November 29, 2025 – 11:47 p.m.
Seoul, South Korea
Lee Hyun-woo was twenty-nine, single, and ranked #1 on the global ladder of Eternal Throne IV for the 38th consecutive month.
The monitor in his darkened room glowed with the final seconds of a 4v4 ranked match.
His faction: the Kingdom of Valdria.
His opponents: three diamonds and one grandmaster who had spent the last two hours trying every cheese, rush, and late-game deathball the meta allowed.
They failed.
Victory screen.
+27 LP.
New rank: #1, 6842 points.
The gap to #2 was now 312 points—larger than the distance between #2 and #500.
Hyun-woo leaned back in his gaming chair, cracked his neck, and let out a long, exhausted breath.
"Again," he muttered.
He opened the post-game replay out of habit.
He already knew what he would see: perfect villager micro, exact build-order timings, zero wasted gold, scouts that never died, an economy that snowballed so hard the enemy team rage-quit at the 42-minute mark.
It was flawless.
It was boring.
He alt-tabbed to the game's official forum.
Top thread: "ET4 is dead. #1 player wins by macro tabbing for 40 minutes. Change my mind."
He scrolled.
"Valdria is just pay-to-win."
"Remove Lee 'Spreadsheet' Hyun-woo from the ladder, he's literally a bot."
"Imagine being so good the game becomes homework."
He closed the window.
For ten years he had chased this.
Ten years of 14-hour practice days, of skipping university parties, of eating cup ramen beside a humming PC.
He had reached the summit.
And the view sucked.
Hyun-woo opened the in-game voice chat with his usual 4v4 teammates (three other top-50 Koreans who treated him like a god and a calculator at the same time).
"GG, hyung," one of them said. "Want to queue again?"
"No," Hyun-woo answered, voice hoarse. "I'm done for tonight."
He stared at the glowing victory screen one last time.
Then, half-joking, half-serious, he spoke to no one in particular.
"If only there was a game where every decision actually mattered. Where people starved if I screwed up irrigation. Where five years passed when I pressed 'End Turn' and I had to watch children grow up or die because of my choices. Something real. Something… thrilling."
He laughed at himself.
Classic burnt-out pro-gamer monologue.
He reached for the power button.
The monitor flickered.
Not the usual Windows shutdown flicker.
Every pixel turned pure white.
A single line of text appeared in the center, written in a font he had never seen before:
[Wish acknowledged.]
A blinding flash.
Lee Hyun-woo found himself standing barefoot on cold white marble that stretched in every direction like an infinite airport terminal.
No walls. No sky. Only pillars of light and the deafening roar of two hundred voices shouting at once.
"OI, WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY CLOTHES?!"
"Mod! GM! I paid for VIP, give me elf waifus now!"
"Ersten Reich wird wieder auferstehen, mark my words!"
"Any Koreans here? Group up, group up!"
"Bro, I literally just wanted to sleep, why am I naked in a lobby?"
Hyun-woo looked down.
He was wearing nothing but black boxer briefs.
Everyone else was the same: two hundred men and women of every nationality, age 18–45, all stripped to underwear, all screaming or laughing or crying.
A perfect circle of golden text floated ten meters above the chaos.
[Welcome, Players 1–200]
[Game: Civilization — Reality Patch 1.0]
[Victory Condition: Classified]
[Defeat Condition: Zero Believers Remaining]
[You now have 10 minutes to customize your starting package.]
A holographic wheel appeared in front of every player:
- Race (Human / Elf / Dwarf / Orc / Halfling)
- Starting Terrain (18 options)
- Leader Personality (12 archetypes)
- One Unique Starting Bonus (list of 50)
The lobby turned into a stock exchange on crack.
"Elves for life, cope and seethe!"
"Dwarves + mountain = free forges, GG ez"
"I took Desert + Nomad bonus, I'm literally Genghis Khan now"
"Human balanced start is for cowards—oh wait, #1 Eternal Throne guy is taking Human Plains, lmao"
Hyun-woo tuned out the noise.
He had theory-crafted this exact scenario in his head a thousand times.
Race → Human (highest fertility, fastest adaptation)
Terrain → Great Plains with eastern mountain range (best farming + future copper/tin)
Leader → "Pragmatic Administrator" archetype
Unique Bonus → "Enhanced Learning Speed +15 %" (because education snowballs harder than any resource)
Confirm.
A calm, genderless voice cut through the chaos like a blade.
Everyone shut up instantly.
[Moderator: Entity-Ω]
[Attention. Starting territories are now being randomized. Previous selections are suggestions only. The world is real. Your choices have permanent consequences. There is no reset button. There is no ban appeal. There is no leaving.]
Dead silence.
[You have 30 seconds to finalize or forfeit.]
Half the lobby started panic-changing their picks.
Someone actually forfeited and vanished in a puff of ash.
Hyun-woo didn't move.
He trusted the math.
[Randomization complete.]
A pillar of light slammedhed Hyun-woo alone.
Entity-Ω's voice now spoke only to him, almost gently.
[Player Valdria1. Lee Hyun-woo. Rank 1 Eternal Throne IV, 38 months undefeated.
Your wish has been weighed and found… acceptable.
You will receive exactly what you asked for: a game where every decision is irreversible and every life is real.
Good luck. You will need it more than the others.]
The marble floor opened beneath his feet.
He fell upward into a bronze-colored sky.
The last thing he heard before the lobby vanished was two hundred voices screaming as they, too, were hurled into the world.