Icons in the Dark
A dark room.
The place was a virtual domain — a space that did not exist in reality.
There, several 'icons' appeared.
C: [So, Linzea's 'enemy' has shown himself.]
The voice of the icon marked C echoed through the room, followed by the voices of the others.
H: [His Yggtube view counts are climbing. Hmmm. Well, couldn't we simply ignore him for now?]
V: [Is that the human we spoke of before? I heard he's under surveillance at the moment.]
C: [I did give the order to watch him, but the man is remarkably quick on his feet.]
V: [And how is Linpel Darius moving? He's an important candidate as well.]
C: [If Linpel Darius moves carelessly, Linzea itself will take a massive blow. That part I couldn't care less about — the problem is that we can't predict how Gabriel Darius would react if it came to that.]
H: [Linpel this, Linpel that. You're giving me a headache. That sort of creature doesn't stir my soul in the slightest. I can't make out Ryu7017 yet, but for now he's mediocre. Do I really have to attend these meetings?]
C: [The records show he once worked as an analyst for Linzea Guild. Though the details were erased. After that, it seems he fell all the way down to Unknown.]
V: [Gabriel Darius's doing, obviously. He wiped any record that could have harmed Linpel Darius.]
C: [So what do we do? Linzea can hardly afford to ignore Ryu7017 any longer. They'll move to cut him out of World of Phantasm before his influence grows any bigger, I'd wager.]
H: [I'd rather just watch from the sidelines for now. Besides, barely half the participants showed up today. What are three of us supposed to decide?]
V: [Watching suits me too, for the time being. I have my own hands full over here.]
C: [Hmmm. Very well. We'll keep the surveillance running as it is. But I intend to act at my own discretion.]
H: [When have you ever asked permission before acting? I'll take my leave.]
V: [Same here. Excuse me.]
C: [Absolutely zero cooperation between you two. Fine, fine~ do as you please. I'll move in whichever direction pleases my soul the most.]
Soon, the light of the virtual domain faded away.
Whatever words had been exchanged here, they vanished without leaving a single trace.
Ryu7017.
He had become the talk of every community on the grid. Everywhere you looked, the chatter was about him, and the topic showed no sign of cooling down.
It was his final words, above all, that had set the whole thing ablaze — because the man claiming he'd been framed had named Linpel Darius and the Linzea Guild outright.
Linzea Guild denied everything, calling it baseless.
They issued a statement warning people not to fall for slander concocted to drag Linzea's name through the mud, and announced they would pursue legal action against Ryu7017 for spreading malicious rumors.
This was hardly the first time bad rumors had swirled around Linzea Guild. A guild that big was bound to attract a steady trickle of dirty gossip.
The most famous of those rumors: a secret backroom deal with Latia, the company that currently held a monopoly on game labyrinth production.
The terms of the alleged deal were simple. Linzea — the single largest guild in World of Phantasm — would cede a fixed portion of its profits, and in exchange, Latia would quietly intervene to keep World of Phantasm's golden age alive as long as possible.
With no proper game labyrinths emerging lately and quality deteriorating year after year, speculation ran absolutely wild.
And given that Linzea Guild had seized control of World of Phantasm and was raking in enormous profits, it was only natural such stories took root.
On top of that, stories abounded of Linzea-affiliated gamers committing vicious acts against their fellow players, so the guild had amassed a considerable army of haters.
So — what would happen next?
The communities had their eyes fixed on the trajectory of Ryu7017 — of Ryu Hwi.
And on one more.
The trajectory of Linpel Darius, the very name Ryu Hwi had spoken aloud.
"Well, if it isn't a celebrity."
Ryu Hwi scrunched up his face at the mocking tone as he stepped into the curiosity shop, Jucheongwang.
"Famous overnight, after barely a few days. The whole internet's in an uproar about you right now."
"The reaction ran hotter than I expected. Then again, that getup of yours is a bit of a warped taste, isn't it?"
Wolya looked nothing like she had the last time he'd visited the shop.
An antique porcelain doll in a black gothic dress, shambling along in a raspy middle-aged man's voice.
It was the stuff of nightmares.
"It's a full-body prosthesis, so I can customize it however the mood strikes, any time I like. The voice happens to suit my tastes, so I left it be."
Rebuilt to this extent, Ryu Hwi seriously doubted the thing could still be called human.
Wolya beamed at him, grinning from ear to ear — evidently curious what verdict he would hand down on her habit of tearing her own body apart at whim.
Full-body prosthetics are built on a human base, and their structure closely mirrors that of a human body. The only remaining organic component is the 'brain', and even that has been modified to a significant degree.
Whether or not this qualifies as human is left to the Master's judgment.
YggON relayed the data from its scan of Wolya.
Could something wearing a full-body prosthesis truly be called human?
A deep question — but Ryu Hwi decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Honestly, he couldn't have cared less.
"Ahem. Total indifference, I see."
"I told you before — whether you're a full-body prosthesis or whatever else, it's none of my business."
"Hahaha, so I did. And so...... what brings a man of the internet's attention to this shabby little establishment today? Perhaps you're in need of a disguise, sunglasses perhaps?"
"Mods."
Ignoring Wolya's banter, Ryu Hwi cut straight to business.
"Everything our shop sells is what I showed you last time, no?"
"Don't play innocent. You told me before, remember? That you'd been asked to test them on a customer — should some obsessive, dim-witted soul ever come looking for the mods."
Ryu Hwi wracked his brain over who could have made such a request.
Someone tied to the mods, without question.
Which meant there was only one answer.
"That would be the Modder, wouldn't it?"
"And the reasoning behind that conclusion?"
"There's no one else it could be."
Wolya gave a light shrug of her porcelain shoulders.
"Then I take it our guest wishes to do business with the Modder?"
"That's right."
The mods' effects had been proven. There had to be far more useful ones out there.
If he could get his hands on them, clearing the game labyrinths would become that much easier.
"I can put the mods to use. And a Modder couldn't ask for a better customer than me, no?"
"Is that so, is that so."
Wolya drew a single disk from her robes.
"This is?"
"Something the Modder you're seeking left behind. She said that if you ever came looking for her, I was to hand it over."
As if she knew his every move before he made it. Ryu Hwi clicked his tongue and accepted the disk.
"It's a mod she's newly completed. She says if you can put it to proper use, she'll grant you a meeting."
"Grant me a meeting? What an important lady you are."
A mod that interferes with visual information. Distorts the user's sight to extract a wide range of hidden data. Higher-spec than any of the Master's previous mods — and correspondingly heavier on the load.
Visual interference. Sight distortion.
Quite an unsettling piece of work, by the sound of it.
In other words, this was the Modder's challenge, plain and simple. The nerve of her, making someone else jump through her hoops.
Ryu Hwi didn't care for the Modder's games. Doing exactly what other people told him to was never to his taste.
"Eh, fine. Next order of business — magic stones, including the dungeon boss-tier drops."
"Oho, now that makes my mouth water."
Business concluded, Ryu Hwi left the shop.
The moment he stepped outside, he felt eyes on him. He glanced casually in that direction.
A few familiar faces. Some members of Black Snake — and their leader.
Ruga, was it? Ryu Hwi stared at them for a moment, then walked on as if they weren't worth his attention.
As he moved, they visibly hesitated, weighing whether to approach.
"E-excuse me......!"
The leader, Ruga, raised his voice. Ryu Hwi stopped and turned back to face them.
"What?"
Watching them warily, he drew his wooden sword. The Black Snake crew flinched and shrank back in fear.
"W-wait a moment! We're not looking for a fight! N-no, sir. Not at all."
Ruga hurried to calm him.
"It's just...... well, if there's anything we can help with......"
Ryu Hwi more or less saw through their game.
They meant to latch onto him, plain and simple.
"Nothing. Get lost."
"Please don't say that...... we've been around this block, we know the streets — if you need anything, anything at all......"
"I'll say it once more. If I need you, I'll call. Until then, stay out of my sight."
Ryu Hwi leveled the wooden sword at them.
"If you want to keep living."
They understood it was no idle threat. Ruga and the Black Snake crew scrambled away in a panicked flurry of feet.
Ryu Hwi glared after them for a while.
I was sure I'd snapped their fangs clean off. So what are they angling for?
He'd broken them to the point where his mere presence should have been terror enough — and yet here they were, approaching him even while shaking in their boots.
It smacked of some other purpose entirely.
"It may well be because of your videos, Master."
"So they might be planning to sell information about me to Linzea."
"Linzea is hardly the only enemy out there, Master. If there are those who recognize the value of a UR, they will most certainly come for you."
"World of Phantasm is crawling with bugs — I doubt anyone in there would be sharp enough to figure out a 'UR'. Besides, the very existence of UR isn't public knowledge to begin with."
"Then I find myself wondering why that trash game is so popular."
He had no desire to linger in the entertainment district any longer than he had to.
The designer of this district had conceived it as a place to liberate human desire.
Every single thing the eye fell upon teased the senses and tickled at humanity's basest appetites.
As dusk fell, the entertainment district glittered with garish light, luring people in like a hungry demon's maw.
Drawn by that glow, the humans who flooded in would chase pleasure until their souls rotted black through.
Even those driven to the edge of a cliff would surrender themselves to a moment's pleasure, desperate to forget everything.
Ryu Hwi turned away from the glittering lights and walked toward the shadows.
Master.
Then YggON called to him in a low voice.
The robotic vacuum cleaner — a creature utterly out of place in the entertainment district — flashed its lens.
How nice, to be so popular. You have company, Master.
"How many?"
Around ten. They're tailing you.
Ryu Hwi pondered for a moment.
Stirring up trouble in the entertainment district was dangerous. This place was a hornet's nest, every kind of interest tangled up in it.
He kept walking as if he'd noticed nothing — deliberately hugging the dark side of the street, then drifting, without any fuss, toward an alley between the busy blocks.
The tails tracked him from behind, their presence carefully suppressed.
Never suspecting that Ryu Hwi had already marked every one of them.
"?!"
"What the—!"
The instant they cleared the mouth of the narrow alley, Ryu Hwi — who had been right in front of them a heartbeat ago — was simply gone.
They spun around in confusion, scanning their surroundings, frantically contacting the others to pin down his location.
But the others couldn't find him either.
Had the man been spirited away by a ghost?
Nothing about it made the slightest sense.
Where on earth had Ryu Hwi vanished to?
"So they followed me, then."
Ryu Hwi looked down at them from the rooftop of a building.
In the brief moment he'd slipped out of their line of sight, he had activated his skills.
SR — Instant Leap Lv3
SR+ — Sword Mastery (Ygg) Lv☆
Powered by the two skills, Ryu Hwi had hurled himself up to the rooftop in a single bound.
To their eyes, he must have simply blinked out of existence.
"YggON, record all their faces."
Already done.
YggON was living up to its capabilities in full.
"Who the hell are these people, anyway? Hired by Linzea? Or some other outfit?"
What will you do, Master?
"I'd rather avoid annoyances until my business is finished."
He had no spare energy to waste humoring them right now.
"I've got other matters to handle too."
The 'message' had come.
Not a welcome one.
A filthy message, one that bound him to his past.
Don't contact me again. I have no wish to be seen fraternizing with an Unknown.
Old memories came crawling back.
"You're the one who told me not to contact you. Honestly, I'd love to know what's going on in that head of yours."