The Floor That Should Not Exist
Even after the violent shaking stopped, a faint tremor continued to ripple through the air.
"Assess the situation!"
The Guild Master of GA-ES, who had barely managed to drag himself to his feet, barked the order. The other guild members forced their bodies upright and scrambled to obey.
Asea felt a creeping dread.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
"Bug corruption status unconfirmable!!"
"We can't maintain bug control!"
The bad news came pouring in, one report after another. Asea's mind went white.
"Something's wrong with the bug control? Don't tell me..."
Asea thought of John Doe.
The genius who had devised the core theory behind bug control — and a broken, trash excuse of a human being. She suspected that John Doe might have rigged the bug control system with some kind of trap.
But the news that followed surpassed anything she could have imagined.
"Th-this is bad! Really bad!"
A scout who had gone out to reconnoiter came sprinting back to the main force, shouting in desperation.
"The B-Burning Gem... it's gone!!"
At first, no one understood what 'the Burning Gem being gone' was supposed to mean.
"What? What is that even supposed to mean? Calm down and speak slowly."
But the scout's grim expression made the gravity of the situation clear. Instead of pressing the man for answers, the Master of GA-ES waited patiently for the full report.
"The Burning Gem suddenly collapsed. The earthquake from earlier seems to have been caused by the impact! And..."
"...!"
The Master evidently couldn't bring himself to believe it — even before the report was finished, he took off running straight for the Burning Gem.
"Wait, I'm coming with you. All of you, follow me!"
Asea and the rest of the guild members immediately raced after him.
Before long, they arrived at a vantage point overlooking the entirety of Floor 50.
And what met their eyes was...
"That's—!"
The Burning Gem had vanished, and in its place remained only an unquenchable fire. No — not fire.
At a glance it looked like roaring flames, but its true nature was a tear in space itself, split so high it seemed to pierce the heavens.
The reason it appeared to smolder and blaze was that the rift was even now devouring the surrounding space, swelling larger with every passing moment.
"What was the bug corruption rate in the Burning Gem region when you last checked?"
The Master of GA-ES asked in a calm voice.
"Around ten to fifteen percent, in progress."
"Then it's certain the bugs aren't the cause."
Bugs might trigger unexpected phenomena, but they could never wipe out a game labyrinth's data wholesale like this. At worst, they could render something inoperable for a limited period.
It was then that Asea remembered something.
A certain being who could 'delete' data within a game labyrinth at will.
"Don't tell me—!"
Kra-koom...
Centered on the ever-widening rift, the sky itself began to split apart.
Floor 50 had already been unstable in its unfinished state. The moment one of the core pillars holding it together vanished, the entire floor began to come crashing down.
"The sky... Floor 50 is collapsing!"
The Master of GA-ES looked up at the heavens and clenched his teeth. Asea sank into despair.
At least one thing was certain.
The plan GA-ES had spent so long preparing had, in this very moment, crumbled to nothing.
Another violent tremor swept through GA-ES's position. The rift in the sky swelled, poised to swallow Floor 50 whole.
And in that instant, Asea screamed someone's name — a name heavy with loathing, despair, and fury.
"Ryu Hwi!!"
"That's Floor 50 of World of Phantasm?"
"It's a complete dumpster fire. Ha..."
Because the flow of time differs between reality and the game labyrinths, live broadcasting from inside them was widely known to be impossible. Beyond the time-flow problem, any number of other restrictions existed, which was why most gamers recorded their playthroughs and uploaded them to Yggtube instead.
Ryu Hwi and Wolya had attempted live labyrinth broadcasting several times themselves, but had yet to achieve any meaningful breakthrough.
So how on earth was this happening?
Right now, the situation on Floor 50 of World of Phantasm was being broadcast live.
The footage played at a default 10x speed, making it hard to follow the details — but what was happening at this very moment was unmistakable.
Criticism of World of Phantasm's game design had been circulating for a long time, but today, its true nature was laid utterly bare.
"Shut down the broadcast!! NOW!!"
The fury-laced roar of Steebro Latia Duke, CEO of Latia Soft, shook the room.
"What are you all doing?! This is a Platinum's order! Cut that broadcast this instant!"
Latia Soft scrambled at Steebro's command, but the situation showed no sign of improving.
"Someone has hacked into the broadcast! Source untraceable — it appears to be the power of a Yggdrasil Item!"
"Then block the signal, jam it, do whatever it takes! We have plenty of Yggdrasil Items on our side too!"
"W-we can't block it! They're completely shutting out all interference from our end!"
"Grrh, you useless pieces of trash!"
Steebro hurled curses at his subordinates.
"Gabriel! Why isn't this man answering?! Is he inside the game labyrinth? Worthless bastard — useless at the one moment that matters!"
When Gabriel failed to respond after repeated attempts, Steebro only grew more enraged, his voice rising to a shriek.
World of Phantasm was unfinished.
It wasn't just Floor 50 — vast stretches of the game had never been implemented at all. Until now, Latia Soft had manipulated the Linzea Guild to keep those unfinished portions hidden.
According to the original plan, no one would ever reach Floor 50, and roughly two years down the line a convenient 'accident' would occur, closing the labyrinth for good. Game labyrinths shuttered by 'tragic mishaps' were a dime a dozen, after all.
But the shameful secret he'd intended to hide until the very end had now been exposed to the entire world.
Two years! Two years is all I needed. In two years, the new labyrinth under development would have been complete, and the experiment finished as well. Then I could have pulled down the current Diamond and become the new king! A new Diamond!
All he had to do was survive this one incident.
Latia's image would take a hit, but it wouldn't be a fatal wound. Contain the situation quickly, spin a plausible enough story, and it would blow over.
Steebro raised his voice at his subordinates once more.
And in that very moment—
KUUUUUUNG!!
A thunderous roar split the air. Everyone watching the broadcast clapped their hands over their ears.
"What now?!"
"R-reporting in! Floor 50 is collapsing!"
"...What?"
It was an absurd report. Unable to bring himself to believe it, Steebro checked the live footage with his own two eyes — and froze.
"Good... God."
He stood utterly dumbfounded.
Centered on the Burning Gem region, all of Floor 50 was collapsing into ruin.
Every single person watching the broadcast fell open-mouthed at the sight.
"Wh-what on earth is happening over there?!"
"Where's the feed from that region?!"
Just then, as if in answer to the flood of demands, a new video appeared.
The footage showed, at 1x speed, exactly what had just transpired in the Burning Gem region.
The trigger of Floor 50's collapse.
"Ha, hahaha! He actually went and did it!"
Some laughed.
"Is that guy seriously out of his mind?!"
Others recoiled in shock.
The man captured in that footage advanced without the slightest concern for whether Floor 50 was finished or not. And at last, he pulled the trigger that brought the entire floor down.
Everyone watching the broadcast knew his name.
In a sense, he was the most famous existence in all of World of Phantasm right now.
"Ryu7017!!"
Seriously, what is with this Floor 50? Isn't this going a bit too far, even for it?
Ryu Hwi let out an exasperated sigh.
[It was always a garbage game labyrinth, but this exceeded even my expectations. Disgusting.]
Even YggON mimed a sigh.
[Calling it unfinished would be generous — even the skeleton itself is shoddy.]
Ryu Hwi looked around.
The Burning Gem. The Reverse Waterfall. The Winged Whirlwind. The Lightning Mountain.
Four regions, all tangled together, created a scene of utter chaos — like a mismatched puzzle someone had jammed together by force.
"I figured if I broke one of the pillars holding Floor 50 together, it would open a hole leading to the center, but..."
The problem was that Floor 50 was far cruder than he'd anticipated. Instead of merely opening a hole, the entire floor had come collapsing down.
It was a disaster born of exactly what YggON had said: even the 'skeleton' itself was defective.
"But still..."
At the far edge of the wrecked, puzzle-scrap landscape, something gleamed brightly.
The only thing amid the ruined terrain that had refused to crumble, holding its shape unbroken.
"There's my objective."
Visible even from this distance, it took the form of a 'tree'.
A tree glowing white — pure, radiant white.
"So if I just reach that thing, the floor's cleared?"
The destination was a fair distance away, but if he hurried, he could reach it within a few hours.
Today, he would finish World of Phantasm for good. Ryu Hwi steeled his resolve.
[I'm afraid it won't be quite that easy.]
"Huh?"
YggON pointed somewhere. Ryu Hwi's gaze naturally followed.
"Now what the hell is THAT?!"
Ryu Hwi found himself shouting at the 'something' flying through the sky.
A mechanical exterior. Crudely assembled mechanical wings. Its silhouette resembled a colossal mechanical whale.
A being that spat in the face of World of Phantasm's entire setting, floating there without a shred of shame.
And it wasn't alone. Countless other mechanical creatures dotted the landscape. From a tower that looked to be stacked out of spare machine parts, laser cannons fired ceaselessly in every direction, while somewhere else, tanks rumbled across the terrain.
"Those are like the machine zombies, right?"
[Affirmative. GA-ES's bugs are the cause. It appears the bugs they scattered breached the null zone and took root there.]
It would be a bitter pill for GA-ES to swallow — but with all of Floor 50 collapsing, whatever plans they'd made were now worthless anyway.
"Damn bastards. Well, at least this means their scheme is dead and buried too."
The real problem was that their bugs had begun obstructing Ryu Hwi in ways no one could have predicted.
Floor 50 in its collapsed state was perilous beyond measure.
Part of him wanted to just sprint straight for the goal, but with the floor this unstable, caution was paramount.
Spatial distortions erupted without warning. The scenery before his eyes shifted moment to moment like a mirage, and the forced, mismatched ground quivered without rest. In some places, the moment his foot came down, the data would glitch and the terrain simply vanish.
He had been about to take a careless step when something pricked at his instincts, and he threw himself backward. The ground where he'd been standing collapsed the instant he moved.
"Damn it... Is even my Intuition too slow to keep up with this?"
Spots that had felt safe a heartbeat ago turned deadly in an instant, while places that had screamed danger abruptly fell silent and safe. His head ached from absorbing the constantly shifting information too keenly.
"Guh—?!"
Sensing something, Ryu Hwi flung his body aside in desperation.
In that instant, a massive beam of light grazed past just above his head.
"A bug turret? Son of a—"
[It is firing one shot at five-minute intervals.]
"So it wasn't just firing at random — it's targeting gamers?"
The turret's laser attack had been something even Ryu Hwi could only dodge thanks to his Intuition. Any other gamer would have found it nearly impossible to evade.
A colossal pain in the ass.
The bugs GA-ES uses are hard to detect properly, but the bugs of Floor 50 itself, I can register them.
SSR — Intuition Lv 2
Passive — always active.
Enhances the user's sixth sense (Lv 2).
Intuition pushed to its extreme glimpses the origin of the world.
= SYSTEM OFF =
It wasn't that they couldn't be recognized as bugs at all.
It was simply that Intuition Lv 2 struggled to keep pace with GA-ES's bugs.
Ryu Hwi checked his Random Box points.
Thanks to relentlessly hunting the powerful foes of Floor 50, he'd amassed plenty.
[Master, this is a warning. Based on an analysis of everything that has happened so far, 'Intuition' is considered a special skill even among the SSR tier.]
Ryu Hwi already knew that Intuition was a 'special skill'.
[Intuition is dangerous. There have been times, Master, when even you could not tell whether a choice was truly your own will — or an order from your Intuition.]
Just as YggON said, there had been moments when Ryu Hwi surrendered everything to his Intuition — when he stopped thinking with his head and simply followed it.
If he raised its level as things stood...
'Ryu Hwi' might stop being Ryu Hwi — and become something else entirely.