[08:43 PM | Seoul Metro Line 2 | Sinchon Station]
Kang Jae-hwan stared at his phone screen with the kind of vacant expression you only develop after reading the same web novel for over a decade.
The train rattled beneath his feet, humming its usual lullaby of fatigue, dust, and indifference. Around him, salarymen dozed with necks crooked like dead flowers. A girl in a school uniform chewed gum loudly, scrolling TikTok on her cracked iPhone. A middle-aged man, hunched in the corner, watched some mukbang stream with an expression of spiritual death.
The smell of instant noodles, floor polish, and stale winter coats permeated the car.
None of them noticed.
None of them ever noticed.
The Epitaph of the Forgotten World — Chapter 3149: "The Final Battle of the Lonely King"
That was the title that greeted him when he refreshed the page.
Jae-hwan blinked.
He scrolled down.
And there it was.
Author's Note: This is the end of the story. Thank you for reading.
He stared at the words for a long time.
No emojis. No long farewell message. No awkward promises of side stories. No crying about low reader count.
Just one sentence.
After thirteen years.
"…You son of a bitch," he muttered, half-laughing. "You actually finished it."
He slumped against the cold plastic seat.
How many times had he imagined this day?
When he started reading Epitaph, he was 16. He was now 29, working at a third-rate distribution warehouse by day and killing time with fiction by night.
Everyone else had dropped it by Chapter 50. The writing was bad. The pacing worse. The plot? Absolutely insane.
The story opened with the end of the world and somehow never stopped ending. Every chapter introduced new systems, new races, new tragedies, new powers, new betrayals. Every volume reset the rules. Characters died and came back and died again. And yet, through all of it, Kang Jae-hwan kept reading.
Because no one else did.
There was something romantic in that.
He looked around the train. It was the usual crowd. Not a single person reading fiction on their phone.
He tapped the comment section out of instinct. Still nothing. Not a single "first lol" or "thanks for the chapter." Just the endless void.
And that was when he saw it.
A small red dot appeared at the top of the screen.
[You have received a message from the author.]
"…What?" he whispered.
There was no messaging feature on the site. There never had been.
He tapped the icon. The screen glitched, then opened a simple message box with a single line:
[Thank you for reading until the end.]
[This world now belongs to you.]
Jae-hwan frowned.
"…The hell does that mean?"
Suddenly, the web novel app froze. Then his entire phone glitched and shut off.
He pressed the power button.
Nothing.
And then—
BOOM.
The subway trembled. The lights flickered violently. The passengers jerked upright, some falling out of their seats.
The hum of the engine died.
Total silence.
Then—
BANG.
The lights died.
The only illumination came from the green emergency strips near the doors.
People began shouting.
"Is this an earthquake?!"
"Check your phones!"
"My kid's asleep at home—what's going on?!"
No one had signal.
No one had power.
And then—
A light. Right in front of Kang Jae-hwan's eyes.
Translucent.
Floating.
Like a digital hologram pasted onto reality itself.
[You have met the requirements to become a 'Reader.']
[Welcome, Kang Jae-hwan.]
His mouth went dry.
"…No way."
[Main Scenario #1 – Survival]
Duration: 30 Minutes
Objective: Survive until the timer ends.
Reward: 300 Coins
Penalty for Failure: Death
He knew these messages.
He had read them before.
This was the exact first scenario from The Epitaph of the Forgotten World.
It had begun in the subway, with the power outage. The same time. The same format. The same location.
The only difference was that it wasn't fiction anymore.
"This has to be a dream," someone whispered nearby.
"Wake me up," someone else muttered.
Jae-hwan didn't speak. He didn't scream. He just kept staring at the floating window in front of him, now joined by a second message.
[You are the only Reader in this world.]
His heart thudded in his chest. He slowly looked around.
No one else was reacting to the messages.
They weren't seeing them.
Just like the readers who never existed in the comment section. Just like the viewers who never left reviews.
Just like the story he had read alone for thirteen years.
It really was true.
He was the only one.
"Excuse me…" a voice beside him broke his trance.
A man in his early thirties, dressed in a rumpled beige suit, looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. His hands were trembling. "Did… did you see that too?"
Jae-hwan froze. "See what?"
"That… that floating thing. A message. It said survive or die. I saw it just now, it was right in front of my face—"
The lights came on for a brief second.
And then the roof exploded.
Concrete and metal rained down. Flames burst from the hole in the ceiling. The front car crumpled inward like a tin can.
Screams erupted.
A thing descended.
It wasn't a person.
It wasn't even human.
It had long arms, dragging on the floor. Its torso was too narrow. Its skin was pale like wet paper. Where its eyes should've been were two gaping mouths filled with teeth, breathing in jagged rasps.
The creature landed in the middle of the car and let out a shrieking laugh.
People scrambled backward. Some tried to open the doors. Others collapsed in panic.
The man beside Jae-hwan cried out, "It's a monster! What is that thing?!"
Jae-hwan didn't answer.
He already knew.
He remembered the first chapter.
The author had described it in the same exact words:
The First Predator: The Scavenger of Beginnings.
And now, the system chimed again.
[The scenario has begun.]
[Let the game… begin.]
To be continue...