I Haven't Even Done Anything Yet

"I haven't even done anything yet..."

Lieutenant Colonel Heat wasn't the only one reeling — the viewers watching the broadcast were in shock as well.

Untouchable was, after all, a hardcore military realism game — realism was its whole selling point. In a game like that, a single person mowing down hundreds of enemies should have been flatly impossible.

The Untouchable newcomers, unable to make heads or tails of it by any common-sense measure, felt as if they'd been possessed by a ghost.

Even the regular viewers — the ones who'd told the newcomers to just wait and see — let out expletives laced with genuine awe.

The viewers had gone past admiration into outright bewilderment.

It was as if the utterly outclassed were paying tribute to their conqueror — the donations poured in one after another.

And amid the stream of incoming tributes, someone's sobbing could be heard through the audio.

"Hh... hhah..."

The voice belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Heat.

The man — a soldier to the bone, drilled to keep his composure — was weeping.

Instead of mocking him, the viewers expressed sympathy. The comrades he had gathered for his revenge had been wiped out by a single person. It was only natural that tears would come — and indeed, that was exactly what the Lieutenant Colonel felt.

"You... you monster!"

Heat erupted into a howl of pure grief and rage, leveling his gun at Seyul, who had strolled onto the scene without a care in the world. He raised the weapon in a convulsive spasm to fire — and Seyul, in turn, raised hers.

The two shots rang out at the same instant.

And nothing happened.

"...?"

Both of them had clearly fired — yet neither had been hit. Heat and the viewers alike stared around in stunned confusion, and by pure chance, they found the answer: two bullets, crumpled from colliding midair, fused into a single mangled lump.

"Wh— AAAH!!!"

The chat froze, and Lieutenant Colonel Heat began to tremble like a leaf in the wind. Because those fused bullets were proof that Seyul had shot his incoming round out of the air — with perfect precision.

"Looks like you've done all you came to do," Seyul said to the shaking man. "If there's nothing left, then decide."

"...Decide what?"

"Whether you die, or whether you run."

By the setting, Heat was technically Seyul's old comrade-in-arms — he had, in his own way, worried about her and tried to recruit her into Untouchable. So Seyul had granted him a measure of mercy. It had backfired spectacularly.

"You think you can actually live a normal life if you run?" she pressed. The man had planned terrorism against the world and watched his organization get annihilated for it. Even if he survived here, his days of living as an upstanding member of society were done.

Having abandoned everything, Lieutenant Colonel Heat slowly raised his gun to his own head. "You, of all people, were the true Untouchable we set out to become," he said, leaving those bitter words behind as he pulled the trigger.

The instant the round tore through his skull—

The message popped up out of nowhere.

"Huh?"

Seyul and the viewers alike were stunned by the message that had materialized without warning.

Seyul hadn't intended any of that — not even remotely — and yet the narration had just hoisted her up as an apostle of justice. On its heels, the ending credits began to roll across empty air.

Just as it truly felt like the game was over for good, the bewildered onlookers snapped back to their senses.

Screaming filled the chat — and their panic was only natural. Even the game's devoted fans had never known a true ending existed.

Speechlessness was the dominant reaction — most of them were simply too dumbfounded to form words. Nobody could have imagined that a game released years ago was hiding an ending like this, let alone a layer of buried meaning in its very title.

And the conditions for unlocking the true ending were, frankly, nonsensical.

The chat had turned into a tribunal, denouncing the absurdity of it all.

What is even happening?

Seyul was equally flustered. She'd sat down intending to take her time with a new game — and before she knew it, she'd seen the ending.

Wait, I destroyed Untouchable, so shouldn't there be a next step? Like getting revenge on the military brass who threw us away once they were done with us, or something?

She had naturally assumed there would be more to come. No matter how much chaos she'd wreaked in God's Warrior, the game had never simply ended on her.

From Seyul's perspective, the experience had been yanked away right as it was getting good, leaving her hollow.

"What a waste of money. What kind of game is this short?"

The woman who had personally slaughtered every ally in the prologue was complaining about game length. Someone let out a scream of raw anguish — but the streamer couldn't see the chat, so it meant nothing.

"Tch."

Clicking her tongue at having spent money for nothing, Seyul shut the game off. The ending credits would be over soon enough anyway, so this time the logout was arguably justified.

It was an understandable logout, so the viewer backlash was far milder than last time. With the streamer gone, the chat settled into easy conversation among themselves.

Everyone was savoring the afterglow, drifting toward the exit — and then—

The stream everyone thought was over flickered back to life — and what flowed out of it was unmistakably God's Warrior. Dissatisfied with how things ended, Seyul had jumped straight into her next session. The departing viewers slammed on the brakes and let out a cheer.

When the moment they'd been waiting for arrived, the viewers were chattering away like kids at a festival. God's Warrior, seen for the first time in a while, was exactly as they'd left it when Seyul logged out last: the moment right after crossing the river, clothes still dripping. She'd been wringing the water out of them when the log-out happened, so Seyul was once again clad in a gleaming bikini.

The viewers fussed over her scandalous state of dress, but—

The donations queuing up the instant she appeared spoke volumes about what they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were really thinking.

And there were new guests arriving, too — the Untouchable newcomers who had come to watch that game had followed her here in a body.

The memory of her bringing down that helicopter was still vivid in their eyes. This was a woman who had run wild one-against-hundreds in a hardcore military shooter. What kind of madness would she unleash in a full-blooded fantasy world? They were too curious to leave.

And so: the existing viewers. Newcomers trickling in as word of those viewers spread. And on top of it all, the Untouchable arrivals.

4,570 in total. In one leap, her audience had swelled past four thousand.

More people meant more donations — a crowd of four thousand-plus, and a downpour of tributes pouring from their hands.

Seyul, blissfully unaware of the pandemonium unfolding around her, held up her clothes.

It's not going to just up and end on me again, right?

Wearing the freshly wrung-out clothes, she scanned her surroundings with a trace of unease. The memory ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of Untouchable ending so absurdly kept creeping back into her mind. There were any number of things she'd grown attached to in that game; ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠praying it wouldn't cut short on her this time, she set off.

Seyul simply moved forward. And as she pressed on, heading nowhere but ahead, something came into view in the distance — a small village.

Of course, this was monster territory, so it was no ordinary village. It was a settlement of monsters, for monsters.

Villages like this were scattered across the monster domains, and in game terms, they were treated as a kind of hunting ground. Players would slaughter the monsters living in them, grow stronger, collect items, and repeat the loop to build their power. Accordingly, the monsters in this village were meant to serve as fodder — mere mobs.

Except...

Did something happen here?

The state of the village mobs, who by all rights should have been disposable cannon fodder, was dire. Seyul, who had wandered in without a second thought, blinked in mild surprise.

Every last one of them was wounded head to toe or wrapped in bandages, shambling around like invalids. The village itself was in no better shape — not a single intact building, the whole place smashed to pieces in every direction.

And this was despite the fact that Seyul, the player, hadn't touched a single thing yet.

One of the viewers, staring at the devastated village, spoke with a shudder.