Hello everyone. I'm just a 34-year-old veteran NEET in the middle of regretting his life decisions right now.

Well, I'm currently lying face up on the sidewalk. You see, besides from the fact that I had been only lightly run over by a semi-truck just a few moments ago, I've gotten myself into a rather awkward situation with my family—given the tenuous circumstances of my mental health, I had missed out on a minor family function with my parents earlier today, despite my honest efforts. You've got to put your own health first, right? Everyone's always parroting about how important mental health is these days.

Honestly, I wasn't stoked to see the rest of my family (who all despise me or aren't aware that I exist, for all I know), but since I didn't want to be the type of son to disregard their parents after they grow old, so I thought that the least I could do was to give it my best to show up for them. But, you really can't expect too much out of someone like me in this situation—I haven't left my room in over a decade, after all. My family should at least try to be considerate of my circumstances.

It was when I had propped my plump frame upright earlier this morning that I noticed a new private message notification on my PC monitor, which was placed adjacent to my futon. I never bothered with a desk since that'd be too much of a hassle. Apparently, I had fallen asleep last night browsing some forum for committing suicide—like I said, my mental health isn't exactly spry after shutting myself away for the better half of my life. Well, it wasn't as if I was there to do the deed either. Rather, I got a kick out of making fun of the losers who were actually was serious about kicking the bucket. If they're posting regularly here, it's not like I'll be the one to drive them over the edge, so what's the harm, right?

Instinctively, I reached around in the dark to find my sweat-stained mouse and opened the message to find the link of some new RPG game. I obviously knew that this had to be a phishing or spam bot, or more likely someone trying to dox me after seeing my posts. I was supposed to get ready for the family function, but just checking out this one link couldn't hurt. I'm definitely not trying to avoid getting up or anything. Then, I clicked on the link, fully entrusting my PC to the expensive VPN I had bought for situations like these.

"BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO COMMIT SUICIDE"

Ah… damn. Accompanied by the big, bold letters was a completely white background screen. Has the developer of this shitty website ever heard of dark mode? Well, at least it wasn't some raunchy porn site (not that I was hoping anything like that). After squinting my eyes a bit, I decided to continue scrolling since there was nothing better for me to do.

Half an hour later, I had just about read through the entire page. To sum it up, this was just a long-winded advertisement for some game, kind of like an ARG. The features of the game are surprisingly customizable, as you get the choose the themes, contents, and various systems of your experience. Frankly, as someone who'd been doing nothing but waste away their life browsing the internet, I'd never heard of anything like this. I'm even more surprised that the game is free from the looks of things.

I decided to give it a try. The first page I was led to was a world creation engine of some sort. To give a brief run-down, I decided on a medieval-fantasy world filled with dungeons, with Brahim set as the main language, whatever that meant. I toggled the 'conflict' setting to as low as possible, since I was a hardcore PVE player.

Eh? What do you mean? I'm just not good at dealing with people?

I'll have to give it to the developers on this one—there sure is a lot of unnecessary lore even on the world creation screen. As a MMORPG veteran, I'd always hated PVP since I could never find anyone agreeable to play with. In fact, I'd end up quitting every MMORPG I'd get serious on because the community would always turn out to be so toxic. Ah, this is it. I could feel it; this game probably is some senior developer's passion project. I'd finally found the thing that I can waste the next couple of years on.

Alright, next up: character creation. Despite the amount of detail put into everything, the method for character creation really is lacking. Unlike the world creation screen in which you can fine tune just about anything, the character creation engine solely consists of a "re-roll" button.

Like every RPG ever, your character has six attribute stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intellect, Wisdom, and Luck. A separate system, called the [Bonus Points Distribution], is tied to your character stats. This seemed confusing and counterintuitive, but after a few minutes of playing around with it, it seemed awfully similar to the way you determined your stats for DND.

Allow me to explain, from what I can understand: with every time I click "re-roll", a value between 1-99 is generated along with a randomized character. That value then determines the total of my stats combined, and also the total amount of [Bonus Points Distribution] points. Then, I can spend those bonus points on the certain skills listed on my character creation screen; each skill has successive levels, and with each skill I choose, the more expensive it gets. Acquiring level 1 skills doesn't cost many points, but as you select the higher-level variants, they can get incredibly expensive. Furthermore, the distribution of stat points across each stat seems to be completely random.

Naturally, I got a whopping grand total of 19 on my first click. Well, that's to be expected, so I kept clicking. And… nearly 15 minutes later, I haven't got anything higher than 90. *Sigh* With my luck, we're going to be here for a while. As pathetic as I may be, I was still a gamer at heart; I'm not going to give up until I'd gotten that damned 99.

Many, many hours later… A beautiful 99 had appeared on my screen after quite some time of robotically clicking away. The RNG of this game seemed rather rigged. I'll make sure to file a complaint later. Regardless, the sun had long since set, but it wasn't as if I woke up particularly early.

Now that I have 99 [Bonus Points], I can at last build my character and play the game. While my stat distribution is pretty skewed toward Intellect, I'm not too worried about it, as I can just raise the other stats later.

My randomly generated character looks pretty decent too—on my screen, there was a European-looking man with a slender-looking build standing before me. His dark blonde hair, worn with split bangs down the middle, seem to be just barely shielding his emerald green eyes. Upon closer inspection, you could also see that beneath his left eye, there was a small mole, and a cow lick sticking out of the crown of his head. I must admit, the character creation is incredibly detailed—my avatar before me had a look of intelligence, and its idle animation looks so realistic. Although, the only downside is that everything is randomized.

Lastly, I just have to spend my 99 [Bonus Points]. There was a veritable mountain of skills to choose from, but I'd already come this far, so I may as well go all in. This game better be worth it.

Let's see… Since my Intelligence stat was so high, I think I'll go with a mage build for this character. My other stats appeared to be abysmal, so I guess my only option was to do a magic min-max playthrough. Either way, I was not spending another day re-rolling my stats.

Under the list of [Bonus Skills] that I was browsing through, [Magic Capacity] seems to be the baseline skill required to use magic. It had a high cost, but it should be worth it since it's going to unlock many possibilities in magic. Alright—check.

Now that I'd checked that skill, a variety of magic-related skills began to appear in front of my eyes. As I was scrolling through, a couple of powerful-sounding spells, such as Meteor Crash, seemed useful, but a particular set of skills had caught my eye: Character Reset. From its name, I could only guess that this skill allowed me to reset my character and reallocate my [Bonus Points] however I'd like during my playthrough… which was incredibly broken. I was all for it.

Without hesitation, I checked the skill. Now that I have that, I don't really have to worry about missing out on any magic. It would have been a shame for me to have missed out on an entire tech tree because I was unaware of it during the character creation phase. It's smarter then to tinker with my skills as I play through the game to suit my needs instead of spending hours on this screen figuring out the best combination of skills to select at the start.

I'll just spend the rest of my points leveling up Bonus Weapon to level 6, and whatever that remains on quality-of-life essentials such as Lower Experience, which lowers the amount of experience I require to level up, and other self-explanatory skills such as Identify, Increased Recovery Speed, and Shortened Spellcasting Speed.

With that, I'd finished my preparations at last.

I clicked on the "continue" button, and another text prompts appears:

"PLAY AS [Rudeus Greyrat]?"

What the heck? I didn't even get to choose my character name? So it must be that kind of game then. Oh well, I just hoped that I can change it to something I like later. Let's just accept it and continue for now.

"WARNING! IF YOU CHOOSE TO CONTINUE BEYOND THIS POINT, YOU WILL LIVE YOUR LIFE IN A DIFFERENT WORLD, NEVER TO RETURN TO THE WORLD YOU WILL BE LEAVING BEHIND. KNOWING THIS, DO YOU STILL WISH TO CONTINUE?"

Jeez, it was making it sound like I was going to be isekai'ed into another world or something. The overdramatization was only making this sound more desperate than forbearing. Well, as long as this was free, let's go on ahead.

"FINAL WARNING! KNOWING THE RISK, DO YOU STILL WISH TO CONTINUE ANYWAY?"

Alright, this was getting kind of annoying. Mr. Developer, would you please just let me play your game already? Once again, I clicked yes, and then…

Five minutes later, nothing happened. Had my screen frozen? Or was it just bad internet?

"ERROR. HOST IS UNABLE TO BE TRANSPORTED AT THIS TIME. TRANSPORT WILL OCCUR POST-MORTEM."

And just like that, the screen had closed out. Panicked, I hurriedly clicked on the link in the forum again, only to be met with a completely white screen. Dammit, had my progress been saved? What kind of a cracked game was this? I can't believe I had even gotten myself so worked up over it…

Well, it's not like I can do anything about that now. I wasn't too disappointed or anything. Frustrated with nothing better to do, I decided to get a little dopamine in my system by relieving some of my pent up… energy. After scrolling through my treasured collection of sacred videos, I made myself comfortable and got to work. But, right as I hit the climax, a jostling rumble that I had not heard in years reverberated at my door.

Without warning, my brothers, dressed in black mourning suits, came bursting into the room that no other person had entered in decades. I pulled up my trousers in a frenzy as they shouted at me with bitter expressions, and I was unable to defend myself having not used my voice in years. My youngest brother, who was armed with a wooden bat, took a quick glance at my monitor. Having caught me in the act, he scowled and wrecked the computer that I valued more than my life.

Just like that, I was kicked out of my home by my own family because of my mental illness. I had done nothing wrong.

All I did was skip my parents' funeral to jack off.

Now that you have been caught up to my current circumstances, we should be all pretty familiar as to how I had gotten run over by that truck.

Luckily, nobody else besides me had gotten hurt. Unluckily, I have about only a couple more seconds to live—my lungs have been completely squished, and I can feel my warm blood escaping my body against the biting cold of the early-winter rain.

I'm really dying now. At least those kids are safe, right? Actually, they kind of reminded me of my own siblings when they were younger. I remember hearing my two brothers and sister arguing with one another, and then making up a few hours later every once in a while through the thin walls of my old house. There was always a small part of me that wished I could be a part of that.

But, as you'll have it, I'm trash.

Those three used to bicker so much in their 20's—especially that time when my sister got recently engaged. My brothers once hated the guy she ended up with, but now they go out drinking every weekend. I wonder if my brother-in-law fulfilled my role for my family as a surrogate sibling. Ah, sorry. I'm just rambling about the past now.

As I lay dying, I can't help but wonder: Why am I still thinking of the family that abandoned me? My last moments of consciousness are filled with childhood memories of my parents and siblings, despite the fact that those same people that beat me up less than an hour ago. Resounding above my physical pain is an emotional pain that I can't quite understand. The falling rain seeped through the cracks of my glasses as it mixed with my tears.

Oh, right. So this is what regret feels like, huh? Who would've thought that a piece of shit like me can experience such a thing.

Hah… I wish I could take it all back. All of it. But, I guess it's too late now, huh? I'm practically already dead.

If only I had another chance, I'd like to seriously put some effort into life.

Since I'm facing up toward the cloud-covered sky, specks of raindrops begin to accumulate on my shattered glasses. Whether it's due to the water, or the fact that nearly all of my blood had been drained from my body, my eyes begin to lose its focus. Before long, I've found my vision shrouded in darkness, forever falling through a dark void…

Until I woke up.