I Start with 13 Hidden Traits Chapter-323

Ch-323. ⟨We Are Called ‘Players’⟩

—

I had agonized over it for a long time.

Whether to reveal it—or not.

But it was a truth that would have to come out someday.

There is no such thing as an eternal lie, and continuing to deceive those who had trusted and followed me would have been a betrayal of that trust.

At the very least, those gathered here had the right to know.

“……Are you sure this is all right?”

Amid the shock, Isabella asked carefully.

I understood her concern.

Of everyone here, Isabella knew me best.

On the Island of the Gods, she had glimpsed my memories.

And I, in turn, had seen hers—learning the secret of the **Divine Disease**.

But even Isabella didn’t know everything about me.

*After merging with Randolph, the side effects disappeared.*

At the very least, the penalty of my existence growing faint had vanished.

Randolph and I were no longer separate beings.

And so, I intended to speak now—without omitting a single thing.

Only then could we face what lay ahead.

The tectonic upheaval shaking the continent of Pangaenia.

And the trials yet to come, including the **Forgotten Dungeon of Honor**.

I couldn’t resolve all of that alone.

From now on, we had to unite even more strongly.

The surest way to prepare for a future no one could foresee was to consolidate around people we could trust—people we could rely on.

“……Park Hyun-myung?”

The first to react was **Isaac**.

Isaac of Lightning Severance.

A character once placed on a nationwide wanted list due to countless criminal acts.

In his attempt to verify the existence of an administrator, he had committed every manner of bizarre act—so he must harbor deep resentment toward me, the one who had moved him at will.

And Isaac knew my name.

Isabella had seen my face during transcendence.

Isaac had heard my name.

“Criminal… Park Hyun-myung?”

“Calm down, Isaac. We all contracted the Divine Disease by our own choice.”

Isabella quickly stepped between Isaac and me.

But Isaac’s expression remained tense.

“I chose it? What choice did I make?”

“Th-that is……”

Even Isabella was flustered.

The situation itself was simply too sudden.

“Isaac. You were destined to die in a mine.”

So—I spoke.

“An unnamed mining city. A place where dozens of enslaved people abducted by force died every single day. You begged me to save you there.”

“……!!!”

Isaac’s eyes shook violently.

Very few people knew about the mining city.

But I knew everything—even the smallest details.

Because I had played it myself.

“More precisely, you made a deal not with me, but with the Blue Bird—the ‘Administrator.’ You called out to me so you could challenge life itself, escaping a death you could never have fled by your own power. You chose the challenge.”

“That… was the Divine Disease?”

“In exchange, you lost the related memories.”

“So… you moved in my place? Because I was going to die in the mine?”

“Hm. Honestly, it wasn’t easy. Not only were there countless watchers, but even fellow slaves routinely informed on one another. At first, I only intended to escape.”

“……”

“But I changed my mind. I collapsed the mine and freed the slaves. After that, I hunted down those involved and committed numerous crimes. The reason you became a wanted criminal—that’s entirely my fault.”

I explained in detail why Isaac had been forced to flee to Cramdel.

As I spoke, Isaac’s complexion shifted again and again, until it finally drained pale.

“…Lately, I’ve been having dreams. Memories I lost in the mining city seem to be resurfacing little by little in my dreams. I thought they were just nonsense dreams, but……”

His eyes were filled with disbelief.

But it was true.

Everyone connected to me was likely experiencing the same phenomenon Isaac was.

“If all of this is true… why did you hide it until now?”

“Because I didn’t know either.”

“……What?”

“Because I didn’t know this world was real.”

It was cruel.

But sometimes, truth had to be spoken anyway.

If I kept hiding it, contradictions would only continue to pile up.

What I was about to say was exactly that.

It was time to unlock the sealed door.

A truth no one spoke of—no one could speak of.

“To me, this world was nothing more than a game.”

I had played a game.

And you were nothing more than characters inside it.

—

—

 

The story continued without pause.

That I had not originally been a Star Bearer.

That I had approached them under false pretenses and used them.

That I had played countless characters—and that even Wilhelm had been just one of them.

And that when Wilhelm died, I had possessed Randolph.

“……”

“……”

Everyone fell silent.

A parade of shock.

They needed time to gather their thoughts.

But it could also be heard this way—

That they had been deceived and used.

Isaac thought seriously about it.

*Was I used?*

To use someone meant to gain something from them.

But Randolph had gained almost nothing from Isaac.

Instead, he had saved him, erased his crimes, and given him a home.

He had allowed him to meet companions.

He had given him warmth he had never felt before.

But……

No matter how one looked at it, the fact remained—he had been deceived.

If the bonds and relationships they had built hadn’t acted as a sedative, Isaac would have stormed out.

…No, that wouldn’t have been all.

*I would have killed him. I would have slit his throat. I only thought about taking the life of Park Hyun-myung—the one who moved me.*

After transcending, after consuming the **Star of the Beheaded**, he had planned to sever Park Hyun-myung’s neck the moment he saw him.

And now, the man stood right before him.

Yet Park Hyun-myung was Randolph.

And at the same time, Wilhelm……

Then where should this anger go?

It was too sudden.

Yet he couldn’t deny it.

Isabella already seemed to know.

The way she looked at Park Hyun-myung—

Her eyes were unmistakably filled with warmth.

“I am also a ‘criminal.’ We call ourselves ‘Players.’”

At that moment—

Hudson suddenly revealed his own identity.

Everyone stared at him in shock.

Hudson shut his eyes tightly and spoke.

“I’m sorry, Serengeti. I’m not a person of this world.”

“……What are you talking about, Hudson?”

“My name is **Oliver**. I came from Earth, not Pangaenia. This body, this face—none of it is my real self.”

“……”

“But believe me. The feelings I had for you were real. That I loved you. That you’re the only one for me. That it has always been so, and always will be.”

“……”

Serengeti stood there, speechless.

Weren’t they practically at the altar, before the wedding had been postponed due to the sudden appearance of a Hydragon?

And now Hudson was a criminal?

A person from another world?

Even the love they shared wasn’t real?

“…So everything was a lie?”

“No. That’s not it. It may sound like an excuse, but I had no choice. Here, our existence was literally that of ‘criminals.’ We were treated as invaders.”

“……”

“In my world, I was ready to die. I was sickly, and I didn’t have a single person I could call a friend. Meeting you here made me so happy that I thought Hudson—not Oliver—was my true self.”

He had wanted to reveal it long ago.

But he couldn’t.

And now, he could hide it no longer.

If he didn’t say it now, he never would.

“I met you, and I began to crave life. I wanted to live. Park Hyun-myung—Lord Randolph—saved someone like me. But deep down, I was always anxious. Whether it was right to keep hiding this. Whether you’d leave me if you knew the truth… Every day felt like hell.”

“You still should have told me.”

“I did. I glossed over it, but… I’m sorry.”

“……Come to think of it, I think you did say something.”

Serengeti bit her lip.

Looking back, Hudson had been strange in more ways than one.

And before the wedding, Hudson had clearly said—

—There’s something I need to tell you.

—Tell me? What is it?

—I’m actually……

—Actually?

—I’m a criminal.

—A criminal who stole my heart?

—No…… that’s not it……

—Don’t worry. The ceremony’s in a week. I’ve prepared everything, so just follow me, Hudson.

—Wait. A week…?

……

She had definitely heard the word *criminal*.

But she had pretended not to, using the wedding preparations as an excuse.

In truth, Serengeti had suspected it too.

Yet she had deliberately looked away, hoping it wasn’t true.

Randolph. Hudson.

Both criminals.

She hadn’t thought much of it before—but now that it was right in front of her, her mind was in turmoil.

“I also……”

“…Huh?”

After organizing her thoughts, Serengeti finally spoke.

Hudson tilted his head, and Serengeti let out a deep sigh.

“You weren’t my first love either, Hudson.”

“…What? What did you just say?”

“Do you know the real reason I joined the Round Table Knights?”

“…What is it?”

“When I was young, the vice-commander was just too cool.”

“…You said I was your first love.”

“Sorry. That was a lie.”

Whoosh!

Serengeti shrugged her shoulders lightly, smiling as if relieved.

“Um… then why was I at the Mountain of Trainees?”

Balte raised his hand cautiously.

Balte had been endlessly swinging his spear in the Chaos Zone of the Mountain of Trainees.

But he didn’t remember how he’d ended up there.

“Because external training was too boring, so I dumped you at the Mountain of Trainees.”

“…Excuse me?”

What kind of thunderbolt was that?

“I cranked the restrictions to the maximum, and I couldn’t see anything. Swinging a spear in that state was so boring that… I never expected you to keep swinging it there for over two years. Sorry.”

“Are you insane? What am I, some kind of boredom snack?”

Balte swore reflexively.

Even someone as mild-mannered as him couldn’t stay silent.

It felt like confronting a truth he didn’t want to face.

But what he truly wanted to know was something else.

“This is incredibly shocking, but before that—if I was also facing death, I don’t remember the circumstances.”

“…Honestly, I don’t remember either.”

“…What?”

“I ran into similar situations too many times. Unless it was something special, it doesn’t really stick.”

“……”

“What I know for sure is that most of them start with being chased by monsters or trapped somewhere. All I had to do was ‘survive.’”

“Then how many people did you manage to ‘save’?”

“Well. I ran it about a thousand times. About ninety-nine percent of them survived.”

“Ghk!”

A strangled sound came from beside him.

It wasn’t Balte.

The one who screamed was none other than **Hudson**.

“Did you really create **a thousand characters**?”

“I didn’t raise all of them, but still…”

“And a **99% survival rate** among them? As far as I know, no one has ever even crossed 50%! Hell, barely anyone has even reached 40%!”

Pangaenia’s tutorial was infamous for its brutal difficulty.

Ever-changing situations, backdrops where survival was practically impossible.

In Pangenia, merely exceeding a **40% survival rate** was enough to be called a *god*.

And yet—**99%**?

Unprecedented.

If anything, the legend of *Phantom* had been severely underestimated.

Back in the early days of Pangaenia’s launch, there was something called a **“Survival Run.”**

Its purpose was simple: clear Main Quest 1, *Survival*.

> *“The point of a Survival Run is to claim the main quest reward. The harsher the survival conditions, the greater the reward upon clearing it. But most runs barely had a survival rate of around 20%.”*

In other words, Park Hyun-myung had deliberately been running **Survival Runs**.

Afterward, he only properly nurtured characters with good rewards.

The real issue, however, was the survival rate.

> *“If you recklessly create characters and lower your survival rate, you’re cursed with a reduced SP acquisition rate.”*

That was why everyone eventually gave up on Survival Runs.

SP acquisition was one of the most critical factors in Pangaenia.

But Pangaenia also tracked something called **survival rate**, and the lower it was, the less SP you received when another character died.

The *Survival* quest was already notoriously difficult.

The more you attempted it, the lower your survival rate tended to sink—so most players simply stopped challenging it.

But **99%**?

If survival rate dropped too low, you were cursed—but if it was high, you gained a **bonus multiplier**.

The more attempts you made, and the higher your survival success rate, the greater that bonus became.

So someone finally asked,

“Um… if you don’t mind me asking, what was your SP bonus multiplier…?”

“About **250%**, give or take.”

“*Cough!*”

A bonus multiplier no one had ever heard of.

And although it didn’t appear on the status window, the SP bonus multiplier still applied to one’s current state.

Meaning—you gained SP faster and in greater quantities than others, even doing the same things.

*No wonder his growth speed was absurdly fast.*

That was one of many reasons—but now it finally made sense.

Hudson asked again,

“Did you also receive SP after becoming Randolph, Hyun-myung? I was given all the SP I’d accumulated from surviving.”

“I did receive it.”

“Then… how much?”

Hudson recalled the SP he himself had received.

Right after his last character died and possession occurred, he checked his status window.

The SP from all the characters he had raised had been lumped together.

It came out to roughly **1,500 SP**—not exactly small, but not huge either.

Thanks to that, he had survived.

Which was why he was even more curious.

If *he* had that much, how much had Wilhelm received when he died?

No—if there were nearly a thousand characters that had been created and survived, how many points had accumulated in total?

It was beyond imagination.

Then Park Hyun-myung spoke.

“About **1.6 million**.”

“………”

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