The shelter appeared exactly when I needed it.
That should have been my first clue.
I'd been walking for maybe twenty minutes, following the minimap's unhelpful gray void, when the system pinged:
---
[Point of Interest Discovered: Abandoned Cabin]
[Quest Update: Find shelter - COMPLETE]
[New Objective: Rest until sunset]
---
The cabin sat in a small clearing, looking like it had been copied directly from a video game asset store. Wooden walls, intact roof, a door that hung slightly ajar. Not collapsed from years of abandonment. Not overgrown with vines. Just... there. Convenient.
I approached slowly, every instinct screaming that this was too easy.
"Let me guess," I muttered. "Perfectly stocked with supplies? Maybe a beginner weapon conveniently left behind?"
I pushed the door open.
Yep.
A bedroll in the corner, neatly folded. A small chest near the wall. A firepit with dry wood already stacked. Even a clay pot that probably contained water, because of course it did.
---
[Safe Zone Entered]
[Monsters cannot enter this area]
[HP and MP regeneration increased by 500%]
---
I stood in the doorway, staring at the blue notification.
This was exactly how tutorial zones worked in games. Safe areas where newbies could learn the mechanics without getting murdered. Standard game design.
Except I wasn't playing a game.
I was living in one.
"Okay." I stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind me. "Okay. Let's think about this logically."
I'd died. That part was real—I could still remember the feeling of my heart stopping, the darkness closing in. Then I'd woken up here, in a fantasy world, with a system interface that looked identical to every RPG I'd ever played.
Standard isekai setup. Protagonist dies, gets reincarnated, becomes overpowered, saves the world. I'd read that story a hundred times.
But the glitches...
I pulled up my status screen, examining it more carefully this time.
---
[STATUS]
Name: Kim Jinhyuk
Level: 2
Class: None
Title: None
HP: 120/120
MP: 140/140
Stats:
- STR: 9
- AGI: 11
- VIT: 8
- INT: 13
- WIS: 12
- LUK: 5
Available Stat Points: 5
Skills:
- [Desperate Strike - Lv.1]
- [Identify - Lv.1]
---
Everything looked normal. Clean interface, clear information, standard RPG stats. I focused on Desperate Strike, and a description appeared:
---
[Desperate Strike - Lv.1]
Type: Active Skill
Cost: 20 MP
Effect: When HP falls below 30%, attack power increases by 50% for one strike
Cooldown: 5 minutes
---
Textbook emergency skill. Exactly what a tutorial system would give a struggling player.
I tried Identify next, half-expecting another glitch.
---
[Identify - Lv.1]
Type: Active Skill
Cost: 10 MP per use
Effect: View basic information about objects and creatures
Range: 10 meters
---
Normal. No corrupted text. No warning messages.
Had I imagined it? The glitched text from before, the "Don't trust the system" message—maybe it had been a stress response. My brain trying to cope with dying and waking up in a fantasy world.
"Sure," I said to the empty cabin. "That makes sense. You're just going crazy. Totally normal."
I walked to the chest and opened it.
Inside: a basic iron dagger, three pieces of dried meat, a waterskin, and a small pouch containing five silver coins.
Beginner's package. Exactly what the quest had promised.
I equipped the dagger—which apparently meant thinking "equip" while holding it, and watching it vanish into my inventory before reappearing at my hip in a leather sheath. Video game logic. Of course.
The dried meat went into my inventory too, along with the coins. The waterskin I kept out, suddenly aware of how thirsty I was.
I took a long drink, the water cold and clean, and sat down on the bedroll.
Seven hours until sunset. Seven hours to figure out what was happening.
I pulled up the quest log.
---
[Active Quests]
Main Quest: Survive Your First Day
- Find shelter ✓
- Rest until sunset (6 hours, 52 minutes remaining)
- Bonus Objective: [REDACTED]
Side Quests: None
---
That bonus objective. Still glitched. Still redacted.
I focused on it, trying to activate Identify, trying to force the system to show me what it said.
Nothing happened.
"Come on," I muttered. "If you're going to give me cryptic warnings, at least let me read them."
The system remained silent.
I leaned back against the cabin wall, thinking. In every isekai story, the system was a tool—a way for the protagonist to grow stronger, to navigate the new world. It gave quests, granted skills, measured progress.
But what if it was more than that?
What if the system was the world?
I'd noticed it earlier, the way everything felt slightly too perfect. The grass too green, the sky too blue, the wolf encounter perfectly timed. Like someone had designed it.
Like someone was watching me play through it.
The thought made my skin crawl.
I stood up, pacing the small cabin. "Okay. Let's say I'm right. Let's say this is all some kind of... game. That means there are players. Or a game master. Someone running this."
But why? What was the point? Entertainment? Experiment?
And what happened to people who didn't play along?
The quest notification had been very clear: Failure meant permanent death.
I shuddered and forced myself to focus. Speculation wouldn't help. I needed information.
I spent the next hour systematically testing the system's limits.
First, I tried to access menus that didn't exist—admin controls, debug modes, anything that might give me a peek behind the curtain. Nothing. The system only showed what it wanted me to see.
Next, I experimented with Identify. I used it on everything in the cabin: the bedroll, the firepit, the walls, even the air. Most results were useless ("Wooden Wall - Provides shelter"), but I was looking for anomalies. More glitches.
I found one.
When I used Identify on the cabin door, the description flickered:
---
[Cabin Door - Level 0]
A simple wooden door. Currently closed.
[Note: Player_0847 placed bet: Will exit before sunset - 3:1 odds]
---
The note vanished before I could read it fully, but I'd seen enough.
Player_0847.
Someone was betting on my actions.
My hands went cold.
"What the hell?" I whispered.
I tried Identify on the door again, but the note was gone. Just the standard description.
But I'd seen it. Someone—some player—was betting on whether I'd leave the cabin before sunset.
Which meant someone was watching.
Which meant this really was a game.
And I was the main character.
I sat down heavily, my mind racing. Okay. Okay. If people were betting on me, that meant my choices mattered to them. They wanted to see what I'd do, how I'd react.
They wanted entertainment.
The realization settled over me like ice water. This wasn't just a reincarnation. This was a show. And I was the protagonist, performing for an audience I couldn't see.
*Don't trust the system.*
The warning made sense now. The system wasn't here to help me. It was here to make the story interesting.
I pulled up my status screen again, looking at it with new eyes.
The stats, the skills, the quests—they weren't tools for my benefit. They were mechanics to keep the game engaging. To make sure I had just enough power to survive, but not so much that things became boring.
"This is insane," I said aloud. "This is completely insane."
But it explained everything. The perfect timing of the Desperate Strike skill. The convenient shelter. The tutorial quest that was just challenging enough to be exciting.
Someone was game-mastering my life.
And they expected me to play along.
I stood up, anger burning through the fear. "Well, screw that."
If this was a game, then I needed to start thinking like a gamer. Not the character—the player. I needed to understand the rules, find the exploits, figure out how to win.
Or at least how to survive.
I opened my inventory and pulled out the iron dagger, examining it.
---
[Iron Dagger]
Type: Weapon
Damage: 8-12
Durability: 45/45
Quality: Common
Effect: None
---
Basic starter weapon. Probably worth nothing. But it was mine, and right now, that mattered.
I put it back and checked my stat points. Five points to distribute. Standard level-up reward.
In a normal game, I'd dump everything into my main stat—probably INT, since I was more of a caster type. But this wasn't a normal game.
This was a game where someone was watching.
Someone who expected me to play optimally.
So what would happen if I didn't?
I pulled up the stat allocation screen and hovered over the LUK stat. Luck. The dump stat. The one every min-maxer avoided because it was too random, too unreliable.
The one no player in their right mind would invest in.
I put all five points into LUK.
---
[Stat Allocation Confirmed]
LUK: 5 → 10
---
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the system glitched.
Not a small flicker this time. The entire status screen corrupted, text scrambling into nonsense, colors inverting. I could hear it—a sound like static, like reality itself struggling to process what I'd just done.
Then, as quickly as it started, everything went back to normal.
Except for one new line at the bottom of my status screen:
---
[Anomaly Detected]
[Flagged for Review]
[Administrator Notification Sent]
---
"Oh shit."
The notification vanished.
My heart hammered in my chest. I'd done something. Something unexpected. Something that had triggered... what? An alert? To who?
Administrators.
There were administrators.
Of course there were. Every game had them. The people who ran things, who watched for exploits, who banned players who broke the rules.
But I wasn't a player.
I was the game.
A new window appeared, different from the others. The border was gold instead of blue, the text sharper:
---
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Unusual stat allocation detected. Please confirm this was intentional and not a user error.
[Yes] [No]
---
I stared at the options.
This was it. The moment where I either played along or pushed back.
If I clicked "No," pretended it was an accident, I could probably avoid whatever review was coming. Go back to being a normal tutorial player.
If I clicked "Yes," I'd be confirming that I was deliberately going off-script.
I thought about the betting notification. About Player_0847 and whoever else was watching. About the fact that I'd died at my desk, alone and forgotten, and now I was here, in this too-perfect world, being used as entertainment.
I clicked "Yes."
---
[Confirmation Received]
[Administrator Review: Pending]
[Continue Playing]
---
The window disappeared.
I waited for something to happen—a punishment, a warning, something. But the cabin remained quiet. The system showed no more notifications.
I'd thrown a rock at the fourth wall.
Now I just had to see if anyone threw one back.
I checked the time remaining on my quest: five hours, twelve minutes until sunset.
Five hours to figure out what I'd just gotten myself into.
I walked to the door and opened it, looking out at the forest. The sun was high overhead, the shadows short. Somewhere out there, monsters were probably waiting. Quests were probably generating. The story was probably trying to continue.
But I wasn't going to follow the script anymore.
I was going to find out who was watching.
And I was going to make them regret it.
---
[Quest Update: Survive Your First Day]
Current Objective: Rest until sunset
[Warning: Leaving Safe Zone may result in combat encounters]
---
I smiled at the warning and stepped outside.
The door clicked shut behind me.
And somewhere, in a place I couldn't see, I was certain someone had just lost a bet.