2. Still, We Live On - (5)
2. Still, We Live On - (5)
***
Another World was a game that was clearly beyond my imagination.
So I tried exploring the world inside Another World, or just passing time in it, but...
I couldn't shake the feeling that simply being satisfied by the passing scenery or the sight of the cities was never quite enough.
That was why, at the destination I'd originally set out for, I tried hunting monsters to get a feel for my body.
I swung the Crescent-Moon Weight I hadn't held in days to loosen up, and that alone kept me moving until I lost track of time.
But... after hunting monsters for a few hours, even Another World started to feel like a grind.
So much so that it reminded me of 'Black Ark,' which had been notorious for its grinding.
A brutal grind.
Endlessly repetitive actions.
Boredom born from nothing but fixed patterns.
Monsters that reacted differently to each individual action didn't exist in this virtual reality.
Which meant that, in the end, it was all nothing more than a “game.”
[PVP Decisive Battle Arena.]
Along the way, I did develop some interest in fighting other people. But the man I'd encountered as an outlaw had been below expectations, so even my expectations for PVP weren't all that high.
————————
The moment my vision went dark again, a familiar sensation wrapped around me.
When I blinked, Another World came into view, its interior completely black.
I could see the spherical access device.
Since this was my first time experiencing virtual reality, my thoughts wouldn't connect properly due to the strangely floating sensation.
I blankly clenched and unclenched my hand, focusing on the sensation.
My hand still felt as though it was gripping the Crescent-Moon Weight.
But after flexing my hand a few more times, the feeling vanished as if it had been a lie.
"It is pretty amazing."
Virtual reality was certainly more astonishing than I'd thought.
Hearing people talk about “virtual reality” was one thing; actually moving another version of myself inside a game world felt entirely new.
It wasn't exactly the same as the me who'd been swinging the Crescent-Moon Weight before. But I did feel, even if only slightly, something similar to the me from Black Ark.
I certainly couldn't properly feel that overflowing sense of omnipotence, or that energy, or anything... but still, it felt better than this empty body in reality.
But the feeling of striking a person—that kept nagging at me.
It was nothing more than attacking a mere character in a game, not a real person, but it still bothered me strangely.
'This is oddly addictive.'
In the world of Black Ark, I'd already casually killed people numbering in the triple digits.
So saying I felt guilt or that I'd harmed someone just from attacking one character now was absurd. It was simply that the feel of striking a monster versus a person was starkly different.
It was almost as if Another World itself encouraged PVP: compared with killing a monster, the sensation of striking a person came through far more vividly.
It even felt like the game was asking: after feeling this, how could you not do PVP?
Growl.
My musings were cut short by hunger.
When I checked the time, I'd somehow been playing Another World for about six hours.
I picked up the smartphone nearby and browsed a delivery app. After ordering a few things to eat, I got up from the access device and threw myself onto the softer bed.
Whump.
"Hah..."
I leaned blankly into the softness that wrapped around me as if to embrace me.
Maybe because I'd been in Another World for so long, I squirmed slightly to loosen my stiffened body.
Only then did I feel my rigid body relaxing.
Suddenly I wondered how expensive a bed had to be to feel like this. Even as I lay down, that thought crossed my mind anew.
And I realized that this was reality.
No danger at all.
No worries.
Not a single one of those things existed.
And a reason to keep living in this world.
Right now, the thing that truly mattered most to me was missing.
With more time than I knew what to do with—and more time to think about myself—eventually those thoughts were all that filled my head.
"......"
At the inns in Black Ark, all sorts of sounds had reached me even when I sat still. In contrast, now only silence filled the spacious room.
The comfort and coziness of reality felt almost seductive, as if they were drawing me in.
Then, suddenly, the image of myself in Black Ark—moving my body every single day, yearning for adventure—felt like a lie.
The immense sense of omnipotence that had filled my body.
The crimson energy I'd built up through years of training.
The legendary-grade equipment and ancient relic equipment I'd gathered through all kinds of hardship.
It felt as though whoever had sent me to this world was telling me to offer all of that as the price and accept this cozy reality.
"..."
My current life truly lacked nothing.
The past me whose name I couldn't even remember anymore.
Now, existing as Han Serin with my gender changed like this, I even thought that—aside from a few physiological things I'd gotten used to—I was living a far more comfortable life than back then.
It wasn't as if I lacked leisure in life, and if anything, what I had in abundance now was time.
The 2.7 billion won sitting in my account. Considering that I wasn't prone to extravagance, I could practically say I had no reason to worry about money.
According to the information I'd gathered through the PC over the past few days, the prices of essentials like food and clothing didn't seem to have risen all that much.
If I lived alone like this, I probably wouldn't have to worry about money until I died.
On top of that, the insurance payout that had come into another account was also in the billion-won range. In practical terms, I was so well-off financially that my sense of money had gone numb.
—Ding.
A text alert sounded at just the right moment: the food had been delivered outside my door.
Click.
I picked up the food wrapped in sleek packaging left outside the door and returned to my room.
"It really is comfortable..."
I turned on the PC, sat in the chair, and those words slipped out blankly.
As I ate the strongly flavored food, I slowly began searching for information about Another World.
During the few days I'd spent adapting to this world, I'd seen countless posts related to Another World, but I hadn't looked at them carefully.
But now, the only thing that held any interest for me was Another World, so my eyes naturally drifted toward it.
When I started searching with game-related tags, other games barely even appeared on the main page.
Nearly every news item, game update, and even community page was filled with talk about Another World.
I opened a few windows of famous sites and clicked on several articles floating on their main pages.
They were nothing but praise.
—A Game Ahead of Its Time! Astonishing Not Just Korea, but the World.
—Implementing virtual reality this perfectly is nothing short of a miracle.
—The game company “Another,” which implemented virtual reality this realistically, has grown to 360 employees...
—An unprecedented global sensation! Another's debut title, “Another World,” is shattering records set by companies around the globe.
—Major corporations such as N Company and P Company announce plans to develop virtual-reality games.
—Beyond the limits of a mere “game”—truly a new world.
—“Another World” achieves an unprecedented 65.55% share of the game market.
Beyond that, there were articles saying that due to 'Another World'—the name of both the next-generation game access device and the virtual reality game—even the login rates of PC games had mostly plummeted.
Well, even in my original world, 'virtual reality' game technology had already existed.
They called it VR.
But most of it was so crude that it failed to live up to what gamers expected from “virtual reality.”
Over time, the technology did seem to develop. But compared to the Another World I'd just experienced, even making the comparison was laughable.
Then I frowned as a painful tingling spread through my mouth.
"No... I definitely asked for the spice-wimp level."
No, this is at least level-three spicy.
Since coming to this world, my appetite had grown, and I'd been ordering all sorts of food. But there were plenty of restaurants that didn't check the order instructions properly.
***
Another World was so popular that there were countless kinds of community sites devoted solely to talking about it.
From sites that only posted simple game information and party recruitment threads.
To people who had no interest in Another World but stopped by to chat because the community sites related to Another World were simply too big.
The user base was truly diverse.
And among them, one of the places that could be called a major community.
'Another Level'
As the name suggested, Another Level was a place where people who took Another World “seriously” gathered.
No, in reality, it was a veteran-player site full of no-lifers who were half-crazy about Another World.
Right now, at the very top of that Another Level site.
In the spot where the most-viewed popular posts of the day usually sat, there was one post that had drawn over a thousand comments and was causing controversy.
—[No, fuck, how is this not hacking?]
Author: AhFuckJustDieThen
(In-game gameplay video)
- No, fuck, my accuracy is 99.4 percent, but not a single attack lands as a clean hit.
At the end, I fired a barrage of arrows from ultra-close range, and they knocked them all away with some dogshit weapon. Fuck, is that even possible?
Another World was definitely an online-service game, so 'PAY TO WIN' elements—in other words, buying equipment or character stats with real money—did exist.
Even if the game company tried to stop it, users would just conduct cash trades among themselves, so there was practically no way to prevent it.
And 'AhFuckJustDieThen' was one of the users who was fairly well-known on the Another Level site.
A PK user who went around beating people with stats raised through what you'd call real-money spending.
Without any clear reason, just the simple fact that someone had crossed paths with him. He'd use that as an excuse to launch preemptive attacks on all sorts of users.
[What, this bastard got killed by someone?]
[Good riddance lololololololol]
[But if someone beat this bastard, that female character in the video must have pretty high stats]
[Looking at the location in the video, it seems to be the elf forest that undergeared bastards can't enter, so that female character seems decently geared too?]
[No, forget that, watching the video, the character's fucking gorgeous. Whose customization is that?]
[But the more you watch the video, the weirder it gets]
[It's not like nobody uses parry, but parrying everything in succession like that is a bit weird]
[No, but I heard there are five hackers alone working on security for this game's engine. Are hacks even possible?]
[There was a hack once before. It was one of the internal devs, I think, who got caught using hacks to boost his own character's stats lololololol]
[↳ I heard that bastard blew his whole salary on real-money spending too lolololololololol]
[At the end, she jumps forward and parries four times in a row in midair. That's obviously just hacks, fuck, lololol]
[That weapon in the video is a Crescent-Moon Weight. Didn't everyone who used those die off ages ago after it was proven to have shit performance?]