March 31st (4)
All I could feel was that the entire world had decided to screw me over.
Tomorrow the world was suddenly going to end, and only people who had an account in a game I'd never even touched would get an 80% chance of survival.
There was forced, and then there was this.
Of course, if I was this deep in despair, someone was bound to ask the obvious question.
"Why the hell are you just lying there moping? Get your ass on Brave Saga right now and make an account!"
And I would answer:
"I already tried..."
Yeah. I already tried.
My friends had screamed at me to do it right now, so I did. I hit the link they sent, got onto the Brave Saga Online site, dug through the app store, and downloaded it as fast as I could.
The download itself wasn't the problem. The second I hammered the app open on my phone and tried to connect...
The servers are currently under maintenance due to an error. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Ser-ver main-te-nance!??????
Why?
Why now, of all times?
Why the hell right now?
Just... why?
I scrambled to boot up my computer and typed in the Brave Saga Online website.
It wouldn't load. The page simply refused to go anywhere.
Oh, no way...
I tore through the Brave Saga fan cafe on my computer. Even the fan cafe was sluggish, but at least it let me in.
Then I saw the latest posts... and despair hit me like a truck.
People raging about connection issues. People mocking anyone who hadn't made an account in advance. Absolute garbage humans laughing at folks who'd always sneered at them for being obsessed with this game. People live-translating whatever was happening at the developer's headquarters and ferrying the news over.
I read every last one of them. Over and over. And every time I sorted the information and filed it away in my head, hope drained out of me and despair swelled up to take its place.
Especially when I saw that the cops had stormed the developer and that every service was frozen solid, with parts of the server room already taken offline — that was when I understood there was no way I was getting in today. All I could do was sink.
In a hollow daze, I opened the fridge.
There was one bottle of soju left over from when I'd gotten wasted with my idiot friends.
No snacks. Just raw, straight drinking. Once the alcohol hit and everything went hazy, I felt a little better. A tiny bit.
Got any cigarettes?
I'd stuck to quitting so hard I didn't even smoke in the military... but right now I wanted a drag so goddamn bad.
Whatever. In one hour and fifty minutes this life's over anyway. I can smoke one on the way out, right? Like those villains in movies who put on a tough act right before they die.
"Hoo..."
Without thinking, I unlocked my phone.
The messenger app showed +70. The other guys must have been flooding the chat. There were a few missed calls too.
I didn't answer a single one. What was the point? No matter what I did, I still didn't have a Brave Saga account, and nothing — not a single letter, not a damn thing — had appeared in front of my eyes.
All because of one game. One single game I hadn't played, and this was my fate.
...God, this is so fucking unfair. I'd spent more than half of my twenty-nine years with my head buried in games. That was a fact I could own without flinching.
Since I was a kid I'd done every ridiculous thing imaginable to keep up with the latest titles. Arcades, PC bangs, console rooms — they were basically my second home. Even in the army, whenever I got the chance, I tried to play whatever I could get my hands on. And after I got out and went back to school as a returning student? Don't even get me started.
And yet... because of one game. One single game I hadn't played... in one hour and fifty minutes — no, one hour and forty-nine minutes — I was going to turn into a zombie and spend the rest of my existence chewing on people's flesh.
...Fuck it. Should I just bolt over to one of my friends' places right now? Camp out in front of one of those bastards' doors. Then when I turn into a zombie...!
...Forget it. Even Minsu's place, the closest one, was more than fifty minutes away. And more importantly, there was no way the streets were still normal. I'd seen it on the news — highways everywhere were locked solid with people trying to flee to the countryside, the provinces, anywhere at all.
The subway? None of my friends lived near a station, so even if I got off at the closest stop I'd still have a long walk. And the trains were packed solid anyway, or just blowing past certain stations entirely. Plenty of people were riding them just to get somewhere with fewer humans. If ninety percent of humanity was about to die and turn into zombies, somewhere with a lower population density had to be safer, right?
...Not that any of that means a damn thing to someone like me who's already booked solid for the zombie express.
"Fuck... I should've forced myself to play it back then. Even if someone stole the account, I should've at least made one."
Why the hell weren't phones allowed when I was in the army... Yeah, this is the government's fault. What kind of country is this!
Ah... the usual venom I felt when I cursed out this goddamn country just wasn't rising from my gut the way it normally did. Maybe that was what happened when you were about to die. It felt like I'd let go of a lot of things.
......
And then...
Maybe miracles really were only thrown to people who'd already given up on everything.
Hello!
"J-Jesus—!"
One hour before midnight, strange letters began etching themselves into the empty air in front of me.
Congratulations, Jeong Hoon!
"...What?"
Congratulations? Congratulate me for what? You just ruined my entire mood and I'm one step from dying!
I didn't say that out loud, though. Because the second those letters appeared and my eyes registered them, my heart started hammering.
Strange text suddenly materializing in front of me to say congratulations? This was... exactly...!
You have been chosen as one of the 10% of humanity who can survive the zombie apocalypse. Clap clap clap clap!
At the very end of despair, it was like someone had thrown me a rope of pure luck!
"Yes!"
Maybe it was the booze, but something in my chest boiled over hard. So there, alone in an empty room, staring at floating letters in midair, I threw both arms toward the ceiling and cheered.
I'm in the 10% that survives in one hour — and this same text must have popped up for my friends too!
But... oh dear. You really are unlucky!
My soaring heart slammed on the brakes at a single word: unlucky.
"Un...lucky?"
Well, of course... Jeong Hoon! You don't have one, do you? A Brave Saga account! You tried so hard to make one, and yet — you still don't have a Brave Saga game account! Right?
In an instant, the fire in my chest snuffed out.
Yeah... I don't. I don't have one!
I pulled every stupid stunt I could think of trying to make one, and in the end I still don't have it! Just me! Out of all my friends! And probably... among the survivors too!
...That's what I thought, but maybe not?
This is a bit unexpected... Even if you've been selected as a survivor, without a Brave Saga character's abilities, surviving even a single day is going to be extremely difficult!
I fucking knew it!
I sank back down onto the floor.
Right. That smug voice said it this afternoon, didn't it? That zombies would overflow and monsters from another world would swarm the Earth. That was why they were going to grant us Brave Saga character stats.
But I don't have an account for that game, do I? I never managed to make one. So what's the point of being alive? The second I step outside I'll get deleted in ten seconds flat. Fuck!
Hmm... hmmmmm... this is reeeally...
And the letters floating in front of me were stretching out their syllables in a tone that was basically a carbon copy of that voice from this afternoon — the one that had pissed me off so badly.
Wow. This is infuriating. Maybe it's the booze, but if this thing were standing in front of me right now I'd beat the shit out of it.
Who? Obviously whatever bastard — or bitch — is pulling this prank!
As expected... as an Administrator, I can't help but feel a sense of responsibility about a situation like this.
Huh? Administrator?
...Oh, right. They were going on about Administrators this afternoon.
Failing to clean up an unexpected situation like this simply wouldn't do, would it? It's not like we're some online trash-game operators who just suck up money!
Huh. That's the kind of line that would make a certain domestic game service company feel a twinge of conscience.
And if ninety percent of humanity gets wiped out, isn't this already a trash game? No — it's way past trash-game territory.
At least trash games don't actually kill people!
Now then... what would be good... Ah! I took a look at your profile, Jeong Hoon, and there's something interesting here?
Interesting? What is it, what is it! What the hell was so interesting!
My word... you've played so many games! Most people your age have tried around a hundred on average... but you, Jeong Hoon, have played over 3,000 games in your twenty-nine years of life! At that age! Truly impressive!
Ooooh, so that's the part!
It was true I'd dipped my toes into a ridiculous number of games.
I'd barely discriminated by genre either. RPGs, shooters, action, fighters, FPS, TPS, online games, simulations — even dating sims... it wouldn't be wrong to say there wasn't a genre I hadn't touched.
...But something about this tone is seriously pissing me off. Like I'm some shut-in NEET whose skull is packed with nothing but games and zero thoughts about getting a job!
Which is accurate, but still!
Alright, I've got a great idea! Listen carefu— no, look carefully, Jeong Hoon!
Please turn on your computer right now!
Computer?
Figuring I had nothing to lose by playing along, I walked over to my desk.
I hit the power button and waited for it to finish booting. I'd installed an SSD, so it only took a few seconds — but the silence stretching through those few seconds made my chest tight and my heart pound.
The familiar desktop appeared, and once again letters floated up in front of me... no, off to the side of the monitor, at an angle in midair.
Please wait a moment... Accessing Jeong Hoon's computer... L-O-A-D-I-N-G...
Even the way it says "loading" like that is pissing me off!
I seriously want to see the face behind this tone! Wouldn't a fist just fly the second I saw it?
The wait didn't last as long as I'd expected. Because something suddenly changed on my otherwise empty desktop.
Is this... a list? Huh. Like Steam, there's a game library on the left... and on the right, a blank list?
Would you look at the left side? I've sorted every game you've ever played — by number, English, and Korean order!
Ah, I thought some of these names looked familiar... well, look at that. 1963 Aero Fighters is sitting right at the top. That's the game I dumped endless coins into at the arcade when I was a kid!
...Hold on. How did they even put this list on my computer? I mean, between the Administrator stuff, the booming voice, the floating timer and logo, and these midair text windows, we're already way past the realm of science... but still. This is goddamn amazing!
From that game list, please pick 10 games you want and drag them over to the list on the right! We'll run a random lottery with those games, and grant you the character stats from whichever game wins. You've got 5 minutes! Begin!
Wh-wh-wh-what? Hold on—!
I didn't even get a gap to ask a question. A timer had already appeared at the top of the desktop.
Oh, for fuck's sake! Two seconds already gone!
No time to think. I yanked the list straight to the top and started scanning through what games were even on there.
Even if I'd spent twenty-nine years devouring games like a shut-in, I hadn't memorized every single one I'd ever played. And more than that, you couldn't always tell what a game was just from the title!
See? I already don't recognize most of the ones that are just numbers! They're probably arcade shooters, so I'm tossing all of those anyway! Games from that era weirdly loved slapping numbers on the front of the title!
And more importantly — one hit and your ship blew up.
One hit. One single hit! And it exploded!
Anything with "Fighter" or "Match" in the name has to get cut too.
Why? High chance it's a fighting game. If I randomly pull a character from one of those and land on someone the community treats as a bottom-tier joke, that's a disaster of the highest order.
Ideally... yeah. I should be looking for something like a zombie action game.
Here's a perfect example! The Bio Evil series!
I'll just throw any of these i— no, wait. When was the protagonist at their strongest? Right, right! Part 3. Part 3! Not just the main character — even the supporting cast was ridiculously strong! That's one pick!
Ah, fuck! I picked one and a whole minute's already gone! No choice. No time to stare at a title and debate whether to take it! I have to find the rock-solid candidates and shove them up there!
I boldly scrolled the list with the mouse, sweeping through it in a rush.
Among the Korean-titled games there'd be a lot of online ones, and that meant plenty of titles where you had to grind levels until your eyes bled.
...Yeah. Stuff like these, for example!
▸ Pine Story Online
▸ Apple Pie Online
▸ Pizzarte Online
▸ Mint Berry Online
▸ Chocolat School Online
All of them were online games I'd picked up in my teens to blow off steam, then only managed to put down in my early twenties.
I really hadn't been right in the head back then. Going to school, grinding through night self-study, and still diving into these games hard enough to raise dozens of characters and hit max level on several of them. I almost missed that teenage stamina that let me pull all-nighters and still bounce around the next day like nothing happened.
And on top of those... I can't forget this one either!
The famous Lortemian RTS series, reborn as an MMORPG
Ah, this one was a time-devouring monster. Hitting max level was easier than in other games, but the endgame content after that was so massive you could stay up for days and still not burn through it all... Is it even still running? I dropped it over five years ago, so I can't remember. Checking this one too!
For two straight minutes I'd been clawing through my memories in a near-trance, and I'd managed to pick my games.
I got to nine, then started scrolling the list up and down, digging hard for a tenth...
When suddenly, one game snagged my eye.