The NTR Knight Commander has Decided to Desert

Chapter 2

Everything started because of that damned game.

An RPG set in a medieval fantasy world.

'Blue Revolution.'

An online game that had been running for ten years,

It initially gained significant popularity for its beautiful graphics and its unique combination of RPG mechanics with dating sim elements.

But eventually, due to the developers' greedy and incompetent management, and the resulting incidents and scandals, it lost its early popularity and began its descent into obscurity—even the veteran players started to leave one by one.

Still, even as the game was clearly falling apart and users were leaving in droves,

I, one of the "oil-tier" veterans, remained.

I, Kim Jinkwan, an ordinary office worker in my mid-twenties,

Continued to play the game to the end, unable to let go of my attachment to it.

Though others mocked it as a dead game, and indeed, there were plenty of reasons for such criticism,

I had spent my school years burning with passion for this game, and the long memories and affection kept me going.

Moreover, despite being fictional characters, the charming NPCs and the royal-road style yet solid story development made it worth playing until the end.

And then—

My love for this game...

Was repaid in the form of the disaster that occurred that day.

'Blue Revolution,' which was facing shutdown due to its steadily declining popularity and revenue.

Among its key NPCs,

Was a heroine character who once ranked among the most popular in the entire gaming industry, thanks to her beautiful appearance, gentle personality, and clear affection for the protagonist, Cromwell.

Holy Knight Clara.

Although the game itself was undeniably on the decline,

As the story progressed, she eventually became engaged to the protagonist.

So, the few of us who remained hoped that, at the very least, the game would let Clara and the protagonist end the war and reach a happy ending before the servers shut down.

However—

In the patch released after nearly three months,

Which was effectively considered the final patch, version 10.04—

The ending I received...

Wasn't just bad—it was mentally devastating.

The protagonist, Cromwell, celebrated victory as a hero who had defeated the core of the rebel forces.

But in the ending that followed immediately after,

What I saw was far from the happy ending I had been hoping for.

—"Sorry, Commander. I've become a woman who can't live without General Neto anymore."—

His fiancée smiled coldly as she looked down at Cromwell, dying from a stab in the back.

Clara.

Standing beside her was General Neto, the infuriating ally who had constantly interfered with the protagonist, and who was notorious as one of the most hated NPCs players wanted to beat to a pulp.

With Clara in his arms, he wore a sly grin.

The screen faded to black, the eerie BGM played, and the credits rolled.

And in the center of the black screen that signaled the end of everything, the words "The End" appeared.

Watching that,

I finally understood what had been going wrong with the story.

And how it had all come to this conclusion.

There had been signs.

Like the false accusations from Olivier, the sub-heroine and lieutenant,

And the sudden betrayal and disavowal by Richard—the mage who was both a heroine candidate and a lieutenant—and William, who had been a subordinate, right after Cromwell's promotion to general.

And the ominous, foreshadowing remarks Clara, the fiancée, had been making.

I had felt uneasy as the once-friendly characters began acting strangely one by one in this chapter.

But still, I had held onto hope, thinking, "No way, it couldn't be that."

And in the end, the game shattered my final hope in the most brutal way possible.

NTR.

A horrifying bad ending, like a sewer pit, where the women you loved betray you and use you, leading to a miserable death.

And this wasn't just after a day or two—

It happened after ten long years of playing, when the heroine-tier characters turned on me and abandoned me in an instant.

The shock of that ending left me with a deep, emotional wound.

I had always despised the NTR genre to my core.

And yet...

I ended up being hit with that godforsaken crap in the very game I'd played for ten years.

Even if it was just fictional data,

These were NPCs who had made me feel what human affection was like, especially since I'd never had a family—so I'd truly grown emotionally attached to them.

And the fact that they betrayed me like this—

Was enough to make me feel a rage more intense and vivid than being stabbed in the back by a real-life friend of ten years.

In the end,

Overcome with betrayal that outweighed all the love and effort I had invested in the game, I did something I normally wouldn't.

Unlike before, when I had just accepted all the terrible patches, this time I couldn't help but get angry at the devs who had sucker-punched the users with such a disgraceful NTR twist, even if it was the final patch.

So I wrote a long complaint email, filled with every curse I could think of, and sent it to the game's dev team who had so grandly delivered this NTR drift.

And then—

The day after I sent that email,

I woke up and realized something.

That I had somehow possessed the body of Edward Cromwell, the protagonist who got NTR'd in the game—

And not just at any moment, but during the mid-to-late part of the final chapter added in the latest patch.

For a while after that, I was thrown into deep confusion by the sudden turn of events.

Even though it was the character I had played, it was only natural that I needed time to adjust to being inside the game.

But as time passed and the initial shock faded,

I quickly assessed the situation based on my knowledge as a player and began organizing my thoughts on what I needed to do.

At this point, nearly all the NPCs I could have called allies had already stabbed me in the back.

All that was left was for Clara to drive the final knife in after the suppression of the rebels was complete.

In this situation, where I was destined to be betrayed and killed soon—

I seriously began to think about how I could survive this crisis.

That's when...

"Huh? What... what is this?"

A notification window appeared before my eyes as I was pondering how to survive.

It had the exact same familiar design as the ones I had seen in Blue Revolution, and I instinctively reached out toward it.

And then...

[You have realized that you have lost everything.

The comrades you trusted and the fiancée you loved have abandoned you.

All that remains is a miserable death, handing your achievements over to them.

However, now that you've grasped the situation one step ahead, another path lies before you.

Escape from the traitors and seek out those who will accept you.

A god who knows your innocence will lend you aid.

Quest Objective: Desert from the Imperial Army.

Reward: Survival, Divine Blessing (Buff).

*If you fail the quest, you will be branded a traitor and suffer a gruesome death.

Will you accept the quest?]

"!..."

The wording was just like the Hidden Quests that would sometimes appear in the game.

But unlike the usual ones that gave you a couple of items,

This one was so dramatic that I was both shocked and began to seriously consider it.

'Desertion...? Leaving the Imperial Army?'

The Britannian Imperial Army, to which I had unwaveringly pledged loyalty for ten years of gameplay.

In game time, about two years had passed, but regardless, I had never encountered a development like this before.

However, putting aside this unfamiliar route——

There was no way I could accept a future where I just sat here, handed over the achievement to those bastards, and died as the quest described.

Come to think of it, just the fact that I could smack those damn Imperial bastards—including the NPCs who used Cromwell all this time and then gloriously betrayed him at the end—right in the back made this a pretty decent option.

It was dangerous, sure, but from the perspective of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," it was also the choice with the highest chance of survival.

And so, despite the many unpredictable variables——

I decided to accept this quest, which, ironically, seemed like it might actually let me survive the predetermined bad ending.

With a heavy tension in my chest over how this would turn out, I carefully turned toward the "enemies" who had now begun to appear before me...

And began approaching the fortress where the rebels were stationed.