[ "I JUST WANT A FULL MP BAR IN ANOTHER WORLD" ]

Chapter 0: Whispers of Ash

The universe never forgives a void...

Every space devoid of movement... every soul that comes to a standstill...

will slowly be replaced by 'erosion'...

It is not a punishment... it is merely 'balance'.

— From "The Zeroth Law of Existence"

My last memory of that world... was silence.

Not tranquility, but a deafening silence... in a square room where time had long since stopped. On the floor lay an apology letter I had tried to write to my family... but could never finish... My body had stopped obeying me.

I was once their hope... a genius who understood things faster than anyone else. But this brain, which worked too fast... was its own kind of prison. It created a boredom for all that was repetitive, and it built a void in its place, even in moments of success. Victory in a competition brought no joy... only a temporary relief that I had not yet disappointed anyone.

I lived my life chasing the "sparks" that flickered into existence from time to time... music, art, coding... but in the end, the shadow of a causeless fatigue would always creep in to consume everything... leaving behind only the ash of a passion extinguished.

Love, too, was the same... It was once the brightest of sparks, but I let my own shadow hurt her... and destroyed myself along with it. The day she left was the day I fully admitted that I had completely lost this internal war.

I left everything behind... my future... my family...

On that final day... I just wanted to do something right, one last time. I tried to get up... tried to clean up the wreckage of my life piled up in this room... but the body I had neglected for so long... it protested... My heart... it clenched... and everything slowly faded to black.

In the final moments of my fading consciousness... I saw a fork in the road... One path led to true emptiness... The other... it was dark, its end unseen... but there was a whisper, as faint as the wind...

"...Do you still... want to fight..."

I had no strength to answer... I just felt my spirit... leaning towards that dark path... with a final, flickering desire...

...

I regained consciousness... in an unfamiliar warmth.

Everything seemed impossibly large... The sunlight streaming in felt strangely gentle.

I tried to move... but could only twitch my own small fingers.

I tried to think... but my thoughts were scattered, as if covered by a thick fog.

I had been reborn...

But there was no joy... no laughter...

There was only silence... and tears that flowed uncontrollably down my cheeks.

It was not the cry of a hungry infant... but the weight of all my memories... the fatigue of an old soul, forced to start all over again.

And then, it appeared... right in front of me...

A familiar, translucent window... but the text within it sent a chill down to my very core.

> System Initializing...

> Residual Memories Detected... Processing...