A Curse Upon Gamers
The 'shadow' stirred, lunging up from beneath Ryu Hwi's feet.
John Doe had been secretly maneuvering his shadow all along, feigning a lecture about his research results.
A surprise attack aimed at an moment of carelessness — and shadow-based attacks were notoriously hard to anticipate.
Master, if you weren't who you are, that would've gotten you.
SSR – Intuition Lv 2
With its level raised, Intuition had shown him exactly how John Doe would strike.
Instinct told him how to respond, too.
Faster than the shadow could surge upward, Ryu Hwi hurled a flashbang into the air.
The instant it detonated, John Doe's shadow was wiped away in a blaze of blinding light.
"Kgh?! No way! How did you read my ability?! Don't tell me you already knew about me?!"
John Doe had convinced himself that his opponent knew everything about him.
"Urgh... AAAAGH!"
The hand gripping his throat tightened again.
It was enough force to snap his neck right then and there.
"I'm pretty angry right now, so don't push my buttons. Answer honestly. What is that thing? What are you people trying to do?"
Even now, Kugan's black aura was eroding the dungeon outward, its speed accelerating by the moment.
"Answer fast. By the way, I've blocked your 'logout,' so running away is pointless."
"Urgh... you blocked my logout? What...? Hgh...!"
Realizing his logout was truly locked, John Doe swallowed hard.
"That's impossible. Even a bug shouldn't be able to... just what the hell are you?"
"Guess Asea never told you anything about me?"
"Asea? You're that Ryu7017?!"
John Doe had been held by the nape this whole time, unable to see Ryu Hwi's face. But the moment 'Asea' was mentioned, something clicked, and his voice shot up.
"I'll say it again. What is that thing?"
"Why should I tell you...?"
"Oh?"
He'd asked several times already, and John Doe had refused to cooperate every single time.
Ryu Hwi decided he was done asking.
Instead, he would run the experiment directly on John Doe's body.
Still gripping his throat, Ryu Hwi hoisted him clean off the ground.
"Hgh?!"
John Doe thrashed in his grip, but no amount of struggling could pry loose that hand.
Then, holding him firm, Ryu Hwi began walking toward Kugan, one step at a time.
"Wait — what are you doing?"
No answer. Just another step forward.
"You wouldn't. You're not actually thinking of doing what I think you're doing, right?"
"What are you so scared of?"
Ryu Hwi sneered at him.
"You did pretty much the same thing to them, didn't you?"
"They're NPCs! I'm a Gamer! What happens if something goes wrong with a Gamer's account?!"
"Not my problem."
As Kugan's black power spread in every direction, Ryu Hwi stepped right up to its edge.
The moment he was about to make contact with that smoldering, undulating black force, John Doe screamed.
"Okay, okay! I'll talk! I'll tell you! Just stop!"
"Oh? Should've spoken up sooner."
Ryu Hwi let out a sigh of genuine regret.
"It already touched you."
Kugan's black aura had brushed against John Doe's arm.
The bug corroding the dungeon burrowed into his body in an instant.
"AAAAAAAAGH!"
John Doe shrieked as he watched his own body begin to corrode.
"GRAAH! No! My character! My account...!!"
He raged like a madman, and only then did Ryu Hwi release his throat.
"Grrrgh! Stop it! Make it stop!"
Whatever control John Doe had over the bugs kicked in, and the corrosion eating into him finally halted. But by then, his right arm had already been consumed — dyed pitch black from shoulder to fingertip.
"Damn it all!"
John Doe scrambled far away from Kugan and hacked off his own blackened arm.
The corrupted flesh refused to regenerate, leaving his character one-armed.
"You damned—!"
He fumbled a potion out of his coat and gulped it down, but the lost arm did not return.
"My character's data is corrupted. Do you have any idea how long it'll take to restore this?! What are you going to do about it?!"
"Wait — it can be restored?"
Ryu Hwi sighed with what sounded like real disappointment.
"Your data's worth less than the residents who just got wiped out."
"I'm worth less than an NPC?"
John Doe gritted his teeth and glared at him.
Paying his fury no mind whatsoever, Ryu Hwi pressed on.
"So? You said you'd tell me about that bug. Out with it. You were dying to brag about your research results, weren't you?"
"Even I have my limits when it comes to what I'll spill, you son of a—!"
John Doe lunged without warning. At the same instant, his shadow split in two and crept toward Ryu Hwi from both flanks.
A classic trick — a feinted pincer attack designed to cover an escape.
Intuition saw straight through it. Ignoring the shadows entirely, Ryu Hwi bolted straight for John Doe himself.
"Hgh?!"
The shadow moved, but it was far too slow to react to Ryu Hwi's charge.
John Doe, half-hidden inside his own shadow, found his throat seized once again.
"A shadow-type skill. I heard it's so finicky to use that nobody plays it properly... but you make it pretty entertaining."
"Kgh!"
Choked as he was, John Doe still tried to counter. His shadow molded itself into the shape of a blade and went for Ryu Hwi's back.
Ryu Hwi reacted to that too. The shadow-blade couldn't even slice through the afterimage he left behind.
"Too slow."
"Damn you! Let go of me!"
To Ryu Hwi, John Doe's every move was laid bare.
It was different from Intuition Lv 1.
At Lv 1, the skill only gave him a sense of danger. At Lv 2, it could trace cause and effect to a meaningful degree.
Why does this feel dangerous? Why is this safe?
With cause-and-effect analysis layered on top of his natural insight, Ryu Hwi had reached the point where he could wield Intuition freely.
The problem was...
...that even Intuition Lv 2 couldn't fully perceive GA-ES's bugs. Unlike before, he could now sense them to some extent — but that was the limit.
Kugan's black aura suddenly lanced out toward Ryu Hwi, and in the chaos he lost his grip on John Doe.
"So you can read my attacks, but the bugs' movements are beyond even you?"
John Doe, barely wriggling free, seized the opening without hesitation.
"Eat this, you mongrel!"
His entire body dissolved into shadow.
Ryu Hwi gave chase, but John Doe's presence had already vanished without a trace. Even Intuition confirmed it — John Doe was simply no longer here.
Now was not the time to worry about him anyway.
The dungeon's bug corruption is ongoing.
Centered on Kugan, the black aura kept swallowing the dungeon whole.
There was hardly a patch of intact ground left anywhere nearby.
"Any way to stop it?"
[As of now, there is no alternative. Even defeating the source of the bugs will not halt the corruption.]
"I see."
First, Ryu Hwi collected the black potions, spears, and banners scattered across the ground. His reason for following them here was fulfilled.
And then...
Before leaving the dungeon, Ryu Hwi turned back to look at Kugan one last time.
The blackened giant stood vacantly, as if every shred of will had drained out of him.
But his two eyes kept welling up with bloody tears — brimming over with rage, despair, and sorrow.
Ryu Hwi watched him for a long moment, then drew an R-rank sword from his coat.
[Master? Defeating the source at this point serves no purpose.]
"Purpose-shurpose."
Gripping the sword tight, Ryu Hwi etched Kugan's final appearance into his memory.
The figure of a man who had risen against this world in his own way.
"I can set at least one of you free."
Ryu Hwi and Kugan shared nothing. No bond, no history.
He felt real sympathy for a man who had raged at the world — but that rage was none of his business.
And yet...
...he couldn't just stand by and watch an ending this wretched.
"Kugan. Anything you want to say, at the end?"
Kugan did not move.
Of course not. His consciousness was long gone.
"Leave us a final word or two. I'll hear out a dying man's will."
"..."
"Show me your last shred of will, at least."
[Master, that man lost consciousness long ago.]
YggON regarded him strangely.
He knew full well that Kugan's mind was gone — so why keep talking to him? She couldn't comprehend it.
[Did the bugs get to the one head you had that was marginally useful?]
"You've got such a charming way with words."
Ryu Hwi moved his lips.
"I know Kugan's lost his mind. I know he can't answer me."
He settled into a throwing stance, sword in hand.
"It's nothing but my own foolish lingering attachment."
I want to shake this world.
That was the only thing the two of them had in common. Beyond it, they had never exchanged a single proper word.
What had he seen? What had been done to him? What had he endured before he resolved to betray the world?
Ryu Hwi had wanted to trade even one sentence with him.
Carrying that fistful of regret, he hurled the sword with all his strength.
The blade punched through Kugan's abdomen.
The trembling body, at long last, began to slowly come apart.
And in that final moment —
Light returned to Kugan's clouded eyes. Those dim orbs, holding a dark radiance, found Ryu Hwi's face.
And then...
"I curse you, Gamer."
With those last words, Kugan's eyes closed forever.
Hearing them, Ryu Hwi couldn't help but chuckle.
"YggON, you heard that, right?"
[You heard a curse of resentment, so why do you sound pleased? Shall I schedule a brain examination for you?]
Right up until this very end, Kugan had refused to give up, fighting the unfairness of it all.
That will, that fury — it had moved something in Ryu Hwi.
"GA-ES is going down eventually anyway. Consider this me settling part of your grudge. So..."
Ryu Hwi turned his back on the blackened dungeon.
"Please forget this memory, and be reborn in peace..."
The Blood-Shedding Corps had cleared the dungeon.
But the price was that they could never return — they had become something other than themselves.
Some people cursed the Blood-Shedding Corps as fools. Clearing a dungeon changed nothing, they said.
Others were stunned that mere residents — nothing more than NPCs — had managed a dungeon clear at all.
The damage was severe, but the fact that residents had conquered a dungeon was enough to shatter every assumption the world had held until now.
Yet the corps' achievement was forgotten almost immediately.
Because 'Predator's Nest,' the dungeon they had cleared, collapsed for reasons no one could explain.
The dungeon's entrance warped into something resembling an antlion pit, and anyone who attempted to enter found that no dungeon information would even load.
That was the theory one Gamer pushed — that this was the aftermath of residents overreaching and clearing a dungeon they had no business touching.
To everyone else, it looked plausible enough. No other explanation for the collapse presented itself.
And so the Blood-Shedding Corps went down in history as the idiots who needlessly destroyed a dungeon.
Some Gamers openly mocked them, and in the same breath grew more brazen in their persecution of the game labyrinth's residents.
In the aftermath, the 'Blood-Shedding Corps Incident' drove the wedge between Gamers and the residents of the game labyrinths deeper than ever.
«Must be the bugs' interference — the footage didn't record properly. I don't think it can be recovered either.»
5555's gloomy voice drifted through the call.
The recording of the Blood-Shedding Corps' dungeon clear was a corrupted mess. The bugged equipment they'd carried had interfered with the video capture.
How the corps had fought. How they had died.
The footage that documented GA-ES's atrocity had been rendered worthless.
Ryu Hwi wasn't particularly bothered.
YggON had already warned him the recording might fail; he'd only asked 5555 in case she had some workaround.
«I never imagined it would end like this.»
It was 5555 who had guided him here in the first place. Even so, she clearly hadn't predicted this outcome.
«We all underestimated GA-ES. Using residents as guinea pigs for their bug experiments...»
He'd expected GA-ES to do something with the residents.
But they were far more vicious than anyone had imagined.
If Ryu Hwi hadn't secretly trailed the Blood-Shedding Corps, the key to the truth behind this incident would have been lost forever.
The corps would have been remembered as nothing more than reckless idiots whose doomed challenge brought a dungeon down.
Exactly as things stood now.
"I have no intention of taking this lying down."
When he was wronged, he repaid it — to the letter, with interest.
That was how Ryu Hwi lived.
«I never thought the Blood-Shedding Corps would exit the stage like this. I'll have to be more careful around GA-ES. They're likely to get in the way of my own goals.»
5555 spoke with what sounded like genuine disappointment. She had probably planned to put the Blood-Shedding Corps to use in her own way — one very different from GA-ES's.
«Well, they're not the only cards I have to play.»
"What about analyzing the data I sent you?"
Ryu Hwi had transmitted 5555 the data from the spears, banners, and black potions recovered from the dungeon.
YggON was already parsing the bug data, but he was curious what interpretation 5555 would produce.
«In progress. Looks like we'll get some pretty interesting results. How on earth is GA-ES controlling bugs like these? John Doe, was it? John Doe, John Doe... he's using a fake name as brazenly as you please, huh?»
The Linzea Guild had never once demonstrated the technology to control bugs.
So where had GA-ES gotten their hands on something like this?
From here on, he would be fighting both the Linzea Guild and GA-ES alike.
"Then I'll head off to earn my Phantasma qualification as planned. We're already way behind schedule."
He'd originally intended to clear Predator's Nest first. The delay meant he needed to move fast now.
The true battlefield.
His road to the Tower of the Demon God.
Not long after that...
...the situation in World of Phantasm began to turn strange.
One by one, residents appeared, seeking to clear dungeons just as the Blood-Shedding Corps had.
They raised their voices, calling for a world without Gamers — for the residents to live by their own strength.
Even among residents who never joined the dungeon expeditions, more and more began flinging open resentment at Gamers.
Some merchants went so far as to declare they would no longer do business with Gamers at all — their primary customers, the very source of their livelihood. They were rising up even at the cost of abandoning the lives they'd always known.
Lately, incidents and accidents had been breaking out across the land at an almost unnatural rate.
And as the turmoil in World of Phantasm swelled, little by little, moment by moment...
...a new Phantasma was born into World of Phantasm.