432 Casual Gaming?

[POV: Mukul, Your Average Earthling]

Games were cool.

They were doorways, windows into other worlds where people brushed against cultures both imagined and inherited, fantastical, historical, and often wholly hypothetical. These worlds were, by all rational measures, not real. And yet there was always that quiet miracle of suspension of disbelief, the moment where a player chose to believe!

That belief was how a super-fast blue hedgehog became cool, how a thunderous yellow rat became cute, and how a retired, bald god of war could become a father and somehow make millions feel the weight of growth, regret, and love.

Immersion did that.

And Lost Paladin Online understood immersion better than most.

When players immersed themselves in LPO, emotions followed naturally from fear, triumph, despair, and hope. They identified with their characters not as avatars, but as extensions of themselves. They felt like Paladins, standing in a strange world of immortals, swords, faith, and ruin.

What they didn't know was that this immersion went further than anyone suspected.

When a player truly connected with their character, something subtle occurred. Their souls, either a fragment or an echo of it, were projected elsewhere, literally cast into another reality entirely through the medium of their characters.

They weren't merely playing in that world.

They were touching it.

It sounded insane. It was insane!

And yet, it was real.

Very few understood how the "Source" truly worked, or what the essence of the world perceived by its inhabitants as 'Earth' actually was. To call it magical would have been an exaggeration, since most of the time, nothing supernatural ever happened within this world. But once in a long while, anomalies slipped through the cracks.

A game that could pull souls across realities was one of them.

Like its predecessor, Lost Legends Online, LPO was an acquired taste. Brutal systems. Punishing combat. A world that did not bend to the player's convenience. But unlike LLO, its successor made genuine efforts to welcome new blood.

LPO launched with two major modes.

The first was the massively multiplayer world, already bustling with players engaging the story together, struggling, dying, learning, and persisting.

The second was a single-player experience known as Immortal Paladin. It stood toe-to-toe with the best RPGs on the market, featuring currently three main storylines: Yellow Dragon Festival, Emperor's Summons, and Potential of a Miracle. Difficulty was adjustable. The experience was rich. And, somehow, it was all free to play.

That alone drew attention.

Across the world, small waves rippled through gaming communities as Lost Paladin Online officially released. Reviews were cautious but intrigued. Streams multiplied. Forums buzzed.

And despite the MMORPG side of the game being just as punishing as LLO ever was, perhaps even more so, players kept logging in.

They complained. They struggled. They died again and again. And yet, they stayed. Some joked about it. Some laughed it off. Some said it felt like the game needed them.

"David needs us."

"The world feels empty when I log out."

"I swear the NPCs remember me."

"LMAO! Ren Jingyi's so cute!"

"Please, nerf the Heavenly Temple elites."

"Hey, I'm new to the game… I'm only at Level 1… Why am I getting targeted by a Level 100 cultivator?"

"This game's so imbalanced, lol!"

"I managed to steal a Soaring Vessel, I'll try to explore other regions."

"Is it just me or Lu Gao is kind of cute?"

"No, it gotta be Yuen Fu…"

"Anyone here know where to get good gear?"

"Where can I fight the Martial God?"

"That was a beta-exclusive boss fight, and I don't think we'll see that guy for some time."

Earth. India.

Mukul was your average high schooler.

He went to school, tried to keep his grades respectable, joked around with friends, and pretended not to worry about the future even though he absolutely did. He knew vaguely and uncomfortably that one day this phase of life would end. That adulthood would arrive whether he was ready or not.

Which was precisely why, while he was still young, he believed in enjoying life.

…By doom-scrolling on his smartphone.

A curvy woman appeared on his screen, dancing to a trending song. Mukul blinked, then nodded solemnly at the universe, double-tapped to like the video, and watched it again. And again. Eventually, boredom set in, and he swiped down.

Another curvy woman.

He frowned slightly. What was wrong with his algorithm today?

Not that he was complaining. He liked curvy women. He was, after all, hitting puberty, and his hormones were doing unspeakable things to his judgment.

He swiped again.

This time, the screen exploded into motion.

A lone warrior stood midair, cloak snapping violently as an army of winged enemies descended from the sky. Golden light tore through the heavens. Blades flashed. Bodies fell. The animation was clean and cinematic in a way that made Mukul instinctively sit up straighter.

"…Whoa."

Curiosity hooked him instantly. He tapped into the source of the clip, then another, then another. Soon, he realized what he was watching.

"Lost Paladin Online."

The game his friends wouldn't shut up about.

He watched beta testers struggle against bosses that moved like nightmares. He laughed out loud at a clip of a rooster sprinting through a battlefield like it had personal beef with reality. He checked MMO footage and saw players getting absolutely demolished, complaining about the skill ceiling.

One comment stuck with him.

"Play single-player first. Trust me."

Mukul shrugged. Made sense.

After a bit more digging, he pieced together the premise: a Paladin from another world reborn into a land steeped in cultures reminiscent of ancient China with cultivation, immortals, monsters, and gods. Heavy stuff. Cool stuff.

Without overthinking it, Mukul downloaded the game.

Installation complete!

Character creation loaded.

"…Why are there so many options?"

His eyes widened as menus unfolded into submenus, which branched into more menus. Six major class archetypes, each representing a Path: Human, Animal, Ghost, Asura, Heaven, and Hell. Each Path had traits, modifiers, affinities, background data, and things that promised to completely change how the game would play.

It was overly complicated. Painfully so.

Mukul grinned.

"This looks fun."

He spent an embarrassing amount of time tinkering, adjusting stats he barely understood, reading tooltips he only half-processed, and selecting traits based on vibes rather than logic.

Then came the final, most important decision.

Male or female?

Now, don't misunderstand him. Mukul was a true stud. He liked girls. Precisely because he liked girls, the idea of playing as one was… aesthetically pleasing.

But then a horrifying thought struck him.

What if he got hit by a truck and reincarnated as his character?

That would be very bad.

Risk assessment complete.

"Male it was."

He made the character brown too, deciding to go full alter-ego. If he was diving into another world, he might as well see himself there.

Satisfied, Mukul finalized the character.

As the screen faded to black and the game prepared to load, he leaned back, grinning, and declared to his empty room,

"Prepare for my arrival, worms."

The moment Mukul confirmed his choice, the world assembled itself around him.

Trees rose from the ground in layered canopies, their leaves filtering pale sunlight into drifting motes of green and gold. The air carried the scent of moss and rain-soaked soil. He stood in the middle of a shrine-like clearing, stone tiles half-swallowed by roots, ancient and deliberate in their placement as though something sacred had once been worshipped here and never fully forgotten.

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Mukul barely registered any of that.

He looked down at himself.

A towering tiger-man stared back, striped fur stretched over a powerful frame, claws flexing instinctively at his sides, and muscles coiled beneath his skin. His character radiated raw ferocity, the kind that looked like it should be ripping enemies apart by default.

"Okay," Mukul muttered. "That's sick."

Ahead of him, atop a raised stone pedestal, stood a woman.

She was beautiful in a way that felt intentional rather than ornamental. Blond hair cascaded down her back, the tips tinged red as if kissed by flame. Her posture was calm and resolute, someone who had endured loss without letting it hollow her out.

A name hovered above her head.

[Ren Jingyi]

Mukul tapped the interface and pulled up her data. The system flagged her immediately as an Essential NPC.

"…Figures."

Only then did Mukul notice the others.

Players shimmered into existence across the clearing Six distinct spawn points were arranged around the world map, each corresponding to one of the Six Paths. A handful of figures were already moving, testing controls, throwing out experimental attacks, or simply staring around in awe.

Ren Jingyi's gaze swept across them all.

"Immortal warriors from another world," she said, her voice clear and ringing, carrying an authority that made Mukul instinctively stop fiddling with his settings. "Blessed flesh of the Holy Emperor, I beseech you, help me reclaim my home from a terrible enemy."

A quest window appeared.

Mukul accepted it without reading.

He already knew this starting zone. He had done his research. The Animal Path spawn was infamous not because it was visually dull or narratively weak, but because it was brutal. Second only to Hell and Asura in early-game difficulty.

That hadn't stopped him from choosing it.

The real reason sat somewhere between shallow and honest.

Their was a fox NPC here who looked cool.

He set off into the forest, quest marker hovering helpfully in the distance, instructing him to gather a certain medicinal herb. He didn't spare Ren Jingyi a second glance. The talk of war, lost homes, and terrible enemies slid cleanly off his mind.

His eyes scanned the treeline instead.

Five minutes later, Mukul stared at the screen in disbelief.

His character's body lay sprawled across the forest floor, already dissolving into motes of light.

Again.

"That—what—from where?!"

A spell projectile had come from nowhere. No warning. No visible enemy. One hit. Instant death.

He respawned.

He walked carefully forward.

Another projectile.

Death.

Again.

Again.

Again.

His tiger-man looked terrifying, but in practice, he folded like wet paper. Enemy mobs outside the immediate spawn zone erased him effortlessly, as though the game itself were offended by his confidence.

"This is unreasonable," Mukul said aloud, rubbing his face.

Frustrated, he tabbed out and pulled up a walkthrough.

That was when the truth settled in.

To meaningfully leave the map, he needed to reach Level 20.

Until then, the forest was a cage.

Early Animal Path players were expected to grind painfully through low-yield fetch quests, minor herb gathering, and the occasional rare monster hunt if they were skilled or lucky enough. There was an NPC instructor, Ezekiel, who offered higher-difficulty quests with better rewards…

…but those quests were widely agreed to be suicide for new players.

Mukul scrolled further.

Most of the guides were written by veterans.

Former players of Lost Legend Online.

People who already understood the game's cruelty, its systems, and its expectations. They moved through this starting zone like predators who had memorized the forest, while newcomers like Mukul were reduced to confused prey.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the respawn screen.

"…So that's how it is."

The forest waited patiently for him to try again.

After another hour of misery, dying to invisible projectiles, jogging back to his corpse, and questioning every life decision that led him here, Mukul slumped back in his chair.

"This game hates me," he declared to his empty room.

He hovered over the quit button.

Then his phone buzzed with a meme.

A screenshot of Lost Paladin Online's death screen, bold white text plastered over it:

"FILTHY CASUAL DETECTED."

Mukul stared at it.

"…Wow," he muttered. "Okay. Screw you too."

He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and sat back up. Quitting now felt worse than dying another ten times. The game looked too good. The mechanics were interesting. There was something there, something he wanted to experience properly.

"Fine," he said. "Single-player it is."

He navigated to the menu and clicked Chronicles.

The screen faded to black.

A campfire crackled to life.

A man with dark hair sat beside it, emerald robes catching the firelight. A simple crown rested upon his head. The accessory was not ostentatious, but unmistakably regal. He looked up, eyes sharp yet warm, and smiled as if he had been waiting.

"Hey," the man said casually. "You're finally awake."

Mukul froze.

"…Why does that sound so familiar?"

The man chuckled softly. "Rough day?"

Dialogue options appeared.

Mukul selected one.

[I'm bored.]

The man's smile faded into something quieter. He leaned back, gaze drifting upward toward a sky filled with unfamiliar stars. "Bored, huh," he said. "Then how about a story?"

Another set of choices appeared, and Mukul chose another dialogue option he felt most appropriate.

[What story?]

The man tapped his chest lightly.

"My story," he said. "Da Wei's story."

The fire dimmed. The world dissolved into darkness.

A new screen appeared.

[SELECT A PROTAGONIST]

Several silhouettes lined the horizon. They were blurred and locked, their names hidden. He wondered what were the requirements to unlock the other playable characters. Still, he didn't mind playing the game with the only available character.

Da Wei

Mukul didn't hesitate. He clicked.

The screen exploded into light.

Suddenly, he was floating.

Stars stretched endlessly in every direction. Below him, a vast world curved in impossible detail with clouds, continents, and oceans glowing faintly against the void. For a split second, it was beautiful.

Then gravity remembered him.

"Oh shit," Da Wei's voice yelled, raw and panicked. "Oh shit—oh shit—OH HOLY FUCKING SHIT!"

The camera shook violently as the world rushed closer. Flames erupted around his body, the atmosphere screaming as he tore through it. The perspective shifted, pulling back into third person as Da Wei became a meteor, wrapped in fire.

The ground rushed up.

Impact.

The forest detonated.

Trees were obliterated, earth thrown skyward as a massive crater formed at the point of impact. Fire hissed. Debris rained down. At the center of it all, Da Wei stood slowly, smoke curling off his body.

Mukul stared at the screen, mouth slightly open.

"…Okay," he said quietly. "That was sick."

For the following week, Mukul barely touched the MMO side of the game.

Instead, he lived inside Chronicles.

At first, everything felt overwhelming from the skill trees branching like fractals, the timing-based parries, the strange balance between positioning, stamina, and ability chaining. But slowly, almost without realizing it, Mukul began to get it. His hands moved with intention. His eyes learned what to watch for. Death stopped feeling like punishment and started feeling like feedback.

Episode 1: Yellow Dragon Festival unfolded cleanly.

Da Wei stumbled into a foreign world, disoriented but sharp, clearly someone important back where he came from. The story hinted at it early, whispers of him being an eminent Paladin and a legend in another land. There, he had gone by a different name.

David.

In this world, he became Da Wei, a name chosen not for glory, but for survival.

Mukul watched Da Wei navigate Yellow Dragon Festival, learning customs, trading words with locals, and attending the festival that felt oddly alive, gaining a disciple, making friends. The pacing was gentle, almost deceptive.

Then the demon appeared.

A thing of grotesque power and spectacle.

Mukul beat it easily.

Every death simply rewound time, letting him adapt, brute-force patterns, and win through persistence alone. When the victory screen appeared, Mukul leaned back, rubbing the back of his neck.

"…Yeah," he admitted. "That felt cheap."

He opened the settings.

Difficulty: Easy → Normal

Players online weren't kidding. Normal Mode wasn't "hard"—it was honest. If you could finish the game like this, you were supposedly ready for the MMO.

Episode 2 began.

And immediately, it became chaos.

Random encounters escalated sharply. Every time Mukul crossed paths with Bai Rong and pissed him off with the wrng dialogue options, it was like flipping a cursed switch. Undead from the Evernight Continent began hunting him relentlessly. Some of them didn't even stop at borders, chasing him across regions like unpaid debts.

Still, Episode 2 had its moments.

There were absurd encounters. Quiet campfire conversations. And then there was Hei Mao. He was funny, unsettling, and unexpectedly sincere. Mukul found himself genuinely invested.

It took him half a month to finish Episode 2.

The difficulty spike was brutal.

The mid-boss, the False Heavenly Demon, nearly broke him. But the final battle?

It was insanity!

First came a deranged cultivator woman who enslaved her own father's corpse. Then a monstrous dragon rising from a lake. Then Shenyuan, lurking in the shadows, pulling strings with infuriating calm. And finally…

The Hell's Gate!

A demonic army pouring out, surrounding Da Wei from all sides. Not to mention, the undead army that Shenyuan brought himself.

Mukul died a lot.

But at the same time, he also improved a lot.

His movement sharpened. Parries clicked. Dodges became instinct. He started chaining skills not because they were strong, but because they flowed. When the final blow landed and the battlefield fell silent, Mukul just sat there, breathing.

"…Okay," he muttered. "Movement and parry builds. That's it. That's the way."

The ending didn't feel triumphant.

It felt bitter.

The Emperor. That smug, calculating bastard.

"How dare you manipulate him," Mukul growled at the screen.

He clenched his fist.

"Next episode," he said, "I'm wrecking you."

Precognition? So what.

By accepting the Emperor's Summons, Da Wei crossed paths with Shenyuan and paid dearly for it. One by one, his disciples fell.

All of them!

Except the goldfish.

The screen faded to black.

Mukul stared at his reflection in the monitor, jaw tight.

"…I'm not done with you," he said quietly.

Mukul felt confident.

Too confident, perhaps.

With a deep breath and a grin that didn't quite survive the click, he raised the difficulty to Hard Mode.

It was hell.

Not the dramatic kind… No, this was the slow, grinding, merciless kind. Enemies punished every mistake. Bosses remembered patterns and adapted. Resources were scarce, healing was expensive, and death no longer felt forgiving.

It took Mukul an entire month to make meaningful progress.

That was how brutal Episode 3: Potential of a Miracle truly was.

And it hurt mechanically and emotionally.

The story dug deep. Mukul found himself hating the Emperor for what he put Da Wei through, for the cruelty masked as necessity. But as the layers peeled away and Emperor Nongmin's past was revealed, that hatred curdled into something far more uncomfortable.

Pity.

Nongmin had lived countless lifetimes again and again desperately seeking a cure for himself, and desperately trying to rewrite an ending where his mother could be happy. Each attempt ended the same way.

It ended in failure.

Mukul's eyes stung as he watched Empress Dowager and Divine Physician Xin Yune fade away beneath the weight of time itself, while Da Wei quietly painted her and her son, preserving what the world refused to keep.

All the fanart and the discussions finally made sense.

Da Wei and Xin Yune.

Though, apparently, the strongest ship right now was still Da Wei and Alice.

Mukul grimaced.

"…When did I start caring about shipping?"

Episode 3 was heavy.

The side quests weren't as playful as Episode 1, nor as adrenaline-fueled as Episode 2, but they deepened the world in ways Mukul hadn't expected. History, faith, regret… Everything felt layered and deliberate.

Da Wei's disciples were resurrected, except Hei Mao.

That loss lingered.

Then came the final battle.

Episode 2's finale didn't even come close to Episode 3's difficulty.

This time, Da Wei faced a literal goddess, one who had stolen the body of his friend, surrounded by an army of eldritch angels that warped space and sound alike. Mukul sat red-eyed, surrounded by empty energy drink cans, jaw clenched so tightly it hurt.

"I'm winning this," he muttered. "I don't care how."

And he did.

Victory.

But the story didn't celebrate.

Instead, it took everything away.

The ending killed Da Wei.

Mukul stared at the screen, stunned.

Was this why there was no Episode 4?

He watched as Da Wei's limbs dissolved into the ether, one by one. The final skill he used against Aixin, the goddess, had consumed his Divine Soul. There was no coming back from that.

Disappointment washed over him.

Suddenly, the scenery changed.

Da Wei flew skyward, chasing the sun itself. When he vanished into nothingness, a skull ignited with furious purple and blue flames filled the screen.

"Reincarnation Scroll of Blasphemous Continuance!"

It was Jue Bu, a somewhat antagonistic ally that hindered and helped the protagonist.

A hut appeared. Twins were being born. A worried father paced back and forth.

Da Wei's voice echoed softly, narrating how, when he thought death had claimed him, a friend reached out and pulled him back.

The scene shifted again to the familiar campfire.

Da Wei sat across from Mukul, smiling.

"That's enough story time," he said. "The wait's over."

A soaring vessel descended from the sky.

Familiar figures emerged.

Unfamiliar ones too.

Da Wei's disciples stood together.

Among them was Hei Mao, plenty alive.

Mukul's eyes widened.

Ren Jingyi stepped forward, smiling softly. "Master… we've been looking for you. Let's destroy the Heavenly Temple already."

Behind her, figures emerged one by one from the descending soaring vessel. Faces Mukul recognized instantly. Companions who had died. Companions who had returned. Then a familiar silhouette stepped out from the shadows.

"Father," said Gu Jie, "the time is almost upon us."

The nostalgia hit like a punch to the chest.

Da Wei turned. looking straight at Mukul. His gaze met something beyond the fire, beyond the screen, beyond the world itself.

"Shall we go?" asked the Immortal Paladin. "The fight never ends. But, maybe one day, when it does, we can accompany each other like this, share stories, get to know each other, and maybe who knows, we can even be best of friends, rather than just comrades in a battlefield. Hah~! Don't look at me like that… I might not look like it, but I am your Holy Emperor, you know?"

The cinematic faded.

A developer's note appeared, informing him that further episodes and playable characters could be unlocked by uncovering secret lore hidden within the online open world.

Mukul laughed quietly, shaking his head.

"…Yeah," he said. "I'm finally ready."