The First Defeat
It had been a decent warm-up, in the good sense of the word.
At the very least, it was far more practical than the monsters of World of Phantasm.
Like World of Phantasm, this game labyrinth most certainly had HP.
And yet...
What was the point of HP, then? Honestly, it would have been fresher if the game labyrinth simply hadn't had any HP to begin with.
"Plum Blossom Sword Formation, Open!"
This forced-defeat event seemed to have another purpose as well: letting players experience what Sword Demon Dragon Blade actually felt like before the game labyrinth proper began.
Masterful direction, truly.
That is, if you overlooked the fact that it hadn't even considered the most basic truth of game labyrinths — that getting wrecked inside one means feeling real pain.
⊳ Objective: Repel the attackers (8/8) — CLEARED
⊳ Time Limit: 5 minutes
⊳ Reward: 10 YggON Tickets
"Time?"
"Two minutes and twenty-seven seconds."
"Hell yeah. Under three minutes!"
Just as he'd promised, Ryu Hwi had cleared the mission in under three minutes.
For anyone else it would have been brutal, nightmarish difficulty — but Ryu Hwi was the exception.
"So what happens if you force your way through a scripted defeat event? Do you get some kind of special reward?"
Before YggON could finish, Ryu Hwi's Intuition screamed a warning at him.
He tried to react instantly — but he was one beat too late.
Danger, closing in without the slightest omen.
Even his Intuition could only report one thing: this cannot be dodged.
"What the—?!"
A massive pentagram unfurled across the ground with Ryu Hwi at its center.
"Hold on, why is there a pentagram in an Eastern-style game...?"
Sword Demon Dragon Blade was an 'Eastern fantasy' game labyrinth, yet — just like the skill spread out before him — it contained techniques whose nature you couldn't pin down: magic or martial arts, take your pick.
"MWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
Laughter thundered down from somewhere above.
Heaven knew what trick he'd used, but the booming guffaw rolled all the way to the ends of the sky.
Before long, an old man emerged from the far side of the bamboo grove.
White hair spilled loose and wild, his beard trailed long enough to brush the ground, and the robes draped over his body were the absolute pinnacle of gaudiness — as if he fancied himself an emperor.
Ryu Hwi's eyes bulged.
"Wait, that's the Sword Demon — the final boss of this game labyrinth?! Why the hell is HE showing up here?!"
After laughing his fill, the old man — the Sword Demon — fixed his piercing gaze on Ryu Hwi.
"You have some skill for a whelp, I see. As a special honor, this venerable one shall demonstrate the supreme realm he has attained."
I don't need it. Don't show me anything!
Ryu Hwi wanted to argue, but the power of the pentagram etched into the ground pressed down on him and held him fast.
You goddamn—!
"Rejoice, for to be struck by the Thousand Killing Thunder Formation is a glory spanning three lifetimes!!"
And then the world turned blinding white.
He now knew, firsthand, what death felt like.
Ryu Hwi, who had blacked out from searing agony, opened his eyes inside a shabby mountain lodge.
"So you finally wake?"
"......"
Before him stood a blind woman, her eyes bound with a dark cloth.
"It seems you were struck by the Sword Demon's Thousand Killing Thunder Formation. I have already treated the internal injuries it left you with."
"......"
"What grievance do you hold against the Sword Demon? Did he perhaps destroy your family with his own hand?"
Ryu Hwi just sat there in a daze, saying nothing, yet the story carried on perfectly fine without him.
"Ah, I see it — vengeance burns within you. Good. If this is fate, then so be it. Follow me. I shall grant you the power to take your revenge."
The plot galloped forward without giving Ryu Hwi a single moment to gather his wits.
The standard setup: the protagonist, on the verge of death, is rescued by a passing woman, and swears his vengeance.
That woman was once a master who strode across the martial world, the inheritor of the absolute secret blade, Dragon Blade.
But the Sword Demon's schemes had robbed her of the ability to ever hold a sword again.
"Bow to me nine times. Then, as the heir to the Dragon Blade, I shall pass down everything I know to you."
"......"
Excuse me, but why would I do that?
The story had barrelled ahead on its own, and now it wanted him to grovel. Ryu Hwi tried to ignore it — but for some reason, his body wouldn't move.
"You son of a bit—"
Gritting his teeth, Ryu Hwi bowed nine times.
"Then I shall now teach you the basic forms of the Dragon Blade."
Per the event script, the woman would name the protagonist heir to the Dragon Blade and instruct him in the fundamental systems of Sword Demon Dragon Blade and its secret martial manuals.
— or so the story apparently went.
"So the tutorial just installs the skills automatically? That's actually conven—"
"......"
The sky was very blue.
The figure playing the protagonist's master was not a genuine game resident, but an NPC placed purely to drive the event script.
If the characters here were living, breathing beings like the residents of World of Phantasm, the whole thing would have felt far more vivid.
But because they were merely 'puppets' staged for the plot, he felt nothing at all.
Yggdrasil apparently allocated different resources to each game labyrinth, so this was probably just part of that difference.
Anyway, that wasn't the important thing right now...
Just shut up, damn it.
Ryu Hwi ground his teeth.
"Change of plans."
The original strategy was to spend a month touring various game labyrinths and stockpiling tickets.
That plan hadn't changed — but he was wedging one more item into it.
"While I'm out farming tickets from the other labyrinths... I'm also going to clear this son-of-a-bitch game labyrinth."
He could not live with being humiliated like that.
He would absolutely smash that smirking face into the dirt.
I will clear this goddamn game labyrinth, no matter what!
Ryu Hwi swore it.
"Just you wait, Sword Demon!"
From the moment he resolved to conquer Sword Demon Dragon Blade, he scoured every corner he could think of for guides and strategies.
With YggON's help, he managed to piece together a fair amount of intel.
There was plenty more where that came from.
The problem was that for Ryu Hwi — who could learn skills through no means other than the Random Box — almost none of it was actually useful.
"I will spin it."
YggON startled itself with its own suggestion.
"Tickets and points from other game labyrinths all go into the pile. But whatever I earn here, I'm spending on the spot, every last one."
Ryu Hwi was aflame with vengeance.
He would clear this game by any means necessary.
"Starting with the 21 tickets I picked up on the way here!!"
Ryu Hwi immediately pulled the Random Box.
And then...
NNNNN
RRNNN
NRNNR
NNNNN
R
"AARGH, YOU PIECE OF—!!"
"Don't!"
Never trust a pickup rate.
Ryu Hwi felt the lesson of every gacha game in existence sink deep into his bones.
Tour other game labyrinths, secure tickets.
Spend the spare time playing Sword Demon Dragon Blade.
Tour other game labyrinths again, secure more tickets.
Play Sword Demon Dragon Blade again.
After a month of this relentless grind, only the final stage remained.
Now and then, whenever he found a spare moment, he'd pilot the cube robot to check on the outside world.
Wolya's shop, Jucheongwang, was still under surveillance by Black Snake and Iron Blood.
Black Snake he could understand — but Iron Blood's motives were a mystery, and that made them unsettling.
Still, so far they'd only watched. They hadn't made any actual move.
They were an eyesore, but he had no time to spare worrying about them now.
He'd discussed the future course of action with Wolya, and together they'd run repeated tests to see whether a game labyrinth could truly be destroyed.
As practice, they'd attempted to bring down about five of them — but only two had succeeded, Doki Doki Builder among them.
"So it's true, then. A 'Phenomenon Collapse' never occurs unless you remove something so fundamental that it flips the game's core settings on their head."
Wolya had coined the term 'Phenomenon Collapse' for the way a game labyrinth would fracture under its own contradictions and come crashing down.
"I've brainstormed every which way to collapse the World of Phantasm labyrinth."
Wolya — currently wearing the childish boy automaton from their first meeting — scratched her head.
While Ryu Hwi had been bouncing between labyrinths and growing stronger, the detailed planning had all been left to her.
"As I mentioned before, a game labyrinth collapses when any one of three conditions is met."
One: the resources allocated to the game labyrinth itself run dry.
Two: the labyrinth's gamer count stays below a certain threshold for an extended period.
Three: a critical flaw arises within the game labyrinth itself, making it impossible to maintain.
It was Wolya who had laid all this out for him.
"At present, World of Phantasm's resources continue to dwindle. But full depletion is still years away. And in the meantime, those Latia bastards will be manufacturing new game labyrinths to extend their own lifeline."
"What are the odds they fix the stagnation problem with the new games?"
"Do you truly believe those incompetent, lazy wretches capable of it? Even the subsidiaries under Latia Soft have soaked in the same rotten atmosphere — all they cough up is endlessly boring garbage."
Latia had to fall.
So declaring, Wolya planted herself on the desk.
"Resource depletion is a luxury we can't wait for. Which is why I've prepared ways to actively exploit the second and third conditions."
A drop in gamer numbers.
A critical flaw in the game labyrinth.
Neither option was easy to stomach.
Right now, the overwhelming majority of gamers were playing World of Phantasm.
Was there really a way to shrink that player base overnight?
And a means of inflicting a critical problem on World of Phantasm was equally uncertain.
"Haha, but there is a way, you see. I shall handle the second plan myself, so you devote yourself to the third."
"Let's hear it, then."
"I built this plan around your abilities, so listen well."
Wolya's third plan.
The moment Ryu Hwi heard how they would trigger a 'Phenomenon Collapse' in World of Phantasm, he burst out laughing despite himself.
Because the plan was this —
Destroy the Tower of World of Phantasm.
They would erase the game's very objective from existence.