Chapter 1 – Last Embers

[Magic engineering was born from the fusion of mages and engineers.

In the age of great magic engineering, humans led their lives amidst the happiness and convenience provided by that infinite energy.

Mages were wary of convenience. However, humanity relied on engineering, a knowledge equal to everyone, rather than magic which was dictated by talent. Thus, the sense of handling mana gradually degenerated.

It was a foreseen outcome, but in exchange for the sense of mana that humanity lost, magic engineering achieved dazzling progress.

Engineers replaced mages.

After all, in magic engineering, as long as the essence of magic called the core existed, both design and production were the responsibility of the engineers. Engineering was where manpower was needed.

Magic engineering was the signal flare of a new era and the end of the age of mages.

The last remaining great mage and, at the same time, a great engineer, the master of ice magic, Icing Techwind.

After promising the eternal immortality of humanity and honoring the glory of magic that once shone brighter than the sun, he passed away after completing his masterpiece, the generator ‘Eternal Magic’, which meant eternal magic.

True to its name, Eternal Magic was humanity’s first true infinite power device that operated perpetually. In other words, a Perpetual Motion Machine. Eternal Magic contained the essence of a hundred years of magic training accumulated by Icing Techwind.

When the essence infused with the great mage’s soul met the genius engineering design he conceived, a machine that produced infinite energy was created.

Humanity enjoyed their natural life spans, leaning on the legacy of the great mage.

However… it did not last long.

Although it was infinite power, the amount produced within a set time was limited.

An irreversible overload occurred on the Perpetual Motion Machine, which had been overworked for hundreds of years by ignorant humanity.

Engineers, who researched and explored to restore lost magic, warned all of humanity of the danger.

That Eternal Magic would go out of control in the near future, and an ice age that humanity had never experienced in its history might arrive.

It was a warning and a prophecy.

Since Eternal Magic was a generator that deviated from the laws of nature, the backlash from its rampage would also be something that defied human common sense…

However, everyone disregarded their cries.

Only the engineers began to study fire magic to counter the ice magic generator, Eternal Magic, designed by Icing Techwind.

Even at that moment, the timer of the numberless bomb… kept ticking.

Engineers around the world, putting their heads together, finally found the answer.

That answer was the ‘Eternal Embers’, the eternal ember.

Naturally, as the name suggested, this was not a solution or a countermeasure to the uncontrollable Eternal Magic.

It was merely a magic engineering generator born from fire magic and advanced engineering design, a self-preservation measure in preparation for the impending doom.

To explain its function simply without getting complicated… it was a massive ‘boiler’ or ‘heater.’

Having finished the development of Eternal Embers, the engineers moved to install them all over the world.

Although the ideal installation area would be as far as possible from Eternal Magic’s sphere of influence, no one knew when it would run out of control.

Regardless of the distance, the engineers struggled to install even one more Eternal Embers.

Right up until the rampage began… they sowed seeds here and there that might, perhaps, become the salvation of humanity in the future…

Finally, having reached its limit, Eternal Magic went out of control.

A massive blizzard raged from the center.

Its aftermath froze lakes, rivers, and oceans… and went on to freeze all of humanity’s civilization and hope as it began to advance toward the exact opposite side of the planet where Eternal Magic was located.

An unprecedented ice age arrived.

Eternal magic brought eternal cold.

And in the bitter winter that froze even human will…

Like the match that thawed the match girl’s cold night and heart, humans who had lost their way began to move toward the land that would become their match.

Eternal Embers.

The thing we call the last embers of humanity.

The eternal ember born from the hands of the engineers… was precisely that.]

* * *

“Sigh…”

A grand intro that was like an epic poem.

Even though I finished watching the overwhelming intro video that dazzled the eyes and ears and captured the atmosphere, I felt no emotion and only let out a sigh.

Last Embers.

A rare masterpiece created by the game company ‘Snow Storm’ and a masterpiece among masterpieces that received an average score of over 9.9 out of 10 on five major game evaluation sites.

It was a highly recognized game that every game enthusiast had played, and even those who did not enjoy games had heard of at least once.

Its genres were SimCity, management, politics, and apocalyptic survival.

As shown by the intro of a quality that could easily rival CGI in most movies, it was a game about constructing and managing a city and surviving in a frozen world, relying on a single giant boiler called a magic engineering generator.

A typical strategy simulation game.

However, was special. The reason lay in the progression method.

First-person, open-world, and an extremely high degree of freedom.

These were elements that did not match the genre characteristics of strategy simulation. However, the game company ‘Snow Storm’ succeeded in developing a high-intelligence AI, opening a new history for the strategy simulation genre.

While most strategy games progressed from an omniscient point of view, looking down at the city from high above, started from a first-person protagonist perspective, where the player became a ‘citizen’ rather than a ‘leader.’

Simply put, the player had to become a character in this world and grow from the very bottom until they could play as a leader.

Once they became a leader, to operate the embers stably, they engaged in a fierce battle of wits with the in-game NPCs through interactions such as political maneuvering and black propaganda.

This unprecedented method granted individual storytelling to the player within extreme freedom and provided an immense sense of immersion, which was truly an innovation that twisted the limits of the genre.

But.

“Again, again, and again. Again…”

total play time: 21,341 hours.

Why did I, a self-proclaimed and publicly acknowledged Last Embers lover—no, a veteran of Last Embers with a pure play time close to 900 days when converted into days—have such a lukewarm reaction?

That was because…

“Just how many times have I watched this intro…”

Because I had watched this intro video more than hundreds of times.

It took about 60 hours for a single play.

So, having played a total of 356 runs, I could not help but let out a despairing sigh at having returned to this intro screen once again.

“Damn it… does it make sense that I can’t clear ‘Bitter Cold’ even once!”

Funnily enough, even though Last Embers was a game released five years ago, the highest difficulty level, Bitter Cold, was an atrocious difficulty that not a single person had cleared.

As a veteran of , I, of course, had never seen the end of Bitter Cold even once.

“The clear difficulty is like dog shit, really.”

There were three difficulty levels in : Cold, Severe Cold, and Bitter Cold. Since it took a year for even the easiest difficulty, Cold, to be cleared for the first time, the game developer’s notoriety pierced the sky.

Needless to say, Bitter Cold was out of the question.

But of course, weren’t game enthusiasts the ones whose challenging spirit burned brighter the harder a game was and the crazier the difficulty it boasted?

As one of the proud game geeks, I also decided to challenge myself to clear Bitter Cold, and burning through my youth while excluding friendships and romantic relationships, I achieved 20,000 hours of play time!

But my youth literally burned up. If there was a mountain of black ashes left after being completely incinerated, the name of that mountain would be 20,000 hours of play time.

‘I will set a great record in gaming history. With my own hands!’

There was a time when I thought that.

A time when I hardened my resolve and determination to be the first to clear a difficulty that no one had cleared for five years.

Because that was the greatest achievement in life that a shut-in geek and game enthusiast could obtain.

But now, I did not know.

Because even though I had tried everything, everything had ended in failure.

was largely divided into two parts.

The early growth part of becoming a leader from a citizen.

The mid-to-late political and management part of ruling the city as a leader.

Boasting a crazy difficulty level starting from the growth part at the beginning of the game, in reality, more than 80% of users had not even entered the political and management part yet.

But what about the political and management part, which had an entry rate of less than 20%? Naturally, it was several times more difficult than the growth part.

Even then, excluding the users who lost the initiative in city management to NPCs in political struggles, those who had tasted the “real” political and management part would be less than 1%.

Nevertheless, the fact that there were almost no departing users was proof of how attractive was.

‘Anyway, I am part of that 1%.’

In the political part, there were two core ideologies: democracy and dictatorship.

Among them, I only practiced dictatorial politics.

Fast and decisive decision-making was the most important factor directly related to the survival of the city, and that was impossible in a democracy with too many cooks.

It was not that I had twisted ideas.

Be it a tyrant or a sage ruler… since it was just a game, I had simply chosen the most efficient, rational, and logical route.

Even though it was the easiest difficulty, I used to easily clear the Cold and Severe Cold difficulties, where even veterans struggled, through dictatorship.

In the Last Embers community, they worshipped me, calling me the one and only player challenging the highest difficulty, Bitter Cold.

While the second-ranked player was struggling even in the middle chapters of Severe Cold, I was the undisputed rank one who had reached the final chapter of Bitter Cold, so I truly deserved to be called that.

‘Though the problem is that it’s an achievement I can’t brag about anywhere…’

I was the only one who received interview offers from game magazines or got invited as a guest by famous game broadcasters.

Among the various playable characters, Aylen Vale, who possessed the unique trait of [Dictator], had reached a level where the name was used as another name or synonym for me in the community.

But today.

After reaching the final chapter of the grand epic with the shortest time to become a leader, god-like political and management abilities, and dictatorial politics of tremendous skill, I collapsed once again.

“And that was just now… my best and optimal play up until this point.”

When my thoughts reached that point, my body went limp.

It was because of the thought that I would never be able to clear it no matter what I did.

The murderous north wind descending to destroy the city in the final chapter of the highest difficulty, Bitter Cold.

That transcendental disaster that brought an end to everything in this world with an unbearable chill.

Namely, the Blizzard of Doom.

It remained an insolvable conundrum even for me.

“Everyone freezes to death no matter what tech tree I choose, so how on earth am I supposed to beat this?”

Even when I developed technology by putting all resources and talents to the limit.

Even when I endlessly accommodated refugees rescued from all directions and lost expeditions into the city, securing unlimited labor and possessed resources.

“It all failed. All of it…”

Every single attempt was a failure.

Really… even though I was confident that I had tried almost every route in existence in the game, I failed to clear Bitter Cold.

However…

“There is… just one last thing left, though…”

There was exactly one route left.

A route that even I, who was called the pinnacle of dictatorship, had excluded entirely because I thought it was a ridiculous method: [Machine Politics].

A machine politics that prioritized only efficiency, erasing humanity, and was even more cruel than dictatorial politics was precisely that.

“Is that really the answer?”

Hundreds of routes were all incorrect answers, and now only that remained.

By process of elimination, it would be the correct answer.

Yet, it was hard to believe.

Because was a game where one had to govern even the psychology of the crowd, and Bitter Cold was a difficulty that made not only the weather but also humanity harsh.

So, a flawless dictatorship in Bitter Cold was an absurd feat that had to make everyone in the city absolutely obey the leader with a madness akin to fanaticism.

Unlike normal dictatorial politics, there was no concept of self and others here. There was only a god (leader) and believers (citizens) willing to sacrifice their lives for that god…

Jesus, Buddha, Allah, and the like.

It meant I had to become a myth on par with those transcendental, divine beings.

“Still… if that’s all that’s left, let’s do it.”

Nevertheless, reviewing and reviewing all my play sessions up to now, I grabbed the mouse once more.

Even now, as I was about to retry, I could not accept it.

How this could be the only route, and whether this route was really ‘possible’ to realize…

“Whew, I can do it. I can do it.”

Driving the crowd harshly while preventing rebellions from occurring was the most difficult task in the game.

In fact, most of the users’ failure factors were crowd rebellions or political maneuvering.

And what I was about to do from now on was to surpass that limit.

I would have to become the most vicious yet worshipped dictator among all my playthroughs so far.

It was a complete contradiction.

Click-!

With the sound of the mouse, I began to slowly read down the story description that appeared on the screen, as if savoring an expensive wine I had never even tasted.

Although they were sentences I had already memorized after seeing them over a thousand times, I did so with the sole determination to bid farewell to this game after this run.

Grit!

===

You have left your hometown and arrived in the frozen northern land beyond the grand mountain range. Here in the ‘Land of Hope’ where the Eternal Embers are located…

You must become a new member of the embers, secure supporters, and rise as a leader. As a wise leader, you must guide the embers onto the right path and recreate the brilliant glory of humanity centered around the generator.

A skin-piercing cold, hunger that might last for days, various diseases and accidents, primal fear caused by the exhaustion of resources, and death that inevitably draws near…

Numerous slanders and political maneuverings taking place around you, the cold and cynical attitude of the crowd that is as freezing as the weather, and the anxiety and tension of not knowing when you might be executed by opposing forces…

Only your wise choices and decisions will determine the fate of yourself and the city.

Are you ready to survive in ‘Bitter Cold’, O seeker of the embers.

[I am ready to light the fire.]

===

Having read the description that inspired the player with excitement and trembling several times, I moved the cursor to the message window with a solemn heart.

The message window that said ‘I am ready to light the fire.’

My throat felt choked up at that sentence, which seemed to directly represent the time I had spent to clear .

Following the movement of my hand, the mouse pointer was finally positioned in the exact center of the message window.

The moment the mouse made a cheerful click sound and my final dictatorial rule of Last Embers was about to begin.

Whoosh!

A black blizzard that seemed ready to swallow everything raged, and in an instant, my vision turned black.