Chapter 1: Prologue

There are moments in life when one stumbles upon a game that feels like destiny.

A game one could play for thousands, even tens of thousands of hours, without ever growing weary.

One might struggle to articulate its precise allure to others, yet it remained a game one consistently returned to whenever a moment of leisure presented itself.

A game akin to a hometown, to which one occasionally strayed in pursuit of trending titles, only to inevitably find oneself drawn back.

For me, too, such a fated game existed.

That game was the sandbox title, [Celestia Maker].

This obscure indie game was one I had stumbled upon by chance in a store during my childhood.

Its premise involved the player assuming the role of administrator for the ‘Fantasy Archive Celestia,’ tasked with composing grimoires to be housed within a vast, magical library.

However, the true essence of this seemingly straightforward game, at least by its description, lay entirely in its formidable difficulty.

The magical formulas comprising each grimoire had to be painstakingly crafted by the player themselves, a process that proved exceptionally intricate, abstruse, and cumbersome.

Every single spell demanded meticulous calculation and countless trials and errors.

It was, in essence, one of those games notorious for their ‘maniacal’ difficulty.

Considering my childhood self had once dedicated a full three weeks to crafting a single, rudimentary spell, anyone could readily grasp the sheer scale of its challenge.

So, after all that arduous effort to create a spell, was that truly the end of it?

—Indeed.

The crux of the problem was that, yes, it truly was the end.

That stark reality, in fact, was the primary reason the game never achieved widespread popularity.

The game’s most glaring flaw was the utter lack of utility for the meticulously crafted spells players painstakingly developed.

It was so egregious that even I, on occasion, found myself pondering a solution.

‘Couldn’t someone, anyone, create a mod for monsters or NPCs?’

There were no monsters to vanquish with powerful spells, nor even NPCs to commend me for my impressive magical creations.

No challenges or achievements could be unlocked through spell creation.

What’s more, the game’s very system offered no feedback whatsoever on completed spells.

It was a game that demanded repetitive, tedious, and intricate labor, solely for the purpose of self-gratification.

That, in its entirety, was the game.

Ultimately, I was forced to compromise, compelled to devise new formulas myself.

‘Hah… fine. If there are no monsters, then I’ll simply devise the formulas to create them myself.’

Thus, I conceived a monster-creation spell, complete with a virtual HP system and meticulously designed behavioral patterns.

Driven by the conviction that even its visual manifestation must be flawless, I meticulously expended my magical energy to forge an ambitious masterpiece: a dragon.

This spell, into which I had poured my heart and soul for so long, ultimately achieved a breathtaking level of perfection—

—yet, regrettably, its existence remained unknown to anyone.

Perhaps owing to the game’s profound unpopularity, no community whatsoever existed for it.

The spell, relegated to mere self-gratification with no one to boast to, nonetheless served its purpose admirably for a long time afterward, acting as a veritable sandbag for testing new magical creations.

And so, that was the nature of this game, in the end.

A game where one could display the fruits of their labor to no one, played solely in solitude for self-satisfaction.

Yet, a game I had played for an exceptionally long time.

A game into which I had poured nearly a decade of my life, driven by the ambition to single-handedly create every spell imaginable within its world.

A game I had loved dearly.

So why, then, was I recalling this particular game now—

“Ugh, ugh…”

‘Because, as I lay dying, I was witnessing my life flash before my eyes.’

‘Of all things, for this wretched game to be the last memory to surface in my final moments—’

‘What a truly futile existence it had been.’

‘Damn this life.’

****

Seo Yohan, age twenty-four.

Born with the name of one of the twelve apostles, a testament to his devout Christian parents’ wishes.

Though, regrettably, his personality proved to be anything but saintly.

To be frank, I never considered myself unintelligent.

After all, I had attended a university of considerable renown and enrolled in a department where one could count the top students faster than the bottom.

My academic performance, too, was consistently among the top echelon.

My family was affluent, my home harmonious, and my life, by all accounts, left nothing to be desired.

And so, living a life that was, in every respect, among the most fortunate, I found that my existence, too, would end among the earliest.

As fate would have it, my body was flung a considerable distance after being struck by a truck that had brazenly disregarded a traffic signal.

“Cough, hack… gasp…!”

As I lay crumpled on the ground, blood relentlessly gushed from my mouth.

Cough, cough—

Each cough brought forth a fresh torrent of blood, and I instinctively grasped the gravity of my situation.

‘Ah. My organs are ruptured.’

My arms ached, and my legs felt like leaden weights; it appeared utterly impossible to even stir.

My body, so unluckily struck by the truck, had been reduced to a mere rag, teetering on the precipice of death.

“Ugh, ugh…”

My groaning body was a stark harbinger, signaling that my time was rapidly drawing to a close.

They say no human is perfect.

It seemed the heavens, in granting me an affluent family, a respectable appearance, and a prodigious intellect, had simultaneously bestowed upon me a truncated lifespan and a truly wretched game.

Considering my life, which had promised a smooth, open road ahead, was already nearing its terminal station.

No, in this particular instance, perhaps the old adage that geniuses are fated to a short life might prove true.

Regardless, as my life ebbed away, I found myself confronting the fleeting panorama of my memories.

“Ah, I still… gasp… haven’t… filled… the library… ugh, completely…!”

And what shimmered before my eyes was the very landscape of the library I had painstakingly constructed over the past decade.

Monster creation spells.

Multi-purpose barrier spells for firepower testing.

Wide-area bombardment spells.

Classification spells for library collection management.

Countless spells I had meticulously crafted over the years flashed through my mind.

Concurrently, spells I had only ever conceived of, but never managed to implement, also began to unfold before my eyes.

“Gurgle, ugh…”

There were so many spells I had yearned to create.

A multitude of spells remained, meticulously designed yet tragically unimplemented.

And yet, to be forced to depart without even completing a fraction of these countless spells—

Could there be anything more utterly wretched in this world?

My heart ached with a profound heaviness as I envisioned the ‘Fantasy Archive Celestia,’ destined to lose its master as of this very day.

The sight of a lifelong, unfulfilled aspiration crumbling before my eyes was utterly heartbreaking.

“…”

And so, with blood welling in my mouth, I strained to extend my hand forcefully towards the heavens.

Thud—

Then, my consciousness plunged into darkness.

****

Where do people go when they die?

Heaven? Or perhaps hell?

No, all of it was wrong.

The answer, it turned out, was a library.

And not just any library, but one so colossal its true scale defied comprehension.

“Ah…”

When I, who had previously lost consciousness, finally awoke, I found myself standing alone within the colossal interior of a grand library.

Its facilities were both magnificent and opulent.

A sight so breathtaking it would surely elicit gasps of awe from any beholder.

Countless antique bookshelves stretched across each floor, with these floors stacked one upon another, reaching dizzying heights.

A spiraling staircase connected each level, ascending ever upwards to culminate in a verdant garden atop the highest pinnacle.

This enormous cylindrical edifice appeared to have been constructed solely for the preservation of books.

It was a library of such breathtaking beauty that it evoked the very essence of a masterpiece.

“My heavens… to think such a library could exist.”

The vista of the library was nothing short of a magnum opus.

It was a place so ethereal, it seemed impossible for it to exist within the bounds of reality.

As I gazed upon the library’s exquisite beauty, a thought occurred to me: perhaps this was all a dream.

And so, I reached for my arm.

My intention was to pinch myself, to confirm if I was merely dreaming.

“Ouch.”

A sharp pang of pain immediately registered as I pinched my arm.

The spot where my fingers had dug in throbbed with a distinct sting.

But why, then?

Despite the undeniable sensation, I found myself still unable to shake the pervasive feeling that this place was merely a dream.

Even this pain seemed to possess an unnatural, almost counterfeit quality.

Ultimately, only one method remained to ascertain the truth.

‘Perhaps I should examine the books within this library. Surely, it won’t turn out to be some sort of underworld registry, will it?’

I resolved to directly inspect the contents of the library’s books.

With that thought, I approached a nearby bookshelf.

Swoosh—

And then, I carefully drew out one of the volumes nestled within the shelf.

Surely, by examining the contents of a randomly selected book, I could discern whether this place was real or merely a figment of my imagination.

Driven by that notion, I unfurled the volume in my hands—

—and found myself staring at its pages with a rapidly hardening expression.

“…”

Rustle, rustle—

With each rustle of the luxurious pages, my face, fixed upon the book, grew increasingly rigid.

And for good reason: the contents inscribed within this particular volume were intimately familiar to me.

They were, in fact, the very grimoires I had painstakingly authored in [Celestia Maker], the game I had played until just last night.

The content of the grimoires I had penned within that game was reproduced here, word for word, in its entirety.

With a bewildered expression, I quietly turned the pages, but soon set the book down and moved towards a different bookshelf.

Perhaps, I reasoned, this entire situation might simply be an extraordinary coincidence.

I entertained the faint hope that the volumes on other shelves might, at least, prove different.

“…What are these?”

Whirrrrr—

The pages of the volume in my hands flipped open at a dizzying speed.

Yet, the contents of those rapidly turning pages remained, just as before, vividly etched into my memory.

They were unmistakably the grimoires I had personally authored within the game.

I proceeded to examine each and every volume lining the shelves.

This one, and that one—none of them proved significantly different.

Without exception, the contents of every volume nestled on those shelves mirrored what was stored in my memory.

Even details long forgotten, those that had faded into the distant recesses of my mind, were transcribed with startling clarity.

Where in the world could such an improbable coincidence possibly exist?

While a single volume might be dismissed as a mere fluke, the uniformity across every single tome in this vast library led to an undeniable conclusion.

As I confronted the familiar contents of the grimoires, several possibilities flashed through my mind.

The possibility that this entire space was intimately connected to me.

And the chilling possibility that I had, for far longer than I ever realized, been directly involved in this very space—

“Could it be…?”

Ultimately, what I was trying to articulate boiled down to a single, startling realization.

—My magic library was alive.