Ch.0Prologue

There’s a common setting that frequently appears in games, animations, or web novels.

At some point, mysterious monsters appear on Earth, and to combat these creatures—which are extremely difficult to deal with using modern weapons—special individuals with unique abilities emerge, wielding equipment made from the corpses of these very monsters.

While this premise would have been novel in the past, it’s now obvious and clichéd. Yet there’s a VR game that boldly adopted this overdone concept that has been milked dry.

Its name: Project Monster.

Appearing like a comet in the early days of mental dive-type VR games, this title has been praised for setting the direction that future VR games should follow, thanks to its exceptional action mechanics, outstanding PVP/PVE content, and excellent operational management.

Even 20 years after its release, the first game is still considered a timeless masterpiece. Following that came the second and third installments, the disaster that shall not be named (4), and the fifth entry, which is generally regarded as decent.

Project Monster, which has produced five series with four or more considered masterpieces, was an open-world RPG as mentioned earlier.

The protagonist is a superhuman who can hunt monsters, using materials obtained from these hunts to craft equipment that allows them to challenge even stronger monsters.

Throughout this process, players develop various tech trees and nurture their own unique characters—this orthodox yet highly flexible system with numerous interactions is what made the game so popular.

Oh, and why am I explaining all this in such detail?

“—?!!! Winner! I won!!!”

It’s because I’ve been selected for the beta test of the recently announced sixth installment in the series.

※ ※ ※

One week after the day I went crazy with joy at being among the first to play the game, it arrived via drone delivery.

I was so happy that my smile stretched all the way to my cheekbones as I unwrapped the package, unlocked the security on the secret box inside with biometric authentication, and extracted the game chip nestled in the center.

‘Hurry, hurry, hurryyyy…’

After inserting the chip into the dive device’s slot, I hastily put on the specialized suit, sat down against the machine, pressed the start button, and donned the helmet that covered my entire head with several tubes connected to it.

[XXPLA-99. Initiating operation.]

As the operational announcement sounded in my ears, safety-grade liquid gel began flowing into the completely isolated interior of the device.

‘I bet they’ve nerfed the monsters in every way possible… but I still can’t wait to play as the Legion.’

Thinking about how the sixth installment would finally unlock the monster play mode that all Project Monster fans had been waiting for, I pondered how to spend this short beta test period.

Simultaneously, I could feel the gel completely filling the device’s interior and gradually solidifying. The characteristic sensation of mental haziness that comes with connecting to a dive device swirled through my mind, and then—

“Ugh… Uhhh… Huh?”

When I opened my eyes after connecting to the dive device, what greeted me wasn’t the lobby of Jet (the VR game platform), but rather a deserted forest.