One Man Army

[The recommended VRA of this game is 150. Users with VRA lower than 100 may experience difficulties in the gameplay.]

The first thing that appeared after he started Eternal Life was a warning message. In compliance with the new law that was made in 2024, all Dream Network contents had to put the recommended VRA, and the majority required VRAs over 80.

Considering how slightly higher VRA requirements were 100~120 until now, EL’s recommended VRA requirement was considerably high. On top of that, non-adults below 18 years of age were limited access so the entry barrier to EL could only rise higher and higher.

However, later on, even people with low VRA played EL despite the risks. Since the game was very interesting, people couldn’t help but play regardless of their VRA. Due to this reason, EL later recorded the highest simultaneous logins despite being an R-18 game.

It was just that amazing of a game, but in any case, a minimum VRA of 150 was required to play EL properly.

This was the reason why there was a considerable number of watching users who didn’t play themselves and only watched the live broadcasts of professional gamers.

‘EL is fun to play, but it is also quite fun to watch.’

To pick some reasons why EL was a success, it was because the game itself was quite addictive and the people watching could have a considerable amount of fun spectating as well.

‘But at this point…… EL was a failure of the game.’

Sanghyuk imagined that the related Raonsoft personnel would be crying right about now. He really had the urge to just call Raonsoft and buy their stocks, but not only did he have almost no knowledge regarding stock trading, none of their financial backers that would sell them since they weren’t people who were running out of money anyway, so he didn’t get greedy on that part.

While he was immersed in his thoughts, it finally came down to the character creation panel.

You require a different name to live a life of eternity. Please speak your name you wish to use in Eternal Life with a clear and loud voice.

“Immortal.”

Sanghyuk chose a name that might not suit EL but wanted to use for quite a while. In his previous life, he used quite a common name, “Roaring Tempest”, so he wanted to use a special nickname this time.

There are 0 people who have chosen ‘Immortal’ as their name until now. Since it is the first registration without an identical user name, no internal codes will be attached.

EL allowed 100 identical names. However, the system would attach an internal code to those names to the people that created avatars with an already existing nickname and register their names in the system with those additional codes.

For example, if someone else made an avatar named ‘Immortal’ as Sanghyuk did, an internal code similar to ‘second’ would be attached and would become ‘Second Immortal’ within the system. They may look like the same ‘Immortal’ within the game, but the system would differentiate between the two.

When he created the name, a white light enveloped Sanghyuk’s body, and at the same time, a whole different world spanned out in front of Sanghyuk.

Endless green plains that made him refreshed just by looking at it was quite a sentimental place for Sanghyuk.

‘Endless Plains.’

This place was somewhere users of EL could only enter in their first login. EL was definitely not a friendly game towards to the users.

There was nothing like a game guide that other games provided so naturally, and they didn’t even introduce any job classes or character control guides.

Every time the users complained about that to the developers, EL’s creator Raonsoft repeated the same words.

‘Eternal Life is a world that the users will need to create on their own. That is why everything needs to be discovered by the users. We will not prevent the users creating their own set of manuals and walkthroughs, but the developers will never create a manual.’

Naturally, the backlash from the users was very big at first, but the users could only comply when Raonsoft did not change their minds.

The place Sanghyuk was standing on right now, the Endless Plains, could be considered a tutorial area, but no one was told that this place was the tutorial, so the early players of EL were very disappointed. Not only that, it was impossible to skip so they would not know that this was the tutorial zone.

Of course, that kind of disappointment didn’t last for long. The users who had become level 10 in less than one day had logged out and revealed what kind of world Eternal Life truly was, so the majority of the players later knew that these plains was the tutorial area.

Actually, there was nothing special about the endless plains. It was just a vast expanse of plains and the only special point was that monsters would rush from the surroundings every 30 minutes.

A choice of weapons would appear 5 minutes before each monster wave. 40 different types of weapons that looked like they were made from shadows protruded from the ground and once the user selected one, then they would materialize and bind itself to the user.

Weapons could be changed each wave, but once the user picked up another weapon the weapon the user picked up in the previous wave would turn into a shadow and disappear again. This basically intended for the users to try out many different types of weapons and select one that fit them the best.

And after 20 waves, 116 types of skill books with the most fundamental skills would appear from the ground before the 21st wave.

Like with the weapons, this could be swapped out every wave as well.

Skill books could be swapped out for a maximum of 40 monster waves. Normally, around 50 monster waves would naturally level the user up to 10. (T/N: 50 waves is 25 hours… how on earth did players reach level 10 in less than a day)

The monster waves themselves had a very easy difficulty so even the people with no talent in the game should be able to clear them easily.

Borrowing the expression from the users, the endless plains was the only place they could experience the cheat mode.

Users could experience weapons and skill that suited them the best within these plains and this helped them a lot in their choices when they actually entered the world of EL.

Of course, after a little bit of time, the users chose their weapons and skills according to the walkthroughs on various communities rather than through their experience in the plains, but anyhow, the experience within the plains was definitely necessary.

Tap tap. Sanghyuk tapped the top of his right ear twice and semi-translucent windows appeared in front of him. This system call gesture was applied to all games by all developers starting 5 years ago, and was a very natural course of action to the people who had experience playing virtual reality games.

Sanghyuk used two fingers to enlarge the quest window on the system window and checked the time left until the first monster wave.

‘Exactly 27minutes 22 seconds left.’

The others who had logged in at the same time the server opened as Sanghyuk did might be putting their effort in to adapt to the surroundings. However, Sanghyuk knew very well what was coming, so he just stood there on the spot.

“Endless Plains…… There are two things I need to get here.”

Sanghyuk had already planned out his course of action while he was waiting for its release during the past year.

The two things he needed to acquire in this place weren’t so easy to get, but Sanghyuk wasn’t planning to leave this place before he got them.

“To be exact, I need to get a unique-grade title and a rare-grade item.’”

If someone asked Sanghyuk what the most important thing was in EL, he would reply ‘titles’ without a moment of hesitation. This was something that all users would say if they enjoyed EL.

Titles in EL could be used as ‘prefix’ titles as well as ‘postfix’ titles. Not only that, there were also titles that had constant effect without equipping them.

Of course, there was a limit of 30 titles that could be activated at once, but it could be seen how important titles were in this game than others.

In any case, titles were more important than any other game elements, and Sanghyuk had already picked out a select few titles he had to get here.

“First is the title ‘Unrelenting Challenger!’!”

The unique-grade title, ‘Unrelenting Challenger’. This was the insanely rare title that could only be acquired here in the Endless Plains.

4,444 times.

Four thousand four hundred and forty-four deaths were required in order to acquire the title ‘Unrelenting Challenger’. To be exact, one needed to keep challenging despite having died that many times.

Actually, this was a title that wasn’t meant to be gotten. No matter how low of a VRA a person had, anyone could crush the monsters in these Endless Plains. So, deaths of users in these plains was a very rare thing in the first place.

From that, it could be seen that dying over four thousand times in this stage didn’t make any sense. Actually, it was 10 years after EL’s release that the existence of this title was revealed.

To be exact, it was revealed after Raonsoft revealed the 5 deleted titles in its 10-year anniversary.

At the time, Raonsoft claimed that there were 10 titles that the users could not acquire during the past 10 years, of which 5 were deleted due to various issues in the patch, and the remaining five still stayed within the game.

The revealed titles were the deleted 5.

What Sanghyuk was aiming for right now was one of the five titles that were deleted in that patch.

It was a unique-grade too! Unique-grade meant what it literally sounded like – only one person could acquire throughout the entire game. In other words, once Sanghyuk acquired the title, no one else would be able to get it even if they died more than 4,444 times here.

Of course, dying 4,444 times in these Endless Plains wasn’t something normal. However, since Sanghyuk knew the answer, he threw his body into the monster wave without any hesitation.

If he didn’t know the answer, he wouldn’t have even tried this.

Deaths upon deaths.

Like that, Sanghyuk died again and again while all the others left this tutorial zone with ease.