A humanoid creature dashed through the thick brushes, morphing its body and slithering through the forest. Despite its muscular figure, the creature displayed unbelievable flexibility and swiftness.

However, the creature could not find any peace of mind. Its pursuers were following as closely as its shadow. Death was always breathing on its neck.

‘Just a bit more!’ it thought. ‘The river is just a little further from here!’

Having ruled over this forest for almost a century, the creature knew its way around. There were countless tunnels it had built over the years, and the one hidden at the bottom of one of the rivers was its greatest achievement. The moment it dove into the water and reached the entrance deep below, none would ever find it again.

Reassured by the glimpse of the river just a short distance ahead, an ugly grin cracked across the creature's thick lips, creating an even worse look on its goat-like face. Saliva began to spill out from under its wagging tongue, as the creature concentrated all of its strength into its hooved feet.

The air around its legs became distorted. Fine particles rapidly gathered and formed a dark aura around the creature’s lower half. A strengthening spell was activated; it was the creature’s do-or-die attempt at fleeing from the deadly pursuers. It had been saving the last bit of its remaining magic power for this moment, while pretending to be exhausted of all magical capabilities.

“Ah! D’ya see that, Master Yr? Ya saw it, din’ya?”

A high-pitched voice suddenly came from above the creature. The nature of the voice’s tone could be regarded as highly irritating to the human ears.

“Hmph. Was that supposed to be your best joke today?”

A dark, raspy voice replied with a light chuckle.

All the hair and fur on the running creature’s body immediately stood up. It was convinced that there had been a good distance between the pursuers and itself, yet the voices just now were dangerously close by. Furthermore, they were both chasing after it with increasing speed, yet neither of them sounded out of breath.

“Kiek-kiek-kiek!! Nay, Master Yr, NAY! That thing cast magic just now! It totally did!!”

The stridulous voice let out an ear-grating laugh.

“I have been wondering what was the purpose of saving such an insignificant amount of magic power, myself. I see, now. A simple physical boost at a moment like this... not a bad plan.”

The entity with the deep voice revealed itself as the two of them jumped over a large gap between the trees. The cackling voice belonged to a tall humanoid being, while the other possessed a contrasting, smaller stature, his eyes completely covered by a sash which wrapped around his head.

The creature’s blood began to run cold, despite its body’s rising temperature. Breathing became painful, as numbness slowly spread across its calves. For the first time in many decades, the creature was pushed to the very brink and forced to experience the agony of being the prey.

‘Like hell! Like hell my life ends here! Never! I’ve crawled to the surface from the depths of Hell once, I’ll do it again if I have to!!’

With the last bit of strength in its legs, the creature dug its hooves into the hard ground and launched itself forward, diving headfirst into the river. A sense of relief took over its entire body...

* * *

A lone man sits under a broken pillar. The damage in his surroundings suggest an intense battle having taken place not too long ago. And yet, the man appears entirely unscathed.

Before him is a floating game menu, titled Clearing Record. A long list of timers is displayed in a descending order, the number one entry bearing the name ‘Rein,’ with a record of 10 minutes 5 seconds. The blinking ‘NEW’ icon indicates that the record has been achieved only recently.

“...Finally beat my PR on the final day, huh?”

Rein mumbles to himself, seemingly not too thrilled about the achievement.

He glances at the digital clock at the corner of the game menu and breathes a heavy sigh. And, as if to rub it in further, a system message arrives. The content is short, yet the text has been formatted with a large, bold font. Furthermore, the message bypasses the Mailbox function and forcefully appears on top of other menus.

[ ALL SERVERS WILL BE TERMINATED IN 5 MINUTES. ALL SYSTEMS AND SERVICES WILL SHUT DOWN. FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION, PLEASE DISCONNECT WITH YOUR FULL-DIVE DEVICES AHEAD OF TIME. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY NEURAL DAMAGE CAUSED BY REMAINING INSIDE BEYOND THE TERMINATION OF SERVICE TIME. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND SUPPORT FOR THE PAST 10 YEARS. WE WISH YOU THE BEST! ]

“I know already. Fine, I’ll log out. I don’t wanna’ wake up braindead either, y’know?”

Rein clicks his tongue and closes all game menus, save for one. Scrolling down on the remaining menu, he quickly spots the Log Out button and hovers his index finger over it.

The distance between his fingertip and the button is a mere centimeter, yet he feels as if there exists an impenetrable force stopping him from pressing it.

He looks over his shoulder and takes a final look around. The scenery of this dungeon has become so familiar, he almost thinks of it as a bar he frequents. After all, to achieve the number one record, he has attempted countless speedruns on this particular dungeon.

And now, he will never see it in its full glory again. Indeed, he hoards several terabytes of high quality screenshots, being a player who has enjoyed Phantasm since its first testing phases. However, a full rendition of this map, or any other map for that matter, will cease to exist after midnight.

“Alright, enough. The devs are working on a new title and whatnot. Let’s just look forward to that.”

Rein turns his eyes back to the Log Out button——

“What the—!”

——only to see a monster standing before him, its glowing red eyes staring directly into his.

Rein instinctively activates one of his skills and jumps back several steps, leaving behind afterimages which disperse into toxic clouds after a second.

“Is that Yurathi’gor?! But I just killed it??”

Rein quickly glances at the oversized corpse of this dungeon’s final boss and confirms that it is indeed still there. It was a tough battle, since he wanted to set a new speedrun record, but the monster itself was not strong enough to hold back Rein in his fully prepared state. Moreover, the timer for the dungeon reset is ticking, still.

“No, this one’s a lot smaller...”

The monster in front of him does possess the appearance of Yurathi’gor, the Final Servant; however, its body size is several times smaller, with a number of minor differences in colours and equipment.

“Analyze.”

Rein wants to fully identify it, but he cannot afford taking his eyes off it to find the necessary items from his Inventory. Thus, he has to settle with using only his best appraisal skill to take a peek at its Stats.

Yuragor, the True Servant of Morthoth

Level ? ? ?

Game Master

“Hah!? ‘Fuck is this?! HEY, are you a developer? Sorry, I’m logging out right now!”

Yuragor neglects to give a reply. It simply raises its hand and calls up a larger, more detailed menu than the regular game menu. Rein knows for certain that is no ordinary menu, because even he can see it.

Normally, players cannot see each other’s menu. The only time someone sees a menu not their own is the occasion of a Moderator showing up and assisting them with bugs and glitches.

‘Is that perhaps the game’s source code or something?’ Rein wonders, carefully observing.

Yuragor activates a few functions from the menu with inhuman speed. Once it finds what it needs, Yuragor begins to rapidly clicks a certain button. It moves so fast, its finger appears blurry, similar to a helicopter’s spinning blades.

[ ALL SERVERS WILL BE TERMINATED IN 5 MINUTES. ALL SYSTEMS... ]

[ ALL SERVERS WILL BE TERMINATED IN 5 MINUTES. ALL SYSTEMS... ]

[ ALL SERVERS WILL BE TERMINATED IN 5 MINUTES. ALL SYSTEMS... ]

[ ALL SERVERS WILL BE TERMINATED IN 5 MINUTES. ALL SYSTEMS... ]

[ ALL SERVERS WILL BE TERMINATED IN 5 MINUTES. ALL SYSTEMS... ]

[ ALL SERVERS WILL BE TERMINATED IN 5 MINUTES. ALL SYSTEMS... ]

[ ALL SERVERS WILL BE TERMINATED IN 5 MINUTES. ALL SYSTEMS... ]

“Huh!?! What the fuck!!!”

Rein’s field of vision is bombarded with the same message from earlier, hundreds of times over. No matter how fast he performs the Close All gesture, they continue to pop up faster than him.

The spamming eventually stops; however, Yuragor itself begins to behave strangely.

It randomly activates a variety of spells and spawns hundreds of random items, before completely glitching out and teleporting itself all over the place.

Wanting to understand the situation a little more, Rein activates his skills and quickly dashes over to the items that Yuragor have created. With Analyze, he discovers that they are all weirdly misconfigured. They have completely mismatched shapes, descriptions, and functions. Furthermore, none of them actually work when he tries to activate a few.

‘Can’t risk these being used as weapons agaisnt me...’

Rein attempts to use the Collect All gesture, thinking that it may not work on misconfigured items. However, betraying his expectations, everything swiftly goes into his Inventory without problem.

Though, he does not have the time to celebrate. When he looks over to Yuragor, it is now trying to craft a new monster from the 3D models of various dungeon bosses.

“No!”

Rein activates a short-distance, low-cooldown teleportation skill and closes the gap on Yuragor in an instant. His gauntlets quickly enter combat mode just before he drives his fist into Yuragor’s face. A damage number shows up, bearing the colour of a critical hit. Yuragor flies past the corpse of Yurathi’gor before landing on the ground. The disfigured creature it was trying to craft falls apart at Rein’s feet and disappear, prompting a few error messages to pop up.

“Looks like the game’s engine couldn’t comprehend whatever it was tryna’ make, or something...”

Rein chugs a number of potions and elixirs before activating even more buffs, going through the entire routine he creates specifically to speedrun dungeon bosses. His gauntlets receive the correct combination of power-ups and transform into a pair of black dragon claws.

And, just in case, Rein brings up the game menu that was blocked by Yuragor’s spam earlier——

“HUH!?”

——only to notice the disappearance of the Log Out button.

“Tch. I’ll just kill this thing first, then!”

Rein tries his best to calm himself. His instincts fully advise against running away, when Yuragor does not appear to have taken enough damage to render it helpless. If he leaves and allows it to go near uncleared dungeons, there is no telling what manner of creature it will then attempt to create.

Once his gauntlets finish charging energy, he dashes toward Yuragor and activates a chain of combat skills.

The first hit to Yuragor’s abdomen deals very little damage, however its Stun value is the second highest in the game. Rein gains more confidence having found out that the skill affects Yuragor’s movement just as well as it does a regular monster.

Greatly hindered by the status effect’s long duration, Yuragor opens itself up to the next attack: a flurry of punches with a high Armour Pierce value. The damage number does not have a chance to go away, as it continues to increase rapidly, never losing the colour of critical hits.

Once the flurry ends, Yuragor moves its head, but is struck with a fist to the face with a high Stagger value. Its body shakes for a moment, creating an opportunity for Rein to slam it into the ground, rendering it unable to move again, due to the Impair value of the following, slamming attack.

Not missing a beat, Rein follows up with a three hit combo directly to Yuragor’s chest, breaking apart its armour and applying a 2.5x damage modifier. During the last second of Yuragor’s impaired state, Rein jumped into the air and winds up both of his fists. The aura of a black dragon appears to accompany the animation of the attack as he dives down on Yuragor with a massive two-hand strike, sinking the ground into a crater.

The damage number doubles in an instant, turning into the final colour of a Mortal Hit. This special damage number only appears when certain chain combos are executed perfectly. Moreover, it requires every hit to be a critical strike. As the result, when a Mortal Hit is achieved, the Instant Death value is applied to the final attack in the chain.

Once the dust animation clears out, Yuragor has been horizontally split into two at the chest, its once glowing eyes darkened.

“Shit... that was so lucky. Can’t believe I actually lucked out like that!”

Rein feels less pleased with his skills than impressed with his luck. Over the ten years he has played Phantasm, the number of times he pulled off a Mortal Hit combo could be counted with one hand.

[ CONGRATULATIONS - YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE SERVANT OF MORTHOTH - YOU ARE QUALIFIED ]

Just as Rein calls up the game menu, it is once again blocked by a system message that he cannot control. This new prompt has no Close, OK, or Cancel button. It simply occupies a large part of his field of view.

“Go away!”

No matter how much he tries to use the Close All gesture, it refuses to disappear.

Click——

“Huh?”

Rein looks down as he hears a strange sound coming from Yuragor’s corpse. A mechanism on Yuragor’s forehead reveals itself and begins to spin. Once all the components lock into their places, a powerful light bursts out, instantly rendering him blind.

Though there is no explosion, Rein’s senses rapidly become numb, his consciousness quickly fading. The sensation reminds him of being put to sleep before a difficult wisdom tooth extraction.

The last thing he remembers is an unusual, loud ringing in his ears.