The Night Where No Sun Rises
That existence was an eternal night where morning never came.
Born from the convergence of countless viruses, it wore Asea's appearance — but it was no longer Asea.
It was the Trucardia Virus itself, granted physical form.
The moment their eyes met, the being that called itself Nox exuded a pressure so crushing he could barely breathe.
“Ryu—Hwi.”
“Ugh—!”
The pressure bore down on him like a mountain. He gritted his teeth and fought desperately to endure it.
But it lasted only a moment. Nox turned away as if losing interest.
Before her, a pitch-black hole appeared, leading to who knew where.
I can't let her get away.
I have to Delete her.
If he let her slip away here, there was no telling what catastrophe she would unleash later.
He forced one foot forward.
In that instant, it felt as though an endless swamp had seized his legs.
“Gah!”
Nothing was actually holding him.
And yet his legs refused to move.
His instincts — his very body — were refusing to obey.
He had never once experienced anything like it.
Am I... afraid?
Then Seven stepped forward.
“Asea!”
It wasn't that Seven felt no fear either.
Even without a specialized skill like Intuition, he was still a living creature.
Knowing full well that an inescapable death waited for anyone who recklessly approached, he still took a step forward.
“Asea, you can't go any farther! Stop!”
Suppressing his terror, he pressed onward, shouting with everything he had.
“I don't care what you've become! Everyone in GA-ES is my family!!”
He knew what John Doe had done. He knew Asea had fallen into something no longer human.
Having understood and accepted all of it, Seven still chose to move forward.
“Your sins are my sins. I'll carry them all myself! Come back, Asea!”
For a moment, wings seemed to appear behind Seven's back.
Wings that were anything but beautiful.
Wings that looked cobbled together from every scrap of junk imaginable.
And yet those wings, unsoiled by the darkness of night, stretched powerfully toward the sky.
“…….”
Only then did Asea stop walking.
Asea — no, Nox's — black eyes turned toward Seven.
“In, Nox's, night, the, sun, does, not, rise.”
“……!”
Leaving those words behind, Nox turned once more toward the far side of the abyss.
The darkness that had painted the world in her wake vanished into the depths along with her.
“Asea!”
Seven's outstretched hand never reached her.
Before long, the darkness of Rider-On lifted entirely, revealing the face of Zone 17.
All Rider-On functions have been fully restored.
YggON announced the end of the anomaly that had gripped Rider-On.
But nothing was truly over.
Linpel Darius and Asea.
All that remained was the result: the enemies who had trampled his past had fallen into an endless abyss, transformed into something no longer human.
'Hecate' had already vanished to who knew where as well.
From beginning to end, he had been nothing but a plaything in S.E.N's hands.
The realization set Ryu Hwi's blood boiling like nothing else.
He was done being toyed with by someone else's games.
“YggON, logging out.”
Leaving Seven slumped on the ground behind him, he walked on.
“Don't think this is where it ends, Hecate. S.E.N.”
Carrying an unquenchable flame of rage in his chest, he pressed forward without hesitation.
“Asea…….”
Left alone, Seven stared down at his own two hands.
“…….”
Wordlessly, he looked around at his surroundings.
Rider-On — the game labyrinth GA-ES had poured its ambitions into. He had never known what it truly was, never known how it had actually been built.
How had GA-ES started again?
He cast his mind back to the moment they had hung up the 'GA-ES' signboard and formed the guild.
It began with the gathering of people who had nowhere else to go.
GA was a name Seven had come up with back when he was still young, running around with a man who had once been his friend.
The GA of Gabriel Darius.
The ES of Seven's real name, Esk Venden.
Come to think of it, the name 'Seven' was an anagram of his own name to begin with.
And so GA-ES started as a joke of a name.
Gabriel eventually dropped out, but Seven kept the name GA-ES alive.
At some point, crowds began gathering around him, and Seven made 'GA-ES' their official title.
Never turn away anyone who comes.
Let the people with nowhere to go gather here and have fun together!
That was how GA-ES was made.
In its earliest days, GA-ES had nothing to do with game labyrinths at all.
Then, little by little, it grew — and as more and more of them earned their game labyrinth licenses, it became a guild of gamers.
The founding Bronze members who couldn't keep up with that pace all drifted away, but just as they never turned away those who came, they never stopped those who left.
Then one day, out of nowhere, Seven thought:
His one-time friend — the 'GA' of GA-ES — now stood impossibly high above them all. So shouldn't the 'ES' climb up there too?
“If we're going to dream anyway, why not aim for the 'top'? Think how fun it'd be if our GA-ES — a bunch of nobodies with nowhere to go — climbed all the way up to those distant heights!”
Everyone followed Seven's lead.
And GA-ES kept growing.
They looked only at the sky.
They never looked at the ground beneath their feet.
Their hastily assembled wings were a disaster, and with their eyes fixed upward, they never saw the foundations rotting away below.
Then a sun rose suddenly on the horizon, and the hasty wings began to melt. Flapping desperately, as if in defiance—
Flapping desperately, as if to prove they could still fly higher—
Without even noticing that their wings had long since rotted through and come apart.
“John Doe.”
Seven called his name quietly.
No answer came.
“I know you're listening anyway, John Doe. I'd bet you've had me filed away as some dim-witted fool you could exploit at your leisure, haven't you?”
Only then did the answer come.
John Doe cackled.
“That's right — I have no intention of kicking you out right now. But…….”
Seven switched his chat to a guild-wide broadcast.
With the settings changed so that every single GA-ES member could hear, Seven raised his voice.
“GA-ES! Everyone, listen! Every technique, every bug we've ever used was created by 'John Doe' through inhumane experiments! And it's not just the bugs. The very technology powering Rider-On is exactly the same!”
John Doe was floored by the declaration.
“Bringing John Doe in was my choice. His crimes are my crimes. I will shoulder this guilt in full and carry it forward!”
John Doe's words died in his throat.
“John Doe, I'm done leaving you to your own devices. Until now I handed you over to Asea, but from this point on, I'll manage you personally.”
“Oh, you will. You've underestimated me far too much, John Doe. Or should I say... Owen Duke — the doctor expelled from Latia!”
Seven laid bare the 'true name' that John Doe had hidden all this time.
“Banished after your taboo experiments were exposed, then notorious for running illegal procedures and experiments from behind the scenes, aren't you? And your experiments — they're connected to Asea.”
“I never turn away anyone who comes. I couldn't care less what you did before you joined GA-ES. But what you did after joining GA-ES — that I cannot overlook!”
John Doe's deeds had crossed the line.
Reflecting on his own blindness in never realizing it, Seven steeled his resolve once more.
“Owen Duke, I'll put you to use in GA-ES until you rot away completely. Prepare yourself.”
From the other end came the sound of panicked scrambling.
The GA-ES members, who had been waiting only for Seven's orders, moved at once.
“Our goal has always been the same. To soar freely through the sky, to spread our wings wide in this rotten world! But before that — we rescue our 'family'!”
Seven declared GA-ES's new 'goal'.
“Anyone who objects, speak now!”
Seven's hand had never reached Asea. He had been able to do nothing.
The fact was more humiliating and enraging than anything.
And so Seven swore.
Even if these wings were a fake, stitched together from scraps of junk, he would never stop beating them.
“We'll make the ones behind this regret ever touching us.”
The masterminds behind this incident — Seven swore he would have his revenge on them.
GA-ES.
That day, they truly spread their wings.
Wings for soaring into the sky, clearing away everything that dared to block their path.
A week had passed since the Rider-On incident ended.
After Rider-On was restored, Seven held a press conference, announcing that the incident had occurred due to GA-ES's own negligence, and that Jucheongwang had contributed to resolving it.
Once GA-ES issued its official statement, the conspiracy theorists who had been insisting Jucheongwang was the cause had no choice but to shut their mouths.
After all, the ones who had been most aggressive toward Jucheongwang all this time had been none other than GA-ES and Seven itself.
As a gesture of self-restraint for the time being, they would devote their full efforts to maintaining Rider-On, and with a final word of apology, the press conference came to a close.
Just as promised, Seven shared GA-ES's next project's original source code, and the other terms were honored according to the 'contract' as well.
Among them was a clause banning all provocations against Jucheongwang for the next six months.
When Seven came to Jucheongwang that day, Ryu Hwi was genuinely taken aback.
In just a few days, Seven had become someone dangerous enough that Intuition itself flared a 'warning'.
The sensation was roughly on par with facing Gabriel.
It told him that this incident had driven Seven to some kind of ironclad resolve.
“The ones behind this incident are……”
“S.E.N.”
He shared the intelligence on 'S.E.N' with Seven.
From now on, S.E.N would no longer be somebody else's problem for GA-ES either.
“Our GA-ES will never join hands with your Jucheongwang. But for anything related to S.E.N, we exchange as much information as possible. How does that sound?”
He nodded at Seven's proposal.
“Hecate said S.E.N was pulling strings behind GA-ES's back. Anything ring a bell?”
“According to John Doe……”
Seven deliberately refrained from revealing John Doe's true identity.
“He says the person who taught him the foundations of the ⟨Human Realm⟩ interface technology was an acquaintance who worked in the Latia-adjacent industry. But when we made inquiries, the answer came back that 'no such person exists.' Not even a trace was left behind. That bastard was almost certainly S.E.N.”
“Latia…….”
He could practically feel the stench of rot echoing in the air.
“The name he went by was 'Britra'. Whether it's his real name or not, I can't say.”
Britra.
After Crowley and Hecate, yet another name had surfaced.
After sharing a few more pieces of information, Seven rose from his seat.
“Don't forget. In the end, what we're aiming for is you and Jucheongwang. We will never stop.”
Enemies on every side.
It dawned on him that besides 'Linpel' and 'Asea', yet another troublesome enemy had been born.
But he'd braced for that much long, long ago.
“Keep flapping away at your impossible dream. I'll pray you don't fall out of the sky from exhaustion.”
“You bastard.”
Hurling one final curse, Seven sauntered out of Jucheongwang.
After Seven left, Ryu Hwi sank into thought.
The threat of S.E.N was beyond anything he had imagined.
Linpel had been dangerous too, but with Asea — NOX — he hadn't been able to find any way to fight back at all.
And it wasn't just those two.
Crowley, Hecate, and Britra, who had manipulated GA-ES from the shadows.
Beyond them, S.E.N surely had more members still.
To stand against them, things couldn't go on like this.
The game labyrinths built on Yggdrasil 2.0 were developing steadily, but far too slowly.
He felt the need for drastic measures.
Just then, his eye caught the disk containing GA-ES's next project's original source.
He contacted 5555 in the development room.
“You're definitely going to yell at me when you hear this, but I have an important favor to ask.”
She knew him too well.
He let out a light sigh, then opened his mouth slowly.
“Release the source code used to build Super Gemini as open source. To the whole world.”
5555's roar rang out loud and clear.