Chapter 1: Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo
"Who… am I?"
I stared at my reflection in the mirror.
If anyone saw me right now, they would think I had completely lost my mind.
"What's my name?"
My name is Hoyeol Lee.
Ho (浩) for greatness, Yeol (悅) for joy.
My grandfather gave me this name, overjoyed to finally see a grandson born after three granddaughters.
But instead of my actual name, a completely different one slipped past my lips.
"…Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo."
It sounded like the name of a nobleman from some obscure, fictional country.
A ridiculously long name.
You might be wondering if I had suddenly remembered a past life, but I wish it were that simple.
No, this wasn't some cliché fantasy trope, and the reflection in the mirror proved it.
My eyes were noticeably sharper.
My physique was visibly sturdier.
And most importantly, there was the floating text hovering right in front of my face.
Name: Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo
This was an awakening. In short, I had just become a "Player."
I could accept that much. The real problem was my new appearance and that bizarre name.
No matter how I looked at it, this was from over ten years ago… or exactly twelve years.
Back when I was fifteen, right in the thick of my middle school edgelord phase.
This was undeniably the character I had created.
I muttered without realizing it.
"…It appears I am royally screwed."
I was speaking so elegantly, as if I had actually become some nobleman.
* * *
I'm fucked. So fucked!
Contrary to my internal panic, my physical actions were overflowing with absolute composure.
From the cupboard, I took out a teacup I'd never once used.
I brewed green tea, something I normally wouldn't touch.
Then, I sat at the table and savored it.
"The aroma is surprisingly pleasant."
…Am I shooting a historical drama here?!
I was the one speaking, but the tone was incredibly cringeworthy.
Regardless, I could instinctively tell what was happening.
Both my behavior and my speech had fundamentally changed under the influence of the awakening.
Player Awakening.
I always thought those words had nothing to do with me, so I had completely tuned them out.
After all, it had been over a decade since I played.
Chronicles of Arcana
Ever since its release thirteen years ago, the virtual reality game had never once stepped down from the top spot.
It wasn't just a game; it transcended entertainment to become a second life for many.
[Unidentified structures appearing worldwide! Are they related to Arcana's service termination?]
[Monsters appearing across the globe… People claim they are definitely Arcana monsters. Controversy spreads like wildfire!]
[Emergence of a new human race? Mysterious creatures defeated barehanded…]
Not only did the game become reality, but its unworldly monsters began spilling into our world.
The only ones capable of hunting these creatures were the players—ordinary people who had awakened the superhuman abilities of their in-game characters.
The world dubbed this the Great Cataclysm.
When I first heard the news while serving in the military, I flinched.
Ah, shit. If I'd known this was going to happen, I wouldn't have quit.
I even used to fantasize about becoming a player while standing on the night watch.
Why?
Because players were literal heroes.
[Player 'Golden Flash' defeats the named monster 'General Sekir'!]
[Rift clear rewards estimated at roughly $5,000,000…]
[In-Depth Interview with Player Taemin Nam, the Man Who Prevented Catastrophe]
But that was where the fantasy ended.
Honestly, even if I had awakened back then, it wouldn't have amounted to anything.
I had quit playing Chronicles of Arcana after less than a year due to a very real, practical problem: the VR capsule alone cost a whopping ten thousand dollars, and the monthly subscription fees were pushing hundreds.
"Kids, I'm sorry."
"It's okay, Dad. You don't need to apologize to us."
"Sob… I'm so ashamed to even look at you kids."
"Ah, come on, Mom, why are you being like this too?"
"Hoyeol and the rest of us are all grown up. What's there to worry about?"
It happened around the time I entered high school, right after the foreclosure notices were slapped onto our front door.
I completely shut off my interest in Arcana, let alone gaming in general, and just lived my life. Whether I liked it or not, I had no choice but to study.
The result of that sacrifice was my current life.
I had a pretty decent job and a pretty decent apartment. I enjoyed a peaceful routine of visiting my family every weekend.
It wasn't a life of luxury, but without any grand ambitions, I was perfectly okay.
"…However, what is the meaning of all this?"
My head was pounding.
I forced myself to take another sip of tea.
First of all, let's just ignore this damn mannerism. The important thing was that I had awakened as a player, and the character I had raised twelve years ago, Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo, had been assimilated into me, Hoyeol Lee.
I'd seen interviews about this phenomenon before.
"The biggest change since my awakening? I guess it's the feeling of synchronizing with my character. It genuinely feels like my real self and my avatar have merged into one. You could loosely call it a form of possession. But even if it is, I was the one controlling that character in the first place. So even if they 'take over,' not much actually changes. Thanks to that, though, I can face real-world monsters without getting scared."
The difference for me was that my playtime was over a decade ago.
Worse, my middle-school self had been severely immersed in roleplaying this character.
"Quite delicious, indeed."
The immersion was so strong, it altered my actual taste buds.
…I'm really going to go crazy at this rate.
Perhaps partly due to Arcana's character data merging with my own, I started remembering Grandfel's long-forgotten backstory.
Naturally, it was a massive lore dump created by my teenage edgelord self.
『 Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo.
Exact age unknown.
Heir to a great family, but his house fell to ruin at the hands of a demon. As the sole survivor, Grandfel walked the path of a Demon Hunter to exact revenge.
Characterized by long, flowing silver hair and a devastatingly handsome appearance. His everyday speech carries the noble elegance of his status.』
To write something so useless in such specific detail… I'm really losing my mind. Past me, you absolute bastard!
It was a backstory so cringeworthy that just thinking about it made my toes curl.
Obviously, not a single bit of that lore was reflected in the game itself; it was just scribbles in my notebooks.
Why did I write that he was a fallen noble? Because I had to start out as a Level 1 beginner with absolutely nothing to my name.
I just slapped on the excuse of "ruin" to make being broke sound cool.
Honestly, the only part that actually made it into the game was my class, Demon Hunter.
Name: Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo
Class: Demon Hunter
Back then, I played Arcana completely immersed in the lore.
Simply put, I wasn't just playing the game—I was living Grandfel's life.
Looking back now, I was an absolute lunatic. But I was only a middle schooler, an eighth grader, no less. It was supposed to just be a funny memory!
"…Memories. How nostalgic."
But the memory I wanted to forget had become my new reality.
Damn it, my migraine is getting worse. I'm terrified someone might see me in this embarrassing state.
…Wait. Don't I have to go to work tomorrow?!
I had to think rationally.
Can I go to the office like this and work normally?
Corporate life wasn't easy. You'd often get into situations where you had to bow your head and swallow your pride.
But could I—whose very palate has changed under Grandfel's influence—survive even a single day in that harsh world?
『Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo is noble.
No matter who his opponent is, he absolutely never bows his head.
His pride is immeasurably heavy and unshakable, even if he were to sink and drown under its weight.』
…It'd be a miracle if I didn't throw hot coffee in my manager's face. I might end up paying more in settlement money than I earn in salary.
At the end of my elegant teatime, I came to one conclusion.
"A noble never bows their head to a mere commoner."
My mouth acted on its own again.
Simply put, I was going to quit my job.
I decided to embrace living as a player from now on.
It might sound impulsive, but this was a purely rational decision.
In this state, I'd only be a nuisance at a normal job. Meanwhile, my living expenses were going to skyrocket thanks to this damn aristocratic palate.
I was going to have to add the cost of premium tea times to my monthly budget.
Ultimately, I had no choice but to work as a player just to make a living.
Of course, I didn't have any grand ambitions.
As I got older, I naturally learned my place in the world.
The guy who firmly believed he was someone special—that middle school edgelord—no longer existed.
Just enough to make a living. If I stick to that, working as a player shouldn't put my life in danger, right?
First, I needed to search online. I knew far too little about the world of players.
It's not like I grew up wanting to join their ranks; just scraping by took everything I had.
Still, the absurd amount of money they made?
That was the one thing I truly envied.
"…Hmm."
Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. Articles about players were overflowing with jaw-dropping numbers. But even as I read them, I felt entirely indifferent.
『 To Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo, wealth was a fleeting concept.
Born as the heir to a great family and having tasted the absolute pinnacle of luxury, he had no reason to obsess over riches and glory.』
This, too, was probably the influence of that damn lore.
Still, maybe I should consider it a blessing. It means I won't risk my life out of greed.
But before all that, there was a much more serious problem.
"…How feeble I am."
Could I even properly kill a single mob? Could I even manage to tag along in a party?
Anxiety washed over me.
The monsters appearing in reality were no joke.
I checked the comments on a recent raid video.
↳Wow, that was super close lol.
↳A party with an average level of 200 barely cleared that, right?
↳Look at the level scaling getting higher and higher tbh.
↳Rankers might actually like it, though? It gives a ton of EXP.
The average level of the party was a staggering 200.
I quietly checked my status window.
Name: Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo
Class: Demon Hunter
Level: 55
A measly Level 55.
My level was exactly the same as it was over a decade ago. Back then, even if I wasn't a ranker, I was still pretty high-leveled.
Time was cruel.
Over a single decade, even bedrock eroded and ancient rivers forgot their course.
"To have squandered such precious time in utter futility…"
A brief moment passed after spitting out that unnecessarily dramatic soliloquy.
I typed 'Demon Hunter' into the search bar.
"Ah… How could I have forgotten."
The Demon Hunter's leveling guide!
I had completely forgotten that back then, Demon Hunters could only level up their characters through a very restricted method.
Unlike other classes that leveled up through hunting, Demon Hunters had to level up exclusively through quests.
《Skills》
Natural Enemy
Silver Mastery
Shooting Mastery
Simultaneous Shot
Exorcism
The vast majority of those quests involved exorcising demons.
Natural Enemy: Combat power increases exponentially when fighting against the demonkind.
Demon Hunters were overwhelmingly strong against demonkind, but embarrassingly weak against everything else.
Because of this, it was a class that couldn't even show its face in normal hunting grounds.
Some might ask, "Then shouldn't you just hunt demons?"
Unfortunately, demons simply didn't exist in Arcana out in the wild back then.
The only time a Demon Hunter could encounter a demon was during specific class quests. As a result, it was an incredibly unpopular job.
"But that is merely the past."
Right! Twelve years is more than enough for a new Demon Hunter leveling guide to come out. Sure, now that Arcana had merged with reality, a game guide might not apply one-to-one. Still, it would at least give me a solid baseline to work with. Alright, let's look it up.
The headache that had been throbbing since my awakening gradually started to clear up.
Maybe it was the tea.
Or maybe not.
Thank God I was born in the information age. To think I can find any information I want just by moving my fingers.
I browsed through the search results, only to freeze.
"…What is the meaning of this?"
What popped up was completely different from what I expected.
"Akshan base… got annihilated?"
Just what the hell happened in Arcana over the past twelve years?!
Akshan base was the headquarters of the Demon Hunters. It was where players carried out their class advancement quests, underwent training, and were reborn into the class.
But for some reason, the base had been destroyed, and all the NPCs had been annihilated. Because of that, advancing to the Demon Hunter class had become impossible.
And that happened a long time ago, too? Wait… then what about me? Where the hell is my new leveling guide?!
Scouring through every online community, I finally realized the truth.
↳I miss the old days, back then there was a class called Demon Hunter too
↳Fr? First time hearing about it
↳Lol you don't know how trash the Demon Hunter was back then
↳Lol, I deleted mine and rerolled a new one
↳It only had the drip, its performance was absolute dogwater
The more I searched, the more my dread turned into certainty.
There wasn't a single player currently active who possessed the Demon Hunter class.
Since I had awakened with my old data… it seemed I was the only one left.
"Good heavens."
I resented my past self and his atrocious tastes.
Even if I was an edgelord obsessed with looking cool, would it have killed me to care about class performance just a little bit?
"My head aches."
It was probably because I had taken in way too much information so suddenly.
I needed a break.
Just as I was about to set my smartphone down, a certain comment caught my eye.
↳But if I knew this was gonna happen, I would've kept leveling my Demon Hunter.
What on earth is the context for this?
Out of curiosity, I scrolled further down.
And I froze.
[Demonkind officially added in the new update! The difficulty of rifts skyrockets! Surge in player deaths!]
Wait, demons were added? And those very demons are now running rampant in reality too? Could this mean…
A possibility bloomed in my mind, but I didn't dare say it out loud.
The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment.
More than anything, even players with much higher levels than me seemed to be struggling against these new demons.
But contrary to my rational self-awareness, my mouth moved on its own.
『 Paradoxically, Grandfel Claudi Arpheus Romeo's pride soars to its absolute highest when standing before a demon.』
"Consider it an honor."
『 No demonic temptation, deception, or tribulations can blemish the noble pride of Grandfel.』
"For I shall personally send you all back to hell."
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