ICHORUS THE UNENDING

Corwin's 22 years of existence can most easily be summed up by what was written on his report cards every year, without fail— a very bright boy who needs to apply himself in more constructive ways. He became obsessed with video games at an early age after receiving an Xbox 360 as a Christmas gift from his aunt.

While not quite a problem child, Corwin was already known to blurt out tactless things and roughhouse too hard with other kids— this was, unsurprisingly, compounded when he started playing online multiplayer games and consequently stopped doing much of anything else.

In the present day, to describe Corwin as unpleasant would be putting it lightly. His personality is cocky and obnoxious even when he's not gaming— and even if you're able to look past that, he uses so much niche internet lingo that it's basically to impossible to have a conversation with him either way.

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From: Planchette Belpointe <"[email protected]">
To: Quality Control Group
Date: November 5th, 3044 at 3:31 PM
Subject: Late arrival TAG for your consideration

The PM team intercepted another promising candidate about an hour ago; I know this is cutting it close to the deadline, but the parameters on this one are really ideal. Sending it your way.

The only thing that'd need to be checked out before tagging is its bizarre proximity to another GENI unit, I think it's one of Northwest's but I could be wrong. You'd probably have to get the guys from legal to look that over. Just to be safe, or at least as insurance to protect our own hides in case it ends up getting the book thrown at Eksosphere somewhere down the line. Haha.

Give it some thought.

Planchette Belpointe
Acquisitions Overseer

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Though his mother was able to strongarm him into successfully graduating high school — albeit with him kicking and screaming the entire time — by his twentieth birthday it became clear that Corwin had no ambitions in life that didn't involve dicking around on the internet in one way or another. This, unfortunately, included moving out of his parents' house; and as fed up as they may have been with him, they would never have turned their own son out onto the street.

Taking pity on them, Corwin's aunt invited him to move into her seldom-used vacation home, an oceanfront house in the United States; Corwin was ecstatic at the prospect of getting a "gamer pad" all to himself, not realizing (or perhaps not caring) that this was all a very transparent effort to put him out of sight and out of mind.

Though in retrospect, it should have been obvious to anyone who knew him that Corwin wouldn't survive living on his own for very long.

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From: Miu Lian <"[email protected]">
To: Sylvia Delphine <"[email protected]">
Date: November 11th, 3044 at 3:31 PM
Subject: RE: Possible anachronism?

Hi Sylvia,

No need to apologize— asking questions is an important part of being on the Eksosphere team.

Regarding those devices the TAG is carrying, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Remember, the data capture process initiates immediately after the candidate expires, so they must have been on its person when it died. They're useless without an internet connection, even more so once the batteries run out. Everything will still proceed as planned

Secondly— TAGs always act erratic during their first week or two, but it's unlikely for one to experience a full-on mental break in such a short amount of time. They usually sort themselves out after a while. I'll tell the psychology department to assess it just to be safe.

Miu Lian
Operations Manager

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To Corwin's credit, he did last for just over two years alone in California. And it wasn't his perpetual diet of energy drinks, vape pods, and fast food that took him out, either. The final half-hour of life was mired in a syrupy, all-consuming exhaustion, his vision blurring into a patchwork of nonsensical shapes— hypoglycemic shock, not that the specifics truly matter.

What truly killed him was his chronic, bullheaded insistence on isolating himself from the outside world. There was no chance that anyone would even find his body anytime soon, let alone find Corwin in time to save him.

His last coherent thought was 'When did it get so dark?'

But ultimately, this was not the last time Corwin would close his eyes. He awoke slowly, as if from centuries of hibernation, to the sight of an impossibly blue sky and two concerned-looking girls standing over him.

Rather than heaven , as he'd initially assumed, he had been reborn into another world entirely— what's more, he was heralded as a messiah-like figure by its residents. They sang his praises as the hero of legend prophesied to descend unto their world and liberate the people from the rule of a tyrannical demon king.

Something about this all seemed very, very familiar to Corwin.

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From: Praxis Najera <"[email protected]">
To: Jamia Green <"[email protected]">
Date: December 18th, 3044 at 3:31 PM
Subject: Wildly behind schedule

With all due respect, what have you and your team been doing for the past month and a half? I hope I don't need to remind you how many employees will be affected if we fail to meet quota this year.

That TAG from November is still jamming up Simulation #1 when it should have been processed in 9 days maximum, meaning our output has quite literally been halved since Simulation #2 is now the only one producing any results. This is unacceptable.

I don't care what anyone's excuse is for this. Get it out of there, now.

Praxis Najera
Operations Director

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Though his personality was terrible, and everyone had to continually remind him that he was in the realm of Nepentha and not "an isekai", the residents of this new world were nonetheless awed by how quickly and efficiently Corwin began disposing of the monsters that plagued their lands. The common assumption that, as a hero, he had been training his entire life for this was not entirely off-base.

Nepentha was somehow a cookie-cutter approximation of every other anime series Corwin had watched prior to his death; even more strikingly, its magic system functioned almost exactly like every other RPG he had ever played. To say that Corwin was ecstatic would be an appalling understatement— his happiness bordered on all-out mania.

Any concerns about how he was technically dead in the "real world" vanished instantly, and he scarcely listened when he was told that killing the demon king would open a portal back to his home world. Why would he ever want to go back? Video games had always been his life, and now that was truer than it had ever been.

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From: Aziz Rahl <"[email protected]">
To: Praxis Najera <"[email protected]">
Date: December 19th, 3044 at 3:31 PM
Subject: RE: URGENT! Risk assessment needed

I understand that you have a lot of fires you're trying to put out, Praxis, but letting employees go home for the holidays is the worst thing we could do right now. This is completely unprecedented and all hands need to be on deck. We're currently approaching the 10 year mark inside of Simulation #1. Even the most difficult TAGs usually made it to the extraction point in about a year and a half, and their behavior was nowhere near as erratic as this one.

The VAMO unit was never supposed to be left autonomous for this long either. Depending on what happens in the next few days, someone may have to just go in and forcibly extract this thing, even if we end up losing its soul in the process.

Yes, company morale will take a hit. We have an HR department for a reason. Keep everyone at their desks.

Aziz Rahl
Senior Machine Learning Engineer

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It would be incorrect to say that Corwin was never the same after he turned his back on the real world. Rather, he surrendered to the arrested development offered by Nepentha without hesitation. The realm was, in all ways, the perfect storm for someone like him— an ideal power fantasy, a dream from which you never want to wake.

When he realized that this world functioned like a game, Corwin exploited it brutally. He spent the first week standing in front of a nest that he'd realized a small grub monster would wriggle out of every two minutes, clubbing each one to death with a broken tree branch before it could even get all its feet on the ground, and gaining a measly 3 points added to his "hero level" every time.

In the short term, this was practically worthless. But they began to add up, bolstered by Corwin staying awake for 36 hour intervals before inevitably passing out on the ground and leaving his two bedraggled party members to lug him to safety. He would get right back to it upon regaining consciousness.

By the end of the week, he had dragged his level up from 1 to 26, and immediately switched his focus to a nest of level 5 monsters to repeat the process.

And so it went. If there was any sort of lesson to be found in Nepentha — teamwork, friendship, humility — Corwin wasn't interested. He carved a path through anything that got in his way and treated Nepentha as a sandbox to test and grow his abilities. Threats of the world's imminent destruction at the hands of the demon king fell on deaf ears, knowing nothing would actually happen until he chose to confront him and move the plot forward. Anyone who's played even a single RPG can tell you that.

He was in control.

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From: Lette Orozco <"[email protected]">
To: Kerr Indigo-Mercier <"[email protected]">
Date: September 3rd, 3045 at 3:31 PM
Subject: Sunk cost fallacy

Do you remember orientation three years ago, when that lady said our job was all about staying the course? What a joke. I signed up to be a pencil pusher and do the same boring little tasks for 80 hours a week so I can pay my bills, and now I've been clocking in every day this year to play fucking Tom and Jerry with that goddamn TAG.

Yeah, I know corporate reads everyone's emails. Who cares. Like they could even afford to fire anyone on this team.

At this point we've torn up the entire forest and desert areas in Simulation #1 trying to kill this thing. Even the VAMO unit can't do it. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just scrap everything and run the simulation somewhere else instead? I bet the higher ups just don't want to admit they've been playing a losing game all year.

Anyway, let me know if you're free after work. I need to go drink myself under a table.

Lette Orozco
Simulation #1 Ground Team

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One hundred and fifty years later, Nepentha still teeters on the brink of destruction, waiting for its chosen hero to rise up against the demon king and his army. And Ichorus — as Corwin had taken to calling himself around the thirty year mark — is still set on anything but that. Having long since maxed out his hero level at 999 and attained quasi-immortality by making himself into a lich, it's a testament to his immaturity that he hasn't gotten bored yet.

But really, what else could you expect from someone who's been stuck with an underdeveloped frontal lobe for a century and a half?

When Ichorus isn't busy being a general menace, he's cloistered away in his "gamer pad" trying to reinvent the comforts of his former life using a mix of alchemy, magic, and vague memories of having taken one year of shop class in 5th grade. His considerable resistance to death has proven to be invaluable here.

Still- Ichorus may be an idiot, but he isn't stupid. Somewhere along the line, long after he'd stopped bothering to keep track of how long he'd been here, he noticed that Nepentha had begun trying to force him out. Not the people (NPCs, as he calls them) but the realm itself, the world around him habitually lashing out and convulsing like a parasite-stricken stomach.

Such efforts have largely proven to be ineffectual on Nepentha's part, however. If there's one thing Ichorus is good at, it's being obnoxious— and that includes being obnoxiously hard to kill.

He's not logging off until he's good and ready.