A new icon appeared on my desktop. It was a symbol I have never seen before.

“Fuuuuuuck! My Precious PC!!!”

Out of my control due to unexplainable reasons, I installed a virus. The cause is a mystery but I don’t have to check on myself because I wanted to know what damages this Cultivation Realm did to my Pc.

“Nothing is deleted. Anti-virus says it is all clear. And I don’t think the private information I have saved is leaked anywhere. But I’m not sure yet…”

Everything looks the same from what I know.

I sighed in relief knowing that it did not give me the blue screen of death yet. But I was sweating a pool because nothing makes sense about it. Suddenly losing control over my body, and this flash drive containing a .exe file.

For the out of the ordinary experience I had concerning my body, there is nothing I can do about it. The best explanation I have is ghosts suddenly possessing me- And I don’t even believe in ghosts a hundred percent.

So I can only try and understand what the file is.

Carefully right-clicking the icon that appeared on my desktop, I check its properties. To my surprise, this .exe file is only 1 byte. I don’t know any virus that is this small.

“What’s this? Do I just delete it?”

“…? Why can’t I”

Deleting it permanently or even putting it in the recycle bin is impossible no matter what method I tried. Despite this characteristic that can be compared to many viruses, this Cultivation Realm icon seems to be non-harmful.

Non-harmful in a way that it did not fry anything on my PC yet.

Humans are stupid in nature, or maybe it’s just me. Because the red symbol made me want to double click it even after all the logic I had to not hover my pointer over it.

Click Click~

All of those hesitations for naught. I still ended up opening this Cultivation Realm.

“Am I an idiot- No I’m an idiot.”

Black screen reflects on the display of my first monitor. I can see my reflection which gave me enough time to see what I look like.

Nothing changed for the past five years I got kicked out of the house. Actually, my cheeks and my whole body got chubbier compared to when my mother decide what’s the meal for that day. My diet is really shit since I have sufficient money and independence.

And exercise is an unfamiliar word for me.

“Did this game provided me enough time to reflect? What’s with this long-duration black screen.”

After a minute or so, there was a change finally. It was like someone just threw a flashbang in my dimly lit room because of how bright the screen was.

“Jesus Christ! There’s a reason why night mode was invented.”

I quickly turn down the brightness of my monitor somewhere close to zero. Now that I don’t need to close my eyes to see, I was able to properly navigate through the menu screen.

Besides the plain black text spelling out the name of the program, there were three things I can click into. Those options tell me that Cultivation Realm must be a game. Although the totally white background does not help explain what kind of game it is.

If I try to guess what it is, it should be a game related to cultivation- Duh.

I’ve had experience reading novels with cultivation as their theme but I am not an avid reader of it. I don’t know why since I enjoyed it the first time I got introduced to the world of cultivation. Maybe I was simply burned because of the almost identical plots of many novels with this theme out there.

“Let me check the internet first what this game is.”

Using my phone because I was unable to alt-tab the program, I type in its name on the Google search.

“Cultivation Levels… Cultivation Online… There is no game with this name. Is this a newly released game?”

When even the second page of the Google search does not provide your desired result, then it means it does not exist.

I’ve tried checking if the Exit function works- And surprisingly, it works. I thought I fucked it up when opening this game. Running it once more is also not a problem. So it works just like your normal game except for the fact that it only consumes a byte in my hard drive.

“Settings. This should give me some answers on what kind of game it is.”

Key binding setting and its control configuration will tell me if it is a First Person Shooter or a Role Playing Game. There might be some exceptions, but game control settings are a good indicator of what kind of game it is.

I want to make sure everything is set before I dive into a brand new unknown game of unknown origin. Apart from that, I also want to check the Frames Per Second cap and if it was 4k because it’s a waste to not have it when I have this amazing PC.

“That’s it!?”

No tabs or anything that categorized what setting it was. All it gave me were these two questionable settings I don’t know what the purpose was. Although I can guess what this share button does.

“Pain Threshold? Why would a game need that, and why can I only bring it down to 20%?”

The Settings just gave me more questions than answers. Because pain threshold sounds like something dangerous, I turn it down to the lowest.

Meanwhile, the Share button directed me to an internet browser. At last! there was something I recognized. It provided me the different streaming platforms where I can broadcast my gameplay. Why this feature was here- almost all games nowadays provide a more convenient way to stream games. And this game is just one of the many.

“Since this game wants me to stream, then I’ll stream it.”

Choosing the most popular game streaming platform, HTV or HitchTV, I connected my account and fill in the details of my stream.

[First time streaming l Cultivation Realm l New game]

My account name was San3P because why not. There is really no reason for it besides it being connected to my nickname.

Clicking OK to everything, I’m now back to the game itself. I search myself on my phone if it was really streaming. True to it, San3P is there with 0, no 1 viewer under the Cultivation World category.

The game is really new since I was the only one playing it and the category does not have a picture for itself. Only a gray question mark. This can be a great advantage to gain viewers or it will be the factor to bury my stream outside of the viewers’ range of interest. Most likely the latter.

Does not matter anyway because I’m in my experiment stage. I can just simply stream another game if this Cultivation Realm is very boring.

…

“Ugh~ I feel like shit.”

The phenomenon of me losing control over my body happen once again. I swear to God I’m going to visit the church tomorrow.

It is the worst headache I had so far in my life that I can barely stand up. And when I did, everything looks different from the room I have been staying in for seven times a week.

“I may have hit my head too hard…”

I was surrounded by a thick forest of humongous trees. The smell of earth after rain tickled my nose as I supported myself with the lush green field I am standing at.

The light barely passes through the leaves hovering over my head. Yet I can still see where I am. The only problem would be the reason why I was here in the first place.

“Did I just get isekaid out of nowhere!?”

That’s the most logical explanation in this illogical situation. I told that to myself yet I don’t believe it. Many great stories have begun with the protagonist being transferred to another world. But often or not, it is after when they died.

“Unless my PC exploded after starting up the game, I don’t see any reason why I would die. Maybe the ghost who possessed my body made me jump out of the window… Wait- the game!”

There can be only one reason why these strange things keep happening to me.

“Now it all makes sense- I’m in a world like Sword Art Online. Logging out should be impossible until I beat the final boss.”

“Oh… I guess not.”

Clicking ‘yes’ on the screen that appeared in front of me, my senses came back to where was five minutes ago. How do I know five minutes have passed by? Because the first thing I did after waking up was check my phone like any 21st-century person would do.

“I didn’t turn into an isekai protagonist or a harem bastard trapped inside a virtual reality game. So what the hell is this Cultivation Realm game.”