Breaking the Fourth Wall with Astonishment

What does this mean?

It knows I reloaded the save?

It's talking to me—not to the character in the game?

Everything it did was all accounted for?

Wu Tian suddenly felt a chill crawl down his spine. He even subconsciously turned to glance at the empty office behind him.

Clearly, Flowey in the game wasn't talking to the protagonist inside the game.

He was talking to the player sitting in front of the computer screen—him.

It knew what he had done. It even knew he had reloaded the save and started over.

Even though Wu Tian was well aware that this was just part of the game's design.

He was still shaken.

And what did Flowey mean by those words?

It also possesses that power?

What was Determination?

While exploring the castle, he had come across some star-like glowing symbols.

When he examined them, he almost always got the same message: It fills you with determination.

For a moment, countless questions surged in his mind.

But even more than that, he felt a sense of awe.

After all, at first he had thought this was just an ordinary RPG.

But with Flowey's appearance, it was as if the fourth wall had been shattered.

What else was waiting ahead?

With that feeling, Wu Tian kept pushing forward.

One after another, characters full of personality appeared in the game.

Sans, who shook his hand while holding a whoopee cushion, and Papyrus, who was obsessed with blocking him using puzzles—this pair of skeleton brothers left a deep impression on him.

Sans, who seemed incredibly lazy, loved telling skeleton-related puns to tease his brother Papyrus.

His brother, on the other hand, was dead set on using puzzle traps to stop the protagonist.

The funny part was, if the protagonist got stuck on a puzzle, this skeleton would actively reveal the answer.

A somewhat chuunibyou fish-woman named Undyne chased him all the way through the game. When they finally reached the lava map, she collapsed from dehydration, and conveniently, there was a water cooler nearby. At that point, he could choose to save her or not.

In the lab, Dr. Effie seemed a bit awkward and shy—a total shut-in archetype.

Later, during the quiz battle against the robot she created, the doctor would even use her hands to gesture the correct answers as hints to the player.

And based on the robot's final answer, it was clear she had a crush on Undyne, the fish-woman chasing the protagonist.

Then there was the performance before the robot duel under the moonlight—it was absolutely jaw-dropping.

But what truly shocked Wu Tian was the conversation with Sans in the golden, magnificent hallway just before facing the final boss of the game.

From the very beginning, Wu Tian had simply assumed that Undertale's setting was just a standard RPG framework.

Even though Flowey's appearance had given him his first shock and sense of wonder.

He still played through the whole game following typical RPG logic.

An RPG, right? Killing monsters and leveling up was normal, wasn't it?

The Spider Lady, some monsters he met along the way that he liked—he let them live. But the troublesome ones, or ones he didn't take a liking to, he cut down without mercy.

But now, Sans's words made Wu Tian realize he had completely misunderstood.

EXP wasn't experience points. It was an abbreviation for Execution Points.

Similarly, what was called LOVE wasn't level either. It was short for Level of Violence.

Every time he killed a monster in the game, his Execution Points and Violence Level went up.

And right now, his LV had reached level 11.

In that instant, Wu Tian also remembered what Toriel had said at the very beginning—about making friends with monsters. Clearly, the game had been dropping hints all along.

The final boss, the King, didn't seem evil at all. In fact, he was quite kind. Before the fight, he repeatedly asked if Wu Tian was ready.

If he said he wasn't, the King would kindly reply that he wasn't ready either.

But once he passed through the Great Door and confirmed he was ready, everything changed.

A stirring BGM rang out.

[A strange light illuminated the room]

[The dawn's rays pierced through the barrier]

[It seems your journey has finally reached its end]

[You are filled with DETERMINATION]

The narration slowly faded, and the king opened his eyes, accompanied by the words "Goodbye, human" from his mouth.

In an instant, he descended like a war god, his crimson cape billowing as he swung his trident, shattering the mercy button into pieces.

Shattering your mercy, and my mercy too. No escape. This battle would be fought to the death!

The final level was extremely difficult. Although Wu Tian had played some similar bullet-hell dodge games, he still barely scraped by.

After finally defeating the king, he could choose to kill or spare him.

At that moment, Wu Tian remembered Toriel and Sans's words, and he chose to spare him.

Faced with the protagonist who had spared him, the king also seemed surprised, expressing his willingness to take care of him together with Toriel, forming a new family in the Underground. Everything seemed so warm and beautiful.

But the next moment, a flash of blade light passed, and with the king's stunned expression, Flowey appeared.

He killed the king.

"You idiot, you still haven't learned. In this world, it's kill or be killed."

With Flowey's sinister, evil laughter, and Wu Tian staring in bewilderment, the entire game suddenly crashed.

What was going on? A bug? Why did the game disappear?

But before Wu Tian could be confused for long, the game automatically restarted the next moment.

And the game's opening cutscene had become eerie as well.

Entering the save file screen, what was even stranger was that this save wasn't his.

It read: Flowey, LV: 9999.

This was Flowey's save file.

Choosing to continue, his own character appeared in the game against a pitch-black background.

Arriving at the star-shaped save point, his save information appeared on the game screen.

But the next moment, the screen suddenly trembled, and blood-red cracks spread from the middle of the save information.

Finally, five words appeared on it: [Save file deleted.]

As the save shattered, Flowey reappeared on the screen.

Having devoured the souls of six human children, Flowey now proclaimed himself a god.

But in the game, his image was a bizarre, grotesque monster. This was the true Final Boss battle.

This battle was even harder than the one against the king.

After dying, a game over sign appeared in the game, along with a line of text.

[This is all just a nightmare, and you will never wake up.]

Besides the text, there was Flowey's bone-chilling mad laughter, and the game screen was filled with the font "HAHAHAHA," before the game crashed and closed itself again.

And when the game was reopened, Flowey would continue to say some despair-inducing words to her in front of the computer.

Like, "Did you think I'd be satisfied with killing you just once?"

"There is no perfect ending in this world."

The only way to defeat Flowey was to keep persisting until the other human souls devoured by Flowey were awakened, finally stripping him of his ability to extract save files, allowing this terrifying boss to be successfully defeated.

After successfully defeating Flowey, he could choose to kill or spare him, but regardless of killing or sparing, the ending was the same.

The only difference was that sparing Flowey would reveal the method to unlock the Pacifist Route from his mouth.

With the final text appearing, the game officially ended.

But Wu Tian, sitting in front of the computer, still hadn't fully recovered from the shock the game had brought him.

Stunning. Right now, he had only one feeling.

It was stunning.

Breaking the fourth wall, deleting his own save file, closing his own game, and the design of Flowey's dialogue.

Even for that one moment in the game, it made Wu Tian feel like there really was such an Underground world, that there really were characters like Flowey existing.

And after this stunning feeling, there was even more curiosity.

In the resplendent golden corridor, he had already learned everything from talking to Sans.

So LOVE was the Level of Violence, and EXP was Execution Points.

Then, what were the other two endings in the game like?