The Destination
The Destination's Stage 4 Challenge had ended. I could say I'd accomplished most of what I'd set out to do. I'd scattered some information about returning to Earth and established the connection with the Anti-Club I'd been hoping for. Time to get back to work.
The immediate priority was fortifying the Equator in preparation for the inevitable clash with the Golden Lord. With the surveying nearly complete, it was time to start gathering parts and assembling the island in earnest. I turned to Park Seona.
“I’m heading out to gather materials.”
“Ah, right. But how exactly do you plan to get them? I’ve been thinking about it and I just can’t figure it out.”
“What else? An event. I’m going to the Destination.”
“Oh, an event!”
The event [Destination]. By Stage 5, quite a few users had formed contracts with sponsors, and the collective intelligence of the community had launched multiple attempts to locate the Destination. Where was it? Users had floated all sorts of theories. If a continent existed, perhaps that was the Destination. But this world had no continents, did it? After endless debate, the consensus was that the Destination lay deep beneath the sea. Countless users had ridden the water droplets from supply drops down into the abyss. When the bubbles popped, they reached the end of their lives. That incident gave birth to the term “suicide droplets.”
Many more attempts followed, yet the event [Destination] was never found there. So where was it? Simply wandering this vast ocean in search of mutations was nearly impossible. Like Park Seona, most people never found the answer.
When the map gets this big, finding an event is basically pure luck. Of course, if someone searched diligently enough they might stumble across a mutation and eventually reach the Destination. A few had actually escaped Stage 5 that way. But I didn’t need to do that. The difference between me and the community users was that I knew this world’s secrets. This world was built on belief, wasn’t it? If I couldn’t go to the event, I just had to make it come to me.
That approach could give rise to all sorts of hypotheses. The end of adventure, the end of the world. If I shaped the situation so that the phenomenon called the Destination could manifest, the event would reveal itself. And if I added the right keywords, I could even trigger a mutation.
“There it comes.”
While waiting on the Equator’s beach, a piece of flotsam drifted toward us. A small raft. Baengnae and I climbed aboard.
“At the appropriate time I’ll call the Equator to the Destination, so stay ready for combat.”
“Yes, have a safe trip.”
From now on, I would head toward the destination of this drifting debris. To the final resting place of these wanderers, abandoned in this endless ocean and pushed only by waves and sea winds.
After the challenge ended, a dramatic change swept through user society. The single phrase “See you on Earth” had set hearts racing. Some thought of beloved family and friends. Others dreamed of becoming powerful rulers. Most users simply felt salvation. Only a handful had reached the upper stages and obtained real strength. The majority remained stuck at certain stages, living settled lives. They wept at the possibility of returning home.
The Anti-Club had cleverly avoided criticism. With the existence of returnees now public knowledge, their original reason for being had vanished. Yet they couldn’t discard the network they’d built, so they hung up a new signboard and sought rebirth. From the start they were a group that gathered to worship strength, and Kim Seolhwa used that to declare a new slogan.
“Only strength defines everything.”
She also made it clear that losing the Stage 4 Challenge didn’t mean she herself had been defeated. “If a returnee is stronger than me, I’ll gladly serve under them. But until that’s proven, I am the sky of this world.”
Thus the group Cheonjwa was born. It proclaimed that only the strongest deserved to sit upon the heavenly throne, and by defeating every challenger who sought that seat, Kim Seolhwa’s faction entered its second golden age. The balance among rankers, which had been quiet during the returnees’ full-scale activities, was beginning to shift once more.
“Baengnae is bored.”
I had brought Baengnae, who had been playing nicely on the beach, but she’d been whining for a while now. The biggest reason she was bored was that we weren’t doing anything. We were deliberately doing nothing at all. If we pursued any specific purpose, the raft might be influenced by that intent. Fishing would turn it into a fishing boat; swimming would turn it into a cruise ship. To keep the flotsam as mere flotsam, we had become part of it without doing anything.
It really is… pretty boring.
Still, there was no choice. Only by establishing the concept of abandoned flotsam would the hypothesis I’d come up with take effect. Then, at some point, the raft began moving in a definite direction.
It’s here.
Honestly, if nothing kept happening I’d been ready to admit I was wrong and head back. Fortunately, that hadn’t been necessary. After five hours of waiting, the raft finally began heading toward its destination.
“Baengnae, look over there.”
A gray mass glittering at the edge of the horizon came into view. An enormous size, visible even from this distance. At last, the final resting place of the drifting debris was approaching.
“Let’s go.”
Since a mutation had been observed, there was no longer any reason to use the raft. I scooped Baengnae into my arms and spread my wings. Then I kicked off the raft and leapt into the air.
Splash—
As we drew closer to the Destination, its sheer scale became even more apparent.
It’s much bigger than I thought…
All sorts of flotsam tangled together in chaotic fashion. Rafts, squid boats, yachts, sailing ships, even what looked like modern warships. This place was literally a garbage dump floating on the sea. And the mess stretched all the way to the horizon. If someone had spent hundreds of years in Stage 5 continuously linking drifting debris together, it might have looked exactly like this. Countless shipwrecks had formed an entire world.
A sudden thought struck me. Flotsam sometimes contained random boxes and native creatures. If enough of them gathered here, they could form an ecosystem all by themselves. The strong would prey on the weak. Among them, clever creatures might open random boxes and obtain items and gunpowder.
As if answering my thoughts, the moment I approached within a certain distance, living beings began crawling out of the garbage dump. They looked humanoid at a glance. Two arms, two legs. They drew guns and cannons and opened fire on me.
Firearms…?!
I stopped my approach for now. After enduring so many storms, their weapons weren’t as high-performance as what users used. Still, charging straight into their line of fire wasn’t a good option either.
“Baengnae, want to stay inside for a bit?”
“Madda.”
After storing Baengnae away, I dove into the sea. Strangely, the moment I entered the water their attacks stopped completely. They showed no sign of pursuit. It was as if whatever had triggered their sensors had vanished, and their functions had simply cut off.
This isn’t normal…
They were moving in a purely mechanical way, following only pre-set behaviors. They looked human, but I got no sense that they possessed intelligence.
I’ll figure it out once I catch one.
For now, I summoned the salarymen who had become fishmen around me. Mixed with aquatic creatures, they had no trouble breathing. I gave them orders.
“Everyone, you see that place over there? We’re going to raid it, but it’s guarded by creatures using gunpowder weapons. I’ll grant the body part of your choice to whoever finds the most effective strategy. In thirty minutes, regroup here and show me the results.”
The moment I finished speaking, they scattered. Having fully accepted their new existence as zombies, they had developed a taste for body customization. They were the kind of beings who would do anything for superior body parts.
“Yahoo! Those wings are mine this time!”
“Hey now, Kim Sa-won. Don’t you know your senior here is ex-Marine? This job’s mine.”
“Ehehe, I’m getting a tail!”
The users dispersed in search of their own strategies. Being zombies with quick wits in this area, they might come back with something soon. I couldn’t let them outdo me either.
Well then, shall we?
A society advanced enough to have developed that level of civilization would definitely have a ruling class. If I could kidnap one of them, I could extract all sorts of information. I pressed myself against the underside of a nearby ship and used Siling’s tentacles to move slowly. Since the enemies only reacted to targets above the water, I planned to move this way even if it was slower.
Slide— Slide—
After penetrating deep enough into the flotsam, I climbed up the side of a ship. There I spotted one of the creatures working on deck. It was putting something into a random box.
Huh? It’s putting things in, not taking them out…?
I extended a tentacle and quietly abducted it. Then came the surprising discovery. The creature wasn’t a humanoid mammal at all—it was a doll stuffed with seaweed. From above, the clothes and helmet had hidden it, but up close its entire interior was plant matter.
I frowned at the form I’d never seen before.
What should I even call these? Seaweed golems?
The seaweed golem reached out to attack me. But it was slow. I grabbed its arm and yanked it off.
Crunch—
The connected seaweed tore apart and the arm came free. Yet the creature showed no sign of feeling pain.
How do I kill it?
While examining it from various angles, I found a gray stone protected by seaweed inside its helmet. When I pulled it out, the creature finally stopped moving and went limp.
Seaweed golems using chemical weapons…?
Combining the clues I’d gathered, I reached a conclusion. These weren’t the result of some highly intelligent creature accidentally developing civilization through random boxes. They had an original master from the start. The technology to make golems out of seaweed wasn’t the kind of thing that came from supply drops.
If anything, these guys were the ones making the random boxes…
Thinking back, the Equator had once been the remnant of a powerful existence, hadn’t it? There was no reason this place couldn’t be the same. From the seaweed golems’ behavior, I could guess what kind of place this was.
Users had always wondered: why were flotsam delivered in Stage 5? Even though this world took the form of a game, it had never been this blatant. So this place was both the Destination and possibly the shipping origin. Packaging items, loading native creatures, and delivering them to users somewhere in this ocean. Of course, they occasionally mixed in terrible traps that would explode as well.
Maybe a bad-tempered Santa Claus lived somewhere in this sea after all.
In that case, let’s go receive some presents. After all, I’m a good kid, aren’t I?