The Beginning
It all started the day he ran into Linpel Darius by chance.
To Linpel, it had been nothing more than a trivial incident not even worth remembering.
But for Ryu Hwi, it was the shocking event that had upended his entire life.
Malice inflicted without a second thought.
That malice had dropped one man straight into hell…
"Five."
…and given birth to a demon.
"Four."
In a span of no more than five seconds, a storm of thoughts raced through Linpel's mind.
"Three."
Just a few days ago, his brother Gabriel Darius had given him this advice.
'Linpel, don't make a rash move.'
The man who normally couldn't care less what Linpel did had, for some reason, said something strange that day.
'Ryu7017, Ryu Hwi. The one you personally drove out of the Linzea Guild. I told you about him once before, remember?'
Linpel still couldn't recall who Ryu Hwi even was.
'Stay away from Ryu7017. For now, I'll gather information on him through the other guild members. Once the intel is in, it won't be too late to move.'
Gabriel Darius was excessively wary of Ryu7017.
'Ryu7017 is… different. Gamers exploiting bugs and cheats have cropped up now and then, but this feels fundamentally different.'
His brother's eyes—always sharper, more calculating than Linpel's own—glinted with unusual keenness.
'I won't say it twice. Do not make contact with Ryu7017 until authorization comes down.'
Under normal circumstances, he would have quietly obeyed his brother. But this time was different.
He would topple the very Ryu7017 his brother feared—with his own two hands.
Linpel had believed this was the perfect chance to land a blow on his flawless older brother.
"Two."
Only now, at the very end, did he realize his brother had been right.
"You bastard—it's not too late even now! Take your hands off me!"
Linpel screamed in a panic.
"One."
Ryu Hwi counted down flatly, pinning down Linpel as he thrashed like a madman.
"Zero."
"I'll make you regret this! You WILL regret—AAAGH!"
A cold, level voice cut off his final words.
The cracks that had begun at Linpel's fingertips spread steadily, crawling up over the back of his hand and up his wrist.
He tried desperately to stop the cracks from growing, but no matter how hard he struggled, they only widened.
"Log out—why won't it let me log out?! Stop it! I told you to stop!"
"I regret to inform you that once this has been activated, there is no stopping it. Truly a shame."
Ryu Hwi adopted an airy, playful attitude as he gazed down at Linpel with eyes of ice.
"Ghhh—aaah—AAAAAAAAAH!"
Every time the cracks spread, excruciating pain flooded through Linpel. Even when the Gunsword had run him through, it hadn't hurt like this.
"My account… my data…!"
Before anyone realized it, the cracks had consumed half of Linpel's body.
Ryu Hwi leaned down, bringing his lips close to Linpel's ear, and whispered in a voice low enough for him alone to hear.
"That's why you should've known when to quit."
It was the same thing Linpel had sneered at him once, back when Ryu Hwi was tumbling into the abyss—except this time, it was Ryu Hwi returning the favor.
"Ryu Hwi!"
"That's right. That's my name. Don't forget it this time. Though I suppose you never will."
Cracks spreading across his entire body, Linpel screamed Ryu Hwi's name one last time before vanishing completely.
The thing that had been Linpel mere moments ago scattered in all directions as dust.
It was over.
Ryu Hwi covered his face with a hand and walked on slowly.
As the commotion died down, the villagers and other gamers began to peek out one by one.
Avoiding their eyes, Ryu Hwi started walking toward some destination only he knew.
He walked, and walked, and kept on walking. No one followed.
"YggON—is 5555 still connected?"
[Yes, she is.]
"Cut it off for a moment. I don't want anyone seeing this."
[Understood. Then…]
YggON's lens flickered briefly, and the little machine vanished somewhere.
No doubt it had read Ryu Hwi's heart and understood his wish to be alone.
Once no one was left around him, he sank down where he stood.
"Ha… haha."
A dark alleyway.
A street where no light reached.
He laughed behind hands pressed over his face.
His body shook as if he couldn't contain it, his jaw clenched tight as though forcibly holding something back.
What he couldn't hold back trickled down through the gaps between his fingers.
But in this place, there was no one to see it.
Revenge is hollow.
Revenge gives birth to nothing.
Don't think of revenge—live your own life.
Worn-out platitudes.
So worn out that they no longer rang true in his heart.
Even if revenge were as empty as empty could be, for some, there could be no moving forward without finishing it.
Ryu Hwi's heart was still frozen in place, anchored to that day three years ago when everything was stolen from him.
Yet today, that same man had taken his first true step toward the future.
A first step—a farewell to his hellish past, and a stride into what was to come.
Ryu Hwi simply sat there, motionless.
Until the warm, damp touch on his palms faded away.
He sensed someone approaching.
He didn't need to look to know who it was.
A searing spike of killing intent was already stabbing into his back.
Rising to his feet, he glanced lazily in the direction of the presence and smirked.
"The meteor you all believed in burned up and vanished. Pathetic, isn't it?"
"……"
A lone figure emerged from the darkness.
White hair showed beneath the shadow of a hood.
Sharp eyes glinted through the gap, glaring straight at Ryu Hwi.
Within those eyes burned rage, killing intent, jealousy, confusion—a storm of emotions laid utterly bare.
'I told you to feel, down to your bones, how reckless and meaningless what I'm doing really is, didn't I?'
Ryu Hwi laughed as if this were the most delightful thing in the world.
Who knew that shattering someone's expectations could feel this good!
"And feel it I did. So much my bones ache. It wasn't reckless, and it wasn't meaningless either. Right?"
The hood hid her expression.
But he could easily imagine the face Asea was making right now.
She would be wearing an expression of bitter frustration, seething that things hadn't gone her way.
Just picturing it was entertaining.
'What was it you said? That the one to finish off Linzea would be you?'
Face to face with Asea, Ryu Hwi pointed his thumb at the ground.
"You think I'd hand such a fun job to a human like you? The one who blows Linzea Guild to pieces is me. And…"
His finger shifted, aiming straight at her.
"Whatever you're scheming, I couldn't care less. I'm going to trample the Linzea Guild, and you, and everything else into the dirt."
"…!"
Asea's hand darted inside her robe, seizing something.
"Care to try me?"
Answering her in kind, Ryu Hwi slung the Gunsword up onto his shoulder.
"Do you think you can win because I'm exhausted from fighting that half-wit meteor? Shall we find out? The next one to get 'Deleted' will be you."
"Gh…."
Asea couldn't hide her impatience.
"It seems you're using some kind of bug yourself…"
The mockery drained from Ryu Hwi's face in an instant.
"Don't you dare call my power a mere 'bug.'"
[You tell her, sir.]
YggON, who had somehow drifted close, chimed in with enthusiastic agreement.
Ryu Hwi inwardly grumbled about the mood-wrecking robot vacuum.
Not that Asea could see it anyway.
"Then… very well."
A moment later, Asea quietly lowered her hand.
"It seems I misjudged your capabilities. There are far too many unknowns about you. Fighting you here would be… risky."
She had apparently given up on fighting Ryu Hwi here and now.
'But the one to finish Linzea is me. On that point alone, I will never yield—'
"Cut the crap."
Ryu Hwi cut her off.
"Sounds like you've got some grudge or whatever, but that's none of my business. I have zero interest in your circumstances."
Whatever reason Asea—Cynthia—had for framing him back then, Ryu Hwi couldn't have cared less.
Whatever the reason, she had stolen his life from him.
And so…
"Next time, I'll be the one grinding you underfoot. Wait for it. And brace yourself."
Asea bit down hard on her lip.
Ryu Hwi's gaze and Asea's crossed, each carrying a mass of emotions in their eyes.
After a long moment, Asea turned away in silence and vanished somewhere.
Ryu Hwi watched her go without a word.
Then, after a while, he let out a soft sigh.
Taking down one Linpel wasn't the end of anything.
This was only the beginning.
"YggON—reconnect me with 5555."
Ryu Hwi reconnected the line to 5555 that he'd cut moments before.
«Oh, we're back online. How on earth does this even work?»
5555's voice came through.
"You got quite the show, didn't you? Though even I didn't see where it was headed midway through."
«Sure did. To think you'd even take down Linzea's ace. That was a thrilling match.»
"Glad you enjoyed it."
«Besides, Linpel Darius's record has vanished from the WoP files… so the data deletion was the real deal.»
5555 had been watching the entire situation through Ryu Hwi's eyes.
She had witnessed, plain as day, exactly how Ryu Hwi 'Deleted' the Game Labyrinth's data.
«There's no way an ability like that comes without limits. So? Are there restrictions? A usage limit? Or do you pay a price every time you erase something?»
There was no need to answer that.
"You shared your end of the deal by letting me use your sight. Now it's your turn to keep your promise."
«Wait! You didn't just defeat Linzea's ace—you deleted his character account entirely. This is going to cause an uproar a hundred times bigger than before.»
Ryu Hwi had recorded his fight with Linpel.
The footage contained, in its entirety, the moment Ryu Hwi deleted Linpel's weapon—and Linpel's account data.
If he made it public, exactly as 5555 said, it would detonate a massive storm.
«Linzea finding out about 'Delete' is unavoidable, I suppose. The man himself, whose account got deleted, is over there. Fine, we'll write that off—but you should think twice before revealing Delete to anyone else.»
"Worried about me, are you?"
«I have a goal. To achieve it, I need collaborators.»
"And to achieve that goal, you hacked into my eyes and spied on me?"
5555 fell silent.
"I don't know what you want, but I'm busy enough with my own work. Go find someone else."
«Even if it's connected to Linzea?»
"Linzea?"
He had no idea what 5555's goal was—but if it involved Linzea, the calculus changed.
«We'll talk details when we meet in person later… but keep Delete hidden as much as you can. That's not about my goal. That's me, looking out for you.»
"Appreciated. But…"
[Upload complete.]
"You already uploaded it?!"
«What?!»
YggON had uploaded the edited video. By now, it would be live on YggTube.
5555 sounded badly flustered.
«Didn't you hear a word I said? Do you have any idea what's about to happen?»
"I know."
One wrong step, and Ryu Hwi himself could end up in danger.
His very existence might be treated as a threat to this world.
"Which is exactly what I want."
What he desired. What he intended to achieve.
"From this moment on, those people will learn to fear me—a mere Unknown. They'll have to live in terror of the very 'Unknown' they used to look down on."
Ryu Hwi's goal was no longer 'revenge.'
Everything, from here on, was for the sake of his 'dream.'
"So go ahead. Laugh all you want."
A new video had been uploaded to the Ryu7017 channel.
It was more shocking than anything that had come before. No—'shocking' didn't even begin to cover it.
──Unknown's Deep Sea Escape
Only now did they finally grasp the true meaning behind the series' title.
And that meaning was…