Chaos, Part 9
"Aren't you proud? Your units are gradually taking shape."
"They are, but they're still lacking."
From the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, I turned on my phone and logged into the game, only for Agares to latch onto me before I’d even gotten my day started. But today, I didn’t have the luxury of sitting down and focusing on the game for long.
I got ready to head out, dressed myself, and left the house with my phone still in hand.
We grow together. Their growth is my growth, and my growth is theirs. And I believed, with absolute certainty, that I was standing at a crucial turning point for that growth.
"There’s still too much cleanup left among your allies for me to order the next step you already had in mind. We’re about to head into another major battle, so there isn’t much for me to do either. In that case, let’s focus on your story this time."
"You really do talk too much."
Even after I boarded the bus, I kept talking with Agares through my earphone as if I were on the phone with someone. By now, he had even given up on pretending to be a helpful NPC and was openly chatting me up.
"And my story? There’s not much to it."
"That’s something you make yourself. To others, the desire you carry may seem absurdly trivial and pathetic. But if even you think that way, then that’s all it will ever amount to. So choose carefully, the way you choose from a set of options. Why are you going to meet Manager Kim Seok-ju?"
"How did you... Well, I guess it wouldn’t be weird if you knew."
I hadn’t expected Kim Seok-ju’s name to come out of his mouth. But thinking about it now, it wasn’t impossible. Honestly, if Agares crawled out of my phone, I think I’d believe that too.
"He’s a scout. If I make a good impression, I might be able to save my team again."
Using Agares’s question as a stepping-stone, I calmly sorted out my thoughts. Kim Seok-ju was a scout for a team called Fluke. And Fluke was a mid-to-low-tier team that relied on cost-effective players.
Besides, given my position, if anyone is willing to call me, I don’t have the luxury of refusing.
"And if I can save the team, then after that..."
"Winning the championship... is that unrealistic?"
Redfield, the game I played as a pro, was a five-man team game. No matter how strong you are alone, it’s not easy to overturn a team-wide difference by yourself at the pro level.
Still, if someone could do it, if someone could prove it, then their reputation would shoot up in an instant.
So my goal was to show people my potential as fully as possible, even if I couldn’t win or take the title. If I managed that, I’d be able to enter my next contract from a position of enormous advantage.
"So you’re confident in your own skill."
"Are you sure about that choice?"
"...There’s no way the current me can’t show it."
Agares asked with a hint of laughter, but I answered with complete confidence. My skill, strengthened over and over through Mythic Essence, was something I believed in because I had paid dearly for it.
"And enough of this. Someone’s sitting down."
As the bus neared my stop, I fell silent and stopped talking to Agares just before another passenger boarded and was about to take the seat beside me.
"Ah. There you are."
Inside the café where we’d agreed to meet, Kim Seok-ju, who had arrived earlier, recognized me and waved. That surprised me a little. I’d come thirty minutes early.
"You got here fast."
"Actually, I had some business here earlier, but it wrapped up sooner than I expected."
It was my first time seeing him in person. He was a broad, stout man with a beard, and he chuckled as he showed me the coffee cup he’d already finished once and was now refilling.
"We don’t really know each other all that well, so... should we just get straight to business?"
After a brief, awkward pause, he brought up the subject first, as if he were used to this sort of thing. I didn’t have any personal small talk to make either, so we got right into a formal conversation.
"To be direct, the team is looking for a new player."
"Is that an offer I can respond to?"
"Lee Hajin, you’re an experienced player, but the coach says we’ll need an internal test."
Getting straight to the point, he shrugged. It was roughly what I’d expected: a first-team offer, but with a test attached. Truthfully, if this had been the me of the past, I wouldn’t have looked very likely to pass it.
"You seem... confident?"
As though he’d read my mind, he set down his coffee with a faint smile.
"I am. I don’t really have the luxury not to be."
"Oh?"
I had no reason to hide it, and no reason to dance around the issue. So I grinned and answered plainly. Apparently my response was unexpected, because his eyes, which had been oddly relaxed until then, widened slightly.
"To be honest, the leadership doesn’t much like the Lee Hajin I’ve been talking to. They think you don’t have any strengths. You’re not especially young, you’ve never shown some exceptional peak, and you’re not the sort of player with star power or easy charisma."
"That stings."
"I know it’s rude, but I’m speaking as someone who deals with twenty-six-year-old players in the real world. Just working hard isn’t enough. I’ve seen too many people in this business. People crushed by the wall of talent, and the few who overcome it or somehow force their own talent into bloom can be counted on one hand. That’s reality. So how far can you actually go?"
He shifted the atmosphere into something serious and continued speaking. Every word hit bone. There was no time, no opportunity, and no talent.
The field had expanded rapidly lately, but that didn’t change the fact that it was still a narrow one.
On that cramped stage of endless competition, the question came down to this: once you’ve already been weeded out, what can you possibly do to stand back up? What, indeed, could I do? In the end, the most basic answer would be nothing more than, I’ll train until my body breaks.
"...Anything. That’s what I can do, after coming this far."
But I could answer that question differently.
Who was I now? The instant I stared him in the eye, I saw the countless lives collapsing as a result of my own choices.
People screaming and bleeding to death beneath the Great Lord’s fangs, Lena’s spears, Karin’s tentacles. I was a piece of trash who had accepted all of that for the sake of my own desire.
Everything had happened for this.
"Anything at all."
"Uh, th-that... just a moment."
Had Kim Seok-ju seen something in my eyes?
He broke eye contact, his expression wavering, and then, with a face gone pale, he shook slightly as he forced himself to lift his coffee cup and take a sip.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"Haa... Sorry. I suddenly got dizzy."
What the hell was that?!
He’d forced himself to calm down by gulping down the coffee, then finally caught his breath and wiped away the cold sweat. But unlike before, he couldn’t bring himself to look at the other man with that relaxed, easygoing expression.
Even though the man across from him was ten years younger and nothing more than a third-rate player.
"Are you all right?"
"Y-Yes! Of course."
Was he always this intense?!
Kim Seok-ju forced a laugh. He was a little tall, sure, but in the end he was just some unemployed guy with shaggy hair and rumpled clothes.
And yet he couldn’t endure the way that man looked at him, so he kept averting his eyes.
"I understand your sincerity, Lee Hajin. Let me say it again more firmly. At the very least, you should be able to come in within three days."
"Thank you. I’ll do that."
Originally, Kim Seok-ju had planned to spend a little more time getting to know the man, but he ended the conversation quickly. He’d clearly confirmed the other man’s sincerity, so his objective had been achieved.
"What was that about? All of a sudden."
Watching him hurriedly leave the café, Hajin muttered blankly to himself. From the perspective of someone who didn’t know what Kim Seok-ju had felt, the reaction was strange enough to be baffling.
"You ask something obvious. Humans naturally have what’s called karma. Whether good or evil, the karma that accumulates from your actions is proportional to the quality and quantity of your experiences. The moment you revealed your sincerity, a mere scout like him no longer had the capacity to endure the karma you’ve built up."
"A mere scout? I’m a mere pro gamer."
At Agares’s explanation, Hajin let out a scoff.
"You’re a failed player who’s achieved nothing, but at the same time you’re the Great Lord who rules a faction. Do you really think a scout like that can compare? A scout who’s never even killed 'one person'?"
"...Shut up."
But at Agares’s next words, Hajin’s face hardened and he covered Agares’s mouth.
There was a difference between not denying something and proudly bragging about it.
"Just do what you’ve been doing. Right now, your faction has finally finished preparing. And as you ordered, they’re going hunting again."
Hajin picked up his phone once more and launched Pandemonium.
True to the choices he had made, the soldiers of Ascalas—led by Lena and Karin—had fully recovered and were moving out once again. The fiercer they were, the more enemies they devoured; the more they devoured, the stronger they became. And as they grew stronger, so did Hajin in reality.
A heavy pulse throbbed in his chest. The heart of the Ascalas Grand Lord, the one that bound all his forces together, beat in time with them.