Surviving in the Trash Hell Game by Tossing a Coin

Chapter 1 - Prologue

I think that unlike my name, Kang Woon(Strong Luck), my life was not a smooth one.

My parents were killed in a car accident during a time I can't even remember.

I couldn't take comfort in the fact that I grew up without lack in an orphanage.

Because I couldn't see a way to live on after that.

I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

My grades, which had been completely ruined since middle school and high school, completely blocked my path to university.

It wasn't that I had nimble hands in terms of technical skills either.

Nor was I physically outstanding.

No matter how hard I tried to find something special about me, I couldn't see it.

So, despite being judged exempt, I went to the military.

Because there was nowhere else I could go.

There, too, I broke my leg and received a medical discharge.

It was the same now.

I had been possessed by a game out of the blue and faced numerous crises.

Mercenaries I had painstakingly raised had died, and I couldn't count the number of times a knife had been held to my throat.

“That’s as far as you run, you rat!”

“We’ll make you pay the price for making a fool of us until now!”

It's the same right now.

The cave I had 'unluckily' gotten lost and wandered into.

'Unluckily', it happened to be an enemy camp.

And 'unluckily', I was cornered at a dead end.

But I know.

There is no reason to be afraid.

Because I just have to keep doing it until I succeed.

Because if a coin has a tails side, it must have a heads side too.

Because in the very end, the heads side of the coin is bound to come up.

Because I am Kang Woon of bad luck.

So I simply stretched out my hand.

I flicked the coin that had formed above my outstretched thumb.

Because that was the special ability that only I possessed in this game world.

A simple ability where if it's heads, I win, and if it's tails, I lose.

With a clink, the coin falls to the ground.

There was no need to even look at the face of the coin that had rolled so earnestly.

“Oh, it's hyeong.”

[ Returnee's Privilege: Jin ]

You, who have overcome this crisis with a heads as well.

‘Luck’ is still smiling upon you, Kang Woon.

Heads Reward: The cave collapses and crushes the enemies.

“What are you doing now- Ugh!!”

“Somebo- Kuaaargh!!”

The updated quest window did not lie.

Without any warning, the ground shook, and the cave ceiling collapsed.

A huge mass of rock perfectly crushed only the enemies that surrounded me.

The sound of crashing and cracking stopped, and I was the only one standing on the ground.

I picked up the coin and weaved through the rocks, heading for the exit.

“Hyeong gets heads.”

I knew without even looking.

Because I know that the goddess of fortune will ultimately smile in my favor.

Yes.

From the moment I was possessed, there were many crises, but there were no defeats.

Of course, that story is a bit long.

***

Dargnes Online.

A turn-based combat strategy massive online game supporting PC/mobile multi-platform.

The player forms a ‘mercenary group’ in a modern fantasy-themed dystopian world.

A game where the goal is to form that mercenary group and survive for as long as possible.

There was nothing special about it.

No, in fact, it was a poorly structured game that only gathered unpopular elements.

A mercenary you raised with utmost care is permanently deleted upon death, regardless of the resources invested.

To add a touch of realism, if you were away from the game for a certain period, all your mercenaries would run away.

An incredibly vast, and therefore complicated, open world.

However, this game was cruising along quite smoothly, riding on its cult-like popularity.

Millions of concurrent users globally.

That connection figure guaranteed the game's success.

So, what kind of ‘cult-like’ element did this game have to attract such popularity?

How did it attract people with the maniacal elements of strategy and turn-based combat?

It was the ‘coin’.

This game made you flip a coin or roll a die unconditionally when a mercenary or an enemy died.

Meaning that regardless of specs and the like, the result was ultimately decided by luck.

Anyone could become strong without paying.

And anyone could be defeated even if they had paid.

It was truly a world governed by luck, for the sake of luck.

People who thought, ‘I’ll be a little different,’ gathered and gathered, forming its current popularity.

I was one of those people who thought they would be different.

Because I am Kang Woon of bad luck.

Because I am the Kang Woon who does it until it works.

In fact, while playing for 3 years, I had reached the upper echelons of the rankings and even achieved impossible feats.

With no capital, of course.

Perhaps as an aftereffect of that, KiSSmEdd, the mercenary captain of the ‘Annyeong-wangnyeong’ mercenary group, was quite famous even on the global server.

The achievement of keeping ‘the mercenary provided in the tutorial’ alive and accompanying them after infinite retries.

Things like clearing the ‘Green Labyrinth’, a place you couldn't even enter without investing a considerable amount of cash currency.

But I quit that game on the exact day it turned 3 years old.

The reason was simple.

I had forgotten that if the dice could roll in my favor, they could also roll against me.

I got two dice fumbles, and failed the coin toss four times in a row.

The result was the permanent death of two members I had raised with utmost care.

I was arrogant.

That's why I didn't retreat.

It was a complacency that insisted, 'I'm a ranker, they wouldn't really kill them, would they?'

The result was the evaporation of my precious members with whom I had spent 3 years.

For the traces of 3 years, overlaid with memories, to disappear with a single flick of a finger.

What kind of comedy was this?

I sent a lengthy email of protest against the absurdity, but the developer absolutely would not return my members.

At that moment, I lost all interest in this game.

Because it felt as if 3 years of memories had been scattered away like pollen in a spring breeze.

Because it felt like it was telling me all my efforts were in vain.

Looking back now, it means I ignored my own creed of ‘keep doing it until it works’.

Of course, I was a little younger then, and I just couldn't accept defeat.

Anyway, that's why I quit the game.

That was last year.

A promotional ad for a large-scale update came as a message.

It was because I hadn't blocked their number.

Global server 2nd-anniversary celebration, character personality additions, and other useless information.

While spewing curses under my breath, I clicked the link and entered the site.

I cursed, but I still had memories and curiosity left, so I was curious about how much had changed.

But I shouldn't have done that.

As expected, my account, which I checked by pressing the game start button for the first time in a long while, was also completely ruined.

Members, equipment, base, etc.—the things I had built up over 3 years.

All of it had disappeared.

I was confident that even a new user would be in a much better state than me after receiving some starting rewards.

The equipment, items, and affinity needed for specs, and skill cards were gone, and my money was at 0.

Because of that damned realism, all my efforts had turned to foam.

I was furious to the point of exploding and tried to complain to the management like last time.

But since it was a system they had announced several years ago, there was no space to express my grievance.

The only thing I could do was go to the general discussion board and lament.

There was no other game as truly trashy as this one.

So I left a long review.

A long review explaining the absurdity of this game.

At important moments, it determines the result by rolling a die or a coin.

And with that one stroke of bad luck, it deprives the player of everything they have.

It made resources hard to obtain and was designed so you could be easily steamrolled by gear.

On top of that, it even limited the means for a non-paying player to obtain gear by ‘luck’.

Even the system itself is hostile to light users who just want to play the game casually.

Starting from 4 months after a player quits the game, the resources and mercenaries they've cultivated begin to evaporate one by one.

It’s a petty system that restricts the player from being able to forcibly quit the game.

Of course, the game is well-structured, so the deeper you dig, the more fun it is.

But that advantage is easily overshadowed by the aforementioned system and the in-game setting of having no ‘grand purpose’.

It was a review with that kind of content.

I wonder how much I wracked my brain; when I counted all the characters, it was a review of about 1557 characters.

For me, who normally doesn't write a single letter, it was a truly astonishing result.

The reason I went so far as to write something I never used to is simple.

I wanted people to realize, just as I had.

I wanted them to attain enlightenment.

That if they just turned their heads away from a trash game like this one.

There are more fun and fantastic games out there.

For other people not to suffer as I did and then suppress their anger, but to live happily.

That there is more happiness in life.

That a cult is just an illusion.

There was a time when I thought that way.

There’s a sort of thing that people often call a meme.

***

Status Window, Status.

A meme that originated from novels about receiving a sudden strong power and breaking through the hardships that appear before one's eyes.

I think a meme is popular precisely because it is a meme.

The moment a meme crosses over into the realm of reality, it becomes extremely unpleasant.

That was me right now.

“Status Window.”

[ Main Quest ]

Someone's will is watching you, who has been summoned inside ‘Dargnes Online’.

From now on, you will once again become the mercenary captain of the ‘Annyeong-wangnyeong’ mercenary group.

Lead your members, uncover the secrets of the world, and safely return to the real world.

The start date is YEAR 4 DAY 1.

Objective: Survival of player ‘Kang Woon’.

Reward: Return to the real world and ???

Upon Failure: Permanent death of player ‘Kang Woon’.

Surprisingly, it seemed I had been possessed by ‘Dargnes Online’, the game I used to enjoy.

And at that, in my bare body with no skills or equipment.

This must be the atrocity of the developers who were enraged by my review.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize.

I'll delete the review, so please send me back.

I'm begging you.

For real.