"To hell with this. I'm finished!"
Since the moment I first initiated this cursed simulation, those words had become my constant refrain.
It had not even been a week since I began, yet the cycle of failure was already absolute.
What bureaucratic madness defined the logic of 'Block Count'? How could my Skadi, a six-star titan of supposedly peerless martial prowess, fail to intercept a few wretched Originium Slugs? It defied tactical reason.
That single strategic oversight cost me a perfect operation. In a fit of cold fury, I hurled my tablet—still flickering with the glow of defeat—onto the threadbare sheets of my bed.
Lately, nothing in my life had been spared from this sense of rot.
I once believed that by clawing my way into a prestigious Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, even if it wasn't the top-tier 'SKY' universities, my future would be forged in something better than iron. I thought my path would open.
Past tense. The optimism was a lie of my youth.
The crushing weight of academia was the source of my undoing.
"That geriatric vulture is calling. Does he even possess a clock? It is three in the morning."
Four years ago, why was I possessed by the intellectual hubris to wonder why the Great Experiment of Communism had crumbled? Why did I seek the answer to that ideological decay?
And why, in a moment of utter weakness, did I pose that question to that specific Professor?
Why did I not recoil when he offered to make me his research assistant—his academic serf?
"Yes, yes... Professor. Ah, hiking? This weekend? Of course, I understand. Understood. Yes. Have a restful night, sir."
The motive for his predawn intrusion was predictable in its banality.
He wanted a Sherpa for his weekend mountain excursion.
...Dying fossil. Entitled old apparatchik.
"This bastard... he buries me in a mountain of manuscripts and then expects me to climb a literal one with him? What kind of draconian logic is—gah!"
A sudden, searing agony lanced through the base of my skull. With a sickening thud, I collapsed.
As I fell, the vibration rattled the precarious, overstuffed shelves above. The heavy volumes of political theory, teetering on the edge, finally surrendered to gravity.
"Gah! Ack... urgh!"
I was swallowed by a tidal wave of ink and binding glue. The physical manifestations of the ideologies I studied were literally crushing the life out of me.
My vision began to fray at the edges; the world dimmed. My eyelids grew heavy with the finality of the grave.
I felt the cold touch of death. It was an industrial sort of end—meaningless and bureaucratic.
I realized I would die here, in this damp hole, without even the dignity of a doctoral degree to my name.
...
It was a pathetic, wretched end. The injustice burned hotter than the pain.
If there were any justice in this mechanical universe, I pleaded for one more chance.
In the next life, I swore I would truly sacrifice myself for the world—not for a degree, but for a cause. Give me one more opportunity!
I directed this silent, desperate prayer toward whatever cold observer might be watching from the void.
Then, there was light.
An incandescent radiance erupted from the tablet screen, flooding my cramped semi-basement and swallowing my consciousness whole.
That blinding glow was the final memory of my life in that miserable world.