The Man Called Seven
“Tch. A little late, aren't we?”
A man had appeared out of nowhere and pulled Asea out of Ryu Hwi's grasp.
“I told you not to act on your own. This is going to leave some lasting damage. Can she even log out properly?”
After confirming just how dire Asea's condition was, the man clicked his tongue.
“Ryu7017, if things had gone even slightly wrong, she could have died. That's a bit cruel of you, don't you think?”
Light tone, casual mannerisms. His gear was light armor, the kind a rank novice would wear.
And yet an unidentifiable air of danger hung around the man.
“Shall we start with 'nice to meet you'? I'm Seven. Ah, obviously that's not my real name, just my character name... anyway.”
Ryu Hwi knew this man. It had been impossible not to learn of him while gathering information on 'GA-ES'.
“The master of GA-ES.”
The guild master of GA-ES, the guild Asea belonged to.
In other words — an enemy.
Seven scooped Asea up into his arms.
“Ryu7017, our GA-ES never stops. First we take down Linzea, and then our goal is to drag out the ones lurking behind it.”
“I couldn't care less about your goals.”
Ryu Hwi answered flatly.
“Is that so? Because from where I'm standing, your goals look exactly like ours. Depending on the circumstances, working together might not be—”
“What the hell does it matter to me whether your goals and mine overlap? And honestly, I doubt a bunch of pathetic losers who depend on garbage bugs like these could be of any help anyway.”
Ryu Hwi scoffed at Seven's proposal.
“Besides, you're on her side, aren't you? The moment that's true, trusting you is off the table.”
“I heard what Asea did to you. It certainly wasn't something forgivable. But...”
“Consider this a warning. Say one more word defending that woman, and I will dedicate everything I have to blowing GA-ES off the map.”
Ryu Hwi's warning was more than enough to shut Seven's mouth.
“No room for negotiation, then. Well, I suppose teaming up with the man who did that to Asea would leave a bad taste in the mouth anyway.”
Hostility toward Ryu Hwi bled through Seven's voice.
All the talk of cooperation aside, he clearly had no genuine intention of joining hands with Ryu Hwi.
“Then how about we settle this at the center of Floor 50 instead? I'd rather conserve our full strength as much as possible — who knows what kind of tricks Gabriel might have pulled.”
“I'm under no obligation to play along with—”
Mid-sentence, Ryu Hwi's face twisted.
“You bastard. You already finished preparing your escape, and you've just been stalling for time.”
“Oh? You caught on already? I wanted to see the look on your face when you realized you'd been played, but I suppose that was too much to ask.”
The space around Seven began to warp.
A bug ability of a different breed from Asea's.
Almost certainly a technique related to movement.
It must have been that same power that let him snatch Asea away right before Ryu Hwi's eyes. Ryu Hwi recalled how John Doe had suddenly materialized inside the labyrinth.
“Spatial — no, it's more like an ability to freely travel to designated anchor points... Can every single member of GA-ES serve as an anchor?”
“Haah... you really are something else. What on earth possessed Asea to poke a monster like you of all people?”
Seven sighed.
Ryu Hwi decided it would be a waste to burn energy here, so he let the showdown wait, exactly as Seven suggested.
“That woman didn't poke a monster.”
“...?”
Seven's eyes went wide.
“That woman made one.”
For all the casual ease with which Seven had tried to defend Asea, Ryu Hwi made him understand just how foolish that had been.
“...Those are heavy words.”
Seven grasped what the statement meant, and a complicated expression crossed his face.
“Heavy indeed.”
Before long, Seven and Asea were swallowed completely by black light.
In the instant before he vanished, he left Ryu Hwi with a final message.
“Come to the center. I'll be waiting.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Once Seven and Asea were gone, Ryu Hwi spat out the curse.
“Creepy bastard, through and through.”
There was zero chance of cooperating with GA-ES.
He had crushed Asea, but that didn't erase every ounce of the grudge.
The man at the head of GA-ES was the one who had interrupted Ryu Hwi's attempt to end everything with Delete, spouting nonsense like a mangy dog.
And with things as they were — especially since they were also gunning to clear Floor 50 — a collision up ahead was all but guaranteed.
Ryu Hwi had no intention of leaving these obstacles in his path alone.
If they chose to be enemies, he would simply grind them into the dirt.
No matter how I look at it, Master, you are the villain here.
No one alive could have argued with that.
Ryu Hwi scanned his surroundings.
Asea's bug attacks had left the area devastated.
Pokryeol Daedo was still standing there, alone.
Deal with him?
He considered it for a moment, then dismissed it. A waste of time.
Ryu Hwi set off straight toward the glowing tree.
“Ryu7017!”
Pokryeol Daedo's voice rang out.
“You — can you actually clear an unfinished Floor 50?”
Ryu Hwi stopped walking. When he glanced back at Pokryeol Daedo, his eyes were brimming with irritation.
“If you're that curious, go watch my next deep-sea escape walkthrough when I upload it.”
Pokryeol Daedo watched that retreating figure until it disappeared from view, then let out a hollow laugh.
After witnessing the battle between Asea and Ryu Hwi, there wasn't a shred of petty pride left in him.
If anything, he was utterly ashamed of himself — the man who had been bewitched by bugs and turned on his own teammates.
Pokryeol Daedo had played World of Phantasm for a long time.
By sheer hours alone, he had played it far longer than Bisque.
He'd been genuinely fond of the game. Watching himself grow steadily stronger had been a joy.
Which was probably what had clouded his judgment.
Time and again he'd discovered strange bugs and reported them to his superiors, only to have them brushed off as nothing. And because his superiors treated them that way, Pokryeol Daedo had let it go too, telling himself it was nothing.
He'd looked away, assuming it was all just a temporary glitch.
Floor 50 clearly wasn't the only unfinished part of the game. Everything below it, down through Floor 49, might be just as incomplete.
In fact, the floors he'd been clearing and every level beneath them had all felt oddly hollow in places.
Everything he'd pretended not to notice came back to him, one piece at a time.
“So I was just playing the clown.”
Pokryeol Daedo stared up at the sky and sighed.
From somewhere, a cold wind began to blow.
Intuition Lv3 already allowed him to detect GA-ES's bugs, but there was no harm in being careful — so the debug mode patch was welcome news.
“A live broadcast? How are they getting around the time-scale discrepancy?”
“How is that even possible? It'd be impossible unless someone could monitor the entirety of World of Phantasm's 50th floor. Is Latia Soft just letting that happen?”
If footage of Floor 50 was being broadcast, the 'unfinished areas' were inevitably going to come to light.
It amounted to announcing to the entire world that World of Phantasm was unfinished — and just how shoddy its construction really was.
“Even with Latia Soft's authority, they can't block the broadcast?”
If even Latia Soft — which practically owned the game labyrinths outright — couldn't respond properly...
Just what on earth was happening out there?
Master, I believe it would be wise to prepare more thoroughly before heading to the center.
The mastermind behind this incident most likely possesses an ability that makes 'bugs' look like a rounding error.
“Well, obviously. Forcing every user to teleport to Floor 50 in the first place is... YggON, do you have some idea what it is?”
Nine times out of ten, the odds are high that the one who orchestrated this plan...
Log out.
The gamers behind the characters Noir and Bisque emerged from their dive units.
Bisque's gamer looked utterly hollowed out. Noir's gamer felt a tightness in her chest, at a loss for how to comfort her partner. Her own body was still reeling from the aftermath of the 'bugs', but right now, her partner's condition worried her far more.
“Bisque! Noir!”
Someone called out to them by their character names.
Within the guild, it was standard practice to address members by their character names, whether inside the game labyrinth or out.
Noir turned to see who it was.
“Ragna?”
An analyst she was on friendly terms with.
“Perfect timing, actually. Ragna, there's something I wanted to ask—”
“Bisque, Noir — come with me for a second!”
Ragna looked thoroughly rattled.
Without so much as a by-your-leave, he grabbed Bisque and Noir and hauled them off somewhere.
“What's your deal? I'm really not in the mood to—”
“Just move, fast!”
Bisque resisted, but Ragna dragged them along regardless.
The Linzea Guild headquarters was in chaos. Analysts darted frantically from station to station, and gamers fresh out of the game labyrinth could be seen shouting their frustrations without a shred of restraint.
Floor 50 is being broadcast?!
Noir was stunned to learn that the situation on Floor 50 was being broadcast in real time.
Live broadcasting from inside a game labyrinth was known to be beyond the limits of current technology.
“Ragna, what on earth is—”
“They'll explain over there.”
Ragna led Bisque and Noir to a secluded spot where no one was likely to wander in.
Once he'd confirmed no one was around, Ragna let out a breath of relief and wiped his brow.
“What the hell is this about?”
Bisque's voice was thick with irritation.
“I found out something unbelievable.”
Ragna glanced around one more time, then spoke carefully.
“The person behind this entire incident — it was almost certainly Mr. Gabriel.”
“What?”
Noir's eyes went wide. Bisque showed no particular reaction.
“What are you talking about? Why would Mr. Gabriel do something like this? Do you even have proof?”
“This is it.”
Ragna pulled a disk out of his pocket.
“A while back, Mr. Gabriel suddenly called for me. He knew I had an interest in 'Ryu7017' and said he wanted to talk about it. After we spoke for a while, he gave me this.”
“Mr. Gabriel gave you that?”
“And then he said this. 'A major problem may soon arise in World of Phantasm. There's a chance I won't be able to respond when it happens — so run the disk.'”
None of it made sense.
Setting everything else aside — why would he entrust something that important to an analyst like Ragna?
“When this whole crisis broke out, I ran the disk, and suddenly the program installed on it seized control of every internal system in Linzea — and this live broadcast started up.”
“?!”
Noir was aghast at the revelation that this very broadcast was running through the Linzea Guild's own equipment.
“This broadcast...”
Even Bisque, who had looked wholly uninterested until now, was visibly shaken.
“A live broadcast that began at the exact moment the gamers were forcibly teleported to Floor 50. That timing is far too perfect to be a coincidence, right? If this goes wrong, I'm the one who gets framed as a terrorist. What do I do? Hahaha.”
“Now is not the time to be laughing! Where's Mr. Gabriel?!”
“If I knew that, would the guild be in this state? Mr. Gabriel's gone missing, so now everyone thinks it's their moment — even the 'executives' are running wild doing whatever they please.”
There had been no contact from Gabriel at all. There was no telling where he had gone.
Noir was dumbfounded by the entire situation.
Mr. Gabriel, really? But why...
No — more than that.
How?
Everything unfolding now went far, far beyond what any single individual could accomplish.
Gabriel Darius. Just what had that man done?
Nine times out of ten, the odds are high that the one who orchestrated this plan...
...possesses the authority of a Game Master.
After a deliberate pause, YggON dropped an utterly devastating bomb.