Chapter 1

[Welcome to Eternal Nightmare. Survival is victory.]

The cold, robotic female voice blasted through the dark while I was sprawled on the couch doomscrolling.

The next second, a white flash nuked my vision and forced my eyes shut. When I opened them again, my living room had straight-up rage quit and turned into a blood-red wasteland.

"Okay, what the hell?"

I squinted and spotted my six-foot-two husband, Adrian Chase, already doing the whole protective-dad thing with one arm around our son.

His tailored suit hugged broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes swept the area, sharp and focused, his throat moving when he swallowed.

Ten-year-old Theo clung to his dad's sleeve. No fear on his face. Kid looked weirdly calm.

I glanced at my phone. The game's backend interface was still running like nothing happened.

My brain caught up fast.

I'd just been yanked into the game I designed.

The chat instantly went feral:

[Whoa, so many players today! This is gonna be good.]

[Damn, that dad-son combo is unfairly good-looking.]

I frowned.

As the game's lead designer, I had never opened this thing to the public. I had no clue where the viewer chat came from.

I forced myself to stay calm.

"Don't freak out. This is probably a full-dive game. We probably got randomly picked as test players."

Adrian frowned at me.

Meanwhile, my fingers flew across my screen, pulling up game data.

The backend showed hundreds of players had been dragged in by force.

Yeah. Not a test.

The system had gone completely off the rails.

"Dad, what's that?" Theo suddenly asked.

In the distance, something came crawling at us way too fast, limbs bent at all the wrong angles, its head twisted completely upside down.

I instantly pulled up a page on my phone, ready to delete the monster, when—

"Move!"

Adrian shoved me out of the way and dragged Theo behind him.

My finger slipped.

Tapped [Reduce Monster Aggression by 50%.]

Seriously?

Adrian moved fast. He snatched up a rock and brought it down in one clean hit.

The thing let out a shrill screech, then melted into a puddle of black sludge.

I hit the ground hard, dirt scraping my skin, my phone almost flying out of my hand.

When I looked up, a translucent screen popped up in front of Adrian:

[Player: Adrian]

[Defeated Low-Level Wraith. XP +10]

[Skill Acquired: Basic Combat]

The chat absolutely lost it:

[That dude is way too calm.]

[The rock hit? Kinda hot.]

Adrian glanced at the thing's corpse and raised an eyebrow.

"So that's it?"

I quietly got up and brushed the dirt off my clothes.

On my phone, a red warning kept flashing:

[Abnormal behavior detected in game core. Immediate termination recommended.]

"Dad, you're awesome! Let's go explore!" Theo grabbed Adrian's hand, looking at him like he was some kind of superhero.

After a few steps, Theo suddenly remembered I existed and glanced back.

"Mom, hurry up."

I caught up while typing lines of code into the backend.

Too late to shut the program down.

For now, all I could do was keep the game's core rules from completely falling apart.

The next three days were straight survival mode in this monster-filled zone.

Adrian was thriving.

He'd always been athletic, and with the game's skill boosts stacked on top of that, he was basically cracked.

Meanwhile, according to him, I spent all day with my head down playing on my phone.