Chapter 115 - The Non-Player III

5

This world was contaminated.

I did not merely mean that its physical spaces had been fouled. The mental world—even the brains of the awakened—had been steeped in corruption, with nothing spared.

-Anonymous: (Recommended) ☆☆☆Level 5–Level 10☆☆☆ List of dungeon hunting spots with sweet XP farming. Must-read for newbies!!

-Anonymous: Got up before dawn today and farmed 10,000 XP, brought my items back, cashed out, and now I'm knocking back beers. Rate my life?

-Goryeojang: Today's Café Mocha.png

-Anonymous: Looking for a level 10 party!! No NPC porter, sorry :(

-[Three Thousand]WitchTrialJudge: Guys. A piece of equipment called Black Orb of Messiah (S) dropped while I was hunting monsters today. Is it any good?

Behold this rotten mental landscape.

Not long after the arrival of the “online RPG,” SG Net had degenerated into this sorry state.

True to their self-proclaimed status as a nation of gamers even before the apocalypse, Koreans adapted far too quickly. All those familiar clichés from subculture—

'What? The world... has turned into a game?'

'This is just wrong...'

'That cheater. How does he know every game mechanic we don't?'

—were skipped entirely. Even elementary-school kids calmly accepted the situation with the expressions of seasoned veterans: 'What? We're game players now? The day has finally come.'

Soon, SG Net was plastered with walkthroughs of every kind. I didn't even need to put on my “Great Library Society” mask and diligently publish guides anymore. Everyone tackled anomalies voluntarily, independently, and enthusiastically.

This was just wrong.

“Why the long face...? Hmm. Isn't this an improvement over when people trembled at the mere appearance of an anomaly? These days they head in and out of the void on their own, saying they want to level up...”

“That's precisely the problem. They're all exploring the void as if it were a game. They should understand the world through their own intuition and hard-earned experience. Instead, they're only looking at a world distorted through lenses provided by some wretched anomaly.”

“Hmm...”

“This ‘online game’ is itself one enormous void. Awakened who call themselves players are practically reducing themselves to anomalies of the void!”

“Well, you have a point, buuut... Would I be mistaken if I said you just look furious that an anomaly has stolen the fame and accomplishments you used to monopolize...?”

There was no need to respect the opinion of a Poison-type Pokémon who viewed everything in the world through a cynical lens.

I traveled to Japan and China, then farther afield to Mongolia and India. Everywhere I went, I confirmed that the “online RPG” had infected it all.

'... This is no ordinary problem.'

People's perceptions weren't the only things that had changed.

Even the anomalies were gradually changing.

“Ehehe. There are so many slimes along the river these days, they're really e-easy to catch...!”

Take the slimes Sim Aryeon caught every day for stress relief, beating them within an inch of their lives with a club.

Originally, slimes weren't particularly common anomalies. They appeared in sewers very occasionally, and even then, they rarely ventured outside. Unless an awakened deliberately went underground, they would almost never encounter a slime in their daily life.

Now their population was skyrocketing. Even ordinary riverbanks frequently had slimes bouncing around.

DING♪

DING-A-LING♪

Thanks to that, sound effects from Sim Aryeon's slime beatings rang through our guild's front yard at all hours.

This noise pollution was what made me seriously resolve to move the guild hideout elsewhere.

That resolution also led to the development of Depth: a rigorously defined, academically proven objective standard ranging from 100 to 1,200 meters, rather than some baseless ranking system of S-rank, SSS-rank, and EX-rank.

“P-power-leveling...! I can really feel my Poison-Drinking Bird skill power-leveling like crazy whenever I beat slimes in the front yard! Th-this is one of those things, isn't it? Like finding out the stairs to your basement lead to a secret mine full of magical elixirs, or a hidden spot where only the p-protagonist gets to reap all the benefits...!”

Aryeon's healing ability was gradually reaching the point where, as long as a patient's head was still attached, she could heal them completely even if they arrived with their limbs torn off.

More and more awakened on SG Net were calling her “our angel.”

This was just wrong.

In any case, slimes weren't the only anomalies multiplying rapidly in this rotten world.

Goblins, orcs, ogres, trolls. In short, the monsters that were staples of games were increasingly filling the void.

There was only one way to explain this phenomenon.

'The online game is encroaching on anomalies as well as the awakened...?'

A chill ran down my spine.

An anomaly that made no distinction between humans and anomalies, that did not remain in any particular place, that was unconstrained by space or time and simply expanded its sphere of influence endlessly.

A God of Alienation.

Yes. As though it had been waiting for Gapless to be subjugated, another unidentified God of Alienation was extending its sinister reach.

Disguised behind the mask of a “game”—something humans found difficult to resist.

-Anonymous: (Proof pic) Set a new damage record hitting an orc today lol

-Anonymous: This game is seriously so much fun.

-Anonymous: Looking for a level 20 party!! Already secured one NPC porter!!

-Anonymous: Anyone want to trade troll eyeballs outside the Gimhae dungeon?

SG Net was becoming increasingly indistinguishable in appearance from a gaming forum.

Before I knew it, people were using “monster” instead of “anomaly” as a matter of course, and ordinary people who hadn't awakened skills were called NPCs.

Killing monsters caused “items” to drop. Slime cores, goblin teeth, orc hearts, and so forth. All these materials had particular effects, which could be viewed through an “item window.”

Everything was a game.

... I shared my suspicions with members of the Regression Alliance. At last, Noh Doha and the Saintess looked serious too.

“Commander Noh Doha. Please formally declare the ‘online game’ an anomaly under your authority as Commander. We need to make people wary, even now.”

“Understood. Though I don't know how effective it'll be at this point. Everyone is showing signs of gaming addiction...”

Gaming addiction.

That was another symptom displayed by awakened infected by this God of Alienation. It was on an entirely different level from the gaming addiction the media had talked about before the apocalypse.

Now the awakened considered the “world in the shape of a game” far more truthful and desirable. Even as we spoke, a new post appeared on SG Net every three seconds.

“Saintess. Please keep playing the role of the ‘online game's’ operator, making sure people have as little reason to doubt you as possible. Even if we can't subjugate this anomaly immediately, we should at least be able to stem some of the faith flowing toward it.”

“... Yes. Understood.”

With these precautions, we somehow managed to keep things contained through run 134.

But deep down, I was already bracing myself for the next run. When we hijacked the “status window,” the strange phenomena of “experience points,” “levels,” and “damage” had appeared in addition.

What anomaly awaited us next?

The awakened of the Korean Peninsula—no, of the entire world—were already deeply addicted to the “online game.” The stats and levels it measured were definite, and the void, once filled with terror, had suddenly transformed into hunting grounds filled with experience points.

Humanity was pushing back the void more decisively than ever. Victory followed victory. All through their own allegiance to an anomaly.

Suddenly, I remembered a monologue spoken by the protagonist of [The Catcher in the Rye].

... Game, my ass. Sure. If you're on the team with all the hotshots, life is a game. I'll grant you that. But if you wind up on the other team, where there's not a single hotshot bastard in sight, then what the hell makes it such a great game? It's nothing. It's not a game at all...

As long as the awakened were winning, at least on the surface, the “online game” really was entertainment.

But how long would that victory last?

Despite the warning from the commander of the National Road Management Corps, the awakened did not stop playing the online game. They remained utterly absorbed in the endless pleasure of leveling up.

Then, one day.

Just as warning signs always precede a massive earthquake, a message reached me.

[The ‘Operator of All Things at Play’ announces an upcoming new event.]

6

A recollection.

[“Oh. Come to think of it, why did you suddenly impersonate some strange constellation a few days ago?”]

[“Pardon?”]

[“A week ago. You sent a message under the name Operator of All Things at Play. I was a little surprised to learn that even you make mistakes, Saintess. Did you accidentally send me a message meant for another awakened?”]

[“...?”]

Those with a good memory will recall it immediately.

This was the anecdote I mentioned toward the end of my account of meeting the Saintess for the first time.

[“I've never sent a message like that.”]

[“What?”]

[“I've never even created a constellation called the Operator of All Things at Play. Are you sure you didn't misread it, Mr. Undertaker?”]

[“...”]

The story of a message sent by a “mysterious constellation” the Saintess had never created.

I simply tell whatever episodes come to mind, without worrying much about chronology. But if we arrange events in run order, they unfold as follows.

Run 117. Subjugated the God of Alienation “Gapless.”

Run 118. First witnessed “Hero Syndrome.”

Run 119. First witnessed the “Reincarnation Truck.”

Run 126. Subjugated “Salvation Narrative Syndrome.”

Run 133. First witnessed the “status window.”

Run 134. First witnessed the suspected God of Alienation, the “online game.”

And it was also in run 134 that I received a message from that mysterious constellation... No, from an entity I wasn't even sure could be called a constellation.

My intuition, honed over my long life as a regressor, trembled violently like the recording needle of a seismograph.

My intuition was not wrong. Run 134 had been no more than a foreshock.

In the next run—run 135—the earthquake began in earnest.

-Anonymous: These bastards seriously do nothing but game all day lol. Turn it off and go outside for once lmao

Run 135 was essentially similar to run 134.

The difference was that, at some point, peculiar posts began appearing.

-Anonymous: The game is reality for us, though? The game is reality for us, though? The game is reality for us, though?

└Anonymous: So true lol

└Anonymous: Currently playing ‘reality’ for 50,783 hours straight. Holy shit

└Anonymous: You should turn it off

-Anonymous: This guy was shitposting before dawn and he's still shitposting now...

└Anonymous: What?

Again, on the surface, it looked like harmless bickering in an ordinary online community.

But every void disguises itself as something barely distinguishable from the natural world. As a school. As a tunnel. As the sea.

In the end.

-Anonymous: Fuck, been gaming so long my whole body's stiff. I'm clocking out first

The void arrived like a thread snapping.

-Anonymous: Sorry guys, sorry, too sleepy to stay online anymore; heading out first

-Anonymous: I'm logging out to go live my real life too~

-Anonymous: Looking for a level 30 party!! Already secured three NPC porters!!

-Anonymous: Ugh, there's fuck-all to do in this game. Quitting this trash game, later

One by one, SG Net members posted that they were logging out of the game or quitting.

But as everyone knew, the “online game” was a game overlaid on reality.

How on earth could anyone “log out” of this game or quit it?

[Mr. Undertaker.]

Whether I wanted to know the answer or not, it reached me immediately.

[The awakened aren't moving.]

“... Are you saying they're dead?”

[Yes. Almost. But it's strange. Some awakened remain completely motionless, as though they've entered suspended animation, then start moving again after a while as if nothing happened.]

“...”

[As though they've logged into a game.]

They resembled zombies.

Like monsters that were active at night but stopped functioning as soon as the sun rose, the awakened did not move at all while “logged out.”

[Even when I look at the awakened in suspended animation with my Clairvoyance, I can't see anything. Darkness. All I can see is black, painted over in pitch-black layers.]

Even when I attacked an awakened who was logged out, they took no damage. My blade passed through them as though they did not exist in this world.

Even Sim Aryeon, the girl in our guild who enjoyed the “online game” most, could not escape this phenomenon.

“—Oh, Guild Leader!”

Aryeon opened her eyes and scampered over to me.

... Her muscles moved so naturally that it was hard to believe she had spent the past three days standing rigidly upright without moving a fraction.

“Were you waiting for me?”

“... Yes.”

“Wow! Thank you! Ehehe. So even NPCs really do react differently once their affection goes up!”

“...”

“I wanted to get back sooner, but real life got in the way... Still, I took care of it this time!”

Originally, the “addicts” had used the term NPC to refer to ordinary people who had not awakened skills.

Now it was different.

As time passed, even ordinary people acquired minor abilities. Without hesitation, they logged into the game and advanced to player status.

Now, NPCs were those like Noh Doha and me, who never logged into the game at all.

Paradoxically, the addicts had begun calling the people who could therefore remain “inside the game” twenty-four hours a day NPCs.

To them, Noh Doha's work building national roads across the Korean Peninsula was a “quest” in the truest sense.

I, too, was treated as a “hidden NPC” whose role was to teach players various classes, skills, and methods of developing their characters.

Which of us were the NPCs?

From my perspective, they were the ones who had been devoured by an anomaly and reduced to parts of the void—mere NPCs. But their perception was the exact opposite: I was the NPC.

I thought to myself that if this was an instance of Zhuangzi's butterfly dream, then it was a truly horrific butterfly nightmare.