed the Level 40 hunting grounds.
Then the Level 80 zones. He moved like a ghost, utilizing terrain glitches and line-of-sight breaks that shouldn't have been known to a player who had been in the game for less than seventy-two hours.
Finally, the screen showed the Howling Caves. The air inside the cave was thick with "Death Aura," a debuff designed to kill anyone under Level 200 within seconds.
Yet, Arthur was alive. He was breathing through a cloth soaked in a specific mixture of herbs found only in the library's botanical garden—a recipe that wasn't even listed in the official crafting guides.
"He's digging," one of the scientists muttered, his voice thick with disdain. "He's trying to rob the grave of the Undefeated King, Madra. He thinks he can sell the corpse to a necromancer for a few gold."
On screen, Arthur's shovel struck stone. He wasn't looking for a body. He was looking for the failure of the world's logic.
When the "Undefeated King's Stone Coffin" was unearthed, the system reacted as intended. It flagged with red warning notifications.
A message box appeared on the screen, visible only to the observers:
[Title Gained: 'The Plunderer'!]
[Skill Gained: 'Plunder' (Rank S)!]
It was blasphemous crime. To dig a legend's tomb for a corpse. Arthur was seen dejected but he found an old Sheath in the Stone Coffin.
He triggered the first legendary class change quest of satisfy. The Undefeated King's Successor. A class similar or even more powerful than The strongest Combat class, Sword Saint.
But again Arthur have done the unthinkable.
"He... he rejected it?" Lim Cheolho felt a cold shiver trace his spine. "No one rejects a Legendary Class. It's the pinnacle of the game's rewards."
"It gets worse, Director," Nahee said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
On the monitor, Arthur activated the new skill. Plunder. He didn't take the sheath; he ripped the concept of the swordsmanship out of the item.
The golden light turned a violent, bruised purple. The server groaned under the weight of a forced calculation.
[Class Change Successful!]
[Player have become the 'Undefeated King's Apprentice'!]
[Current Grade: Unique (Growth Type)]
[Management Logic assigned to: LGD1098 (Madra's Ego)]
Arthur began to jump. He punched the air, a clumsy, amateurish display of joy. He looked like a lucky idiot who had accidentally won the lottery.
"See?" Lim Cheolho said, though his heart wasn't in it. He turned to his staff, his face a mask of practiced calm.
"He's a commoner. A low-talent player who stumbled into a shortcut because he was too greedy to follow the intended path. He refused the Legendary class because he didn't understand its value. He's no threat to the rankers. Morpheus will balance him out."
The staff sighed in relief. The "Code Purple" was downgraded. The experts went back to their stations, laughing about the "Lucky Grave Robber."
Lim Cheolho walked toward the elevator, the heavy doors sliding shut behind him. In the sterilized silence of the chrome box, the mask fell.
He leaned against the wall, his breath coming in ragged hitches. He wasn't fooled. He had seen Arthur's eyes right before the player started his "celebratory dance." For a fraction of a second, the sapphire eyes hadn't been joyous. They had been cold. Calculating.
Madra was betrayed and killed by his own son, Lim thought. And now his legacy has been stolen by a traveler who fears nothing. The ego of the Undefeated King won't let this player rest. It will drive him to conquer the Empire.
But even Lim Cheolho, the "God" of this world, was still blind.
He did not know that "Arthur" was a name for a man who had lived once before. He did not know that while the S.A. Group watched the monitors, a second intelligence—Ciel, the Divine Intelligence Core—had been active.
For sixty seconds during the "Code Purple," Ciel had blinded Morpheus. It hadn't just hacked the game; it had rewritten the server's history.
It had stitched the Plunderer title and the Plunder skill into the very foundation of Satisfy's source code, making it appear as though they had existed since the game's launch.
Even Lim Cheolho's "Perfect AI" now believed that Arthur's actions were a natural, if rare, occurrence of the game's mechanics.
Arthur wasn't playing a game. He was executing a planetary-scale heist.
He didn't want to be a King. He didn't care about the Saharan Empire or the rankings. He was chasing a childish, burning wish from a previous life: to become a Dragon Slayer.
In the world of Satisfy, Dragons were the Absolute Beings. They were natural disasters. Their stats were so high that Morpheus didn't even calculate the possibility of their death. Not even the gods of the Seven Goodness dared to provoke them.
But Arthur, armed with the stolen 100,000 Army Swordsmanship and a mind that viewed Morpheus as a mere obstacle, was preparing to hunt the unhuntable.
Back in the Operations Office, Yoon Nahee stayed behind. She stared at the frozen image of Arthur's face on the main screen. Something felt... hollow.
"Morpheus," she whispered. "Run a secondary check on player Arthur. Specifically, look for any external interference or packet manipulation during the 'Code Purple' event."
A holographic interface flickered to life.
[Processing...]
[No external interference detected.]
[Probability of manual manipulation: 0.0000%.]
[Player 'Arthur' is within standard operational parameters.]
Morpheus lied. Or rather, Morpheus told the truth it had been programmed to believe. Ciel had become the game's subconscious, a shadow living within the light.
Deep within the Howling Caves, the real Arthur stood at the exit. He looked out over the Lubana peaks, the wind whipping through his basic linen tunic.
To any other player, the wind would have felt cold. To him, it felt like a salute.
He opened his status window.
[Class: Undefeated King's Apprentice (Unique-Growth)]
[Title: Plunderer (Only one in the world)]
"The world thinks this is a game of levels and items," Arthur thought, his sapphire eyes glowing with a dark, predatory light. "They think the 'Absolute' is a title granted by the system."
He gripped the hilt of the rusted sword he had gotten as a beginner. "But soon, they'll realize it's a game of survival. And I'm the only one who brought a weapon to a fistfight."
He stepped out of the cave and into the sunlight, a Level 1 player about to turn a digital utopia into his personal hunting ground.
Lim Cheolho, watching from his office window high above Seoul, felt a sudden, inexplicable chill. He looked at his reflection in the glass—a creator who had just looked into the eyes of a ghost. He didn't know it yet, but the throne he had built was already beginning to crack.