I opened the front door. A frigid draft immediately seeped into my nose. Why is it colder inside than outside? Goosebumps prickled my skin. I brushed the snow from my shoulders and head before kicking off my boots and sliding my feet into slippers. The plastic bag from GS-Mart, holding a hamburger and a cider, I tossed onto the sofa. I grabbed the remote from the shoe rack by the entrance, turned on the boiler, then collapsed onto the two-seater couch. I pulled the dead battery from my phone, swapping it with a fresh one from the charging stand. I snapped the case back on and held the power button. The screen glowed white, and after a quick fingerprint scan, NexusOS unlocked. My thumb instinctively found the app in the center of the screen. It was a mobile game called Summoner's Call, released two years ago by a developer named Nexus. In those two years, Summoner's Call had exploded in popularity, closing in on one hundred million downloads worldwide. The loading screen appeared, then gave way to the main menu. [Welcome to Summoner's Call!] [TOUCH!] I tapped the screen. The familiar scene of the waiting room greeted me. In the central office, a blonde female knight sat quietly. Six-star Grand Knight Siris. She was the leader of my main raid party and the first and only 4-star super-rare character I had ever managed to pull. I remembered the day I’d summoned her. I’d been furious, having poured five million won into the game without getting a single 5-star—or even a 4-star—hero to show for it. Five million won, not five hundred. I’d actually wept with relief when the summoning fanfare for Siris finally rang out. In return for her arrival, I pampered her with every scrap of gold and all the best materials I could find. It was only later, after I’d fallen deep into the game, that I learned a five-hundred-pull dry spell wasn’t all that uncommon. But that realization came much later. Tapping on Siris brought up her illustration. She was a green-eyed beauty with flowing blonde hair. A proud laugh escaped me. She may not have been born a 5-star ultra-rare, but I’d raised her into a special hero who could stand against almost any 6-star character in the game. I closed the illustration with the ‘X’ in the corner and surveyed the other heroes stationed in the various facilities of my waiting room. First, there were the ones grinding away in the training center. Most of them were 1- or 2-star heroes from free draws. Rumor had it that, with an infinitesimally small probability, one of these low-tier heroes could awaken into a prodigy that surpassed even a natural 5-star, but it was almost always a waste of resources. I’d tried and failed myself. Even in the world of a mobile game, there was a class divide. Heroes born with less than 3 stars were destined to become synthesis fodder for their betters. Since the pull-rate for high-level heroes—4-stars or higher—was abysmally low, you had to grit your teeth and raise what you could get. That was the average player’s experience. Second were the heroes who had successfully completed their training. They weren’t good enough for my main raid party or small-scale missions, but they were useful for filling out the ranks in larger parties or for special missions. Finally, there was my main force, the heroes I cherished. I had hand-picked the most promising from my collection and nurtured them. Now, all of them were 6-star powerhouses. Just last week, we’d become the first in Korea to clear the 88th floor of the main dungeon. They were an elite team that could hold their own against any challenge. This wasn’t a game won by stats alone. I thought back on the hardship of clawing my way to 5th in the world rankings. It was hell. Absolute, utter hell. The subtitle of Summoner's Call was A Hyper Roguelike Summoning RPG. Roguelike. It basically meant the game was one giant roll of the dice. Summoning was luck. Stat growth was luck. Combat was luck. You could give basic commands, but battles ultimately played out with the heroes acting on their own AI. They decided when and how to use their skills. And for reasons I could never fathom, sometimes they would just… stop fighting. As the memories surfaced, my grip on the phone tightened. No, that's not right. That was just my mindset back when I didn’t know anything about Summoner's Call. There were definitely ways to overcome bad luck with strategy and know-how. I was living proof of that. I was one unlucky bastard. I’d performed thousands of paid summons and had never once seen a 5-star hero, the kind that other top-100 rankers claimed were a dime a dozen. To be honest, I hardly ever got 4-stars. The only one I had was Siris. The 5-star probability was supposedly 0.1%, and the 4-star was less than 1%, but my experience felt far worse. But if Summoner's Call was a game decided purely by the luck of the draw, I never would have become a top ranker. Skill could overcome luck. That was the biggest reason I was so hooked on this game. Today was Friday. I checked the status of the waiting room and issued a new set of instructions to my heroes. My roster had grown so large that managing them individually was nearly impossible. Then, I checked the notices. [Summoner's Call Surpasses 100 Million DL!] [Thanks to the enthusiastic support of Masters around the world, total downloads for Summoner's Call have exceeded 100 million! To celebrate, we are holding a special event. Check below for details.] It had passed 100 million already. Please be an Advent Dungeon! Gems and gold were fine, but I had plenty. Now that my operations were running smoothly, I was overflowing with resources. I didn’t even care about summon tickets. It’s not like I’d pull anything good anyway. What I needed was a hero awakening! A chance to obtain a 7-star hero, the so-called “dream grade”! My heart pounded as I read the announcement. [Event Details] [1. 100 gems will be distributed daily from January 27th to February 5th, 20XX. A chance to get a total of 1000 gems! (Compensation will not be paid for days you do not log in.)] [2. All logged-in Masters will receive 1 Advanced Hero Summon Ticket. (Advanced summon tickets are guaranteed to summon at least a 3-star hero!)] [3. The final event! The Transcendental Advent Dungeon is now open.] When I saw the third event, a shout of pure joy escaped my lips. It was the Transcendental-difficulty Advent Dungeon, which only opened once every three months. I selected ‘Dimensional Gate’ from the bottom left of the main waiting room menu. The blue summoning circle expanded, displaying a list of available dungeons. [Climb the tower and save the world!] [Main Dungeon: Current Cleared Floor - 88] [A feast of dungeons that changes daily!] [Dungeon of the Week: Argentum Mine (Advanced - 5 hours)] [Collect various rare materials!] [Exploration Dungeon: Ruins of the Saints (Time remaining: 17 hours, 35 seconds)] [Prove your strength!] [Advent Dungeon: Difficulty - Superb] There it was. The Transcendental-difficulty Advent Dungeon was open. I swallowed hard, a mix of joy, excitement, and tension swirling within me. The Tome of Ascension. The key material for ascending a hero to 7-stars. I’d gathered all the other materials a long time ago. If I could just get the Tome of Ascension, which dropped at an excruciatingly low rate from this specific dungeon, I could create a 7-star hero. There were less than five of them in the entire world. With one, I could aim for world number one, not just fifth place. I opened my hero box and scanned my roster. I selected a party of heroes strong enough to scout the boss's patterns, but disposable enough that I wouldn't miss them when they died. Their abilities were decent, but they weren't crucial to the overall operation of my waiting room. Their role was the advance team. Summoner's Call featured a brutal system: when a hero died, they were gone forever. Hardcore, by definition. A single mistake or a bad roll of the dice could erase a hero you’d spent hundreds of hours and millions of won on. Some people raged and quit, but I—and all the other Summoner's Call fanatics—didn’t care. That’s what made it fun. It was a mobile game, but the stakes felt thrillingly real. A roguelike wouldn’t work if you had infinite chances. The tension of not knowing when or where you could die. The satisfaction of watching the unique combat AI of each hero play out. The joy of a hero’s growth and the despair of their death. The absolute freedom that came with clearing a new floor. That was the essence of Summoner's Call. I dispatched the temporary party to the Advent Dungeon. You never knew what kind of boss would appear. Its level, its type—monster, humanoid—the skills it used. The advance team’s job was to analyze the boss’s patterns before being sacrificed. A chime rang out. [Advent Dungeon opening!] [Warning! Warning! Warning!] A series of red messages, heralding the appearance of a powerful enemy, flashed across the screen. The field type was Dark. According to the game’s lore, this was a ‘super-dimensional space’. It was an uncommon map, nothing but pitch-black darkness. In the thousands of dungeons I’d cleared, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen a Dark field. Since it was an Advent Dungeon, the battle began immediately. But as soon as the stage loaded, a stream of status-change notifications appeared on the right side of the screen. [‘Diana (★★★★★★)’ is afraid! All stats decreased by 30%.] [‘Nicholas (★★★★★)’ feels fear! All stats decreased by 30%.] [‘Gideon (★★★★★)’ feels fear! All stats decreased by 30%.] [‘Elara (★★★★★)’ feels fear! All stats decreased by 30%.] [‘Melky (★★★★★)’ feels fear! All stats decreased by 30%.] What the hell? The boss hadn’t even appeared yet. A moment later, Diana, the party leader and main tank, sent a prompt. [The leader of Party 38, Diana (★★★★★★), suggests retreating. Do you accept?] [Yes / No] I pressed ‘No’ without a second’s hesitation. [‘Diana (★★★★★★)’ panics! All stats are 50%...] [‘Nicholas (★★★★★)’ is...] [‘Gideon (★★★★★)’ is...] Are you serious? No matter how disposable they were, this was a team of 5-star heroes and a 6-star leader, all raised to their level cap. And they were panicking? Panic was a status effect you only saw on newly summoned heroes in their first battle. Only one conclusion made sense. The boss has some kind of fear-inducing ability. The deduction was instant. A list of items and skills that increased fear resistance scrolled through my mind. If I couldn't counter this, I might have to form a second advance party. Just then, the boss appeared with a dynamic sound effect. Its name flashed at the top of the screen. [SS▩SH黑⊙∈※ Lv.999] “What is this?” What kind of name was that? Was it a bug? Its appearance was even more bizarre. I could tell it was a small, humanoid figure, but its entire body was covered in a mosaic effect, blurring it into a mess of pixels. I could only make out its basic shape; the rest was indecipherable. [‘Diana (★★★★★★)’ falls into despair! All stats are 80%...] [‘Nicholas (★★★★★)’ is...] [‘Gideon (★★★★★)’ is...] A hollow laugh escaped my lips. And what was with that level? 999? This was clearly a system error. Of all the things I'd seen in Summoner's Call, now I was seeing a game-breaking bug. In the two years since the game launched, there had never been a single reported bug, aside from a few minor visual glitches. I hit the screenshot button and steeled myself for the end of my advance team. There was nothing I could do. Once a battle started, you were locked in. The battle began. I used a few potions I’d bought with gems to try and remove the status effects, but the despair wouldn’t lift. An 80% stat reduction. With sluggish movements, Diana stepped forward, her shield raised. The damage dealers, Nicholas and Gideon, stood in the middle, while the supporters, Elara and Melky, took up the rear. It was a standard formation. And then the boss moved through the dark purple field. “…” It was a massacre. Diana died without even a chance to resist. Despite having a skill that let her cling to life, she didn't even enter a ‘moribund’ state before she died. She just… vanished. Because of the mosaic covering the boss, I couldn't even see what skill it was using. It just squirmed forward, leaving only a corpse in its wake. [‘Diana (★★★★★★)’ has returned to the goddess’s arms. Her fighting spirit will be remembered forever.] [‘Nicholas (★★★★★)’ is...] [‘Gideon (★★★★★)’ is...] The words ‘You Lose’ materialized in the center of the screen. My max-level party, including a 6-star hero, had been wiped out in less than ten seconds. “Damn it.” I knew they would die. I’d sent them in fully expecting it. But what did I get for my trouble? Do you have any idea how long it takes to raise a 5-star hero? They had to at least put up a fight for me to get any useful data! “This damn luck-based game!” And of course, a bug had to pop up here, of all places! No matter how much I yelled at customer service, they wouldn’t fix it in time. And their policy was firm: once a hero was lost, they could never be restored, for any reason. I jabbed my thumb at the screen, repeatedly tapping it. Uh, but… “Why isn’t it loading?” The screen wasn’t transitioning back to the waiting room. The ‘You Lose’ message remained, hovering over the image of the boss in the center of the screen. “What’s with all these damn bugs?” I pressed the power button on the side of my phone. A bug this bad warranted more than a support ticket. I held the button down, forcing a shutdown, and waited for it to reboot. “…No way.” It didn’t turn off. The power wouldn’t turn off. The ‘You Lose’ message was still there. And beyond it, the boss seemed to be looking at me, through the screen. The garbled pixels where its mouth should have been seemed to shift, to form words. 「I found you.」 Then, my consciousness faded to black.

Chapter 2: You Answered The Call