"Why, just why isn't there any other ending in this game?"
Noah slouched in his desk chair, running his fingers through his short black hair as he tried to figure out a different ending for the game he was stuck on.
The faint hum of his computer filled the quiet of his room. His clear blue eyes stared at the monitor displaying the text [Bad Ending #78].
"Sigh, this is really getting on my nerves," Noah sighed as he leaned back in his seat.
At 16, he was an average teenager, his days blending into a monotonous loop of school and homework, with little excitement beyond the glow of his screen,Video games were his escape.
For the past year, he'd been hooked on Survival of an Extra, a classic RPG where players survived as an "extra" in a sprawling fantasy world alongside epic heroes, the true main characters of the game's world. The game was an open-world RPG with fantasy elements, multiple scenarios, and various endings. All players controlled an extra character named Noctis Nightryn.
The game offered two modes:
Story Mode—also known as easy mode, where the player gains the unique regression skill and is tasked with surviving alongside the main characters. There isn't a linear progression in this mode; players could skip most main quests and do nothing, and the game would progress with the main quests without them. The regression skill helps players survive most events and reach the mode's single ending.
Abyss Mode—also known as hell or hard mode, with its permadeath mechanic and the unique skill Fate's Gambit. Players are forced to participate in most events, or the consequences lead to their death.
The community had uncovered countless endings, from heroic sacrifices to quiet survival, which could also lead to bad endings.
But Noah craved something new. Since the game's release a year ago, Abyss Mode had a total of 100 bad endings and over 500 different approaches, all leading to one of those 100 endings.
This was his obsession—its brutal stakes and nerve-wracking process fueled his thrill for high-risk challenges.
"Time for another play."
Noah moved his mouse over the screen and returned to the main menu.
The intro played for a second, and the mode selection appeared:
[Story Mode]
[Abyss Mode]
"Obviously Abyss Mode," he snorted as he selected it and pressed Enter.
---------------------------------------------
30 Minutes Later
The new playthrough was going much like the previous one, except for a few changes Noah made. As the extra character Noctis, he was tasked with supporting the main characters. The screen displayed a rugged landscape, revealing a dungeon beneath a large tree. Noah eyed the familiar dungeon and frowned.
"Farming is just so boring, man."
Noah guided his character alongside Heath and Lena, Noctis's classmates, as they faced a Fractured Golem guarding a mana crystal deposit.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard as he supported his party members while executing stealth attacks on the golem.
He maneuvered his character to debuff the boss while switching to his DPS party member to deal damage.
"Hmm," Noah hummed as he switched to another character to heal the party after they were hit by a large-scale AoE attack.
The boss's health dropped to half a bar as it entered its second phase.
The golem became engulfed in a black surge of mana, sprouting another pair of arms as its core gained an additional layer of defense.
After a few minutes of hit-and-run tactics, the golem's HP fell to 10% as it prepared a sure-hit AoE attack with no room for anyone to escape.
Noah checked his health, which was at 80%, and his skill cooldowns.
"Let's see what probability falls this playthrough," he muttered, clicking to activate Fate's Gambit, hoping to twist the odds of the golem's AoE attack hitting everyone and increase their chance of dodging it at the cost of his character's HP.
The skill triggered, and the probability appeared on the screen as an obscured black color around the player. Time seemed to freeze for a second in the game.
In the next moment, the AoE attack failed to launch as one of the golem's legs, cracked from previous attacks, broke, causing the golem to collapse backward.
"Yes, looks like I'm lucky this time," Noah smirked as he watched the struggling golem try to stand.
"Time to finish this," he muttered, moving his mouse to a skill beside Fate's Gambit to end the fight.
"Rawhhh!" The golem roared the very next second, startling Noah as he clicked instinctively.
The familiar obscured black color appeared on his character. Noah glanced at his skill bar, noticing his mouse was over Fate's Gambit.
"How? The skill's on cooldown—how did it activate?" Noah wondered as the black light surrounding his character disappeared. The screen flickered for a moment, as if his monitor had a screen tear.
A jagged burst of fractured mana erupted from his character, distorting the golem's model into a glitchy mess. To Noah's shock, the boss collapsed instantly, its health bar vanishing in a single frame.
A notification popped up:
["????" BUFF has been Acquired]
The buff had no description, just question marks.
"What the heck?" Noah frowned, leaning closer.
"This skill doesn't have high attack damage. How did it insta-kill a boss with 10% health left?"
"Wait a second. Did the game glitch, or did something happen?" Noah stared at his screen, confused.
He saved his game, opened his browser, and searched the community for any information on this glitch or the skill's abnormal behavior.
After a few minutes, he gave up. Shrugging it off as a fluke, he returned to the game and kept playing, the mysterious buff still lingering in the corner of his UI.
As the playthrough continued, the game grew stranger. Noah scratched his head as he played, sometimes excited, sometimes bewildered by the changes.
Some changes happened so abruptly that he couldn't even process them.
The Solvorn Empire fell, crushed by a mana bomb that detonated out of nowhere during a cutscene.
Wait, what? Did that glitch trigger some unknown quest line, or is this because of the buff?"
Noah stared at the cutscene, mouth agape, glancing at the buff with question marks in the corner of his screen.
As the game progressed, main quests derailed into dead ends as required characters went missing. Other important characters followed, ambushed by random assassin organizations or dying inexplicably.
Noah's jaw dropped. "This isn't supposed to happen!" he exclaimed, frantically checking forums again in a new tab. Some posts mentioned that the death of characters required for main quests would lead to an instant bad ending.
Yet, in his playthrough, no bad ending's triggered, and the game kept going.
The world warped further: the sky's colors bled into a distorted haze, quest NPC's vanished, and NPC's began killing each other. By the end, all significant characters, including the final boss, were either missing or dead.
Noah stared at his screen in shock, his hand covering his mouth. "Did I trigger some kind of apocalypse ending or something?" Confused, Noah navigated his character back to a safe area, planning to save the game and continue later after researching or asking other players.
He clicked the save button, but nothing happened.
"Huh?" Noah waited for the text [The game has been saved].
"Sigh, did the game get corrupted, or is this a save restriction for a certain period?" He scanned his screen but found nothing unusual.
"I'll try to save again. It might work," Noah muttered, moving his mouse to the save option. As he was about to click, the screen flickered, and the familiar obscured black color appeared on his character.
[Fate's Gambit] activated without his input.
His health and mental bars began plummeting, the skill's effect spiraling out of control.
"No, no, no, why? What's going on? I finally found a different ending, and now this happens!" he yelled, frantically pressing keys to stop it, but the bars kept dropping.
Even after his health hit zero, the game-over screen didn't appear. His character collapsed, twitching on the ground, as if something writhed beneath the pixels.
Noah's heart raced. "Jesus, what's happening?" In a split second, it looked like a shadowy figure was clawing its way out of his character. The audio warped into a low, guttural hum.
Then, the screen went black, and text flickered:
[#$? @?# Has Awaken]
Noah stared at the screen, contemplating the text that had appeared.
"Awaken? Did the developers add some eldritch or unknown creature to this?" he muttered, running a hand through his hair.
After a few seconds, he sighed, reaching for the mouse to exit to the main menu. He clicked the X icon, but there was no response.
"What, no—"
Before Noah could react, a black tendril shot out of the monitor, piercing his chest with a sickening thud. Pain erupted throughout his chest, and his vision blurred as he stared at the black tendril.
"Y-you see t-this," Noah stammered, struggling, but his vision darkened.
Just before his eyes fully closed, he saw a flash of light as something white grabbed him and pulled him forward.