"I guess I'm someone important to the future, and you're clinging to my thighs in order to gain my favor. No, this game isn’t a game. I’m sure you’ve realized that by now. The most realistic game up until now doesn’t even hold a candle to this current one. That’s because it’s not a game—it’s a test.

  The gods are letting our consciousness occupy these bodies, or rather, remotely control them. These bodies are real, but our souls remain in our actual bodies on earth. When we die here, it’s simply a matter of creating a new body or repairing the existing one. What they want is for us to evolve into Grand Elders.

  Each race has a progression: High, Elder, Grand Elder, Sage, and finally Saint or Saints. Of course, some races, like Demons, follow a slightly different evolutionary path. Regardless, the gods want us to reach the equivalent of a Grand Elder. If we don’t, we won’t meet the qualifications to transmigrate in this world.

  Earth has only 10 years, not 40, before it becomes an uninhabitable wasteland. The clock is ticking. And no, the Mars colony isn’t a viable solution either. You’ve probably heard the rumors about it. Unsurprisingly, it only takes two years for the colony to fall apart. It’s not shocking, really—most of the people responsible for Earth’s current mess are the same ones fleeing to Mars to escape the chaos they created.

  These people are leeches—entitled, rich, and utterly useless. Of course, skilled engineers accompany them, but imagine the frustration of those professionals dealing with entitled brats who have no real value. It’s no wonder the colony was doomed from the start.

  Now, you’re probably wondering what I’m offering you. For starters, a magic book containing spells developed by future players. These include key magics for speeding up the progression of ordinary magical tool creation, as well as life and light magics that are otherwise difficult to obtain. Normally, acquiring these would involve grinding NPC favor and navigating complex political nonsense.

  I’m giving you this book and other future knowledge in exchange for your help in reaching the Grand Elder evolution. I chose the Beastkin race this time instead of human because their strength complements my spear-fighting style, which relies on powerful thrusts requiring immense force. Beastkin are ideal for this.

  Let me guess—once I’ve reached that level, you’ll cut ties with me? Smart. It’s a neutral cooperation. Let’s start with this: dungeons are only accessible to us players. They’re also the only places where monsters respawn. Monsters are a functional part of the ecosystem, and in non-dungeon areas, they can be hunted to extinction. That’s why island nations often lack monsters.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Dungeons are exceptions, perfect for grinding levels.

  Now, let’s talk about resurrection. Do you know the difference between resurrecting someone with life magic and light magic? It’s simple. Light magic, also called holy magic, is often branded by churches to push their religious propaganda. Light magic requires a body—intact or not. As long as there’s something left, it can work. However, if the body is reduced to a pile of flesh and blood, it may not be possible to resurrect someone. The success rate goes up the more intact the body is.

  Life magic can resurrect someone without a body, but it’s much more difficult. A common workaround is creating a clone body and using light magic, which requires a physical body for resurrection. Life magic is rarer—on par with space-time magic or death magic—and far more versatile. It can purify ghosts and restore souls before resurrection, something light magic cannot do. Light magic is incapable of purifying incorporeal entities like ghosts, making it less effective in certain situations.

  Life magic restores vitality to dead bodies during the resurrection process, essentially reversing the decay caused by leaking vitality. When someone dies, their vitality slowly leaks out, contributing to decay—not just the microorganisms breaking down the body.

  However, light magic doesn’t restore vitality during the resurrection process. Once resurrected, you’ll be in a weakened state. With time and recovery, you can gradually regain the lost vitality, but this has its disadvantages. After being resurrected, you won’t be in any condition to fight and will need to go through a rehabilitation period before you’re fully functional and ready to go again.

  I’ve been delaying dungeon raiding to experiment with combining illusion and life magic. By bringing illusions to life, I can mimic low-grade creation magic. While true creation magic can produce anything, even things that don’t exist, my low-grade version requires an understanding of the object I’m creating.

  For example, I can create iron if I understand its properties—I don’t need to know everything about it, just enough to make it. However, I can’t create complex devices like smartphones. That said, if I create the components piece by piece and use telekinesis to assemble them, there might be a way to bypass the complexity restrictions that prevent me from making overly complicated items.

  After extensive experimentation, I finally succeeded in combining illusion magic, a application of light elemental magic—with life magic to create a form of low-grade creation magic. With that breakthrough, I decided to plan our dungeon run. Naturally, I included all the guild members, who were technically employees since this game doesn’t have a guild system.

  I summoned the regressor. "You know where the dungeon is, right? I’m assuming it will be discovered in the future."

  They nodded. "It’s actually supposed to be found in a year. The test will last a total of three years. By then, anyone who hasn’t reached the Grand Elder evolution will automatically be locked out of the game and unable to log back in. Everyone else will be transmigrated."

  "Technically, you have a choice," they continued. "A floating window will appear with the option to transmigrate, but no one is stupid enough to decline. Even if they don’t fully believe the decision is real, they’ll still click 'yes'—just in case it is—so they can escape Earth, a dying world. Actually, I suppose it’s already dead. You said it yourself: Earth becomes an uninhabitable wasteland in just 10 years, much faster than previously projected. If you fail to reach this level, you’ll die along with Earth."