Chapter 1: Supreme Leader
I’m not entirely sure how I died.
I remember waking up in this vat, soaked in liquid.
That’s probably not the most comforting way to begin a new life, but there it is.
No memory of a tragic accident, no flash of light, no long tunnel.
Just… floating.
Cold.
Then pain.
And now this.
This being… a fantasy world.
Not the heroic, swords-and-sunsets kind.
No.
I’ve been reincarnated into what I can only describe as a magical startup with suspicious ethics and zero HR presence.
For the record, I had heard of reincarnation before.
In my past life, I think.
My memory is very hazy.
Some belief systems — I forget which ones — say you come back based on the deeds of your past life.
Do good things, come back better.
Do evil things, maybe you come back as a worm or something equally underwhelming.
So naturally, I’ve been asking myself one simple question since I got here:
“What the hell did I do to deserve this?”
Because here I am, freshly grown in a vat, assigned a name like I’m a warehouse pallet (“Abel,” nice to meet you, I guess), and now being forced to crunch balance numbers and write patch notes for what appears to be the magical equivalent of an MMO.
I’m not exaggerating.
There was literally a “Bug Triage Board” near the dormitory kitchen.
I’m told I’m supposed to “report to Adam.”
***
That’s all the guidance I was given.
No title.
No context.
Just Adam.
After asking around, I was directed to the West Simulation Chamber, which sounds more impressive than it looks.
The door creaked ominously when I opened it, as if trying to warn me, “You sure you want to go in, champ?”
Inside, the room was… well, chaotic.
Piles of scrolls, parchments, wax-sealed folders, and magical rune-paper were stacked like teetering towers of anxiety.
A few of them glowed faintly.
One pile seemed to be whispering something in a language that I am sure I didn’t have the vocal apparatus to pronounce.
I didn’t investigate.
The floor had burn marks — some recent, some scorched deep into the stone.
One section had melted slightly.
I did not ask why.
Some things are better left un-asked when your body is only two months old and still hasn’t figured out how knees are supposed to work.
At the center of it all, standing behind a wide wooden table, was a man.
Older than me, though not by much.
Early 30s, maybe.
His silver-blond hair was a mess, his coat had ink stains, and his eyes had the wild gleam of someone who hadn’t slept in three days but was riding the high of a really good idea.
In front of him, projected mid-air from a ring of glyphs, was a 3D simulation.
I kid you not.
A party of four—warrior, mage, rogue, and something I’m 80% sure was a raccoon in a trench coat—were fighting a massive octopus on a beach.
The sand shimmered.
The octopus roared.
The rogue backflipped off a seashell.
It was all animated in real-time with damage numbers and health bars.
The man didn’t even glance at me when I walked in.
“You’re two minutes late,” he said, tapping a rune and watching the octopus fire a water cannon at the warrior.
“That’s minus one social affinity point.”
“I wasn’t told I had an appointment,” I replied.
“Not an excuse,” he said, still not looking up.
“Neither was I, and yet here we are.”
I cleared my throat.
“You’re… Adam?”
At that, he finally turned. His eyes were a soft gray, but sharp — like he was always thinking six thoughts at once and only saying the weirdest one aloud.
“That’s me,” he said.
“Founder. Creative Director. Bug Tester. Executive Coffee Summoner. First of my kind. Welcome to… this.”
He gestured vaguely at the room, then at the simulation, then at me.
“You must be the new homunculus.”
I blinked.
“…Excuse me?”
“Homunculus. Vat-born. Soul-slotted. You. Me. Cut from the same cloth.”
He waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t worry. You’ve got about six weeks before the existential dread really sets in.”
“Wait. You’re a homunculus too?”
He gave me a cheeky little grin, like I’d just asked if water was wet.
“Technically yes. First successful run. Prototype body, soul grafted from a dead guy. Probably from the same world as you.”
“Probably?”
“Well, I remember our world, but only the useful stuff. Like games. MMOs. And how to make an endgame system that doesn’t make people rage-quit. The rest? Meh. Not important.”
I blinked again.
“So… you brought me here?”
“Yup. Siphoned your soul mid-float from the Sea of souls. Stuck you in the backup vat. Punched a few runes, and here you are! Welcome to my dream project. You’re now part of the greatest live-service MMORPG this world has ever seen”
I stared at him.
He stared back.
Then he hit a button, and the raccoon in the simulation cast a fire spell shaped like a hot dog cart.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said.
Adam only grinned.
“Don’t worry, Abel. You’ll adjust. They always do. Especially once I let you try the PvP simulation.”
“I don’t even know magic.”
“Neither did the raccoon. Look at him now.”
I didn’t have the heart to argue.
I had too many questions.
But part of me already knew the answer to the most important one.
‘Why was I here?”
Because Adam wanted to make an MMO… and apparently, he needed patch notes written in blood.
***
Over time, I got used to life underground.
Not in the “ah, how cozy and mysterious” way.
More in the “I haven’t seen the sun in two months and I’m beginning to talk to the ceiling tiles” way.
The facility — which no one gave an official name, by the way — was buried so deep underground that I’m fairly certain we were legally considered bedrock.
It was all torch-lit hallways, humming rune circuits, and that damp medieval castle smell that just never goes away no matter how many herbs you hang near the air vents.
At first, people avoided me.
They didn’t make eye contact.
Conversations ended when I walked into a room.
One alchemist even pretended to be a statue when I passed by.
(She was very bad at it. She sneezed.)
Eventually, I learned why.
Adam hadn’t really done the best PR for us homunculi.
They thought I was the Supreme Leader’s successor.
Currently the title that Adam holds.
They thought I was his successor.
Not a successor.
The successor.
As in, the one that would someday rule this underground (literally and figuratively), secret global shadow organization, crush dissent under heel, and possibly develop mind control perfume.
You know — standard Supreme Leader activities.
I tried to tell them I had no idea what I was doing, that I didn’t even know what I was doing, let alone why I was doing it.
But they didn’t believe me.
Until one day…
I broke.
It was week four of working under Adam.
He had assigned me to rebalance the economy of a virtual goblin colony, and by “economy,” I mean I had to calculate how many coins, fangs, and random garbage items they should drop per combat encounter, per player level.
By the end of the second day, I was face-down on a summoning scroll, crying into the ink.
That’s when someone finally talked to me.
It was Reena, one of the maintenance mages.
She found me blubbering and muttering something about “drop rate decay curves”.
She knelt down beside me, patted my back, and quietly offered me a biscuit.
From that moment, the walls began to fall.
Turns out, once people saw I was emotionally broken by spreadsheets, they realized I probably wasn’t some dark overlord in the making.
And that’s when I started learning the truth.
About Adam.
About everything.
Apparently, Adam wasn’t just the first reincarnation project — he was the prototype.
The pet experiment of the previous Supreme Leader of this organization, who had been looking for a “soul of unparalleled manipulation and subtlety” to engineer world domination from the shadows.
They fished Adam’s soul from the Sea of souls, grew him in a vat like me, and expected him to infiltrate royal courts, orchestrate coups, and weaponize political scandal.
What they got instead… was Adam.
And in six months, he broke the plan in half and replaced it with something infinitely worse.
***
First, he invented the magical equivalent of a computer.
Not out of any directive — he just wanted something with faster processing than rune-paper.
He called it the ArcanoFrame.
Then he discovered how to make these ArcanoFrames link to each other remotely using light-bending crystal relays and sigil routers.
He created the first magical intranet.
And then…
Then, he introduced this world to the most dangerous, addictive, diplomacy-destroying game ever created by humankind:
Chess.
Yes.
Chess.
With magic-enhanced game boards, holographic pieces, and animated death scenes for each capture.
It spread like wildfire.
Kings gambled kingdoms on it.
Generals abandoned battle planning meetings to get “just one more game” in.
Children skipped sword training to study Queen-pinning strategies.
Churches split over which opening was holier.
And then — then — Adam introduced online multiplayer.
Five copper a month.
That’s it.
No one batted an eye.
People started taking second jobs to afford faster connections and shinier in-game piece skins.
Yes, skins.
He made skins for each piece, he made skinlines.
There is a pricing tier to the skins.
Some rare skins have entire religions themed after them.
And that made the organization so much money, Adam effectively bought out the Supreme Leader.
I’m serious.
The guy retired.
Took his gold, his shares in the chess server hosting infrastructure (which Adam called “the RealmGrid”, by the way), and vanished to a tropical island rumored to have daily ranked matches and free lemonade.
Adam became the new Supreme Leader.
Officially.
No coup.
No rebellion.
Just… a business transition.
And now?
He’s got a new goal.
“Chess was just the test run,” he told me once, while gesturing at a wall-sized whiteboard covered in monster sketches and gear progression trees.
“Now it’s time for phase two.”
“Which is…?”
I asked warily.
“A fully immersive, magic-powered, continent-wide MMO.”
“Oh gods.”
“With guild housing. Real estate will be very important.”
***
So here I am.
Abel.
Former vat product.
Now Lead Intern of Balance, under the most ambitious homunculus-turned-game-director the world has ever seen.
***
Author’s Note:
Hello Hello ( ^_^)／
It might feel a little different from my other story, and honestly, I hope I will able to do this story justice.
I just really wanted to explore something new, and I promise I’ll be putting just as much heart and effort into this one too. ╭( ๐_๐)╮
Thank you so, so much for taking the time out of your day to read this chapter.
Seriously. It means the world to me that you are here, giving this a shot.
I hope you enjoy what’s to come. ( •̀ᴗ•́ )و ̑̑