章 10: 0.01%
"Precisely," the man in indigo replied, placing a gentle hand on Khalil's shoulder. "Come," he said, turning back to the scene below. "Let us continue watching. Perhaps we'll discover more promising souls like yourself today. Though," he added with a slight smile, "bonds with beings of such power are exceedingly rare."
As they stood there observing the ceremony, Khalil felt the weight of responsibility settling on his shoulders. He realized that this world - game or not - held depths he had yet to fully comprehend. It was like discovering that what he thought was a simple application actually controlled critical infrastructure - the stakes were far higher than they appeared.
Below them, another candidate stepped forward to enter the portal, and Khalil found himself watching with new eyes, understanding at last that he was witnessing not just a ceremony, but a crucial moment in the ongoing battle between light and darkness.
But his attention was drawn by something else once again.
'Should I inspect that system window now...?'
The floating interface had been waiting patiently in his field of view, like a notification he'd been too busy to check. Now that he had a moment to breathe, his developer's curiosity urged him to examine it properly.
'Ok, let's go.'
While the others remained focused on the ceremony below, Khalil finally turned his attention to the glowing window that had been hovering in his vision since he'd regained consciousness. As a web developer, he was used to debugging code and finding solutions to complex problems, but this was far beyond any system error he'd ever encountered.
[Congratulations! You have been chosen as a Guardian Candidate to save this world.]
His breath caught as the next message appeared:
[Status: Your soul has been transferred to this world upon your death in your original world. Your previous memories have now been awakened. To protect your mind and soul, these memories were temporarily sealed until you formed your first bond.
Current Situation: You have successfully bonded with a Guardian of Light - one of the Ancient Protectors of this realm.
Mission: Save this world from the impending darkness.
Success Rate: 0.01%
Note: This percentage reflects your current chances based on forming a bond with a Guardian of Light. Without this bond, your chances would have been 0.00001%.]
Khalil stood frozen, his developer's mind automatically trying to process this like a complex bug report. But this wasn't a code issue he could solve by checking the console or debugging step by step. This was real.
"This has to be a game glitch," he muttered under his breath, his voice barely audible. "Maybe a rendering error or..." He trailed off, knowing deep down this wasn't something he could fix with a simple code patch.
As someone who spent his days learning building and maintaining virtual web applications, Khalil was intimately familiar with virtual worlds and their limitations. His younger brother's endless chatter about isekai stories and game worlds had always amused him - he'd even helped develop some small easy indie games in his spare time using AI's help.
But this... this was different. The sensations were too real, the experience too vivid to be explained away as clever programming.
"It can't be real," he whispered, reaching up to pinch his cheek. The sharp pain made him wince - definitely real. He pinched harder, half expecting to see a "404 Error: Reality Not Found" message pop up.
But nothing changed.
The memories that had flooded his mind during the bonding ceremony, the strange sense of familiarity with this world's systems, the otherworldly Guardian of Light that had chosen him - it was like trying to understand a codebase written in a language he'd never seen before, yet somehow could read perfectly.
His mind raced with questions. If he had died in his original world, what about his family? His life? His university?
Khalil's hands gripped the railing tighter as the implications sank in. He hadn't asked for this responsibility. Just yesterday—or what felt like yesterday—he'd been debugging his term project, worrying about deadlines and planning which web development frameworks to learn next semester. Normal student problems. Not... saving a world with a 0.01% success rate.
A bitter laugh almost escaped him. As a developer, he was used to seeing error rates and success metrics, but this was absurd. In today's age of web development, anything below 99% uptime was considered problematic. A 0.01% success rate? That wasn't just bad—it was practically impossible.
'Is this some kind of sick joke?' he thought, his developer's instincts kicking in. 'Who designs a system with such terrible odds? Are they trying to tell me to give up before I even start?'
He glanced at the others on the observation deck, still focused intently on the ceremony below. None of them seemed aware of his internal crisis. To them, he was just another promising young tamer who'd made an impressive first bond. They had no idea he was grappling with the knowledge that he'd died, been transported to another world, and been handed what amounted to an impossible task.
His mind wandered to his family. His mother, who always had a plate of his favorite food ready when he stayed up late coding. His father, who'd supported his choice to study web development even though he didn't quite understand it. His younger brother, who'd constantly pestered him to play the latest games...
Would they miss him? Were they mourning him right now? Did he let them down?
The success rate notification seemed to mock him, floating there like a persistent bug in his vision. As a developer, he was used to facing challenging problems, but they were always solvable with enough time, research, and effort. This... this felt different. It felt like being handed a project with impossible requirements and told to make it work anyway.
"This isn't right," he muttered under his breath, his voice barely a whisper. "I never wanted this. I never asked to be a guardian or a hero or whatever this is. I just wanted to..." He trailed off, realizing there was no point in finishing that sentence. His old life, his plans, his dreams of becoming a full-stack developer who would make his parent proud—all of it seemed to have vanished like uncommitted code.
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