Sshhhhhhh— With a deafening white noise, the monitor screen went black.

Midnight. The exact time for the service shutdown of 《Arkea Online》.

It was the final moment of a game I had poured my youth into for ten years. I was sitting upright, equipped with the 'Paladin of the Apocalypse' set—the ultimate gear for a max-level account—waiting to greet the final credits. But then, a massive surge of current flowed back from beyond the display, and with a blinding flash, my vision was bleached completely white.

My head spun as a violent storm of mana swept through my entire body. And then—

"Ugh..."

I snapped awake to the smell of damp, coarse earth. A heavy sense of gravity pressed down on me. This wasn't my comfortable chair in front of the monitor. Above me, real, cold night stars were twinkling, and I could feel the texture of the cold stone floor beneath my hands.

I hurriedly pushed myself up and felt my body.

The shining Paladin of the Apocalypse armor, which I couldn't even remember the cost of, was gone. In its place was a single, tattered cloth vest that looked ready to crumble. Clutched in my hand wasn't a legendary greatsword, but a single, shabby 'Beginner's Wooden Sword' that looked like a mere branch.

Ding!

A familiar, yet terrifyingly real, transparent blue UI window popped up before my eyes.

[System Error] Character information has been forcibly reset due to packet loss and exceeding data compression limits.

Current Level: LV.1 Location: 1st Starting Village

"...Level 1? A cloth vest? Wait, where's my inventory? Where are my ten years of farming results?!"

As I frantically clawed at the air, trying to strike the status window in panic, a sophisticated pillar of holographic light erupted from the massive blue gem (Server Core) in the center of the starting village plaza.

Swish—

Floating in the air was the General Store Guide NPC who used to stand in the corner of this village, mechanically reciting "Welcome, adventurer!" No, to be precise, a completely different entity wearing that 'shell' was looking down at me.

Impeccable silver short-cut hair, cold and sunken golden eyes. His administrator's robe fluttered as he buttoned it to the top, and the man tapped the air with fingers holding a virtual tablet.

"You're noisy. Data scrap."

The voice was a strange mix of cold mechanical tones and chilling human irritation. It was Arhen. He had the face of that 12-gold general store middle-aged man I had visited countless times to sell junk, but his gaze now was that of a Chief System Administrator who held the laws of the world in his hands.

Arhen looked down at me sitting on the ground with cold eyes and clicked his tongue.

"The logout time has long passed, yet there is a fragment of permanently bound data due to the aftermath of the system error. ...You, Level 1 newbie. Have you still not come to your senses?"

I stared up at him blankly. In my mind, every boss pattern, hidden bug, and map terrain of this game flashed by like a vivid panorama. My body had been relegated to a penniless newbie, but my brain was still that of a wicked veteran who used to manipulate the entire server.

"Arhen... Aren't you that general store guy? Why are you talking like that?"

When I called his name so casually, Arhen's brow twitched, and he gripped his tablet tightly. He looked appalled that a mere piece of data, who had no right to call him by his system designation 'Admin Code-001' or 'Arhen', was boldly saying his name.

"Who are you calling 'guy'? I am Arhen, the sole Chief Administrator of this collapsed server. And you..."

Arhen scanned my worn cloth vest and wooden sword, then pressed his hand to his forehead as if he had a headache.

"Of all things, the packets got tangled the moment the server rebooted, causing the max-level account to oxidize and leaving only this beginner data scrap behind. I've never seen such a perverted error in violation of regulations. It would be proper to delete you immediately, but..."

Arhen's fingers moved busily in the air as he muttered.

Pzzzt—

Instantly, the data of a wild low-level monster, a 'Slime', which was about to spawn at my feet, was forcibly bounced away by Arhen's administrative override. Since he couldn't officially help me, it was a subtle correction where he twisted his admin privileges to increase my survival probability from 0% to about 1%.

Arhen gave a cold snort and threw a warning at me.

"Listen well. This is no longer the peaceful dress-up game you used to play. The natives don't know about system windows, and the outer fields are collapsing under the realistic physical laws of this other world. I don't know what you can do with that fossil-like brain of yours, but..."

Arhen brushed his robe sleeve and partially vanished into the air.

"The moment you take one step out of the village, you will die instantly at Level 1. So stay quietly tucked away in a corner of the starting village picking up junk. I'm going to go clean up this abnormal bug."

As soon as he finished speaking, Arhen's form flickered like a hologram and disappeared.

But I knew. Looking at the log data where Arhen had vanished, he had just sneakily applied an [EXP Gain x2 Correction] and a [HP Regeneration Buff] to me.

I picked up the wooden sword left alone on the ground and let the corners of my mouth curl up.

My body is a newbie's, but the source code of this world is in the palm of my hand. In the starting village plaza, the end of the server and the beginning of another world, the dangerous survival story of a rotten veteran was finally raising its curtain.