The Betrayer's True Name

The moment the logout timer expired, the figures in black vanished. Either they had logged out on their own, or someone on the other side had forced them out.

Once he confirmed his enemies were gone, Ryu Hwi gave the other gamers a slight nod of acknowledgment, then dropped his rear onto a bench in the plaza.

"And here I'd prepped all sorts of contingencies, and I didn't need a single one."

Ryu Hwi swept his gaze across the plaza.

He'd planted things here too. If anything had gone even slightly wrong, the townsfolk could have been caught in the crossfire and turned this into a massacre—which meant he'd have to remember to retrieve everything before leaving.

"Save it. Keep your mouth shut for a minute."

5555, who had obediently kept quiet throughout the whole fight, said something or other, but Ryu Hwi ignored her.

He had more pressing business right now.

"There it is."

The achievement completion alert had arrived.

The rewards were stingy.

And for some reason, unlike every time before, the payouts were Random Box points instead of tickets.

Do PvP-related achievements pay out in points?

At least fighting ten opponents at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠once had been worth it—the ten-victory achievement had cleared in one go.

5555 raised her voice as if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to say, even after this?

"What?"

Ryu Hwi made no effort to hide his irritation.

"Ryu7017, Ryu Hwi. Unknown."

"I'm under no obligation to ans——huh?"

Ryu Hwi's Intuition triggered.

Not that he needed a sixth sense to notice it. The presence stepped brazenly into plain view right in front of him.

There were more of the attackers' friends left after all?

A hooded robe made it impossible to make out their features. They looked shorter than the average grown man—somewhere around 160 centimeters, give or take.

The robed figure pulled something from within the garment and flung it at him with a flick of the wrist. Ryu Hwi caught it on pure reflex.

If it had been dangerous, Intuition would have reacted. That very assumption was what lulled him off guard.

A dagger?

It was a dark-hued dagger. Even a casual glance filled him with a creeping sense of dread.

[Master, that item is——]

The instant YggON tried to speak, light burst outward from the dagger's core.

"Ghk—?!"

Then his entire field of vision drowned in black.

What the hell had just happened?

Ryu Hwi didn't panic. He calmly took stock of his surroundings.

In the blink of an eye, the scenery around him had changed completely.

Space transfer? No—something else.

Darkness stretched out on every side. But it wasn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mere blackness—strange patterns surfaced and dissolved across it without pause.

[Master, this is an artificial bug.]

YggON sized up the situation immediately.

"A bug?"

[A warped space existing outside the standard domain. A bug code capable of generating a distorted space like this has been embedded within that dagger.]

Ryu Hwi surveyed the darkness again. Now that he looked closely, the patterns flickering through the black space were an endless tide of code, woven entirely from zeros and ones.

An object that deliberately triggers bugs. Why didn't my Intuition pick it up?

He couldn't reach 5555, either.

The moment he entered the bug space, their connection seemed to have been severed.

"Ryu Hwi."

Then, someone materialized before him.

A robed figure. Ryu Hwi wrapped his hand around the grip of his Gunsword, ready to move at any moment.

"A bug item, huh. Interesting toy you're carrying. The Linzea Guild, through and through."

"I'm not Linzea."

"Yeah, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠well, nobody ever admits it will——"

Mid-sentence, Ryu Hwi felt something odd. The robed figure was a woman. And her voice was strangely, horribly familiar.

Hearing it made his chest lurch and his skin crawl.

It nearly brought the bile up his throat.

"Who are you?"

"Asea, of GA-ES."

GA-ES.

A word he'd heard somewhere before.

[A guild recorded in the Dungeon Rankings.]

At YggON's words, it finally clicked. He distinctly remembered glimpsing the name several times near the top of the dungeon record rankings.

A guild with zero connection to me.

Then why had a GA-ES gamer sought him out?

And why did her presence feel so deeply, viscerally repulsive?

"'Asea' is my real name, but I went by a different name once. You'd probably know that one better."

"What?"

Ryu Hwi's eyes widened.

A name no amount of trying could make him forget.

She pulled back the hood, and snow-white hair spilled into view.

Hair white as fresh snowfall. Once upon a time, he had thought it nothing more than a beautiful color.

Now it looked filthy—like snow trampled into the mud a thousand times over.

Ryu Hwi's vision wavered.

His clenched fist shook uncontrollably.

Ryu Hwi knew her well.

She had been introverted, the type who never stepped forward—a woman who observed the world from one cautious step back. And yet, when it truly mattered, she never bent her own will.

They had shared meals. Exchanged stories, laughed, argued.

But now, every one of those memories had been shoved into the trash and buried.

"CYNTHIA!!"

Rage toward the traitor surged beyond all control.

The woman who had betrayed her own comrade and framed him alongside Linpel.

One of the beings who had stripped Ryu Hwi's life down to the bare walls.

And now she stood before him as a gamer calling herself 'Asea.'

Part of him wanted to applaud his own restraint for not swinging his sword on the spot.

"Asea. That's my real name. Cynthia was just an alias I used while working at Linzea for a short time."

She gave a soft smile.

"It's been a while."

"A while... you say."

Time is relative.

Joyful hours race by in an instant, while hours in hell crawl by slow enough to drive a man mad.

For one person, three years pass like nothing. For another, they drag on like thirty.

Ryu Hwi fought with everything he had to calm the storm inside his chest.

"What this bug space even is. How you became a gamer. Why you're in GA-ES instead of Linzea. What you meant by Cynthia being an alias. I've got plenty of questions, believe me... but right now, there's only one I want answered."

Every trace of expression drained from Ryu Hwi's face as he faced Asea.

"What face gave you the nerve to show up here?"

"Guess this isn't a conversation we can have with smiles on. Oh well."

The eyes that looked at Asea held no warmth left in them at all.

"First, I'd like to apolog——"

"Don't bother."

Ryu Hwi cut her off before the apology could leave her lips.

"Right. It's not something an apology was ever going to settle—though I knew that already. That was grating to listen to."

Strange.

Ryu Hwi observed Asea with cold detachment. The face matched the woman he remembered, but her speech and manner were entirely wrong.

Had three years changed her personality? Or had she always been like this, hiding it behind a mask of sweetness?

"You saw through the fact that this is a bug space impressively fast. But no need to worry yourself over it. You're exploiting bugs too, aren't you?"

[To classify this UR-grade YggON as a mere bug is beyond insulting. 'If it falls outside their little understanding, it must be a bug'—this is exactly what happens with low-grade……]

Ryu Hwi let YggON's grumbling pass through one ear and out the other. Every nerve he had was locked on Asea.

Every glimpse of that face dragged him back to the day he lost everything, twisting his stomach into knots—but he endured it. Somehow.

In his head, he was already running through every possible way to deal with her.

But with the unknown variable of 'bugs' in play, moving rashly now would be dangerous.

"I wanted to talk somewhere no one could interrupt us. I never dreamed you'd become a gamer. When I saw that video, I nearly——"

"That was your doing."

Ryu Hwi cut her off again.

"Every single day, I thought about how I'd wipe you out. You, Linpel, the whole lot of Linzea. Without that, I'd have died somewhere along the way."

Because after everything, there had been nothing else left to live for.

"You want to talk? About what? Shall I tell you how I scraped through each day after you people took everything from me?"

"So revenge is your goal."

Asea tapped her own throat lightly with two fingers.

"You have the motive for it, and the right. I understand. I know I've earned the grudge."

A weapon materialized in Asea's hand.

A longsword soaked in the same dusky gleam as the bug-conjuring dagger.

"But no. There's something I have to see through, no matter what."

That longsword carried 'bug code' in it too—YggON had warned him at once.

Intuition doesn't react to bugs?

Once again, the skill stayed silent. Unease coiled in Ryu Hwi's gut.

Impossible. It clearly reacted when I fought the Witch……

There might be some other factor keeping Intuition dormant. Fighting Asea here, with no preparation whatsoever, would be reckless.

Ryu Hwi and Asea, blades in hand, stared each other down.

"One piece of advice."

Asea spoke.

"If you want to run the Game Labyrinths, be my guest. But stop provoking Linzea."

"Huh?"

For a moment, Ryu Hwi wondered if he'd misheard.

"I get that you want your revenge on Linzea, but you're not beating them with a single 'bug' that slips past the system."

"..."

"You finally became a gamer, didn't you? Use that license properly and you can shed the Unknown status in no time. Gold isn't out of reach, even. Forget revenge for now and think only about getting out of Unknown. If not for yourself, then for your family's——"

Asea kept pressing, reasoning with him. Forget your revenge, enjoy life as a gamer. Be sensible, she said.

"You can reclaim the life you lost easily enough. No—more than that. Depending on how hard you work……"

"Shut up."

Human malice needs no reason.

Ryu Hwi felt that truth with brutal clarity.

"For your family's sake"? You can spit that out with a straight face... which means you never cared one bit what happened to me afterward.

If she had held even the tiniest sliver of concern for him, she would have known what became of his mother.

"I've got plenty more to say, but wasting even a minute of conversation on something like you isn't worth it, so I'll ask just one thing."

Every moment spent beside her in the Linzea Guild. Every story they'd traded, every word exchanged.

All of it had burned to ash in the fire of his fury.

"Did you honestly think I'd play along with that garbage?"

Ryu Hwi tapped his own temple with a finger.

"The very architect of my ruined life shows up out of nowhere and tells me to... what? Start fresh?"

"..."

"If you were trying to provoke me, congratulations—wild success. I'm getting a very thorough lesson in what a murderous impulse feels like right now."

Ryu Hwi forced down the urge to swing his sword then and there.

"I——"

"We're done talking. Get lost. Now."

His sword hand trembled violently.

It wasn't time to fight Asea yet. Too many unknowns remained.

Above all, until he understood why Intuition refused to trigger, careless moves were forbidden.

"I don't regret it."

Asea spoke again.

"A happy world where everyone wins doesn't exist. To survive here—to climb any higher—you have no choice but to trample someone. In the end, there's no other way."

Asea's sword leveled at Ryu Hwi.

"I held no ill will toward you. You were simply one more defeated soul I crushed beneath my feet."

"Wanna try that again right now?"—is that it?

The reason he'd been strangling down was going numb, dissolving into pure rage. Bug or no bug, the urge to obliterate Asea on the spot seized hold of him completely.

"If you'd accepted my offer quietly, I was prepared to buy you time so you might actually survive."

Asea let out a sigh and said something utterly incomprehensible.

"What kind of nonsense——"

"The 'Meteor' is very close."

Meteor?

"Feel it in your bones just how reckless and meaningless the thing you're trying to do really is. And……"

The world around them was turning blindingly white. YggON alerted him that the bug space was collapsing.

Before the light swallowed her whole, Asea left a final word behind.

"I'm the one who's going to end Linzea."