Escape (1)

A grimy, pitch-black floor. The stale, musty reek of dust. I blinked, then lifted my lolling head.

"Ah, for fuck's sake. Can't a man get a sip of booze around here?"

The muttered complaint came from right beside me. A bald man with a vicious face swam into view, still grumbling under his breath.

Others in the same clothes sat hunched in a ragged line around us. It took only a few seconds to understand what those clothes were, and where I was. Prison uniforms. A prison. Thick iron manacles bound every wrist and ankle in sight, and ahead of us a wall of densely set iron bars sealed the cell shut. Beyond those bars, a translucent blue veil shimmered in the air. Something out of a fantasy novel. What the hell was that?

A heavy clank answered me.

I wasn't any better off. I stared down blankly at the massive iron cuffs locked around my own hands and feet.

What the hell is this...?

I couldn't make sense of any of it, so I groped backward through my memory. I had been sitting in front of my computer, playing RASA. I'd fused the Chaos Box, and an absurd 10-star skill had come bursting out of it, and then—right. My vision had gone dark. I'd lost consciousness.

And when I opened my eyes again, I was here.

Everything before and after was vivid. That didn't make the situation any clearer. If anything, it made it worse. I frowned and looked around once more.

"The fuck you starin' at?"

The bald man beside me snarled the moment our eyes met. I asked him anyway.

"Where is this?"

The voice that slid out between my lips startled even me. It wasn't mine. And it wasn't Korean—some other language had come out of my mouth as naturally as breathing.

"What? This crazy bastard's talking nonsense..."

I just stared at him while he swore, looking at me like I'd grown a second head. He flinched, then answered despite himself, the reluctance plain on his face.

"Where d'you think? We're on this goddamn transport ship."

"Transport ship?"

"...Did you doze off or something? We're headed to Achemon. That goddamn graveyard of prisoners!"

Achemon? The graveyard of prisoners?

The name was familiar enough that I almost blurted what? before I could stop myself. Of course I knew it. It wasn't a place that existed in the real world. It belonged to a fictional one—the game world I knew inside and out.

"Hey."

"What now?"

"Achemon. You mean the maximum-security prison run by the Rognar Kingdom?"

"Why do you keep asking shit that's obvious?"

"...This place. This world. It isn't Earth. It's the Lakironia Continent?"

The bald man was looking at me now the way you'd look at a complete lunatic.

"What a psycho... did he just snap?"

He muttered it and edged away from me. I shut my mouth and said nothing more. I didn't need to ask anything else. I finally understood what was happening—including the numbers that had begun to materialize, slowly, in the air just above the prisoners' heads. The bald man included.

Level readouts.

It was unbelievable, but there was no other explanation. I had entered the game. I was inside the world of Lakironia Saga, the one I'd been playing only moments ago. Nothing else could account for this. And the sensations flooding my body—vivid, inescapable—made one thing certain: ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this was no dream.

And this... this isn't even my body.

A mirror would have been nice, but I didn't need to see my face to know. Skin tone, voice, build—all of it was wrong. The body itself carried a foreignness I could feel in my bones. Possession? Had I possessed a character inside the game? How was something this insane even possible?

I forced the confusion down and started with what I could actually use: this body's situation. The short conversation just now had given me more than enough.

A transport ship. Bound for Achemon Penitentiary.

The bald man hadn't been exaggerating. That place really was a graveyard for prisoners. I'd passed through it as one of the countless steps in the main story. I knew it well.

No release. No escape. You live out your days in brutal forced labor and human experimentation until every last drop of blood is wrung from you.

Apparently I had possessed one of the prisoners being shipped there. Of all the bodies to land in, it had to be this one. Worse—who had done this to me, and why? Thinking about it wouldn't give me an answer. Survival came first. I had to deal with the crisis in front of me before I could afford to wonder about anything else.

And then, unbidden, a strange disconnect hit me.

...Why am I so calm?

I had been dropped into a game. I had woken up in chains, a prisoner being hauled to a death camp. Panicking would have been the sane response. Most people would have lost their minds. Instead I had sorted the situation in seconds and gone straight to solving the immediate problem. The shock had lasted a heartbeat. What I felt now wasn't terror or dread—just a thin layer of confusion, and questions. I'd always considered myself reasonably level-headed, but... had I really been the kind of person who could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stay this cold in a situation this absurd?

Then a massive explosion tore through the air.

It didn't stop at one. Blast after blast followed, and the whole space lurched hard enough to throw us sideways. Now what? The prisoners burst into panicked muttering and shoved themselves up off the floor.

"Fuck, what was that? What's going on?"

"Something blew up above us."

The hull kept shuddering. Every pair of eyes in the cell snapped toward the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bars at once, wide as a startled rabbit's. The blue veil that had wrapped the outside of the prison was losing its light, fading, thinning to nothing. The moment it vanished completely, someone shouted.

"The Suppression Field is gone!"

The cry might as well have been a starting gun. All around me, restraints cracked and split with a sound like breaking bone. The prisoners were tearing the shackles off their own wrists and ankles.

"Kahaha! What the hell? My mana's actually back!"

"We're free! Let's tear this whole place apart!"

In an instant they had their bodies back, and they went wild with it, roaring, laughing, drunk on the sudden rush. I sat there staring at the chaos. The strength on display had nothing to do with common sense.

They're ripping through iron like it's paper...

A grinding crunch, and the bars themselves came apart in their hands. One by one the prisoners stepped out of the cell. I was still sitting there alone, watching it happen, with no choice in the matter. Explosions. A ship coming apart under our feet. I knew the situation was spiraling—but escape wasn't an option I had.

Shit.

I looked down at the shackles that wouldn't budge no matter how hard I strained, and cursed inwardly. This body's strength was ordinary. No different from my original one. I couldn't snap the restraints the way the others had.

Another blast detonated—this one terrifyingly close.

The prisoner who'd been leading the charge out of the cell came flying back like a cannonball and smashed into the wall. A hole the size of a fist had been punched clean through his chest. What was left of him was crumpled past recognition, dead on impact. The others' eyes went wide.

"Insects, hopping about in their glee. Where do you vermin think you're crawling?"

The voice that came with him was a killing thing. A white-haired old man stepped through the wreckage. He was enormous—so vast that the burliest prisoners in the cell looked like children beside him—and the pressure rolling off his body was the weight of a mountain.

"You're dead—!"

A few of them, too stupid to know better, lunged. They ended up no different from the one already plastered to the wall. The old man flicked a fist the way you'd swat a fly, and they bounced off it and came apart into crushed meat. He didn't stop there. He started slaughtering everyone who was left.

Speed and force that left humanity behind. I couldn't even track the movement. All my eyes caught were fountains of red and the prisoners' bodies bursting, one after another, in a line. It didn't feel real. Could a human body come apart that easily—like overripe fruit?

One of them slammed down near where I sat. Blood spattered across my face.

The prisoners never managed to fight or flee. They were wiped out in the space of a blink. I'd known how this would end from the moment the old man appeared. Because—

The number floating above his head had told me everything. He was a monster from another dimension. Prisoners in the forties and fifties could have piled on forever and never come close. Most RPGs worked that way, but in RASA especially, a wide enough level gap meant combat itself simply failed to exist. Numbers were meaningless. And a gap of dozens of levels...

Fuck.

The atrocity in front of me. The thick, clinging stench of blood. I wiped the spatter off my cheek and cursed again, silently. Yanked into a game. Waking as a prisoner on a transport ship. Something exploding, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠everything going to hell, and then this monstrous old man appearing out of nowhere to butcher every other prisoner in the hold. Too much, in too little time.

The one thing I knew for certain was this: my life was hanging by something thinner than a rotting vine off a cliff's edge.

"Hah. So there was one who stayed quietly in his place?"

The old man looked over at me with something like curiosity, shook the blood from a fist soaked to the wrist, and came closer. He stepped over the wrecked bars into the cell and looked down. I looked up at him and said nothing.

The truth was I'd never gotten free of the shackles. But I hadn't run, either. I'd stayed put. A sliver of hope flickered—maybe that would be enough to spare me.

It was a useless hope. A cruel smile touched the old man's mouth.

"A peculiar light in those eyes. I've no particular wish to kill you, but... circumstances being what they are, I have no choice."

A hand the size of a cauldron lid settled on top of my head. That was all it did, and already the pressure felt like my skull would collapse. If he closed his fingers even a fraction, my head would burst. And that was the future arriving in the next second.

Was I going to die? Like this?

...This pointlessly?

Even now, whatever was wrong with my head kept thinking, cold and clear. Maybe if I died here, I'd wake up back in the real world. It wasn't impossible. But I couldn't treat this life like a game and throw it away on a convenient theory.

...!

In that sliver of a second, hunting desperately for any way out, something flashed through me. The last moment before I'd entered the game. The Chaos Box. The skill that had come out of fusing everything the character had.

The thought crossed my mind: what if?

I had entered the game immediately after the fusion finished. I had no proof. None. But this was the kind of moment where you grabbed at straws, because the alternative was dying in the next breath.

I met the old man's eyes, and spoke, very quietly.

The hand resting on my head slid away.

A heavy thud. The old man's vast body hit the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.