The Count’s Youngest Son is a Player

Chapter 1

“Young master, young master! Please wake up!!”

The sound of someone calling out seemed to drift towards him. The moment he realized his consciousness, previously as hazy as fog, was gradually returning.

“Argh!!”

“Screech!!”

Thud.

He suddenly jolted awake, screaming, and gasped for air while clutching at his chest.

“Heave, heave!”

Cold sweat ran down his entire body, and his heart pounded as if it was about to burst.

“Ouch, ouch. Are you okay, young master?”

A small voice from beside him prompted him to turn his head with difficulty, only to see a little girl, seemingly not even ten years old, sitting on the floor beside his bed, looking at him with a worried expression.

‘What’s this? What happened??’

As his breathing slowly steadied, he took a look around, only to find many oddities.

His eyes met with a large room filled with antique furniture.

Walls adorned with lavish decorations and paintings.

Windows made out of wood.

And lastly, a girl in a maid’s outfit.

It didn’t seem realistic at all.

He had thought he was dead, stabbed and asphyxiated, only to wake up in such a luxurious room?

If he was alive, shouldn’t he have woken up in a hospital?

As he frantically scanned his surroundings, the girl who had flopped onto the floor asked him again.

“Are you alright, Master Raul? You are sweating profusely. Should I call a doctor??”

‘Raul??’

The moment he turned his head towards the girl with a puzzled expression.

He saw something that he shouldn’t have.

[Lv3. Anna]

Above the head of the maid-dressed girl floated a small inscription.

“Anna??”

“Yes, Master.”

The girl replied as if it was the most natural thing, and he furrowed his brows, clutching his head.

It seemed he had entered the world of Connect.

A while later.

Having become the boy named Raul, he sat at the desk with a grave expression.

Through Anna, his personal maid, he was able to gather basic information about his surroundings.

And after checking his changed body through the mirror, he had no choice but to accept his new reality.

‘To think I’ve entered the world of Connect…’

It wasn’t merely logging into a game; he had reincarnated into the body of a boy named Raul existing within the game.

And the moment he acknowledged this fact, a small message window popped up before him.

[The settlement of your soul is complete. Close Beta system activated. User interface is now available for use. Current user count: 1.]

The moment Raul saw the system message, he was thrilled.

It wasn’t just that he had reincarnated into the game world; he had come back to life with the ability to use the game’s system!

The myriad of ways he could use this ability began to swirl in his head.

‘Wait. Close Beta? And if the user count is one, doesn’t that mean… I’m the only one in this world using the game system?’

Raul’s gaze deepened.

As a professional player who had risked his life in games in his previous life, he couldn’t miss such an opportunity.

‘First, I need to figure out exactly who I am and where I am.’He had spent a whopping 15 years in the world of Connect. Leveraging the advantages of being a leading player and a top ranker, he even managed to run a game information site dedicated to Connect.

No matter how vast the world of Connect was, he had accumulated a comprehensive stack of information in his mind.

There were a total of six human nations in Connect: two empires and four kingdoms, along with dozens of cities united with each other.

The number of noble families was staggering, making it nearly impossible to recall them by name alone. Or so he thought.

But then, at that moment.

[Locked user information has been verified. Updating information.]

A system message appeared, and suddenly, a deluge of information began to pour into his head.

“Argh.”

Pain and dizziness akin to his brain being directly hammered struck him.

He clasped his head with both hands because of the excruciating pain, but as if nothing had happened, his head cleared up, and he regained the memories of the last 15 years of Raul.

“Huff, huff.”

Raul, catching his breath belatedly, quickly regained his composure and thought.

‘The Count Ashton’s household of the Ruben Kingdom. I’ve heard that name quite a lot, but wait a minute!’

As Raul revisited the rough map of the continent and the major events in his mind, his face gradually turned pale.

“Good grief, I remember!”

The Count Ashton’s household was the first noble house to be destroyed in Connect.

* * *

In the year 2035, rapid technological development gave birth to the perfect virtual reality game [Connect].

A reality almost indistinguishable from real life.

Artificial intelligences in the form of NPCs without any sense of incongruity.

And spectacular swordplay, magic, and superpowers that could only be experienced in the game.

All these brought people into the world of Connect.

Bae Dohyun, game nickname: Crash.

He was a veteran player entering his 15th year and ranked among the top hundred players.

Being among the top hundred out of over a hundred million players meant he was an immensely talented individual.

Especially considering he was a solo player.

Had it not been for the major guilds colluding with empires to overturn the world of Connect five years ago, he might not have lost his number one spot which he had held for ten years.

But Connect had already fallen under the control of the major guilds, and he was the only solo player in the top hundred.

Squelch, squelch.

Dressed in assassin-like black leather clothes and a black cloak, Bae Dohyun walked across the blood-stained floor.

Around him lay the bodies of players in armors adorned with various logos.

With every step he took, dozens of weapons embedded in their bodies were pulled out and concealed within his cloak.

An old priest stained with blood on his pure white clerical robe was seen among the corpses.

He was leaning against the stairs leading up to the platform, panting heavily.

Clink.

With a flick of his hand, the blades stuck in the priest’s body fell out and clattered across the hall floor.

Bae Dohyun poured a potion on the bleeding wound, but it was too late for any treatment.

“Cough… So it has come to this, stranger.”

The priest spoke with a pallid complexion.

However, Bae Dohyun seemed uninterested in the priest’s words, merely starting to search the priest’s body.

“The gods predicted that a savior would come to this world, yet why is it that only packs of wolves have gathered? Look, stranger. Why have you brought calamity upon this world? Why have you burned down cities and massacrated the innocent? Why have you enslaved the residents here?”

The priest’s rebuking tone made Bae Dohyun’s eyebrows twitch.

But he soon turned his attention to the distant sounds of shouting and combat, hastening his search.

Finally, he pulled out a small pendant hidden within the priest’s robes.

‘Phew, found it. I need to hurry.’

The priest, with great effort, grabbed Bae Dohyun’s ankle as he was about to leave.
“You’re no different from the rest of them. But do not forget. All is according to the will of the divine… In the end, you all will pay for your sins. Cough!” With blood tears streaming down, the Elder Priest uttered his last words before his head finally fell to the ground.

Bae Dohyun, with a bitter expression, detached the Elder Priest’s hand and said, “Sigh. Elder, your resentment should not be towards me, but towards the Empire and the guilds in league with it. They’re the ones who have turned this world into chaos.”

Though he felt uneasy, there was no time to dwell on the lamentations of an NPC. ‘I need to find it and get out of here quickly.’

Fortunately, he had managed to ambush a detachment of the guild’s forces. However, it was only a matter of time before the main force arrived.

If he didn’t want six months of hardship to go to waste, he had to hurry.

Holding the pendant, he ascended the platform and noticed a chair adorned with lavish decorations.

Bae Dohyun nodded slightly and without hesitation, placed the pendant into a slot behind the chair.

Soon after, a secret passage revealed itself, and there they were—the first-ever mythological items to appear in the Connect world! “Just as the intel said. With these!” Bae Dohyun clenched his fist and bit his lip hard.

Though late, he was filled with a conviction that he could once again reach the top rank, surpassing the major guilds and the Empire.

He hurriedly stored the three items in his inventory and was about to leave the secret chamber when something caught his eye. ‘What’s that?’

In a corner, untouched by light, lay something. Despite the urgent need to escape, Bae Dohyun was drawn to it.

“This is… a game cartridge?”

It was a small, rectangular plastic object, the kind that is highly prized among collectors of classic games—a game pack, without a doubt.

The presence of a game cartridge in a medieval virtual reality game was perplexing.

As he hesitated, his vision began to warp as if interfered by static, and throbbing pain assaulted his head accompanied by a pounding noise. ‘What’s happening?’

The moment he hastily grabbed the game cartridge, Bae Dohyun was ejected from the world of Connect with a great shock.

* * *

“Ha, ha…”

Bae Dohyun was panting, leaning against the wreckage of the capsule device.

Holding his stomach with one hand and a broken piece of wood rolling nearby his other hand, he wondered, ‘How did it come to this?’

Looking down at his blood-streaked left hand, he grimaced and bit his lip feeling the hot gush of blood.

“Sucker, you’ve finally calmed down a bit. You should’ve just gone quietly instead of struggling.”

As Bae Dohyun strained to lift his head, he saw men in dark suits surrounding him, the nearest one’s sashimi knife dripping with blood.

One of the men in the back made a phone call, “Yes, Chairman. We’ve caught him. Should we bring him alive? Yes, yes. Understood. We’ll do so.”

After the call, the man ordered, “Alright, finish him. Just bring his head.”

As the men approached, Bae Dohyun tried to swing the broken piece of wood but was quickly subdued.

“That’s what you get for messing around. You thought you were something special just because you knew how to play games? You thought the world had nothing on you because your fans adored you? Idiot.”

A white cloth covered his face. Despite his struggling, he couldn’t fend off four strong men.

Fading into unconsciousness, all he felt was regret.
‘I thought I was finally going to make a change… To think they’d actually resort to knifing in reality, those bastards.’

That’s how Bae Dohyun took his last breath, unaware of what would happen to him next.

(To be continued)