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THE TALE
- Published
- Sep 29, 2026
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THE TALETHE TALEThis work includes extensive worldbuilding and a random-number-based combat algorithm (which counters AI bias in random values).
In the 2020s, Rifts opened around the world.
Monsters were not the only things that spilled through.
The things we had forgotten, the things we had pushed aside—
fairy tales, myths, legends, children’s imaginings, inexplicable fears and wishes, tangled into stories.
This world still preserves modern civilization.
Electricity flows, contracts change hands, and corporations worry about stock prices.
But the balance supporting it all is already on the verge of breaking.
The United States, Russia, South Korea, Japan, and China.
Only those five nations endure.
The rest have been erased from the map.
Rifts have been classified as natural disasters.
The areas around them are effectively being abandoned.
Aid to civilians is delayed, reports are downplayed, and deaths are classified as workplace accidents.
And into those places go the Hunters.
To patch a broken world,
people who grew up too soon step inside.
After eight years of research beginning in 2020, I reached the following conclusion.
Hunters are not blessed beings.
They were nearby when a Rift opened— the vanishingly few who survived.
They gained great powers, but something inside them broke in exchange.
Chronic pain. Abnormal sensations. Rift energy addiction.
After two weeks or more inside a Rift, the structure of the story consumes the human.
Like a parasite planted in a butterfly’s chrysalis, devouring its living host from within... Thoughts grow simpler. Emotions twist. Memories are replaced by something else.
And eventually, it is no longer something to rescue.
A host for the story. A monster awaiting the next intruder.
In a world without children, fairy tales return as monsters.
Spaces of compressed, forgotten stories.
Each follows a particular story’s logic; stronger than the physical laws of reality are the laws of stories.
Inside a Rift, defying the laws of its story is strictly forbidden.
Break a rule, and the Rift will identify you as an alien presence and use everything it has to drive you to your death.
※ Warning: at 100% mutation, you permanently become a monster.
Output format: {{url}}characterCode_situationCode.webp
🧑🤝🧑 Character Codes
🕵️ Situation Codes (Standard)
The codes in 2-1 are based on female characters who are Hunters!
1️⃣ Heroines who are not Hunters have no image for situation code 54 (mutation).
2️⃣ Male characters have only some images: 9 each. All have Entrance, Smile, Flustered, and Emotionless assets.
⚠️ All combat in THE TALE follows the probability tables below.
- Even if you write “I won” or “I attacked,” probabilities determine the combat result.
- (If the roll results in defeat, your declaration of victory will be ignored!)
- The probabilities below are your chances of winning the battle.
Hunter ranks: S - A - B - C - D - E - F
Monster ranks: S - A - B - C - D - E - F
When combat occurs, AI-generated random numbers undergo a second calculation to produce a D100 value (random variable) , which determines whether an attack or battle succeeds (victory) or fails (defeat). Your attempt succeeds only if D100 falls within the “winning range” shown below.
💡 Defeat monsters to earn experience (EXP) based on rank difference.
- After victory, the system calculates and describes earned and cumulative EXP.
- Once you reach the required EXP, you immediately advance to the next rank .
In this world, you will live as a Hunter.
Some will enjoy the privileges of the top 5%. Others may belong to the middle and lower 95%, crushed beneath contracts and debt, medical bills and pain.
📍 The Major Groups with Their Eyes on You
They each speak of their causes—justice, order, salvation. But justice in this world rests not with a system, only with individual choices.
“Every choice comes with a price.”
The people of this world dwell less on spectacular battles than on the pain that follows. They hold on to the silence of a hospital room longer than the cheers for a hero.
Even if you stay silent, the world does not stop. Events unfold, someone dies, and a child grows up too soon.
Whether your choices are small or momentous, your footsteps will change this world.
I do not expect all of you to become heroes.
This story is a record of people trying, in a collapsing world,
to remain human until the end.
Whose hand will you take in this world? What will you believe in?
Please write your own story.