Chapter 2: The Divine Veteran

Because Jeong Yun-jo had created the original game entirely on his own during high school, it suffered from many rough edges.

The worldbuilding was far from expansive, and the overall lore lacked meticulous detail.

The development studio that acquired the rights expanded the world dramatically and added far more intricate lore, even recommending that he test-play the build prior to its official launch.

Jeong Yun-jo installed the build sent by the project manager, played it once or twice out of sheer obligation, and remarked that it seemed quite impressive.

After that brief session, he never logged in again.

The vibrant, modern graphics felt unfamiliar, and the underlying systems had become so complex that it no longer felt like his own creation.

Around that time, he had likely purchased a brand-new phone.

He was the type to keep using his electronics until they were completely worn down before ever replacing them.

Given his tight allowance back then, upgrading such an expensive device had been a distant dream.

However, having just received his contract payout, he found himself quite well-off for the first time in his life.

He indulged in replacing his phone while it was still fully functional, meaning the old device—without a single scratch on its screen—ended up buried inside a drawer, never even reset.

The only reason he logged into the forgotten game now was simple curiosity.

When he attempted to log in using his old credentials, the system connected on the very first try.

A brief title animation played alongside crisp sound effects.

Until that moment, Jeong Yun-jo had remained entirely indifferent, but the second the next screen rendered, his eyes widened in utter disbelief.

What caught him off guard was his own character standing on the screen.

It was the test character he had created five full years ago, yet it looked entirely different.

Jeong Yun-jo, who had not bothered to think deeply when making a basic test character, had simply used his own real name.

He had also set the age to match his own at the time.

He was a high school senior back then—seventeen in Korean age—but since his birthday had not yet passed, he was sixteen internationally.

Now, the in-game character was twenty-two years old, meaning that as five full years slipped by in reality, the exact same amount of time had elapsed for his digital counterpart.

Reflecting on it, this was not surprising in the slightest.

That was precisely the signature mechanic of this game.

In Eternal Sun, in-game time progressed at the exact same pace as real-world time.

Once created, a character aged alongside its player in real time.

This principle applied to the original build Yun-jo drafted, the closed beta, and the official release alike.

Thus, as Jeong Yun-jo aged over the years, his character aged alongside him, reaching twenty-two.

It was an obvious mechanic, yet one he had completely forgotten.

With a wry, self-deprecating smile, he began browsing through his character’s status panel.

And that was when true shock settled in.

‘…Wait, what?’

Looking closer, his character’s attributes were vastly different from what he remembered.

It was not merely his age that had changed; the overall stats were utterly absurd.

The attributes and skill levels across every single discipline displayed numeric values he had never seen in any game.

‘This is insane. He’s a complete munchkin.’

This was entirely unexpected.

After thoroughly examining the status window, Jeong Yun-jo finally understood why this radical transformation had occurred.

It was because he had abused developer cheat codes during initial testing.

In both the public beta and the live server, character attributes capped out near ten thousand.

Here, however, his character’s numeric values operated on an entirely different scale.

They were so astronomically high that trying to count the digits was entirely meaningless.

Normally, in any structured game, every stat possesses a hard-coded limit.

No matter how many years a player invests, they cannot cross that ultimate threshold.

However, while building his test character, Jeong Yun-jo had used backend cheats to remove the cap on every single attribute.

As passive experience accumulated automatically over the span of five full years, those unbounded numbers had skyrocketed into something terrifying.

Back then, he had merely been curious to see how the engine handled uncapped values, never intending to construct a game-breaking monster.

Such reckless tinkering was only possible within a closed beta sandbox; in the official live game, the security architecture would never allow such a broken entity to exist.

Consequently, acquiring these omnipotent stats was entirely accidental.

‘Is this what people call a true veteran character…?’

Yun-jo was likely the sole individual holding a character of this nature.

Granted, holding supreme power on an isolated beta server completely disconnected from the main player base meant very little when he was the sole remaining player in existence.

Even so, it was breathtaking to look at.

The master skill tree unlocked by these unlimited stats was vast and endlessly versatile, inspiring pure awe just to scroll through.

In short, his character had become an all-powerful, omnipotent being.

To put it plainly, these stats were practically indistinguishable from a deity.

If this character were placed onto the live server of Eternal Sun right now, people might actually revere him as a living god.

Furthermore, the character had been astonishingly industrious over the years; not only was the skill list maxed out, but the inventory was packed to the brim with legendary items.

Reviewing the endless list of achievements logged automatically over time, Jeong Yun-jo could only stare in speechless admiration.

Then, quite suddenly, his heart sank heavy in his chest.

When he thought about it, this outcome was completely natural.

Because it was a programmed character, it had neither slacked off nor failed to gain experience while he was away.

No unexpected tragedies had derailed its growth, nor had everything it owned vanished overnight.

At least within the realm of the game.

It was a world where everything proceeded smoothly according to predefined rules and logic.

‘Haa…’

He swallowed back an involuntary sigh.

Though it was merely trapped air, it refused to pass down easily.

His throat felt uncomfortably tight for a long while, as if a sharp fishbone were lodged deep within.

All evening, Jeong Yun-jo stared blankly at his phone.

His fingers still lacked proper sensation, preventing him from manipulating the touch screen with ease.

He simply left the application running and watched.

Even though it was not particularly thrilling to observe, he could not bring himself to look away.

He watched his in-game self walk and run energetically on two perfectly healthy legs according to its set routine, until he eventually drifted off to sleep.

Right before slipping into unconsciousness, a single thought drifted through his mind.

Perhaps over there, rather than here…

Perhaps as that character, rather than myself…

Life might actually be better off.

Intense, blinding sunlight stabbed directly into his eyes without warning.

Yun-jo squeezed his eyes shut, deeply disoriented.

The swirling afterimage of a pure white sun whirled dizzyingly behind his closed eyelids.

Where am I?

It was oppressively hot.

The scorching heat made his scalp sting and tingle.

With every breath he took, dry, scalding air rushed down his throat.

Though he was actively breathing, the sheer heat felt utterly suffocating.

All around him, a deathly silence reigned.

Not even the faint whispering of the wind could be heard.

Yun-jo blinked several times before forcing his eyes open once more.

As his vision slowly adjusted to the harsh glare, the first sight to register was a high white stone wall topped with deep indigo tiles.

It towered high on all sides, completely enclosing a low building that resembled an ancient imperial palace hall.

The wooden floorboards and intricate railings were polished with sleek black lacquer, the massive pillars shone a brilliant crimson, and beneath the wide eaves, decorative dancheong patterns painted in vibrant turquoise and midnight blue radiated an elegant, regal dignity.

For some reason, he felt an unsettling sense that he had intruded upon a place where he did not belong.

Deciding he needed to find a way out immediately, Yun-jo surveyed his immediate surroundings.

There was no visible entrance anywhere in sight.

This appeared to be the secluded rear garden of the grand hall.

If so, the main exit had to be located on the opposite side…

Suddenly, a faint splashing sound echoed directly beneath his feet.

Looking down, he noticed liquid coating the ground.

The courtyard floor, tightly paved with dark flagstones, was subtly sloped to prevent rainwater from pooling, causing a wet trail to spread slowly in a single direction.

‘Did someone spill water?’

As he absently tracked the movement of the liquid, a sharp, peculiar scent struck his senses.

‘Is that… blood?’

It was faint, yet unmistakable.

Having spent so much of his life inside hospital wards, there was no way he could misidentify that metallic tang.

Tracing the liquid back to its source, he realized the water coating the dark stones was heavily laced with blood.

He had failed to notice it initially because the flagstones themselves were pitch-black.

The crimson-tinted water was trailing down directly from the main hall.

More specifically, it was dripping steadily off the stone foundation, drop by agonizing drop.

Yun-jo approached the hall with extreme caution, taking care not to make a single sound.

A clear, shadowless afternoon.

An unsettling, metallic reek of blood.

The moment he carefully rounded the corner of the stone foundation, Yun-jo discovered a figure lying motionless on the ground.

‘Wh-what the…?’

The person was thoroughly soaked and severely injured.

Their robes, originally stark white, were more than half stained in brilliant crimson.

At a fleeting glance, it almost resembled an intricate red pattern, but a second look revealed that the white fabric was utterly saturated with fresh blood.

Judging by the slender build, it was a young boy.

Loose white robes marred by vivid bloodstains, topped by a chaotic mess of long black hair.

‘Is he… dead?’

Even as a total stranger suddenly appeared right before him, the boy did not move a muscle.

For a terrifying moment, Yun-jo assumed he was staring at a corpse, but looking closer, he realized the boy was still breathing—he had simply lost consciousness.

Still, it was blatantly clear that the boy was in no condition to move, allowing Yun-jo to relax slightly and examine him more closely.

The closer he stepped, the stronger the sickening smell of blood became.

The wet cloth clung tightly to the boy’s fair skin, exposing several gruesome wounds gouged into his back.

Seeing those raw lacerations left Yun-jo completely speechbound and utterly bewildered.

He could not begin to fathom how such brutal harm had been inflicted.

He also questioned why the boy was so dripping wet in this blistering weather.

Had he fallen into a deep body of water?

Yet there was no well or lotus pond anywhere nearby; if he had fallen in, where could it possibly have been?

Realizing he urgently needed to call for help, Yun-jo scanned the area, but there was not a single soul in sight.

The surrounding palace structure was unnaturally, eerily devoid of human presence.

As he closed the remaining distance, the boy’s face finally came into clear view.

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