Episode 6: Haven Online

I didn't particularly want to keep Lee Yeonju as a streamer who belonged only to me.

I'd felt a flutter, yes, but that didn't mean I'd fallen in love. I was at that age—plenty of sex drive, plenty of curiosity about women—and yet something in me held back. Maybe it was because ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd lost my parents young and already scraped the floor of what feeling could do to a person. Fresh out of the military, I was living in the quiet satisfaction of having finally leveled out the worst of the swings. Maybe that was why I wasn't taking it any further.

"They're really taking the bait."

I watched the chat plaster itself across the screen and decided not to step in any ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠further. Leaning into it would have been fun, but from the audience's side it would start to curdle into wait, is this real?—and some vague distance would open up between them and the streamer. There was nothing to gain from wrecking a broadcast that was going well.

Thanks to that, Yeonju spent the rest of the stream fielding the viewers' relentless questions.

After the broadcast, a text arrived from Lee Yeonju. She didn't blame me for putting her on the spot. So this was what it was like—sprawled on the bed, half-watching a movie, trading messages with a woman.

Yeonju had asked. What was I doing tomorrow? I'd never really thought about it.

My childhood had been comfortable enough, in its way. The inheritance my parents left behind when they died was enough that I'd grown up richer than most. It wasn't the kind of money you could play with for a lifetime and never once worry, though, and I hadn't planned on living that way anyway. A little more room than other people simply meant I could do what I wanted and buy what I wanted—and that I had a wider view, a real chance to look for the work I actually felt like doing. That was as far as it went.

Then, right when I should have been agonizing over how I was going to make a living, all of this happened. I skipped the whole process and came out rich. I hadn't done anything. Nothing, except the luck of being chosen by Windy, who had come looking for me first.

"Windy."

"Yes."

"Why me?"

The question came out of nowhere, so I asked it. She answered the moment I called, and she answered without hesitating.

"Because you were the only person who could put the necessary amount of cash into circulation at once, who felt no attachment to that money, and who would not spend attention on me for the length of time I required."

"Aha."

Cutting-edge AI, all right.

Luck had been good to me. From here on, I was done with a life spent wondering what I'd do tomorrow just to keep myself fed. In its place sat a happier problem: how was I going to spend the time?

"Hm."

Thanks to Yeonju, I'd ended up thinking harder than I meant to. Was I supposed to keep living like this? There was nothing wrong with it. What was so bad about a life like this? I wasn't short on money. Breakfast, lunch, dinner—I ate whatever I felt like, and when the urge hit, I took care of it however I liked. I slept when I wanted to sleep. I met the woman I wanted when I wanted. I even got to text like this.

I was just arriving at the thought that maybe I didn't need to worry at all when her next message came in.

A reply had come back from Yeonju, and the truth was I'd never played a game in my life. In school I'd been too busy studying, and after that there was the dark stretch I kept having to explain. That didn't mean I disliked games. If anything, I liked them. The reason I hadn't even touched the phone games everyone else played as a student was that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to climb back out. In the army I never really brought games up, so no senior ever asked me about them, and once I became a senior myself the juniors never bothered raising the subject either. I'd overheard a few things. None of it stuck. I hadn't cared.

"Windy. What is Haven Online?"

Did I really need to keep carrying that past around? Why hadn't I thought of games? I didn't have to worry about getting addicted anymore.

"A virtual-reality RPG. Released two years ago, it has held first place across the entire virtual-reality category for one hundred and five consecutive weeks. It accounts for ninety-two percent of the VR market, with seventy-five million concurrent players worldwide and three hundred and sixty million users in total."

"Whoa."

How had I been the only one who didn't know about a game like that?

"So it's fun?"

"Haven Online is the world's first game designed and operated directly by an artificial intelligence, so there are no updates and no patches. I believe that is part of why it is more popular."

"Hmm."

It had the feel of the game people had always wanted. A game, after all, was hard to separate from the sense of a war between companies and users over who could shake the wallet harder. Anyone who had played for long enough said the same thing: they got sick of it. The content burned out fast. What had been front-loaded at launch gave way to overpowered new characters, built to wring the spines of the players already hooked. Balance between characters had been abandoned ages ago. All that was left were games that sold cash-shop goods to keep the monetization numbers up. And into the middle of that, like a comet, an AI's game.

Even I, who had never played, found myself interested.

"But if an AI is good enough to make a game, how good are we talking? Is there another AI on your level, Windy?"

"Of course not. Haven Online is a game I made."

"…Ah."

She was quick enough to say it once asked. Hearing that only made me more curious. By my standards, at least, Windy was one hundred percent on my side.

"Tell me what Haven Online's like."

"An open world at a one-to-one scale with Earth. Countless classes. Differentiated grades. A character who grows stronger the more you spend. Monsters that grow stronger without end. Pulse-pounding adventure. Among other things."

"…This is a straight-up Korean MMO, isn't it?"

"It is a game built from the elements users are most likely to love."

"Yeah. Whipping out your wallet is the most exciting part."

And for who I was now, it was the most attractive part, too. You got stronger in proportion to the money you spent. When I was a kid, before the world of virtual reality arrived, there had been a game people called the final boss of pay-to-win. Spend enough there and you grew so strong you could take on thirty people in a castle siege by yourself and win.

"What do I need to play it?"

"Only a virtual-reality access capsule."

"Where do I buy one?"

"It is being delivered."

"Huh?"

"A limited-edition, highest-grade capsule is on its way here. It will arrive within thirty minutes."

"Wow. There really isn't anything you can't do."

The more I talked to Windy, the more incredible she felt. It was like speaking with a person, and yet she still carried out her role as an AI.

"Why don't you conquer the Earth?"

Honestly, it was hard not to think it.

"…"

Right. So that was how she saw it.

Having something to do out of nowhere lifted my mood. I looked up what you needed in order to play a virtual-reality game. The communities were full of posts on exactly that subject.

"Mm."

In the real world, there wasn't really anything I needed.

While I waited for the capsule, I pulled up whatever Haven videos I could find.

The capsule was something else. The inside was softer than a hotel bed, and the cushions wrapping my body made sleep come creeping in. I started it up. The world in front of my eyes went black, and I was summoned into a new one.

"Whoa. Insane."

Virtual reality. I had just set my first foot in a world that shouldn't have been possible. A pretty goddess stood before my eyes, in a blouse so thin her figure showed straight through it.

"Welcome, adventurer."

I raised a hand, suddenly self-conscious.

"Hi."

The goddess smiled, bright and easy, and snapped her fingers. A full-length mirror appeared in front of me.

"Would you like to change your appearance?"

"Uh…"

I'd never thought of myself as handsome, but I'd never lived with any particular complaint about my face, either.

"No."

"Customization will be skipped."

Next, dozens of cards began to spin around me.

"We will draw your class. Would you please select one card? The class written on the first card you draw will become your class. If it does not please you, you may draw again for one hundred thousand coins."

I'd seen this while I was searching. Haven's first paywall, the one the whole community tore itself apart over: the class gacha. Strangely enough, the game pressed you to spend from the very first moment. Not a true compulsion, of course. It simply hung hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of classes with anywhere from one star to five, and set their performance apart by that count. Tell people not to pay and they paid anyway, chasing something higher. Especially when it was a class you had to carry for the entire game.

I pulled a card at random.

"…"

Honestly, I hadn't wanted much. I'd thought about trying the game, but I hadn't planned to go hard from the very start. Just a taste. I figured it would be more fun if I could meet Yeonju in there and mess around. Then I saw a one-star card, and for some reason it pissed me off. A one-star was too much, no matter how I looked at it. And that lazy excuse for a class name was enough to make me angry on top of it.

"How much is a hundred thousand coins?"

"One hundred thousand won."

"…"

I understood at once why half the posts in the community were people cursing Haven for steering them into the cash shop.

"Can I pay with Windy Pay?"

"You may."

I paid on the spot. The card I'd drawn vanished, and the others began to spin again. I pulled another one at random.

"All right. Let's see which of us wins."