Front Line

Unlike a finished edit that tops out at thirty or forty minutes, a live stream runs for hours at a stretch.

Naturally, you can't just sit there staring blankly the whole time. Live streaming assumes real-time interaction, after all.

The problem was… my stamina.

Lying on the bed, I raised a hand and watched it tremble.

"Ugh… I'm like this just from a little VR gaming?"

Of course, the avatar you move in a VR game isn't your real body. Common sense says that no matter how hard you run in a virtual world, you shouldn't get tired in reality.

But common sense has never applied to the Awakened.

Senses trained to the absolute limit through war tense up on their own at even a virtual threat, and the muscles move of their own accord.

Judging by the VR gear still working fine, it was nothing more than little twitches… but the durability of this ruined body kept tripping me up.

An Awakened with worse stamina and a weaker frame than a girl my age. If I forced myself to keep using the VR gear like this, it might actually put my life at risk.

So I'd given up on the streaming part… until now.

"Maybe I should just ask?"

Maria Gorshkov. Twenty-five. Current Far East Army Colonel.

The fact that she'd made colonel at twenty-five told you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠everything about how exceptional she was as a healer.

Setting aside the range of her ability and looking purely at recovery and buffs… she could go toe-to-toe with a saintess.

Her buffs could take an ordinary adult man and make him able to fight a D-rank Awakened.

I knew all that, and still my body wouldn't move.

That power was a miracle that saved people on the brink of death. Was I really going to ask for something like that just so I could be a little more comfortable?

And to do that, I'd have to admit I wanted to stream in the first place.

Absolutely not. No matter how precious the bonds on the other side of the screen were, embarrassing was still embarrassing. I knew full well that even I wasn't exactly proud of the Sword Gallery.

"…Ah, forget it."

So I decided to just tough it out.

Muscle pain like this was old news anyway.

In an ordinary gallery, cliques and friend-circles were grounds for summary execution. But out in a backwater corner like the 3D Swordsmanship Minor Gallery, that rule didn't hold very well.

Couldn't be helped. A frontier gallery where no one ever came, left to its own devices, was basically a lawless zone.

Thanks to that, the mass exodus I'd been half-worried about never happened. Just one more variation added to the usual rolling pile of bait threads.

So, with a grateful heart, I posted something of my own.

"Heh, you'll just have to find out for yourselves~"

I muttered it under my breath and unlocked my phone.

I didn't need any fancy streaming gear. I was only going to show the medal and then jump straight into a game—why bother with expensive equipment?

I didn't bother setting a room title either. I wasn't doing this for new viewers; I just wanted to hang out with the Sword Gallery crowd.

I propped the phone so it pointed at the desk and waited a moment. Standing still through the countdown felt awkward, so I warmed up my voice a little.

"Hmm, ah… ahhh? Mm… is that about right?"

I raised my pitch a tone higher than usual. The delivery, too—not my usual timid register, but something a little friendlier.

The ordinary Lee Haneul was a boring shut-in who never left his room… and I was terrified everyone would leave.

I still had so many days left to live, and no idea how to live them.

Being alone was lonely, but forming deep relationships was frightening, so I wanted to at least hold on to the bonds I'd made online.

"Pff, I'll think about it."

So I switched the camera on with a bright smile. Checking the stream on my secondary phone, I saw an ivory-colored desk filling the whole frame.

"Sadly, no."

Cutting off their desperate appeals, I pulled out a medal—the thing I'd promised to show yesterday and then completely forgotten about.

No matter how I looked at it, the Order of Great Fatherland Merit was far too much. Not because of its value, but because so few people had ever received it.

So I'd brought a medal that still meant something, but had a decent number of recipients.

"Eulji Order of Military Merit. Ever seen one?"

"Mmm, that's a secret. I already revealed my unit—if I give you that too, my identity gets way too easy to pin down."

The twenty-first century was the age of the internet. Dig around long enough and operation names turned up. In a war between humans and monsters, information control barely meant anything.

Of course, all my records from before I received the title of Sword Saint had been scrubbed by the World Government—but that didn't erase every suspicious point.

If someone claimed they'd received a medal and there was no record of it, people would just call it fake.

"Oh, uh… is it?"

I froze for a second at the nickname, then barely managed to pull myself together and pick the medal up properly.

And once again, the chat went up in flames.

This time, though, the fire was burning in a slightly different direction—because of the hand that had entered the frame when I lifted the medal.

Well, even I had to admit it looked young. My ID said twenty-one, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but… this body's real age was seven.

The test subject "Serena" was a newborn who'd been reborn at the age of fourteen.

At the end of a long, long series of experiments, the original body was gone, and only a silver-haired, blue-eyed girl named Serena Eustania remained. A Theseus's ship situation, basically.

"Ah, I am an adult, okay? I'm twenty-one this year?"

"Hm? It took me about three years to get the medal, though."

Something about the conversation felt like it was spinning in circles. There was some invisible information gap between me and the viewers, and because of it nothing we said quite lined up.

I tilted my head and dredged up old memories.

Unified Korea was a safe zone one step removed from the worldwide Gate crisis.

The underdeveloped North was another story, but life in the South wasn't all that different from the 2020s.

Which meant conscription started at twenty and up. So they couldn't make sense of my age?

"Ah, I'm not Korean."

Which country I was from, even I didn't know. I'd been a war orphan, and every last trace of my original appearance had been erased—there was no way left to learn my birthplace.

"I'm an unidentified veteran high school girl-chan."

"With that in mind—"

Snap—

I flicked my fingers lightly, and the empty title field filled in. A prepared room title appeared, and the camera angle shifted away from the desk.

I climbed into the capsule and launched the game I'd already booted up.

A multiplayer PvE game built around stories from the front lines—Front Line.

"Thinking of playing this one today."

I'd already seen everything there was to see—the things you should and the things you shouldn't. There was no reason to be surprised now. I was sure of that.

So, with full confidence, I stepped into hell.