The MCs only cheat applied is the titles he got after defeating the Gatekeeper, the ones that remove the stat limit and double his stats.

The game the MC is playing is an MMORPG that he had been playing for an unspecified number of years, think the average person who likes to min-max on WoW, his character, his stats, and his items are all based around that.

The game in specific has a "reincarnation system", it's never explained in full detail, but basically after you hit the max level with a character, all of your stats will be like 200-300~, after that you can then reincarnate, and your character restarts from the beginning with a portion of the stats at max level. If you repeat reincarnation enough times you can get all of your stats to the cap, 999. This essentially requires, leveling a character to max level, and repeating it dozens of times, though there were several handfuls of people in the game that maxed out. Also, after reincarnating a certain # of times, your race upgrades to "High", like the MC is a High Human.

The MC is fundamentally a trade skill class. Though everything about him is pretty absurd making it seem like he's built around combat, the guild the MC was originally part of specialized in trade skills. The MC himself was said to be one of the most skilled blacksmiths in the game. He was a producer of a lot of the top end weapons/armor, using the highest quality materials, his stats and such were a means to get the materials himself.

There's an NPC character support system in the game. Putting it simply, it's something like having your own personal NPC pet, that you can level up, have learn skills, and it's essentially like having a real player help you out, you can use them to help out at some extent in combat, or watch your player store, etc.... Another hobby of the MC was to create support characters.

The MC made roughly 10~ support characters during the long period he played the game, during the time he maxed out his character, he also got the stats of his primary support character, the blond elf he leaves in charge of his store roughly 800~900 in all stats, with most skills maxed.

Most of his other support characters have similar reincarnated stats, 400~500~700, making them the "high" version of their race, and having stats beyond that of the average max level character. He also equipped them with a ton of high quality equipment he produced, and the races of his support characters cover a range of pretty much all of the races in the game, he was probably leveling them up as a hobby to test the races specialties/min-max.

Those are roughly the details of the game the MC was playing, and a bit of background on the game, now for the details of the situation he's in starting in the first chapter.

Simply put the series of events went something like this:

Year XX-XX: Main Character is addicted to MMORPG, min-maxes, is one of the top players of the game
Year X: Through some series of events the game is suddenly turned into a Death Game, the GAME is still a GAME, and it's no different than the game was during the time it was played as a game, other than the fact that you die if you die and you can't log out.

After the start of the death game, NPCs/support characters start to gain self-awareness through some means, however they haven't developed a specific AI yet, they can only interact the same as the time it was during the game, but they basically gain the ability to think with the start of the death game.

The period the death game takes place over is roughly a span of several months, in other words, from the time it stops being a regular MMORPG and suddenly turns into a death game, until the time the MC clears the Gatekeeper, is roughly 1-3 months or so.

Year X: After the MC finishes the death game, all of the player characters in the game log out and we get the start of the manga.

However, there was actually a series of developments that happened during the 511~ years he ends up in later.

First off, all of the support characters and NPCs who started gaining self-awareness during the death game, begin to gain the ability to move about freely, even they themselves aren't aware of exactly how long after it was, since they remained self-aware the entire time, but they suddenly begin to gain the ability to act freely without their missing master.

During that time, there is also a series of cataclysms causing a lot of the game continents to split and change from how they were during the time the MC played, a mass of monsters suddenly attack and annihilate a number of the capitals as well after the players are gone with just the NPCs left.

When all of the actual players of the game logged out, the NPCs were basically left in the above situation, all of the players had the primary amount of gold/$$ from the time it was a game, when all of the players disappeared all of that gold went with them, along with high quality items, etc... causing an essential market crash. Very few NPCs could reproduce the things players could.

The NPCs & support characters split up depending on their personalities, some of them found kingdoms, some of them search for their long lost masters that logged off, some of them die (they have normal life spans after this point, but the "high" races naturally have long life spans)

The world the MC ends up in after he defeats the Gatekeeper is 511~ years after the above events and developments.

The first thing he does is goes to find his primary support character the blonde elf, and check on his player store. He finds the other black haired elf running his store when he gets there and learns a bit about the past.

Since the economy crashed, the old gold all the players took with them when they logged out is basically treated like a relic, and new lower quality weapons/currency made by the NPCs is used.

The NPCs that the main character made as support characters are spread all over the world.

He starts exploring the world he ends up, his primary goal is to try and figure out what happened and how he can return to reality/figure out if he's in a game or another world, at the same time all the developments are based around him coming across his old support characters and learning how they've lived these past 500~ years without him.

Some of them have created kingdoms, some of them have died, most of them are basically legends of the world because of their absurd stats and abilities. He basically goes around reuniting with those kings and their ancestors in that world, some of them choosing to follow him again after reuniting while he tries to find out what happened.

His level is already maxed out at 255, the player cap. Though whether he can go beyond that level limit thanks to the title I don't know. His stats are basically capped out at 999*2 (1998), though he can change equipment to alter his stats to some extent beyond 2000.

The reincarnation system is still active for the NPCs that live in that world, but they don't comprehend how the system works. If an MMORPG turned into a death game, would you attempt giving up your life to reincarnate just for some stats? The death game lasted like months at most, since the death game took place after the peak of the MMORPG itself, most players during the death game had maxed out levels or over-max reincarnated characters. Very few details are given about the death game since it's literally over by the time the series starts, the death game itself was some sort of in-between stage for the game world to shift into an isekai.

I forget the term they use, but NPCs with an excessive amount of power are born in the world he ends up, the MC realizes this is thanks to the reincarnation system. It seems to have some relation to the temple/church, but it never goes into too much detail.


There was no skill limit on skills in the MMORPG he played as well, there might have been class based bonuses, but essentially as long as you met the conditions you could learn every skill.

Learning skills seems to have had several methods, one is something like a mentor system, where a player who has the skill can create skill books from their skill and hand it over for others to learn.

Learning the skill initially requires knowing the conditions to learn the skill, "kill XXX of a certain monster", etc... this works for the NPCs as well, though they don't know the conditions for the skills, so most of the high end skills were lost when all the players logged out.

Though it seemed kind of like the MC got sick of various events that happened during the period it was a death game and just went into to try and clear it risking his life.

He mentions that the other high humans that were in his guild had already quit the game before it became a death game and if they had still been playing he would have been able to reduce the time it took to clear it by a number of months, so a lot of the players who had stats comparable to his probably had already quit the game. (Think if the current WoW or Tera became a death game right now, any number of maxed out skilled players have already quit, the ones left are the hardcore players who want to get every item in the game.)

A number of regular non-reincarnated players or non-max level players may have died trying to clear it, and the MC finally stepped up even though he was a blacksmith.

Whether he even went there alone or maybe the rest of his party died in the dungeon/the dungeon was split into multiple gatekeeper rooms is unknown.