Day 27: The Price of a Hit Piece
“So you’re telling me,” Cheon Seo-ah said, “that this is why I haven’t been able to play games until now?”
“That is correct.”
Around a round table sat the nine villains. Cheon Seo-ah had appeared among them, staring hard at the smartphone screen the Representative held out to her.
“Haa—”
A long sigh slipped from her lips.
For more than several hundred thousand years she had met and dealt with countless human beings. And still—
“People really are impossible to understand, aren’t they.”
To bare this much malice just because someone was good at a game.
Cheon Seo-ah shook her head.
“More importantly—you said there was a way to fix this, didn’t you?”
“Yes. If we hadn’t found a method, we would never have troubled you by summoning you here, my lady.”
At her repeated question, the Representative nodded with complete confidence.
“And what is that method?”
“Simple. If they doubt your skill, all we need do is show them your skill. Isn’t that so?”
“You don’t mean…?”
Something in the Representative’s self-assured tone made Cheon Seo-ah’s face tighten with discomfort, as if she had already guessed.
“That method is…”
“An internet stream. Hosted under Riot’s official banner, of course.”
“No.”
The refusal came out at once. The Representative’s expression flooded with bewilderment.
As Representative—no, as every one of the nine villains gathered here—none of them had imagined Cheon Seo-ah would reject the idea.
Honestly, there was no surer method than this.
So why refuse?
When the nine of them only stared at her without understanding, Cheon Seo-ah frowned and said,
“I am not an animal locked in a zoo cage. I have no intention of becoming a spectacle for people to gawk at. I’d rather…”
How about we just kill them all?
She said it with a perfectly innocent look. The nine villains’ faces went stiff.
Cheon Seo-ah swept her gaze across them one by one.
“Of course, I don’t believe it would be realistic to kill every last one of them. Well—possible, yes, but that would cause far too much chaos. So instead, we make an example of the original poster of that hit piece, and a few of the people whose slander against me has gone beyond what anyone should tolerate. Kill just those. Wouldn’t things quiet down after that?”
“That is…”
Faced with her explanation, the Representative could not immediately answer.
Setting aside the claim that she could kill every one of them, the rest of it was entirely feasible.
But if they did that—
“The heroes would move.”
“They would move… over a game?”
“If what happens in a game stayed in the game, they would not. However.”
If they carried out the method Cheon Seo-ah had just proposed, the heroes of the entire world would move. One hundred percent.
After all—if the original poster who had sniped a single user suddenly died, and then people who had piled on with that smear started dying one after another?
Even if Cheon Seo-ah never lifted a finger herself, they would treat her as the culprit.
Just as she had said—“over a game”—anywhere from dozens to hundreds of people would die.
At the Representative’s explanation, Cheon Seo-ah’s face fell.
“I thought it was a rather good idea. So is the only option left to quit the game altogether?”
“Perhaps… simply streaming would be the better choice…”
Still unwilling to abandon the “prove your skill on stream” plan, the Representative carefully floated the suggestion again.
“Is that really the only way?”
“As far as resolving this as gently as possible, this is the best option.”
“Haa—”
To step out in front of ordinary people and perform tricks for their sake.
No matter how she turned it over, it was a method she thoroughly disliked.
And yet, if she thought it through carefully, she could not deny that the method these children had offered was the gentlest—and the most certain—way to settle the matter.
So Cheon Seo-ah said,
“I have conditions.”
“Anything you wish. You need only say the word.”
The Representative answered with a faint smile.
“Hoo—piece-of-shit cheater.”
Inside a dim room, a man stared fixedly at the monitor on his desk, a greasy smile crawling across his face.
This was the original poster of the hit piece on Cheon Seo-ah—and the man who had carried that smear to countless communities, domestic and overseas alike, determined to bury her however he could.
Days had passed since his hit piece had set communities ablaze, and still Cheon Seo-ah had not offered a single explanation. The thought put a nasty smile on his lips.
Well. Even if she wanted to explain, she couldn’t.
Obviously.
“No way a cheater could explain anything.”
In this man’s mind, Cheon Seo-ah had long since become a villain who had toyed with countless players using nothing but a cheap hack.
He was still wearing that greasy smile, thinking he might fire up Valorant for the first time in a while, when—
Kiiing—.
A strange sound rang out from somewhere.
Alarmed, the man looked around.
At the same moment, he found the “anomaly” that had opened in the corner of his room.
Space had been torn open.
Beyond the rent stood a vast round table, and around that table sat nine men and women. And through the torn space, a single girl was walking toward him.
“Hello?”
“W-who…?”
The girl—Cheon Seo-ah—greeted him. The man could not hide his shock or his fear.
Who is this?
What’s going on?
What’s with this kid—and who the hell are those people?
Thoughts rose and sank in a frantic cycle.
Even so, there was one thing the man was certain of.
I—I have to run!
The girl who had just greeted him was one thing. But the nine men and women beyond the torn space were looking at him as if they meant to kill him.
Instinct screamed danger. He bolted for the door.
Or rather—he tried to.
He shoved himself up from the chair, ready to flee the room—
Thud-crash—.
“Uwaaaaagh—!”
His body hit the floor and rolled. A hideous scream tore out of him.
At some point both of his legs had been ripped off. And beyond the torn space, among the nine, a man with particularly vicious eyes was chewing on those legs with wet, grinding bites.
“Ptoo—tastes like garbage.”
The man who had been chewing spoke around a mouthful.
“Ah—! Aaaah—! Aaaaaah—!”
Panic poured from the man’s throat in screams.
Hwaaaagh!
It hurts! It hurts! It hurts—!
Save me! Please, somebody save me!
I was wrong! Please, just spare my life!
Writhing under the agony of his torn-off legs, the man—face already a mess of tears and snot—begged for his life.
The nine villains beyond the rent only sneered at him, looking at him like trash.
And then—
“Thanks to you,” Cheon Seo-ah said, walking slowly toward the legless man, “I haven’t been able to play games properly lately.”
Couldn’t play games?
What is she talking about?
Even as he thrashed under the pain, the man seized on her words with a desperate, confused question.
What possible connection was there between him not being able to play a game, and him ending up like this?
He screamed that thought inwardly and forced himself to look at her.
“This is the right person, isn’t it? The original poster of the hit piece about me.”
At Cheon Seo-ah’s question, one of the nine beyond the tear—a woman called Asura—nodded.
“That’s right. My children investigated it themselves.”
The villain Asura.
She had received from Cheon Seo-ah the demonic cultivation art known as the Six-Faced Nine-Orifices Art, and within the Illuminati she commanded the organization that handled “information.”
At Asura’s confirmation, Cheon Seo-ah turned her eyes back to the man.
Only then did he understand why this was happening to him.
A hit piece. The original poster.
There was only one thing that could mean.
The girl standing in front of him—she was the very person he had written about. Apocalypse Demon Heavenly Venerable!
That reeking, old-fashioned name had belonged to a girl this young?
No. None of that mattered now.
What mattered was—
“P-please spare me! I was wrong! I was wrooong! I’ll write an explanation! I’ll write one—!”
Half his reason gone to the pain, he could barely even shape the words. Still, clinging to a single will to live, he prostrated himself at Cheon Seo-ah’s feet and begged.
She looked down at him.
“Whether you meant to or not—shouldn’t a person pay the price for what they’ve done? And if people like you are left alone, there might be more victims like me.”
“That’s not true! It’s not! Never—never again!”
He denied her words and begged on and on.
Cheon Seo-ah smiled faintly at the wretched sight of him—
Shunk—.
—and drove a finger into his forehead.
“Ah—?”
He felt her finger pierce through his brow and root around inside his brain.
At the same moment, the agony that had been about to shatter his mind vanished without a trace.
Startled, the man looked up at her, a single word blooming in him: hope.
“With this,” Cheon Seo-ah said, smiling, “you will never die. Congratulations. You’ve achieved the immortality people dream of so much.”
Immortality?
Immortality? Him?
His eyes flooded with joy and rapture.
Immortality!
He was immortal!
In the rush of realizing he could not die, he forgot entirely why she had come to stand in front of him.
She, however, was not finished.
“I also made a few adjustments to your mind and senses. From now on, every external stimulus will hit you amplified a hundredfold—and nothing will be able to break your mind. Not even the ability of a Rank-1 ability user. In other words, even if you want to pass out, you no longer can.”
…?
For a moment the man’s face went blank.
Every external stimulus a hundred times stronger?
His mind would not break? He could not even faint?
Why was she saying that?
Still holding that dazed question, he stared up at her—
“From here,” Maraseung said, stepping through the torn space and pressing his palms together toward Cheon Seo-ah, “we will take over.”
“Please do.”
Cheon Seo-ah nodded.
Maraseung seized the legless man by the hair and trudged back through the rent, dragging him along.
The other eight villains still seated at the round table watched the man being hauled toward them and wore smiles that were anything but kind.
Only then did the man understand.
Why that girl had made him immortal.
Whether he was truly immortal was almost beside the point. One thing, at least, was certain from her words: external stimuli now hit him a hundred times harder.
He could tell, because even being dragged by the hair was an agony so hideous it made his vision swim.
It was beyond comparison with the pain of having both legs torn off.
He would have given anything to pass out.
He could not.
Even inside that horror, his mind remained terrifyingly clear.
So—
“S-spare me—!”
he cried out in desperation.
Cheon Seo-ah only smiled at him.
“Well then. Have a pleasant time.”
With those words, she sealed the torn space shut.