Nothing Is Over Yet!

In just half an hour, this game reviewer had been torn to shreds online.

At that moment, he was still enthusiastically talking to his sponsor on the phone. He had cleared the game in only half a day.

He had written up a review at top speed today. The sponsor was sure to be satisfied, right?

He had quite a few fans in the gaming community, and they were far more loyal than the fans of Getting over it's creator.

"Big Boss Sponsor, you're satisfied with the results this time, right? I really did play the game myself. I was careful every step of the way because I was afraid I'd die and have to start over." The reviewer sounded smug.

"In the end, I still managed to outlast the Hand of the King." As he said that, he could not help but feel a little emotional.

If he had not been paid this time, he truly would have wanted to give the game a positive review.

Those seemingly random little items had genuinely helped him a great deal during the final boss fight.

There was also the smooth control feel. The entire battle had been utterly exhilarating.

He even wanted to try out how other weapon combinations would feel in combat.

"You've got the nerve to ask me for money?" Yogame's contact person looked at the messages he had just received, his face turning completely dark.

"What we wanted was for you to point out the bad parts, even the flaws, based on an honest review of the game!"

"Yeah, I followed those requirements." The reviewer's eyes were full of confusion. He really had written what he honestly thought.

To him, the huge variety of equipment had high potential for combinations, but for such a simple game, it really felt a little excessive.

"Go look for yourself. And remember, we signed an agreement. This was a review you chose to write yourself. It has nothing to do with us." The contact person hung up after saying that.

A sense of foreboding rose in the reviewer's heart. He quickly opened his phone and immediately saw the 99+ replies.

Oh no!

The reviewer instantly realized that this review had gone disastrously wrong.

If what he had said had been correct or fair, most players would only have casually glanced over what he wrote and would not have responded.

This could only mean that what he had written was wrong—horribly, unforgivably wrong—for so many people to reply.

When he opened the replies and saw what they said, his vision went dark.

Clearing the game was not really clearing the game?

Clearing it was only the beginning of Cell One?

Because he had needed to write an authentic review from a "player's" perspective, he had not looked up any information online before playing.

He felt that doing so would mix too many other people's ideas into his own.

As a blank sheet of paper, when trying a game for the first time, he preferred to fill that sheet himself.

The information online stated that players would obtain an Origin Cell after defeating the Hand of the King. After that, they could adjust the number of Origin Cells at the starting point to change the difficulty. Aside from differences in monster health and damage, each difficulty also came with certain additional settings that made the game harder.

After Cell One came Cell Two, Cell Three... all the way to Cell Five.

Every player who had reached the later stages said the game had tortured them into delirium. They were also frantically discussing all sorts of mutation and weapon combinations, arguing over which playstyle was the best.

And him?

He had only played Cell Zero, and to save time, he had not even paid much attention to the story.

After beating the Hand of the King, he crushed the King and wrote a negative review of the game.

He quickly deleted the review and wrote another article to apologize, saying that he had only played part of the game and had not noticed there were more stages afterward.

He thought that would settle the matter.

Who would have thought that every game company he had previously worked with would send notices terminating their partnerships?

In those companies' words, this game reviewer was not rigorous enough when reviewing games.

Cold sweat poured down the reviewer's back. At that moment, he had only one solution in mind.

He had to clear the game completely, then write a new review containing the most authentic player experience.

He reopened the game on his computer. Looking at the screen for Cell One, he could not help swallowing hard.

He had just read what other people were saying.

If Cell Zero was meant to lure players in, then Cell One was where the suffering began.

They still considered Cell One and Cell Two relatively easy, at least until Cell Three.

Enemy health, attack power, and danger all increased substantially. That increase was already extremely dangerous for newcomers. Enemies that could teleport would teleport, and stages began featuring a greater variety of enemies.

Although recovery pools appeared the same way as in Cell One, they only restored one use of the flask. Players had to start learning how to manage their health.

By Cell Four, enemy health, attack power, and danger all increased massively, approaching nightmare difficulty. There were no recovery pools at this difficulty. Players could only buy food or potions from shops, though they could also find food.

By Cell Five, it had already become a living hell. Even highly skilled players who had reached this point were constantly crying out in agony.

Here, enemy health, attack power, and danger increased to an extreme degree. Plague ravaged the entire island, and even some food became contaminated with germs. As long as players took damage, they would become infected.

Eating contaminated food by mistake would also cause infection. A gauge would appear above the health bar, and once it filled completely, health would keep dropping until death. Players could reduce the infection level by drinking water or eating fresh food.

As the story progressed, players also learned that only after defeating the Cell Five boss could they discover the game's true ending.

At first, players thought the green algae clinging to the headless corpse was merely an escaped prisoner from the Underground Prison.

But as the story advanced, everyone discovered that the green mass was the protagonist—and the King at the heart of this game's story.

At the end of Cell Zero, after killing the Hand of the King, players could see a man in a purple robe and crown sitting motionlessly on the throne behind him. He sat in a stone chair, with a red crystal embedded in his chest.

That Philosopher's Stone that had drawn the outrage of the people.

The respected King was both cultured and skilled in martial arts, but he had one greatest flaw: arrogance.

After unifying the empire, his ambitions began to swell. He started seeking that illusory dream of immortality.

It so happened that the Collector told the King of a method for eternal life. They began researching the panacea, homunculi, and the Philosopher's Stone...

Thus, the King began sending people into the caves to mine red crystals for the creation of the Philosopher's Stone. But the caves contained more than red crystals—they also held poisonous gas and monsters.

Mining was the most grueling and thankless job on the island. Many people were crushed to death by falling rocks, suffocated by toxic fumes, or killed by strange creatures...

Uh, do you all want a female lead? I'm not really interested in writing one, but it feels like the story needs a little romance.