Escaping Despair (2)
Once Park Sangchul and Kim Daeshik finalized employment contracts with a handful of orphans and departed, Sanghyuk quietly prepared to leave the facility behind. In truth, he had already leased a small studio apartment in Ilsan, so all that remained was to pack his belongings and go.
He held no lingering affection for the orphanage. The moment his high school graduation was confirmed, he walked out without waiting for his resettlement grant. Given the odds, the administrators would likely pocket the subsidy anyway, and lingering around in hopes of collecting it only invited trouble. Cutting his losses and making a clean break was far wiser.
In roughly three months, the pre-open beta for Eternal Life would finally begin. Putting himself in prime position to hit the ground running mattered far more than a meager payout. EL was a game bold enough to run its open beta for a single, solitary week. While critics cried foul at the time, that razor-thin testing window stood as a testament to the supreme confidence of its developer, Raon Soft.
Leaving the orphanage proved simple enough. Wards like Sanghyuk who had no plans to attend college were expected to fend for themselves the moment they held their diplomas.
Carrying a single light bag, Sanghyuk took the transit straight to Ilsan. He saw no need for anything extravagant, settling on the smallest, cheapest studio he could find in Janghang-dong, Ilsandong-gu. To him, the quality of his living quarters was entirely beside the point. What truly mattered was the capsule-type VR terminal scheduled to hit the market in two months.
Sanghyuk had already settled on his purchase. Setting cost-efficiency aside, he intended to buy the machine past EL veterans had unanimously hailed as peak hardware: Ilseong Electronics' Andromeda-X. He planned to order the top-tier flagship edition packed with every optional feature, fully prepared to drop at least ten million won on the rig. A master carpenter might never blame his tools, but superior instruments in skilled hands yielded far greater masterworks. When it came to VR hardware, Sanghyuk had no intention of pinching pennies.
Having established his base in Ilsan, Sanghyuk settled into a strict regimen of meditation and kendo while counting down the days until EL's launch. Once the servers opened, he intended to cut his sleep to the bare minimum and immerse himself completely. He needed to stockpile stamina now if he hoped to sustain that relentless sprint later.
The winter chill of January 2028 bit deep, but Sanghyuk ran through Ilsan Lake Park every morning and evening, honing his physique. To an outside observer, he resembled an athlete preparing for the most crucial match of his career. In Sanghyuk's eyes, professional gamers were athletes in their own right, and back when he served as head coach, he had drilled the vital importance of physical health into every player under his command.
Time marched steadily forward, turning the calendar to February.
With the new month, concrete rumors regarding Eternal Life began circulating in earnest. At this stage, however, skepticism vastly outweighed hype. The game was shrouded in excessive secrecy, and the gaming community found it difficult to place faith in an unproven rookie studio. Mainstream interest gravitated toward other high-profile titles, while the recent commercial rollout of capsule-type VR terminals kept most Dream Network users too preoccupied to pay EL much mind.
Naturally, Sanghyuk headed straight to an authorized electronics retailer the moment the capsules hit the shelves. Though the hardware carried a steep early-adopter premium, the limited production run of the flagship tier risked selling out if he hesitated.
"So you're saying you don't have it in stock?"
To avoid pointless detours, Sanghyuk had visited the largest VR hardware dealership near Ilsan. The specific terminal he was looking for was a niche luxury item, impossible to find at an ordinary shop.
"Well... we have the unit itself, but..." The clerk wore an awkward expression, hesitating.
Sanghyuk tilted his head. "If you have the unit, what's the issue?"
"I'm very sorry, but we don't currently have a technician qualified to configure it. That particular terminal requires an exceptionally complex calibration..."
"Ah."
Hearing the clerk's explanation, Sanghyuk recalled a detail so fundamental he had completely overlooked it.
"Our headquarters has a handful of specialists on staff, but their schedules are entirely booked right now," the clerk continued apologetically. "If you submit an installation request today, you'll likely have to wait at least a month for an appointment."
It was true: professional-grade capsule terminals were far beyond the capabilities of ordinary technicians. At this early stage of release, the industry's elite engineers were swamped catering to corporate clients and VIP purchasers.
"Forget the calibration, then. Just deliver and install the physical terminal."
A capsule terminal could not even interface with the Dream Network without proper software calibration. Sanghyuk's chosen flagship model demanded an intricate synchronization process, making manufacturer-dispatched specialists standard protocol.
"I'm afraid that's impossible, sir," the clerk said, shaking his head. "Unlike conventional headset units, this machine won't function simply by plugging it in."
"I know. You have to configure the damage synchro rate, calibrate the biometric graphing telemetry, and integrate the VRA mixing program simultaneously. It's not something an amateur can handle. But I know how to do all of that myself, so just set up the hardware."
"You... know how to calibrate an Andromeda-X?"
"I work in the field," Sanghyuk replied smoothly.
Explaining his real circumstances was a waste of breath, so he simply passed himself off as an industry technician. In truth, he was not a certified engineer, but having spent years tearing down and rebuilding VR hardware across his past life, his practical expertise eclipsed that of contemporary technicians by a wide margin.
"Ah, I see! That makes things much simpler," the clerk said, visibly relieved. "I'll arrange delivery immediately. As quoted earlier, the total comes to fourteen million won, value-added tax included."
Even considering the steep pricing of capsule terminals, fourteen million won was an exorbitant sum—ten times the price of a standard consumer capsule, which retailed for 1.4 million. While the retail markup technically included white-glove engineering service he wouldn't be using, taking a slight financial hit was a trivial price to pay. Securing the hardware and synchronizing his reflexes a month ahead of the curve was worth far more.
With the unit in stock, physical delivery and assembly concluded swiftly. Although the vital software calibration remained untouched, Sanghyuk had no intention of waiting.
He climbed straight inside the capsule to begin configuration. One of the core design philosophies of VR architecture was that terminal software could be manipulated entirely from within the virtual space generated by the machine's onboard processing unit.
The interior hatch sealed shut with a soft hiss.
As Sanghyuk activated the terminal, the dark enclosure dissolved, replaced by a stark, featureless white room: the D-Room. In its current state, detached from the global Dream Network, it was an isolated sandbox.
"First, the synchronization parameters..."
Sanghyuk tapped the floor beneath his feet. In response, a massive array of entangled code windows sprang upward, floating in the empty air. During his darkest years, when he clawed his way out of the gaming sweatshop's despair to regain his autonomy, he had mastered VR programming out of sheer necessity. It had been just one of many desperate efforts to qualify for competitive play, but the skills stuck, leaving him sharper than most commercial programmers.
His fingers flew across the holographic prompts with effortless familiarity. A few parameters on this first-generation architecture felt slightly foreign after decades of hardware revisions, but muscle memory steadily resurfaced as he worked.
Three intense hours later, he brought the system into immaculate alignment. Had this been a familiar seventh-generation unit, he could have wrapped up the job in under an hour; wrestling with primitive first-generation protocols had cost him a bit of extra time, but the end result was flawless.
With calibration complete, Sanghyuk linked his D-Room directly to the Dream Network. In ancient computing terms, it was the equivalent of installing an operating system and plugging in the ethernet cable.
Now that he was on the network, he needed to benchmark the rig. Whenever Sanghyuk calibrated a machine, his definitive diagnostic tool was a VR fighting game. In his book, nothing served as a better warm-up. They were thrilling, demanding, and intensely engaging. While the genre lagged behind VR MMORPGs in raw player volume, it maintained a fiercely dedicated following with several marquee franchises.
Sanghyuk booted up the undisputed king of the contemporary fighting scene: Fantasy Iron Fist 4.
Back in his previous life, when he was ground down like livestock in the sweatshop, he had stolen whatever brief respites he could find to log into Fantasy Iron Fist and vent his suffocating stress. His handle back then had been Jiroejin—Earth Mine Quake.
There was, however, one fact Sanghyuk had never realized during those grueling years: among the ranked elites of Fantasy Iron Fist, the name Jiroejin had been an object of unmitigated terror.
Under the game's competitive ranking mechanics, individual match outcomes dictated massive rating swings. Losing to someone outside the top one thousand inflicted catastrophic rating penalties on high rankers. In that brutal ladder, encountering Jiroejin—a player parked near the rank 10,000 threshold who boasted a horrifying win rate north of ninety-five percent—was an absolute nightmare. The handle became legendary across the forums, yet the man behind the avatar remained blissfully oblivious.
Since this was his very first time connecting in this life, he registered a fresh profile, entering the name Jiroejin once more.
Sanghyuk queued up for ten casual matches to shake off the rust. Fools often claimed there was no difference between virtual reality and physical reality, but that was a grave misconception. The two realms operated on fundamentally different axes. Warming up in virtual reality did not limber the flesh; it tuned the mind.
VRA, in its broadest sense, measured neurological processing speed. While deeper variables played a role, a user possessing razor-sharp mental reaction times moved with greater speed, fluidity, and precision within the digital space.
Ten consecutive matches. Ten effortless victories.
Sanghyuk disconnected from the ladder with a soft exhale.
Whew. It's been so long I can definitely feel the rust.
Diving into a match from a state-of-the-art capsule without physical exhaustion was a sensation he had missed for years. While an ordinary spectator would have watched his godlike reflexes with their jaw on the floor, Sanghyuk found his execution lacking.
"I'll need to log in regularly for a while to sharpen my instincts."
He nodded to himself. With a month remaining before Eternal Life officially opened, he had ample time to bring his mental edge back to peak condition.
Blessed with absolute freedom, Sanghyuk logged into Fantasy Iron Fist daily, steadily reclaiming his former mastery. Naturally, the players paying the butcher's bill were the existing rankers.
Racking up an unbroken winning streak, Sanghyuk rapidly pierced the top 10,000 threshold, entering the matchmaking bracket where the ladder's apex predators roamed. Almost immediately, whispers of "the catastrophic Jiroejin" spread like wildfire through high-tier circles. It reached the point where ladder grinders joked that a ranker's daily rating was determined entirely by how many times they managed to dodge Jiroejin in the queue.
Sanghyuk, of course, had never visited a community board in his life and had no idea he was the talk of the scene. Having permanently muted whispers, friend requests, and all in-game communication channels, he remained utterly detached from player gossip. After the betrayals and exploitation that ruined his previous life, he harbored a profound distrust of human relationships. Cutting off social contact at the root was simply the easiest way to ensure he never took a blade to the back again.
Meanwhile, the inexorable gears of time turned.
At last, the date arrived.
March 4, 2028: the official launch of the Eternal Life open beta.
Raon Soft had blindsided the gaming world by announcing the open beta schedule a mere two weeks prior. Hardcore gaming circles had held cautious expectations for the project, but the abrupt rollout paired with an extreme lack of promotional information left the mainstream internet rife with skepticism.
Yet even if the entire world turned its back in doubt, one man remained unshakable.
Sanghyuk alone understood the peerless colossus Eternal Life was destined to become. Having lived through its reign, he lay inside his capsule with every preparation finished, calmly waiting for the servers to ignite.