Former Ranker's Newbie Life-Chapter 0: Prologue

He was fucked.

Matt Damon stranded on Mars[1] had the luxury of time to think things over but Do-Jin didn’t have that at all.

With a hole in his stomach the size of a human head, what the hell was there to think about?

If this wasn’t being fucked, then no one in the world ever had been.

“Urgh...!”

The slightest movement sent a wave of intense, raw pain shooting through his entire body.

Even though this was virtual reality, the pain wasn't absent as one might hope. In fact, it felt real, however, the pain was of a lower grade compared to the inflicted wound. It felt more like having a wound poked around under bad anesthesia and the sensation was unbearably unpleasant.

But sitting still and waiting to die wasn’t an option.

Do-Jin clenched his teeth and scanned his surroundings, hoping against all odds that someone else might have survived the hellish laser barrage.

But all he could see was a landscape of scorched melted rock and a sliver of black sky visible from the deep crevasse where he’d fallen.

Damn it. Is this event really going to fail like this?

Considering how the laser beams blanketed the ground like a carpet-bombing and the aftermath split and collapsed the earth swallowing people whole, it was honestly a miracle that Do-Jin was even alive. Expecting there to be another lucky bastard out there was pure greed and even if a few others had survived, it wouldn’t change anything.

Still, the fact that the last one standing was none other than himself who was the lowest-ranked among the elites and mockingly nicknamed the Glass Cannon was absurd.

Do-Jin let out a laugh and shook his shoulders in disbelief.

“Haha... ha—ugh...!” His laugh turned into a groan as pain flared up again.

He decided to stop moving altogether and leaned back and shut his eyes.

The pain faded a little but now the looming disaster ahead started to cloud his mind.

Do-Jin silently stewed in anxiety.

Death penalties like losing levels, dropping items or having connection restrictions weren’t the problem. Neither was losing the rewards from this once-in-a-lifetime World Event. It would surely sting, but that didn't scare him.

What really scared him was the penalty for failing the World Event itself.

In LOST, failing even a World Boss Raid was enough to mess up the entire game world.

For instance, when players couldn’t take down the resurrected one-horned dragon Galante, the areas contaminated by its miasma remained lands of death to this day.

Then what of this event? It was on a completely different scale. For failing to stop an enemy of this magnitude... Who the hell knew what would happen next?

Just thinking about it was enough to sink him into despair.

Fucking Möbius bastards. At least make it look like we could win, Do-Jin cursed.

For him, LOST wasn’t just a game. It was an escape from the nightmare that was his real life.

It was the one place where he could forget about the aftermath of his car accident, and the crippled body that wouldn’t even let him walk on his own two legs.

If he hadn’t had this escape, in all likelihood, he would’ve been crushed under the weight of his misfortunes and ended it all already.

Sure, he’d thrown his life away chasing this game. He’d lost a lot and his life was a mess. But because of that, he’d only clung to LOST even harder.

And now, faced with the reality that this world might also go to the shithole, Do-Jin was scared out of his mind.

At the same time, he hated himself for being so fucking pathetic.

“You fucking idiot...” The hatred Do-Jin felt for himself had no limits. A suffocating wave of self-loathing tightened around his throat.

The misfortunes he’d faced were overwhelming, but it wasn’t like he’d never had a chance to patch things up. The one who dragged his life into a bottomless pit past the point of no return was none other than Do-Jin himself.

Exhausted from running away and disgusted with his own pathetic self, Do-Jin wished for death.

No...

He wanted to live again.

As he realized this, another voice, on the brink of death, reached his ears. “Is this... my limit this time, too?”

Do-Jin turned his head toward the sound.

Through the cracks in the shattered rocks, he caught sight of a pale figure.

She was the Starsea Princess, the star of this World Event who had displayed overwhelming power, single-handedly slaughtering countless monsters on a battlefield where even LOST rankers had been completely helpless.

Yet now, even she looked as broken and battered as Do-Jin felt.

Her once-radiant platinum hair was caked with dirt and blood. Her pristine white armor was shattered almost beyond recognition. Her body was covered in severe injuries, and her battered appearance made her look like a corpse waiting for its final breath.

Without thinking, Do-Jin called her name.

“Starsea Princess...”

Hearing his voice, the princess slowly raised her head. Her deep, shimmering eyes locked onto him.

“It’s you... again,” she said softly.

Do-Jin couldn’t make sense of her words.

Again? Now that he thought about it, hadn’t she said something similar a moment ago?

In the real world, Do-Jin might have been a wreck, but in LOST, he was still a ranker, sitting proudly at 998th place. That rank wasn’t a fluke, either. He’d clawed his way there by crushing competitors who had been playing for three years longer than him.

His intuition as a ranker was screaming at him. The word “again,” spoken by the Starsea Princess, wasn’t just casual. It was a critical keyword loaded with meaning.

No way... Could this be a hidden quest?

Actually, it made perfect sense. If there was ever a situation where a hidden quest would appear, it was a moment like this.

Those fucking Möbius devs—the sadistic bastards loved screwing players over with absurdly difficult, borderline unfair challenges. That was already a well-known fact. But even taking that into account, the difficulty of this World Event had been insane.

What if the event was deliberately designed to be unwinnable, and the real solution lay in triggering a hidden quest through this interaction with the Starsea Princess?

It all made sense.

The more his thoughts aligned, the faster his heart raced.

The despair and hopelessness he’d been drowning in just moments ago, looking like a depressed wreck had completely vanished.

He knew how pathetic it was to get so worked up over a hidden quest. He knew how utterly ridiculous and hopeless it made him look.

But he didn’t care.

He was already too far gone, completely addicted to this world.

“You’ve always been the one to witness my repeated deaths,” she said quietly.

Repeated deaths. Another keyword had surfaced.

It’s probably a regression concept. Do-Jin quickly worked his thoughts toward a conclusion. He wanted to tread carefully, but his numbing senses warned him he didn’t have much time left.

He needed to secure the hidden quest before the forced logout kicked in.

Do-Jin spoke quickly, “Are you saying... you’ve been dying over and over?”

The Starsea Princess nodded. “To prevent destruction, I had to grow stronger. I grew stronger each experience—each one making me stronger than the last. Now... I am the strongest I’ve ever been. And yet, ironically, I feel weaker than ever. So weak I want to give up entirely.”

For the first time, Do-Jin’s focused expression faltered. He knew this conversation was part of a sequence meant to trigger a hidden quest. He knew better than to let unnecessary emotions get involved. It was foolish to do so.

However, hearing her talk about being so exhausted that she wanted to give up wasn’t something Do-Jin could dismiss as just NPC dialogue.

It brought back memories of his own past, when he’d been crushed by misfortune and reduced to a hollow shell of a person.

Maybe that was why the words that finally came out of his mouth carried an undeniable sincerity. “You can’t give up.”

The Starsea Princess fixed her gaze on him and asked, “Why can’t I?”

Do-Jin replied, “That’s...”

But his words faltered. His tongue refused to move, as if it had turned to stone.

The thought crossed his mind, Did he, someone who had spent his life running away, really have the right to tell her, someone who had fought against destruction across countless lives, not to give up?

But his silence seemed to carry a different meaning for the Starsea Princess. “Do you pity me? Do you think I’m just a wretched woman to be pitied?”

“I—” Do-Jin tried to respond, but she cut him off before he could finish.

“Thank you.”

“What?”

As he looked at her in confusion, the Starsea Princess gave him a faint, silent smile.

“Living as the empire’s greatest spear and shield, my life has always been surrounded by countless emotions and gazes—jealousy, love, admiration, resentment, reverence, fear, hope, and doubt... That’s how I have lived. But I don’t think I have ever been pitied. As far as I know, no one has ever looked at me with eyes like yours.”

Do-Jin couldn’t say a word.

The sheer exhaustion in her eyes, the weariness and regret worn down by years, left him utterly speechless.

The Starsea Princess turned her gaze back to him and asked, “Do you have regrets? Regrets so deep, so painful that you wish you could change your past?”

“I do.” This time, he couldn’t hold back from replying instantly, almost on an instinct.

He had always wished for it, and only moments ago, he had been lost in the same thought.

The Starsea Princess seemed amused by how fast he answered and she let out a quiet chuckle as her shoulders shook with laughter.

Then, she reached into the air and retrieved an intricately crafted ornament of silver and gold, gleaming faintly even in the dim light.

Looking down at the object in her hand, she said, “Well, how many people live a life without regrets? I’m sure you have things you wish to change, too. Consider this a reward for keeping me company through my repeated deaths, so in the future, I wouldn’t face them alone either. And... also a reward for pitying someone so pathetic that they’d abandon their duty.”

The air around them changed.

Do-Jin didn’t need anyone to tell him—the hidden quest was about to begin.

Yet, strangely, he felt a bit bittersweet.

He couldn’t quite pinpoint what or why but something about the moment left him yearning.

Maybe it was the side effect of experiencing genuine human emotions and thoughts for the first time in a long while. His mind felt unbearably cluttered.

And as if to make things worse, an overwhelming drowsiness began to take hold.

Damn... am I being logged out...?

As his consciousness blurred, the Starsea Princess’s voice resonated faintly in his mind.

—I will return to you the time you’ve lost. So live. A life without regret or stain.

Her tone was dignified and formal as expected of someone royal, but there was a warmth to her voice.

***

Something was wrong.

When he opened his eyes, the speckled cover of his VR capsule should have been the first thing he saw, and beyond that, the dim, cramped interior of his room.

But none of that was there. Instead, he was staring at a ceiling covered in colorful stickers.

The problem was that those childish stickers felt incredibly familiar to him.

“Is this a dream...?” he murmured drowsily, startled by the sound of his own voice.

It wasn’t the rough, raspy voice he had grown used to. This voice was clear, clean, and youthful.

That wasn’t the only strange thing.

The chronic pain and fatigue he had endured for so long, the symptoms of the lingering aftereffects of his car accident and years of self-neglect were completely absent.

Instead, he felt relaxed as if he had just woken from a deep, restful sleep.

A mounting sense of dissonance began to build within him. And eventually, that growing unease snapped him fully awake.

“Wha—!” Do-Jin’s half-closed eyes shot open.

What came into view was an unfamiliar yet deeply familiar scene. It was unmistakable. He was back in the studio apartment he used to live in.

Thinking he was dreaming, Do-Jin slapped his cheek hard, sat up, and rushed toward the bathroom.

But then he stopped in his tracks and looked down at the floor.

It felt far away. It had been a long time since he had seen the floor from such a height, ever since he had lost the ability to stand.

“I’m walking,” He muttered in a daze and his voice was trembling as he took an unsteady step forward.

Thud.

The moment he became conscious of his movements, his steps turned clumsy and he tripped.

But he didn’t feel any pain.

Do-Jin clutched at random things within reach for support and finally made it to the bathroom.

And when he looked into the mirror, he froze completely still.

In the mirror was Do-Jin—not the broken, sickly man he’d been after the accident. It was the younger, healthier, more vibrant version of himself.

Do-Jin stared blankly at his reflection in the mirror. He couldn’t say a word. He couldn’t think a single thought.

So, he just kept looking to confirm that this was not some surreal illusion but reality.

For a very long time.

1. The movie “The Martian.” ☜