The final boss fell without ceremony.
No cinematic explosion.
No triumphant orchestral swell.
Just a clean, decisive strike—executed exactly as planned.
On the screen, the Demon Lord's health bar emptied with a precision that would have made any speedrunner proud. The last sliver of crimson vanished, and the towering figure froze mid-motion, its massive blade suspended in the air as if the world itself had hesitated.
Then the model shattered into fragments of black light.
The battlefield went silent.
The young man sitting in front of the monitor didn't cheer. He didn't raise his fists or lean back in triumph. He simply exhaled—slowly, deeply—like someone finally setting down a weight they had been carrying for far too long.
"Clear," he muttered.
His fingers remained on the keyboard and mouse, unmoving, as if letting go might somehow undo what he had just done.
For seven years.
That was how long this game had been part of his life.
Not casually. Not as a distraction. But as something closer to a companion—sometimes an obsession, sometimes an escape, sometimes the only place where effort felt rewarded in a clean, logical way.
Eternal Ascension.
A brutal fantasy RPG notorious for its unforgiving mechanics, hidden routes, irreversible choices, and endings that punished even the smallest misstep. Players joked that it wasn't a game—it was a trial. Walkthroughs became obsolete within months of each patch. Entire forums were filled with debates about whether certain endings were even achievable without datamining.
And now… it was over.
The screen flickered.
A message appeared at the center of the display.
[FINAL BOSS DEFEATED]
The text lingered longer than usual.
He frowned.
Normally, the post-clear sequence triggered almost instantly—credits, statistics, maybe a cryptic hint about New Game Plus. He'd seen it before on streams. He knew the flow.
But this time, the screen didn't change.
The battlefield remained frozen in place. The shattered fragments of the Demon Lord hovered unnaturally in the air, as if caught in an invisible pause.
A second message faded in beneath the first.
[WORLD STATUS: STABILIZING…]
"…That's new."
He leaned forward slightly, interest cutting through his exhaustion. His eyes scanned the edges of the screen, looking for UI glitches, hidden prompts, anything.
Then a third line appeared.
[PLAYER PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
His lips twitched into a faint smile.
"Well, yeah. Took you long enough."
He hadn't brute-forced this ending. That was the part he was most proud of.
No overleveled build.
No exploit abuse.
No last-minute patch cheese.
He had planned this route for months—balancing risk, optimizing resource use, intentionally letting certain characters die while preserving others, avoiding the World Blessing path entirely until the final arc. A route most players dismissed as "theoretically possible but practically insane."
He had done it anyway.
Because that was how he played.
Not flashy.
Not reckless.
Just… optimal.
The screen dimmed slightly.
[ENDING CONDITION: TRUE SEAL ACHIEVED]
His fingers finally relaxed.
"There it is."
The True Seal Ending—the one no one had confirmed legitimately. Not victory. Not annihilation. Not domination. A compromise that kept the world intact without resetting it.
A "good" ending, depending on how you defined good.
He leaned back in his chair, joints creaking in protest after hours of stillness. His eyes burned from staring at the screen, but he didn't look away.
He wanted to see everything.
The monitor brightened again, but instead of credits, a new interface slid into view—minimalist, monochrome, unfamiliar.
[CONGRATULATIONS, PLAYER]
That… wasn't right.
The font was different. Cleaner. Sharper.
[YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF THE WORLD'S SCRIPT]
His smile faded.
"…Script?"
The room felt quiet in a way that had nothing to do with sound. Even the low hum of his PC fans seemed distant, muffled.
[NO FURTHER WALKTHROUGHS AVAILABLE]
A strange chill crawled up his spine.
This wasn't a normal end message. Not even a hidden one. He knew the datamined strings. He knew the unused assets. This wasn't part of any known build.
[THANK YOU FOR PLAYING]
The message lingered.
Too long.
He reached for the mouse, intending to click, to skip, to open the menu—anything.
The cursor didn't move.
"…Huh."
He tried again. Keyboard input. Alt-tab. Task manager.
Nothing.
The screen brightened, the white bleeding outward until it consumed the battlefield, the UI, everything.
His reflection stared back at him from the glass of the monitor—pale, tired, eyes sharp with the last traces of focus.
Then the final message appeared, centered and stark.
[GAME CLEAR]
No sound accompanied it.
No music.
Just silence.
And then—
Pain.
Sharp, sudden, absolute.
It wasn't like in the game. There was no health bar to drain, no warning flash, no slow fade. One moment he was sitting in his chair, and the next his chest seized as if a massive hand had clenched around his heart.
His breath caught.
"What—"
The word never finished.
His vision blurred violently, white fracturing into black at the edges. The room tilted. The weight in his chest intensified, crushing, relentless.
He tried to stand.
The chair clattered to the floor instead.
Air refused to enter his lungs. His thoughts scattered, no longer neat or optimized or calm. Just instinct, raw and panicked.
This isn't how it ends, a part of him thought distantly.
Not like this.
His body hit the floor.
The ceiling spun above him, lights smearing into long streaks. His ears rang, a high-pitched whine that drowned out everything else.
Strangely, his mind didn't race through regrets.
There was no dramatic montage of memories. No unfinished dreams flashing before his eyes.
Just one clear, absurdly calm thought.
…I cleared it.
The pain began to fade—not because it lessened, but because sensation itself was slipping away. His limbs felt heavy, distant, as if they no longer quite belonged to him.
The world dimmed.
The last thing he saw wasn't the room.
It was the screen.
Still glowing.
Still displaying those two words.
[GAME CLEAR]
His consciousness unraveled quietly, like a thread finally reaching its end.
No light.
No sound.
No sense of time.
Just darkness.
And then—
Something shifted.
Not a sensation. Not a thought.
A transition.
As if the darkness itself had depth.
As if he were falling—not downward, but inward.
Far away, something pulsed.
A rhythm.
Steady. Slow.
A heartbeat.
His awareness twitched, fragile and incomplete, and for the briefest instant—before everything dissolved completely—one final idea surfaced, unbidden and strange.
…Why does it feel like the game isn't finished?
The heartbeat grew louder.
The darkness thinned.
And the world, somewhere beyond his fading consciousness, began to load.