Ash Emperor

"Thanks for playing!"

Staring at the end message on the screen congratulating him on clearing the game and bringing the curtain down, Liao Ji let out a long breath from his chair.

The game he was playing was called Falling.

It was a character-raising game set in the Wasteland.

Players took on the role of a leader of survivors in the Wasteland. They recruited companions and trained characters step by step, built their own organization and shelter base, fought against all kinds of disasters, and carved out a haven in a wasteland crawling with mutated monsters and contaminated by Corrupt Calamity.

The game offered an incredible degree of freedom. Its story was calculated in real time according to the player's decisions, and its artwork and character models were exquisite. In every respect, it was practically flawless.

Except—

It was just too damn hard!

The early-game challenges alone were enough to make players suffer: scarce character-raising resources, sinister monsters scattered across the wilderness, and scavengers watching them like hawks.

And that was before you factored in Falling's extreme randomness. Disasters and misfortunes could strike at any moment, so there was no such thing as following a guide step by step to clear the game. Every player's world was completely different, making it incredibly difficult to copy someone else's strategy.

According to the official global statistics, fewer than a thousand people had ever cleared the game.

And the number of players who had achieved all the achievements, collected everything, and explored everything—in other words, those who had achieved a "perfect clear"—had always been zero.

Oh, no.

That number should have just become "one."

At the end of the game, a CG image titled "Family Portrait" was included. It showcased the five strongest Corrupted characters of different classes whom he had raised during that playthrough.

Corrupted was a term unique to Falling.

It referred specifically to people who had mutated under the influence of Corrupt Calamity in the Wasteland but still retained their sanity for the time being. They were divided into five different classes according to the abilities granted by their mutations.

For players to establish themselves in the Wasteland, recruiting and training powerful Corrupted was absolutely essential. It was also the core gameplay loop.

As a straight man in good standing, Liao Ji had naturally raised only waifus, and he'd aimed for a diverse family.

Thus, the five female Corrupted in the CG image all had distinct styles and came from different races.

The priest-class nun, Stia.

The esper-class Succubus, Rena.

The Vanguard-class Dragon Girl, Tang Jiuyou.

The marksman-class android maid, Zero.

And last, the guard-class Elf knight Anno, whom Liao Ji often cried out to, "Mom, save me!"

Among them were the voluptuous and seductive but flat-chested, as well as the pure and innocent whose slightest jiggling could make you dizzy. Some were tsundere and aloof, while others were gentle and demure.

But they all had one thing in common: they were all top-tier beauties!

However, after seeing so many beautiful faces, their looks had gradually lost their novelty for Liao Ji. What had truly left an emotional mark on him was the memories they carried with them.

Back then, every one of them had played a pivotal role in a different stage of his time with the game.

They had been the sort of characters for whom, at the time, he'd wanted to give every last bit of his best equipment and supplies.

And yet.

As the game's setting and stages changed, Liao Ji's needs for Corrupted had changed too, and one after another, they had started to be "laid off."

Take Stia, the "healer" who had brought Liao Ji back from the brink countless times during the early-game expansion phase.

But once he had established himself and moved into the midgame, with his faction beginning to grow and expand, a pure healer like her had become less and less useful, until Liao Ji had eventually put her in storage for good.

In her place came more aggressive characters who could help Liao Ji conquer territory: the powerful physical attackers, Vanguard Tang Jiuyou and marksman Zero.

But gradually, the two who had once slaughtered light-armored enemies like scavengers with ease began to struggle as Liao Ji's foes grew tougher. The enemy became base guards with fine weapons and armor, boasting both high defense and high attack.

The two physical attackers who had once dominated the battlefield could now barely scratch their foes.

Liao Ji had no choice but to put them back in storage, strip them of their resources, and invest everything in new characters: the Succubus Rena and the Elf Anno.

The former's powerful esper abilities could easily deal with the enemy's heavy armor, while the latter's nature magic and shields could withstand the enemy's terrifying firepower, providing the strongest defense and creating room to attack.

Only after the last Wasteland faction had been defeated and surrendered did Liao Ji finally unite the entire Wasteland.

[The Ash Empire]

It was officially established at that very moment.

Incidentally, "Ash" was the ID Liao Ji had chosen for himself in the game.

After that, once he had united the various races and factions, Liao Ji, now the Ash Emperor, led his army to reclaim monster-occupied territory step by step. He began to wage war against the source of the Wasteland and the culprit behind the disaster: the Abyss of Corrupt Calamity.

But.

Though he was many times stronger and had more resources than he could ever use—far removed from the desperate struggle to survive at the start—Liao Ji somehow no longer felt the same joy he had at the beginning of the game. His interactions with the Corrupted he had raised had also dwindled drastically.

For one thing, once the conflict with Wasteland monsters had become an all-out war, the army mattered more than individual strength. For another, as Liao Ji's abilities as the "protagonist" grew stronger and more versatile, he no longer needed the Corrupted to fight for him.

Instead, keeping them in the rear as support staff and making use of their infrastructure skills to boost production throughout the Empire and its cities was the best choice.

Take Stia, for example:

[Dark Light (increases with level): When "Stia" is assigned to a "church"-type building, the city gains +15% resistance to mental contamination and the Corrupted's rampage rate decreases by 10%.]

[Saint Healer (increases with level): When "Stia" is stationed in the rear (not in the combat lineup), the entire faction's rate of disease and plague outbreaks decreases by 30%.]

So putting them in storage didn't mean he had truly given up on them.

Even if they couldn't go to the battlefield, the five Corrupted's powerful infrastructure skills were more than enough to justify continuing to feed them EXP items and keep their levels on par with the main force's first tier.

"..."

Liao Ji snorted.

Put that way, it sounded nice, but wasn't he just squeezing every last bit of value out of them? He no longer even brought them along, yet still made them work day and night in the factories at the rear. Weren't they just tools?

He shook his head.

At the edge of his vision, a thick stack of small notebooks beside his computer caught his attention.

He opened one. Every page was covered in dense handwriting. He had written it all by hand: calculations of training returns, the cost-effectiveness of each instance, plans for future decisions, and the locations and distribution of rare materials and equipment drops.

All together, the records amounted to the game notes of a veteran player with an almost pathological level of dedication.

Liao Ji planned to organize and compile them after he finished, then post them online. He hoped the lessons he'd learned over tens of thousands of hours would help newcomers avoid a few detours—and maybe even save the game's flagging sales?

But after looking over the notes he had painstakingly written, line by line, for a while longer, Liao Ji sighed.

He began to reflect.

Had he been a little too obsessed with character strength?

Because he'd kept them in storage for so long, several of them had lost quite a bit of affection for him. In the game, affection seemed strangely useless, like a dead-end stat, so Liao Ji had never paid it any attention.

It wasn't until he saw it in the CG screenshot that he realized it was probably one of his biggest regrets after clearing the game.

Of course, there was an exception: Stia was one of them.

Though she had been the first he put in storage, quietly serving as a tool in the rear, and the first whose equipment he had stripped off and given to another woman,

just as befitted her gentle nature as a priestly nun, Stia would never grow resentful toward him. Ever since her affection had reached 100%, it had never changed.

If she were real, perhaps she'd be the kind of wife whose husband had been away on a long "business trip" and hadn't come home for ages, yet who still laid out the tablecloth, set the table, and cooked for two every day. She'd do it just in case her husband remembered he had a home and came back one day, so she could smile and say, "Go wash your hands."

Phew!

Liao Ji let out a long breath and shook his head, mocking himself for getting so carried away over a fictional character written in code.

Still, when he posted his guide, he decided he would put a line right at the beginning for all the newcomers.

[Strength is temporary, but the waifus you raise are yours for life!]

That should do it.

It was about time to call it quits.

Liao Ji's parents had passed away when he was young, but fortunately, they had left him a large inheritance. He had never needed to worry about food, drink, or a place to live, but it had also made him a loner.

Maybe games had been created to give people like Liao Ji a safe harbor for their hearts.

The record in the bottom corner of the CG image showed that his total playtime in Falling had quietly climbed to more than ten thousand hours.

Though he was filled with countless regrets, Liao Ji finally accepted it. With the feeling of seeing off an old friend, he moved his mouse and clicked the button to confirm the end of the game.

However, he hadn't expected this.

[Congratulations! You have met the requirements to unlock "Second Playthrough." Would you like to begin?]

Liao Ji: "...!?"

A Second Playthrough meant letting players clear the game all over again. Some more generous developers usually added extra content to a Second Playthrough to flesh out the world and improve the player experience.

Of course, there were also some truly brilliant studios that could make a Second Playthrough feel like an entirely new game.

Liao Ji certainly didn't expect Falling's developer, whose sales had bombed and who was rumored to have gone under, to manage the latter. But even the former would be enough to surprise him.

After all, Liao Ji had never heard mention of a Second Playthrough for this game, not on the official site or on the forums.

Full of curiosity and anticipation, he selected "Yes." But instead of launching the game immediately, another dialogue box popped up.

[Friendly reminder: Second Playthrough has a very high difficulty. Saving and restarting are disabled. You will also begin with the five Corrupted you raised in the CG. Please choose carefully.]

That's it?

In a single-player game, disabling saves certainly made things much harder. And if restarting was disabled, did that mean he only got one chance to enter Second Playthrough?

But compared to the other part, none of that mattered.

"I can carry over my data!? I can take the characters from this playthrough with me?" Liao Ji couldn't help exclaiming at the screen.

That didn't seem like the kind of thing Falling, a game notorious for its "get lost" difficulty, would do.

His five Corrupted were all at the very top of their respective classes. Even the weakest, Stia, could easily destroy a city under his control.

If he could "carry them over" into his Second Playthrough, wouldn't that mean he'd start a new game with the five strongest fighters in the world at his side? This—

Wouldn't he just steamroll the whole thing!?

Damn!

After his initial shock, Liao Ji quickly "understood" what the developers were getting at.

It was simple.

They were obviously giving him a chance to have fun!

The developers must have understood that you couldn't have both power and beauty, and guessed at his regret. That was why they'd added a Second Playthrough, giving him a chance to make up for the time he'd sacrificed with his waifus for the sake of strength.

Well done!

Thrilled, Liao Ji slapped his thigh, wanting to give the developers a huge thumbs-up.

In the past, he'd let his obsession with strength blind him. This time, Liao Ji had made up his mind: he didn't care whether their builds fell out of the meta, and he didn't care about developing the infrastructure. He was going to keep his waifus by his side and max out their affection!

With that in mind,

Liao Ji pressed the [Confirm] button without hesitation.

In the next instant, light flashed.

Darkness swallowed Liao Ji's entire field of vision.