Erysichthon Protocol (2)
The others weren’t the only ones who’d gone radio silent. The “brilliant senpais” who’d kept bombarding me with texts and calls were all unreachable now too. My advisor had “taken ill” and simply vanished from the campus.
Days later my phone rang. Police station. I’d been messing with a scammer, figuring it was phishing, and now it was a real detective. I offered full cooperation because his voice was so broken up.
“You guys ever tell new grads they should get insurance or derivatives?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you actually read the fine print?”
“No. What the hell is this?”
“It was illegal pyramid selling. The professor was the mastermind.”
Every garish business card on the table belonged to the advisor’s company, like a 24-hour yakiniku joint with neon signs. The lucky Moriarty of a professor had been erased from the university roster, but he was forever burned into our chests.
Days later I got a call from the Student Council Federation.
“I’m the president? Why?”
“You’re the oldest student on the activity roster.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Nobody’s signing up. No professors willing to sponsor either. You could apply to dissolve the club, but…”
The real reason was clear. They wanted me to close it myself so they could whine that the student body had dwindled. I hated taking the moral hit.
“...Fine. I’ve got about thirty thousand won left in the treasury. You want to close it, you burn that first.”
Closing a thirty-year tradition with my own hands didn’t sound that bad.
“Deal.”
I forgot about the receipt and the commemorative photos. The only thing that stuck was the realization that keeping it would be embezzlement. I rounded up the freshmen with the same “risk-averse” or broke-as-shit profile. They were all younger than me.
“One last group dinner and we scatter.”
“Where? Four people at thirty grand? That’s got to be some fancy place.”
The coupon I’d forgotten about popped into my head. The coupon that had warned me, with a cruel asterisk, that drinks only went to customers spending ten thousand or more. It had taught me the hard way that you never read the fine print.
“I’ve got a family restaurant coupon. Let’s go there.”
Everyone else was either single or with family. The five guys who looked like they’d rather be grinding at monitors still looked gloomy as they muttered over the menu. The part-timer delivered it with a sharp maid voice.
“...Food cost more than the plates. What is this, a joke?”
They just nodded and kept poking at their forks and knives in silence. The meal that had taken twenty minutes vanished in five.
Everyone wore meaningless smiles that said the whole situation felt fake. I could feel the air getting thick.
But there was always at least one guy who liked stirring things up.
“Hey, prez, you play games?”
I didn’t answer right away. Then I just said,
“Shut up. I don’t play games.”
“Then what the hell do you do for fun?”
I didn’t say I watched cat and dog videos. That was my private thing.
At first it was just the cute rolling videos that made me laugh. Then related searches started spitting out training clips and it slowly turned into a hobby.
There was something weirdly addictive about it. Watching public opinion swing like a conductor’s baton while I sat back and laughed at the chaos. People got furious, but the animals just looked happy. That was the difference.
If I was the master they raged; the animals worshipped the control. The thought of panting, belly-up, eyes looking up at me while I held them down was enough to satisfy even in my imagination.
I’ll train them one day.
Just then my junior shoved his phone in my face.
“...What is this?”
“It’s a brand-new company game. Reviews are great. There’s talk of a stock listing.”
Domestic markets are still battered by that “Korean discount” bullshit and mocked for being box-office forever, but it’s still a solid, legitimate place. Stock listings don’t happen to mediocre companies.
A brand-new game company talking about listing? Suspicious as hell, but my curiosity won.
“You raising demons?”
My junior quickly swiped away a half-naked demon girl photo and shoved a creepy one in its place. A twisted human figure clawing at its own body against a pitch-black background.
“Erysichthon Protocol.”
“Erysichthon Protocol?”
“Yeah. Feels cool, right? Registered to a local studio but the devs are all foreigners. Rumors say the real money guy isn’t even tied to gaming. Anyway, it’s got cash and talent.”
The rest was background noise. The three of them were faking their knowledge, so I tuned out. The explanation was too dense anyway.
That was my first encounter with the game.
I remember the night I staggered back to my empty room feeling total disillusionment.
The professor had lied to me, then sat there smiling in the glittering night city. The signs flashing brighter than the stars above slapped me in the face.
So I can do the same, huh? Fine. This isn’t about good or bad. It’s about usefulness or not. People are just tools; nobody’s safe to lean on.
The illusion I’d been pushing away hit me hard.
But the weird loneliness wouldn’t let me rest. I installed Erysichthon Protocol on my laptop and it pulled me in faster than I expected.
Everyone was everyone else’s enemy. All of them wanted to kill me. So I could kill them however I wanted.
Use them. Drain them. Toss them away.
Games were supposed to be a safe space for some people. It was true for me. Thanks to all the pent-up shit I’d dumped here, I could fake being a normal human in reality.
I found a strange talent here. Stir the pot, avoid the heat, and take the good stuff.
The spots where people would explode with rage, the places where they’d get pissed off, they were all crystal clear to me.
Society calls it vandalism, harassment. I just call it Tuesday.
If I did this in real life I’d get blacklisted.
Here it’s fine. The world isn’t real. It’s fake. And most of all, it’s fun.
Game companies apparently didn’t expect this playstyle because it was still working fine.
But right now I’m not sure. Will it still work? Who knows.
Too many things had changed. First, the safe zones. According to Hans, a “Human Protected Zone” had appeared.
The old conflicts between nations were just setting flavor text. Inside the game they were buried in item descriptions. Anyone could spot the fake ID Hans had sent me instantly.
So the game that used to be just me hunting zombies or dying alone had added a story and drama. The story and conflict would probably steer in directions I couldn’t predict.
Of course I’d tested every time period. Right after the outbreak. A week later. A month later. A year later. Ten years later. I knew exactly how the world would look.
But I’d never tried the middle stage, when the zombies were still spreading and society hadn’t fully collapsed. The ending would be different, though.
Everyone dies. The world dies too. But the way and the process would be nothing like what I remembered.
Reality and the game were starting to feel almost identical.
I finished draining the remaining tuna can. I’d been sipping it slowly on the bike yesterday and it was already half gone.
I couldn’t carry an open can anyway. I tilted the lid carefully with the knife so I wouldn’t cut myself.
I tilted the can and drank the thick, sweet tuna. The sticky feeling on my tongue felt good. Filling the gaps with that cloying sweetness made me happy.
I forced the can away and chewed the tuna in my mouth. Of course it didn’t break down, but I wanted the sensation of actually eating something.
Kurukul. My stomach growled louder. I took a sip of water and tilted the can again.
Once the sweetness hit, I couldn’t stop. I sipped water every few seconds so I wouldn’t choke, but each time the sweetness washed away and the next sip tasted better.
“I’m starving.”
I muttered it like a dream, then startled. I wasn’t making the sound out loud. Half a can of tuna. Two hundred grams out of four hundred. Two hundred grams at three hundred twenty calories per hundred grams—that’s already six hundred forty. More calories than two bowls of rice.
Of course tuna isn’t rice or bread; it’s closer to cream. But it’s insanely sweet and heavy. Still my stomach growled like it was starving, louder than it had in years. My tongue felt raw from how much saliva it kept producing.
“Nothing left…”
I poured the water from the water bottle into the tuna can, shook it gently. My eyes were spinning from hunger; I had to do something. I probably would have licked it with my tongue if I hadn’t noticed the sharp edges.
“Hah.”
Only after I’d somehow filled my belly did the feast end. I’d downed an entire five-hundred-milliliter bottle of plastic water over the last two days. The tuna was gone too. Now I had one sip of water and one untouched sausage.
I wasn’t ready for long travel yet. First I had to eat and drink here so I could move to the next area without dying.
Stay in one place, gather enough resources, scout the next area thoroughly, then claim and secure it.
Those three steps were the basic survival method. If I just loaded up on supplies and rushed in somewhere I didn’t know, I’d end up as a treasure goblin.
This container wasn’t a full base, but it was enough for temporary storage. Lots of people didn’t know about it and stayed briefly, so even the game company tracking player patterns probably had almost no data on the place.
But I couldn’t stay long. Just one or two days. I’d scout the rising nearby areas and be ready to dash the moment they looked good.
Only that much planning.
Again, my stomach growled.
I checked the mirror and it was obvious.
My body felt wrong.