A Soldier's Pride
The cracks in the sky were rapidly expanding.
The shattered fragments didn't fall to the ground; instead, they hovered somewhere between heaven and earth, rotating slowly.
The space beyond the sky shimmered ominously, but its true form was impossible to discern.
"That's the flip side of the Internet. Don't keep looking at it. It'll break your mind."
Kang Yeolchan said, wiping away a trail of blood from his nose.
"H-Hieek..."
"W-What do we do now?"
"We're finished..."
The field workers slumped to the ground in despair.
Kang Yeolchan spoke up.
"We're still fine. I'll draw its attention. You all need to head back the way we came. If you open the door to the Seoul Station kiosk, you can return to Intra-Maetan."
"But, Yeolchan, your arm..."
The field workers' eyes shook with anxiety.
He was the only one they could rely on, but his current state was visibly precarious.
"This happens all the time. A scratch like this is nothing."
Yeolchan grinned, swinging his remaining right arm in a wide arc.
Waaaaail—!
At that moment, sirens began to wail from all directions.
Police cars began to swarm the area relentlessly.
"Run! If we can just make it to the subway station, we'll make it!"
We bolted toward the subway entrance in unison.
But the people on the street blocked our path.
Pedestrians, department store shoppers, and even people pouring out of nearby buildings were all converging on us.
"Lord have mercy, what on earth is happening?"
"How are we supposed to get through this?!"
"Uwooooah!"
Crash!
Then, with a violent shockwave, the crowd blocking our way was blasted in all directions.
The impact was so severe that some were thrown straight through building walls.
Standing at the center of the blast was... Kang Yeolchan.
He was carving a path through the heart of the crowd to secure our escape.
"Aaaaargh!"
Even with his left arm torn off, Yeolchan's strength was overwhelming.
Every time he swung his fist, the ground cracked, bodies exploded, and cars on the road flipped over and burst into flames.
It was like a massive elephant plowing through a swarm of ants.
But the problem was their sheer numbers.
No matter how small and fragile, the ants were numerous enough to completely bury the elephant. There were just too many of them.
Before Yeolchan could even pull back his fist, a crowd larger than the one he had just blown away swarmed him.
"Graaaah!"
Boom!
Yeolchan slammed his right fist into the ground.
The asphalt split open, and a vortex of flames erupted from the fissures, enveloping him and his enemies.
The vortex incinerated, tore apart, and swallowed everything it touched, hurling the debris into the sky.
In an instant, a massive clearing opened up in the center of the crowd.
Amidst the storm of blood and fire, the one-armed Red Goblin roared:
"RUNNNNN!"
Crash!
Shattered glass rained down from the surrounding skyscrapers.
We bolted toward the subway entrance.
Thud! Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Urgh!"
A police car screeched in with sirens blaring, ramming into Yeolchan, while officers opened fire on us with handguns.
If Yeolchan hadn't blocked them, we would have been sitting ducks.
"I can't... hold them off much longer! Hurry!"
Yeolchan shouted, shielding us from the bullets with his own body.
No matter how heavily muscled an A-class Player was, bullets were still lethal. The blood dripping onto the pavement was already forming a dark pool.
I could feel it. Yeolchan was at his limit.
The flame vortex seemed to be a technique that demanded a heavy toll from its user.
His trembling, buckling legs said it all.
There were no skills or tactics left in him now.
He was just enduring.
He was buying us time, taking the bullets with his bare flesh.
Suddenly, faces from my past overlapped with Yeolchan's.
"Once you're out... close the gate...!"
Those were the last words.
The mob pouring out of the buildings swarmed over Yeolchan.
Rip, tear, crunch.
Officers fired at point-blank range, a restaurant owner plunged a kitchen knife into his flesh, and those with bare hands tore at his skin with their teeth.
"H-Hieek, Yeolchan is...!"
"W-What do we do? Do we save him?"
"Even a Player can't handle this! What can we do?! Just run!"
"We're... we're not going to make it...!"
One by one, the field workers scrambled down the subway entrance.
The last of them disappeared down the stairs, leaving only me behind.
Thud!
A body flew through the air and crashed right next to me.
Yeolchan must have thrown him, I thought.
But then, something caught my eye—clutched in the corpse's teeth.
A red eyeball.
It belonged to Yeolchan.
I looked back. Chunks of red flesh were scattered everywhere.
There was no need to double-check.
That was Yeolchan's body.
His torn-apart remains littered the street.
I looked down at my left arm.
Though I could only see the green-skinned hand of a goblin, it was definitely there.
The steel prosthetic arm left to me by my now-deceased comrade, friend, and family.
That left arm seemed to speak to me.
Are you going to run? Leaving him like that?
"Not a chance."
I spun around and ran.
My target was the nearest police car.
An officer was using his open car door as a shield, firing toward the spot where Yeolchan had been.
I crept up behind him and drove my dagger deep into the back of his neck.
As I pulled the blade out, blood gushed, and he slumped to the ground.
I immediately hopped into the driver's seat.
A few officers noticed me too late and aimed their guns, but my foot hit the accelerator faster than their fingers could pull the triggers.
Ramming through the crowd blocking my path, I charged straight toward Yeolchan.
"Kang Yeolchan!"
The spot where he had stood was now a writhing mass of people, clumped together like a giant ball of meat.
They were packed so tightly that I couldn't even see him.
I swerved past them, brushing dangerously close, and roared:
"Grab on if you want to live!"
"Uwooooah!"
With a monstrous roar, a single red arm burst from the pile of flesh and gripped the police car's trunk.
Thud!
The chassis sagged under the sudden weight of Yeolchan and the people clinging to him.
Without hesitation, I floored the gas pedal.
Screeeeech!
"Aaaaargh!"
Dragging along the asphalt, Yeolchan let out a ragged groan.
But I couldn't afford to slow down and let him climb in properly.
A fleet of police cars was already tailing us.
"Aaaaargh!"
I tore down the four-lane road of Mia Intersection, a bustling district in central Seoul I had never seen in my life.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
After a frantic car chase through the streets of Seoul, I finally shook off the police and steered the car into a dark, secluded alley.
Sirens still echoed from the main avenue, indicating they were still searching for us.
"Are you alright?"
I got out of the car and walked over to Yeolchan, who was still clinging to the trunk.
Only his upper torso and right arm remained. He leaned against the car, panting heavily.
I expected him to be bleeding out from his severed lower half, but his muscles had contracted tightly to stem the flow.
"Why..."
Yeolchan rasped, his voice thick with phlegm.
Every time he spoke, a trickle of blood seeped from his torn throat.
"Why didn't you run?!"
"It would've hurt my pride."
"What?"
"...I've never left anyone behind. We were always the ones who guarded the rear."
Yoon Juhyuk, the employee of Maetan, could run.
But as a soldier, I couldn't leave someone behind.
We close the battlefield.
There is no one behind us.
That was the pride of the Shoeshine Unit, the ones who always stood at the very back of a retreating force.
Yeolchan stared at me in disbelief before bursting into a laugh.
"Pfft, hahaha! I've never heard such a ridiculous excuse!"
He laughed so hard that tears welled in his eyes.
"A field worker... and one with such a low Computation Grade that he's stuck with a goblin avatar... actually worried about me, an A-class Player? Seriously?!"
Whether he was crying or laughing, bloody tears dripped from his eyes.
"Pant, pant... Come to think of it, you said you were a soldier. What unit were you in?"
"The Shoeshine Unit."
"The Shoeshine Unit?! The rear-guard delay action specialists?! I see... That explains it."
Toward the end of the war, my unit's primary mission had almost always been buying time for the main force to retreat.
"Were you in the military too?"
"Just briefly, when I was very young. The war ended before I could be deployed, though."
Yeolchan tried to lift his remaining right arm, but the blood-soaked limb refused to budge.
"Whew... Thank you. You saved my life."
Somewhere along the way, his tone had shifted to a respectful register.
"Are we really safe, though?"
"Your body temperature is still displayed, right? They haven't force-disconnected us yet. That means the gate hasn't closed."
I checked the temperature in the corner of my vision.
41°C.
What the... When did it get this high? Isn't this dangerous?
A sudden wave of dizziness washed over me.
"As long as this connection holds, there's hope. Once the field workers log out, the security forces outside will find a way..."
There were only about forty A-class Players in all of Maetan.
It wasn't a tiny number, but it wasn't large either.
Still, there was no denying they were highly valued assets.
Maetan wouldn't abandon someone like him so easily.
"We need to hurry to Seoul Station too. If the field workers made it out safely, the gate will be closed by now. After that, it opens at a set time... for ten minutes starting at 42 minutes past every hour."
Yeolchan said, staring blankly into space.
I pulled up the Neck-Hub console and displayed the time next to the temperature.
"Let's move."
I grabbed Yeolchan by his shirt and hoisted him onto my back.
Stumble. Instead of lifting him, my own feet left the ground.
Even though only a fraction of his body remained, he was still far heavier than my goblin avatar.
My pathetic physical strength wasn't up to the task.
"Heh, hold on a second. *Hup!*"
Crack!
Yeolchan tensed, and his mangled right arm snapped off.
Blood splattered, but his surrounding muscles quickly constricted to stop the bleeding.
"Regeneration takes time. It's faster to just shed the dead weight."
Tearing off your own arm with sheer muscle power... Is that even possible?
"There's an earring in my right ear. Can you take it out?"
I pulled out the Taegeuk-patterned earring dangling from Yeolchan's ear.
◈ Effect: Mighty Strength (A)
◈ Description: Drastically increases the wearer's physical strength.
"It's a piece of equipment, so put it on."
"Items" referred to objects that could warp the laws of the virtual world without consuming the user's computational power. An A-grade item was something money couldn't buy.
I put the earring on, but I didn't feel any different.
"Try lifting me again."
I hoisted him onto my back once more.
The weight that had felt like a massive boulder earlier now felt no heavier than a sack of rice.
"Ho."
"Let's ditch the police car. The system is already highly sensitive... I don't want to accumulate any more bugs."
"Then what? Do we walk?"
I didn't know how far we had to go, but my body wouldn't hold out.
I'd probably hit 42°C and kick the bucket before we arrived.
"I didn't want to use this because it's expensive... but we have no choice. Can you check my breast pocket?"
Inside the breast pocket of Yeolchan's shirt was a leather wallet.
74,000 Won
"Let's take a taxi."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
For the first time in my life, I hailed a taxi.
I put Yeolchan in the back seat and climbed into the passenger seat.
It was a surreal sight—a limbless Red Goblin and a green goblin sitting in a taxi—but the driver didn't bat an eye.
He simply hummed along to the trot music blaring from the taxi's speakers.
Seeing a few police officers stationed on the road, I tensed up, but Yeolchan reassured me.
"Don't worry. They're just directing traffic, not looking for us."
Just as he said, the police paid no attention to the taxi and let us pass.
"Don't we look strange to them? We're a goblin and a red goblin."
"They have eyes, but they don't judge us by sight. As long as we act normally, we won't get caught. Unless we do something conspicuous and accumulate bugs."
"Accumulate bugs?"
"Like flying through the air or summoning a vortex of fire. If you do something that shouldn't be possible under normal circumstances, the system recognizes it as a bug."
Isn't that exactly what you just did? I thought, but kept it to myself.
"Or if the police or military check your ID... or if you're caught breaking the law, like injuring a resident of the Internet. Any of those will alert the AI."
Outside the window, the peaceful streets of Seoul rolled by.
Roads packed with cars, shops lined up in a display of abundance, and children with innocent expressions—a sight rarely seen in Maetan.
"I never imagined I'd be hailing a taxi inside the Internet."
"Doesn't Intra-Maetan have taxis too?"
There were indeed taxis in the virtual world of Intra-Maetan.
But those were merely decorations meant to enhance the realism of the virtual environment.
They were autonomous vehicles with mannequin-like figures pretending to drive just to create a city atmosphere. They lacked the lifelike details of the driver next to me, who hummed along to songs and looked sheepish when he caught me staring.
And nobody actually used them anyway.
"Why on earth is the Internet replicating the old world to this extent?"
I finally voiced the question that had been nagging at me since I first entered the Internet.
Virtual reality existed in Intra-Maetan as well.
But that was a virtual world created with a clear purpose—for Maetan's citizens to work, play, and enjoy past cultures.
"The Internet rejects human access, doesn't it? Why does the entire Internet need to be a virtual reality in the first place? I thought the Internet was... you know."
"Did you think it would be more mechanical?"
I nodded.
Yeolchan closed his eyes, lost in thought.
He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.
"I don't know the details either. It's too dangerous to investigate, so scholars and Players have all kinds of theories... But there is one particularly intriguing hypothesis."
I looked at Yeolchan, waiting for him to continue.
"They say it's the result of the artificial intelligence occupying the Internet beginning to think like humans. When humans think, we use language and visualize ourselves in reality, right? Similarly, as the AI began to think like humans instead of using traditional machine code, the Internet transformed into what it is now."
If that theory was correct, were we currently walking inside the mind of an artificial intelligence?
"No wonder the AI hates humans entering the Internet."
"Huh? Why is that?"
"Who would like strangers barging into their mind?"
Hearing my response, Yeolchan nodded and smiled.
"That actually makes sense."