LV.1 Swordsman Gaon
Swordmaster Gaon offered a prayer to the Goddess.
"O Goddess. Time and again I begged you not to let that game die. Yet in the end you never answered my prayer. I pleaded with all my heart, and still..."
The Goddess answered.
I am the Goddess of the Hearth, not the Goddess of video games. And even if I were, I would have let that predatory gambling den of a game collapse all the same.
"Sadly, the game did die in the end."
In all my tens of thousands of years, I have rarely been so pleased.
"And so I mean to start a new one. But first... I ask your blessing."
The Goddess's jade-bright voice fell silent. Only after a moment did a desperate tone ring through Gaon's mind.
Can't you just stop gaming and go outside for once? Come now — when you rescued that orc downtown the other day, didn't it feel rewarding?
"O Goddess of Fire and Hearth. I, Gaon, am your Great Warrior. I shall remain in this house and tend your hearth."
Gaon. Do not talk nonsense just because your Goddess cannot descend and smack you on the back! Enough. Go out. Meet people. Please. You turned two hundred and thirty this year. Must you still be lectured at that age?
"I'm an elf and a demigod, so I'm still young at this..."
The Goddess sighed.
Silence stretched again, and Gaon considered the matter in earnest — whether to put into practice the sacred doctrine of Whoever Weeps First, Wins. Fortunately, the disgrace of a man past two hundred and thirty faking tears never came to pass. The merciful Goddess spoke at last, in a voice of reluctant concession.
This is the last time, Gaon. Play this one game, and after that we go outside and do something — anything. All right? You wouldn't want to watch your Goddess so furious she weeps, would you? I beg you, truly.
The Goddess had given her permission. There was nothing left to hold him back.
Gaon bowed deeply toward the Goddess's electric hearth in thanks, then entered his dedicated machine and started the game.
A virtual reality game.
His consciousness sank into darkness.
A black field of vision — some kind of loading screen, it seemed. Loading screens typically did not just sit on black; they displayed information about the game, famous quotations, that sort of thing. A few lines of text rose into the darkness.
Nightmare of the trenches. King of urban warfare. God of the guerrilla.
A mass murderer in waiting. A dictator in waiting. An oppressor of democracy.
The words concerned him personally, and Gaon frowned.
A moment later, the screen changed. The opening began.
The opening was a kind of film — an introduction meant to establish the game's setting. It was like watching a movie.
Left, thud, left. Amid the measured tramp of boots, soldiers in uniforms from decades past marched in formation. Along with the footage, a kind of narration drove itself into his mind.
The people of Earth advance. Their hearts are full of pride... or of superiority.
A sense of superiority over another world, unprecedented in tens of thousands of years of human history.
When a vast dimensional gate opened, the people of Earth discovered another world.
They were certain this new world was lesser than their own. In civilization. In the arts of war.
Earth's politicians and capitalists gladly gifted the new world their civilization and technology, their religion and their plagues — in the expectation that, in return, they would receive resources, every manner of right, and the loftiest respect and awe.
Earth-made tanks and fighter planes belch black exhaust as they cut across the new world.
Across As.
A fantasy world that, in tens of thousands of years, never invented the steam engine.
The scene shifted. Soldiers again — but a different army. An army that carried swords and staves alongside their rifles.
The people of As advance as well. The natives. The defenders. The avengers.
The holy sites and kingdoms of As were trampled under military boots long ago.
Now, with every last scrap of pride evaporated, the hearts of As's people hold nothing but rage.
Despite defeat upon defeat, the warriors' march does not stop. In place of hope for victory, the desire for revenge serves as fuel. They take the field simply because they are consumed by spite.
The weapons of As are paltry and their technology paltrier still, yet they are not so easily overrun.
Elves and dwarves, orcs and goblins... dragons and the gods of heaven join them in their wrath.
The screen changed once more. This time it showed both armies. A battlefield where the two forces collided filled the frame.
Decades later, in the year 1943. The closing years of the Second World War.
The two worlds have fought for a wearisomely long time, yet the matter is still not decided. Then as now, both fronts only keep expanding.
A battlefield grown vast beyond measure demands more troops, more blood.
You, too, are a mercenary dragged onto the battlefield to bleed.
The opening ended there. A voice in his mind asked a question.
Are you an Earthling invader, or a native of As?
*You may answer differently from your actual origin.
A system message, apparently. Gaon answered as he had decided beforehand.
"Earthling."
Those of Earth origin may only select the Human race. Is this acceptable?
"Yeah."
What do you look like?
Along with the question, the screen displayed a man. Gray hair, pointed ears — the typical appearance of a Gray Elf.
Do you wish to keep your original appearance?
*Accepting will conclude character appearance customization.
"No. Change it."
The instant Gaon answered, the figure on the screen began to shift. Character appearance customization had begun. It was the sort of work that was difficult without considerable skill — but not for Gaon. He was well practiced at changing his own appearance.
After about a minute, the figure of an exceedingly handsome East Asian man was complete.
What weapon will you use on the battlefield?
"A sword. A longsword, any length, so long as it weighs 1.4 kilograms or less."
That appeared to be the final question. A system message announced that character creation was complete.
Begin your journey, mercenary of Earth.
Slaughter and violate every native in sight, and fatten the bellies of your capitalists.
As his consciousness shifted, Gaon did not admire the work he had just created. He clicked his tongue.
"I've got a disease where I'll die if I don't play a girl."
Darkness passed, and light seeped in. Gaon opened his eyes and let out a sound of astonishment.
This was a game?
Gaon knew VR games existed — titles that ran to hundreds of dollars, even over a thousand, for expensive hardware and a high-end computer, all to grant a sense of three-dimensional space. But this was not a matter of added depth. Looking at the scenery around him, he thought:
The scents, the sounds — all of it is indistinguishable from reality...
Another world, a world that was truly a world, spread out before his eyes. How? It was a sight astonishing even to an elf who had lived more than two hundred years. He was still turning his head this way and that when a voice called out.
"Gaon?"
He looked toward the sound and found a human man — so utterly ordinary that he clearly had no talent for customization. Gaon smiled faintly and asked,
"You're Jijonmussang, right?"
The one whose nickname was Jijonmussang nodded vigorously.
"Yeah! Oh, we met right away! Great! Then let's go make some money, quick!"
Those were the first words out of his mouth upon meeting? Gaon was a little taken aback.
"Right now? We should look around a bit first."
"The account fee's too expensive to sit around zoning out!"
"Come on, why so cold-blooded? Look at this. It's amazing that this is a game. Don't you feel like you should be marvelling at it?"
Jijonmussang was unmoved.
"What's there to be surprised about? It's a game made in a fantasy world, so they probably just did something with magic."
"Magic isn't a miracle potion, you know."
"Ah, who cares! Let's just go make money, yeah?"
Gaon, however, was in no hurry. He took his time looking around.
They were not the only ones here. Six other men, wearing the same basic military uniforms as they were. Gaon approached them and asked,
"Hey hey. You guys new too?"
"Ah, yeah. 'You guys'? Huh, feels weird calling people that here. First time for you too, mister? Your customization's really well done."
In an ordinary online game, there would have been no reason for strangers to feel awkward with one another. Not in this one. It was so much like reality that the same stiffness that hung between people meeting for the first time hung here as well.
He was in the middle of trying to build some camaraderie despite that awkwardness when a shout cut through the air.
This game had no intention of giving them a chance to get acquainted.
"Everyone shut up and pay attention!"
"Hands in the air, all of you! Move and I shoot!"
A man in a red cap, dressed like a military drill instructor, bellowed the order as he leveled a gun at them. And the instructor was not the only threat. Gaon took in the change in their surroundings and raised one eyebrow.
They're staging an encirclement?
What surrounded them was a kind of fortress — a twentieth-century fortification built to withstand artillery. From its embrasures, gun barrels jutted out, every muzzle trained on the gathered new players.
Ohh...
Gaon smiled faintly, intrigued. The excessive realism was startling, but the situation itself was not strange. After all, whether a novel or a game, the beginning ought to be intense.
"So this is the game's prologue, huh."
In that case, was the one shouting at them to put their hands up an NPC?
He was not.
There is a uniquely overbearing tone that belongs to Koreans who have done their military service, or grown accustomed to a culture of rank — a voice looking down from a great height, the words sheathed in a film of ice. The instructor barked in exactly that voice.
"Did you not hear me say shut up? I said shut it."
A strangely chilling silence settled. Then one of the new players muttered,
"Man, why's this prologue so damn annoying..."
A gunshot erased the rest.
Smoke curled from the muzzle of the instructor's gun. In the same instant, the man who had just muttered collapsed, twitching. Blood spilled. The raw, metallic stench of it filled the air.
The realism was excessive, and the gunshot was far too loud. Some of them had never heard a gun fired in their lives. A few flinched as if they might faint. The instructor kept talking.
"Keep yapping and I'll just shoot you. Die and you respawn after twenty-four hours — and since you newbie bastards don't have a nearby city, you respawn right where you dropped. Then you die again. This shit game, you wanna remake your character, you gotta buy a whole new account, you know that? Got money to burn, go ahead and die."
Slowly, they all began to realize this was not a tutorial. NPCs did not talk like that.