Butterfly Effect
The blond boy spread both arms wide and sprinted wildly down the laboratory corridor. “Ahahahahahaha!”
Reaching the end of the hall, he pounded on the door. Each knock left deep dents, crumpling the metal mercilessly. Fortunately, the passage opened before the door was completely destroyed.
With a soft whir, the boy dashed inside. A tall woman in a lab coat turned to look at him. She was easily five times his size. Brushing her emerald hair aside, she ignored the boy and returned her attention to the screen.
“Haa, I was wondering who it was… I’m extremely busy and in a difficult situation right now. Please come back later.”
But the boy paid no attention. “Linzel! I found someone I want to sponsor!”
The woman shook her head. “I’ve told you countless times not to call me by that nickname. And I’ve also told you just as many times that you’re not in any position to sponsor anyone.”
“No, I did everything this time, didn’t I? I gave them a crisis and a reward. I handled it all myself!”
The woman flinched. She began searching through the data, her brows slowly furrowing. “There’s no record of you carrying out any actions toward anyone… Surely not…?”
The woman called Linzel was currently dealing with an intruder who had breached the server and torn through the firewalls. And now the culprit had appeared in person.
“It was you? You little brat.”
“Ahahahaha. You caught me!”
Realizing that getting angry would only hurt herself, Linzel forced herself to calm down. Shouting would only cause her more trouble.
“So… you didn’t come here to turn yourself in, did you? Then why are you here?”
“Hehe. The Zombie Summoner is mine. Touch him and you all die.”
Linzel pressed a hand to her forehead. “I have no interest. I’ve already chosen the summoner I’ll be sponsoring. Though I suppose there may be others who would covet a capable Zombie Summoner… but I have no ability to control them.”
Then Linzel paused. “Wait, why a Zombie Summoner? He has no connection to you at all.”
Suppressing her curses, Linzel ran a search on the screen using the keyword “zombie.” The cause and method of the error were immediately identified. Grinding her teeth, she let out another sigh.
“It’s right here. At least it’s fortunate we figured out the problem… Huh? You threw a vampire giant at someone in Stage 2?”
“Ahaha. That’s right! I was about to save him right before he died and give him a gift to show off, but the Zombie Summoner just went ‘yap’ and killed it! The plan was a complete failure. Total disaster.”
“The forces of the Gray Castle… in Stage 2?”
“He’s mine. He’s mine. The Zombie Summoner is mine.”
As Linzel read the information, jagged horns suddenly began sprouting from the top of her head. Unable to contain her rage any longer, she began berating the boy.
“Wh-what is this? You insane brat! You arbitrarily sent the summoner back to his homeworld? By forcibly manipulating the main system? You absolute lunatic! Seriously! Aaaagh!”
Linzel finally lost her patience. With a sharp clap, the avatar of “The Most Melancholy Savior” crumpled into a bead. She stomped on it furiously.
Crunch— Crunch—
“Haa… Park Gibeom isn’t even on Earth anymore since he’s already become a summoner. What the hell is that brat doing? Aah, aaah! Aaaah! I hate this so much!”
Linzel tightly shut her eyes at the workload that had increased fivefold beyond her expectations. Her clenched fists trembled. The brat’s avatar had already been destroyed, but the workload remained.
After sitting in her chair for a moment to clear her head, she began operating the screen again. She needed to send messages to those who might covet the Zombie Summoner.
“Kek. You can suffer once too, you damn brat.”
Linzel wore a triumphant smile, unaware of what all these events would eventually come back to her as.
With the look of someone who had landed a solid hit, she began typing out the messages.
“Kuh… This is sweet.”
I had reached world rank 1 with my very first community post. The comments had already reached five figures, and the count was still rising in real time.
‘Sweet, so sweet. Is this what it feels like to be popular?’
I soaked in the dopamine rush once before closing the community. Most of the comments were asking how I’d done it, but how could I answer something I didn’t know? In times like this, silence was more impressive.
It was all knowledge I’d picked up from the community. That aside, I’d discovered something interesting. Whether due to some influence or not, I could now summon zombies within a certain radius at will. At first it had only been possible through my phone, but after practicing little by little, I’d grown accustomed to it.
‘It’s not like my body was in any condition to do anything except practice and browse the community anyway…’
I summoned all my zombies into the conference room. One humanoid and five dogs. Out of the original forty dogs, only five remained.
“They’ve decreased a lot…”
Still, the situation wasn’t entirely bad. Because of “The Most Melancholy Savior,” I’d thought all the Stage 2 corpses had been wiped out, but that wasn’t the case.
First, the dwarf corpses had all been eaten by the zombies. It wasn’t that the zombies had eaten them of their own accord. The dwarves in the watchtower had casually mentioned that everything would go to the zombies, and she had remembered. As a result, the zombie had consumed a hundred brains, raising its intelligence enough to speak. Of course, its pronunciation was still quite slurred.
“Zombi ate all da dwawfs.”
“Good job, good job.”
From the way it spoke, the zombie seemed to recognize its own name as “Zombie.” It was getting confusing, so it was time to change its name.
After a moment of thought, I clapped my hands. A brilliant name had come to mind.
“You ate a hundred brains, so you’re Baeknoe! It means an extremely intelligent zombie. How about it?”
“Baengnae?”
“No. Baek. Noe. Pay attention to the pronunciation. Since my surname is Baek too, it’s a perfect name!”
Baeknoe rolled its eyes. It looked displeased.
“But. Da udder zombis will eat too.”
‘Oh no!’ The zombie—no, Baeknoe—had evolved to be so intelligent that it was now arguing back. Or perhaps it had always been arguing and I simply hadn’t understood before.
But I presented my prepared logic.
“Not at all. By the time the other zombies eat a hundred, you’ll have eaten a thousand. Then you’ll be Cheonnoe!”
“Cheongnae?”
“Right. And if you eat ten thousand? Then you’ll be Mannoe!”
Baeknoe didn’t answer. Had it finally surrendered to my logic?
“Baengnae is… Baengnae.”
I narrowed my eyes. Despite its poor pronunciation, it was trying to assert its own claim over its name.
“Fine then. You’re Baengnae.”
The zombie’s name was officially set as Baengnae. I would accept no further objections. And with Baengnae, the logic it had been pushing was also refuted.
Baengnae aside, the vampire giant hadn’t disappeared either—it was safely inside the bellies of the zombie dogs. The dogs had spent dozens of hours repeating the final command I’d given before losing consciousness: “Bite.” The giant’s body had regenerated and been eaten again, torn apart for a full thirteen hours. Thanks to that, the five surviving dogs had become incredibly strong. What had once been medium-sized dogs were now the size of calves. Just lining them up in a row gave off an imposing presence.
‘That aside… how am I supposed to find the department manager…’
There was a problem even after finding him. Wasn’t this the Republic of Korea, a country governed by law? If I harmed the department manager, the police might start investigating. The department manager being torn apart was fine, but the police were just people doing their jobs. I didn’t want to harm them unnecessarily. Indiscriminate killing wasn’t good for my mental health either.
‘This is tricky, really tricky. It would’ve been better if the department manager was still in that world… This is so ambiguous.’
At that moment, a new message appeared before my eyes.
Correction for the error is in progress.
Returning in 30 seconds.
‘Huh? An error?’
Thinking about it, this made sense. The message that had appeared when that lunatic summoned the giant had been [ERROR], not [WARNING]. He had done something abnormal. So it was only natural for the system to intervene and fix the mess he’d made.
‘Maybe this is for the best…’
The fact that the error was being corrected meant the system had reined him in, didn’t it? Maybe I wouldn’t have to see him again.
The Earth Return reward I’d received wasn’t bad either—I’d already used it to write a popular community post. ‘Honestly, it’s a bit disappointing though…’
Calculating compensation for the error.
‘Oh? They’re giving separate compensation? Well, that makes sense. I’m the victim here! It’s only right that I receive compensation.’
In a good mood, I looked out at the city nightscape. It hadn’t been that long, but it was a view I’d missed a little. I’d spent years staring at this scenery while slaving away at the company.
‘If it weren’t for all the disgusting people, Korea wouldn’t be such a bad place to live…’
Hate the sin, not the sinner? Bullshit. The problem is the people. If all the trash humans disappeared, this Korean peninsula would become a peaceful and wonderful place.
A faint glow began rising from my body. It was time to return to work.
In the zone of the extremely few top-ranked users who had cleared the Stage 6 boss fight, they had formed a guild. There, server integration between users had taken place. This was classified information that hadn’t been shared on the community. The guild leader of Climber, a guild created solely for the purpose of climbing, Han Yua, couldn’t take her eyes off the popular post. It was because the post had been written by someone who had already achieved what Climber desired.
“This is impossible…”
The users in the guild had united with the hope that they could return to Earth after seeing the end of this game. But no one in the integrated server had managed to clear Stage 7.
‘Does the difficulty vary greatly depending on the server?’
She knew that there wasn’t just one server. At the end of Stage 6, Han Yua had chosen the Gray Castle server to make use of her summons’ characteristics. ‘But even so…’
Han Yua estimated that fewer than twenty people from around the world had entered the current server. There were six servers in total, and only three users—including herself—had chosen the Gray Castle. And the task of Stage 7 was far too different from the previous worlds. It wasn’t something they could push through with these numbers.
‘Even if a large number of users had gathered in a specific server and cleared it… then there would be multiple returnees…’
In the end, all the answers lay with one person. But the post’s author had blocked all means of contact except for comments. Though the guild members had been leaving comments whenever they had time, he hadn’t responded to any questions. The only clue was his community ID.
‘The Most Melancholy Madman.’
One thing was certain—he was a madman.