To Where the Wind Blows
We stayed one more day in the Dark Trench for maintenance. Park Seona needed time to consume the rewards she had received from the Success Myth. Overall, our forces had grown considerably stronger.
“Shall we head to the event soon?”
The Event offered great rewards in proportion to its danger. It would serve as a crucial breakthrough for our situation.
“Which one are you planning to tackle first?”
I looked at Park Seona with a puzzled expression. Then it struck me—she had been stuck in Stage 5 because of the Event and hadn’t been able to progress. I checked the event list again.
Event ‘Equator’ is now open.
Event ‘Destination’ is now open.
Event ‘Replicated World’ is now open.
It seemed the system wanted us to clear Equator and Destination first. I smirked.
“Don’t worry. We’ll handle them in order.”
“Will it really go that smoothly?”
“You don’t know how to resolve events?”
This time Park Seona gave me a confused look.
“I do… You just find the corrupted location, right? But even after drifting across the entire ocean, I never found any sign. Stage 5 is just too vast…”
Of course, the method Park Seona knew was the standard one. By locating a corruption somewhere on the map and tracing its center, one could reach the heart of an Event. But I intended to use a different approach. Why bother searching for the event when I could make it come to me?
“Ah, you’re not familiar with the rules that govern this space. There’s a law called belief here.”
“Huh…?”
“Rather than explain, I’ll just show you. The first event is very straightforward, so it won’t be difficult.”
I found a metal rod nearby, tied a small cloth to one end, and planted it high up before returning.
“See that?”
“Yes… It’s a flag. Are we finding the event with that?”
Park Seona looked completely bewildered. She had spent so much time searching the ocean for Equator without even finding a clue, so the idea of locating it with a crude flag was hard to believe. I teased her lightly.
“Until yesterday you were calling me ‘darling’ nonstop. Now that you’ve got your reward, you don’t trust me anymore?”
“N-no, that’s not it! I… I’m really wronged here!”
I laughed at her reaction. Maybe at first she really had approached me only for the reward. But everything she had done since then hadn’t been purely calculating or selfish.
“I’m joking. Listen, I’ll explain.”
“Okay…”
“From Stage 4 to Stage 6, people’s beliefs have a powerful effect. Even if something isn’t true, if enough people believe it is, it becomes reality.”
“Is that… ah?!”
She seemed to recall experiences that could be explained by what I had just said. Satisfied that she understood, I continued.
“Now, tell me—what is the Equator?”
“The Equator… a hot place?”
“The precise definition is the line equidistant from both the South and North Poles. It’s also called the Equator because it’s the path the sun travels.”
“Oh… Huh? So it’s not a hot place?”
I nodded.
“Right. The Equator isn’t necessarily hot. There are places covered in eternal snow. But the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is that most people perceive the Equator as a hot place.”
Park Seona stared blankly at the flag I had planted.
“So… if we go to the hottest place in Stage 5, we’ll find the Equator that people think of as hot?”
“Exactly.”
She wore a puzzled expression. The concept might have been too complex to grasp immediately.
“Um… but what does the flag have to do with heat?”
“You know wind blows from high pressure to low pressure, right? Basic science.”
“I think I’ve heard that.”
I pointed in the opposite direction from where the flag was fluttering.
“We’re going to move toward the area with the highest atmospheric pressure in this world. The place with the highest thermal energy. If we follow the direction the wind blows, the Equator will reveal itself.”
Park Seona looked at me blankly. I wasn’t sure if she fully understood.
“Will… this really work?”
“You doubt a lot.”
Of course, I could be wrong. I wasn’t always right. But if she was on my ship, she had to follow my orders.
We sailed against the wind. The direction shifted several times, but as the temperature steadily rose, I smiled deeply. Park Seona, who also felt the increase in heat, wore an odd expression as she praised me.
“Darling… you’re amazing. I never imagined we could find an event this way!”
“You can figure it out if you combine a little information.”
“I couldn’t… And it’s not just a little. How do you know so many different things?”
‘How do I know these things…’
I wouldn’t deny it. Even though it had been a dogshit company, my time at Barosoft had helped me in countless ways in this world. Usually, when a company name included “Soft,” people assumed it was a web development firm. And we were a small company that took on every kind of computer-related job and dumped it on our employees. Ordinary, if you could call it that. As long as it made money, we accepted all sorts of work.
You’ll remember Park Gibeom. The department I worked in was the one he managed as department head. And he always brought in bizarre requests that suited his own twisted tastes—things involving fantasy and various superstitions. So the work I did most at Barosoft was ‘game planning.’ Writing stories, creating characters, and so on. My main job was revising drafts from clients who had money but no ideas, while trying not to offend them too much.
Clients lacking common sense was routine. But on the flip side, the moment I didn’t know something, things got very troublesome. Because of this strange structure, I naturally devoured all sorts of miscellaneous knowledge just to survive.
I was someone who possessed a wealth of fantasy-related knowledge that wasn’t particularly useful on Earth. Thinking about it, there was a reason why the people from Barosoft had all been positioned at higher stages. Generally, users who rose to the top had something exceptional about them—exceptional physical ability, exceptional intelligence, or exceptionally good luck with summons. The reason the Barosoft people had reached high stages despite lacking any of those was probably thanks to ‘common sense.’
‘What a ridiculous story.’
I chuckled at the memory. I couldn’t exactly say I’d learned it while working like a corporate slave, so I glossed over it.
“I just studied hard, that’s all…”
But Park Seona seemed to interpret it differently. She clapped her hands and looked up at me.
“That’s amazing! I barely attended school because I was busy practicing choreography. You must have studied really hard!”
‘Hmm…’
She seemed to have misunderstood, but I let it slide. And strictly speaking, the credit for easily locating the event should go to the Cat. If I hadn’t stolen the information that this world was based on ‘belief,’ I would have wandered quite a bit myself. Her sacrifice had saved me.
“To be precise, it’s thanks to my former sponsor. Without her, I never would have made it this far.”
While we chatted, our destination drew near.
“We’ve arrived.”
The surrounding temperature had risen steadily, the sky had grown clearer, and finally, an island appeared in the distance. An island that shouldn’t exist in this world. It was clearly a corruption phenomenon.
“Is that the Equator? It looks… strange.”
Park Seona’s reaction was normal. There shouldn’t have been an island in the Equator’s corruption. According to the community’s guide for the Equator, you would drift across the sea until you found a cluster of red reefs, follow them to reach the Equator, and if the reefs suddenly changed direction and started chasing you, you had to run. Otherwise, your ship would run aground and you’d be attacked by bizarre sea creatures. If you successfully escaped the Equator, the event would end and you’d receive a small reward. That was the standard method.
But because I had chased the event using the keyword ‘heat,’ something else had mixed in. What appeared was a bright red island. A massive crimson island with three volcanoes at its center loomed over us.
“Darling. Are we… sure we came to the right place?”
“Don’t worry.”
Honestly, I had expected this. Ever since twenty-seven Minotaurs appeared at the Exit in Stage 4, I had known something was off. No matter how I thought about it, they weren’t the kind of difficulty a normal Stage 4 user could handle. But in the end, I had grown tremendously by defeating them, hadn’t I?
‘I only started properly sweeping through Stage 4 after solving the Exit.’
It was the same this time. To face abnormally difficult monsters, I couldn’t grow through normal means. Whether it was monsters or traps, it didn’t matter.
“We just have to devour them all and move forward.”
Park Seona swallowed dryly. Then she murmured in a trembling voice.
“I wondered how you could stay so calm amid all those unreasonable crises… You’ve always been on these grand adventures, exploring the unknown.”
“Are you scared?”
The blue-maned beast bared her fangs in a smile.
“No. It’s an honor.”
Whoosh— As we approached the island, countless red reefs came into view. A red island to begin with. All the landmasses extending from it were crimson.
“These ones aren’t moving.”
“Maybe the red reefs other users encountered all came from this island. Since we’ve come to their original location, they might be dormant.”
Park Seona stared at the reefs blankly before laughing.
“Haha… I searched so desperately for those red reefs, and this is how we meet. I’m really glad I took the job to seduce you, Darling.”
“Watch your mouth.”
I added a warning in case she let her guard down.
“Events corrupted like this have much higher difficulty than the original. Be extremely careful.”
The sun blazing down from above. The beautiful scenery filling every direction and the sound of clear waves. All this peacefulness was so far removed from the usual Stage 5 that it only made it more dangerous.
We docked the ship and stepped onto the island. Onto the eerily crimson land where the sun shone intensely—the only place in this world where it did so.