Responses
I have seen novel readers say that it isn't what it seems to be, that she was stuck in a game and the mods she was talking to are actually mods. So just take the whole current setting with a grain of salt. Maybe you will be able to come pick this back up. The actual setting might only be revealed after quite awhile though
I just couldn't get past the past where they can't delete the character because “she's our previous character”, I'm sorry, WHAT?!?! SOMEONE IS GOING TO D.I.E!! They think game devs don't have backups of their characters??? OF FUCKING COURSE THEY DO! What would they do if the character picked an herb and it bugged and instead just mashed it's hand into the ground for eternity? Just leave her as the game's bugged woman who likes to fist her herb her spirit somehow garden violently? NO! They remove her from the game, figure out what's won and write her back in. This character has the worst bug possible, it won't let go of its human. If say that's a pretty massive bug. MC is 200% right here. Remove the character and send her back.
Man, I could even have fixed this story by changing that one line. “Why don't you remove the character from the game?” “Well we can't find your body. It's possible that this character is the only remnants of your physical form. If we delete her without figuring out what happened. You might disappear forever.”
The only thing that could fix this is if we found out the the tester had went into a comma awhile back and her spirit somehow possessed the npc; she was only hanging onto this world by a thread, or the developers, not knowing how well she was bound to this character or not, decide to lie and make her believe she's still alive to experiment with this supernatural phenomena. So by telling her they didn't want to delete the character because she's precious, it gives a positive, albeit ridiculous reason why she can't come back that way. They know that if they delete the character, they delete all that's left of her; and if they tell her the truth she might breakdown beyond repair, somewhere no one can help her.
If I had some kind of guarantee that was the case. I might be able to pick this back up.