The mans name was Yamada Kenichi. A 35 year old salaryman. Relationship status, single.

Although its over but going out of service in just 3 years really?

The man grumbled in his 1K apartment (one room apartment with a kitchen). It was a Saturday afternoon. He lamented as he looked at the computer screen, without going outside.

On the screen, FIN was displayed at the lower right in a stylish font with a fantasy-like castle in the background. Maybe it was an online game, as the game characters were saying Thank you for playing while doing a farewell gesture.

Well, this too was a nuregame1, though. The most nure of all nuregames. It might be better that it ended. More so if I consider that I wont have to spend any more of my time or money behind it.

While he did spend most of his bonus and salary on the games gacha and paid items, he didnt feel any sorrow when the service had ended.

He had started playing the game 3 years ago but was greatly disappointed with its setting and how easy it was. Despite his dissatisfaction with the game, he had continued believing that they would add speedrun elements to it with a version update one day.

Unfortunately, probably due to the user count not increasing much, the company announced discontinuation.

Oh? Whats this? We are starting a new service?

After closing the game, he looked at the companys homepage.

A link leading to a new game was added there. It was the introduction page.

What do we have here? Eh?

Kenichi was shocked. Sentences which made him despair were lined up there.

Level up even while youre logged off! Occupation can be easily reset! The AI will do the fights for you!! Limited offer: 3 free pulls for gacha with 100% legendary item drop rate!!

This is hopelessly nure. This isnt even a nuregame, its a houchigame2. When did we get to this point

The man held his face with both hands and thought back to the games of the good ol times. That time, 20 years ago, when he had first started an online game.

One would have to greatly struggle to level up and it was only natural for it to take at least a month to do so. He still vividly remembers the excitement he had experienced after changing to an advanced occupation after grinding for half a year.

Deaths came with penalties in that game; Equipment would drop to the floor and the player would lose 20% of their accumulated experience points.

The bosses of that game had an inconceivable amount of HP and it would take more than an hour to kill it even when 50 players did the raid at once. It even took him 3 hours once. He had to rapidly smash the buttons continuously so much that the keys would break which made it necessary for him to prepare a spare keyboard in advance.

On top of that, after frantically beating the boss, it only dropped 1 item. After which, a death match would begin between the 50 players.

Let alone hundreds of hours, he had spent tens of thousands of hours behind that game and it also went out of service more than 10 years ago.

He has tried numerous games afterwards, seeking that excitement.

However, the times have since changed. The people have started to hate the speedrun elements which nobody even asked for. All the big companies and huge game distributors shifted to nuregames.

They made it so that players could smoothly level up and easily obtain equipment.

Guess Ill look for some other game.

Washing his hands off the developers of this game, he started exploring the internet for games with high speedrun elements.

He inserted Game, obsolete setting, speedrun into the search bar and looked around for the kind of game he wants.

The search results popped up and the top site wasnt a game title nor a distributing company.

Oh?! Lets see, whats this We invite you to a never-ending game?

Never-ending game, a game you can keep playing forever such sentences flooding the screen aroused his curiosity.

I see a fantasy world with western-style swords and magic, eh? Well, lets try it out, for now. Hmm, so I directly enter the setting in the site

Seems the catchphrases caught his attention, he decided on trying it out for the time being.

It wasnt a download type game as the site asked to decide on the settings and transferred to the setting menu.

First, the difficulty it starts from easy mode. Normal, extra, and hell. Easy mode would be too low.

It looks like the users could set the difficulty for the game. The site also properly listed the points of differences for different difficulties.

Easy Mode

Acquire skills 10 times faster than normal mode; Skill development is also readily possible.

Up to 3 extra skills can be drawn from the gacha.

Greatly popular with those players who are beginner gamers and/or hate grinding.