Dong Bong-su stroked the Kirin's horn and mane once more as he surveyed the surroundings.
Kurrrrrrrr....
As if two tectonic plates had already overlapped, the world was warping everywhere his eyes could reach.
Wet soil seeped up over the crimson soil, and crimson soil was layered over that once more. A mountain ridge surged up over the gray ruins, hardening in a semi-warped state. The boundaries kept loosening, making it impossible to tell which was this side and which was that side.
The framework supporting this world could ultimately no longer endure that entanglement.
[G▒ds of R▒a▒ms — ▒▒▒c ▒rror]
Distorted text crackled at the edge of his awareness before smashing apart. Wherever the coordinates were disrupted, the same sign spread along the fringes.
Kugugugugugugugu.
At last, the crimson ground beneath his feet was pushed away in all directions by a single layer, and beneath it, another ground surged up, expanding its territory.
A vacant hole tore open in the space that used to be the sky before patching back up, as the rules comprising this world fell out of alignment piece by piece.
The world began to collapse, crushed under its own weight.
The topography that had surged crumbled down, and on top of what had crumbled, another thing fell and stacked up.
'Is this the price for stuffing two worlds into a single location?'
It seemed the physics engine of this crimson world did not possess a vessel capable of enduring that weight. This might be the medium of the rift itself.
Of course, that kind of thing didn't matter at all.
Kwaduk, kwajijijijik...
Only the fact that the sound of the pillars supporting this world completely collapsing could be heard from somewhere deep within carried any meaning.
That was enough for Dong Bong-su.
Because this collapse was undoubtedly the path to return over there.
The crimson world began to fade.
It wasn't that he had walked somewhere or passed through some door. On this very spot where he had set foot, right over the exact coordinates where the crimson soil had been laid out, another world was seeping out.
The two worlds had been overlapped from the very beginning. From the moment the Kirin swapped its board onto this place, the Crimson Arena and the Murim pressed down beneath it had been sharing a single coordinate. As one side collapsed, the remaining side floated upward as if permeating.
The dry heat of the crimson soil faded from beneath his feet. In its place, a cool moisture seeped up. In the air where gray dust had scattered, the scent of long-soaked stone and moss expanded. It was the scent of water. The scent of a place within a narrow valley that had been subjected to rain for a long time.
Dong Bong-su did not move a single step from where he stood.
There was no need to move, either. Because the one moving was not him, but the world.
The overlaid crimson board was being pulled away layer by layer, and the coordinates of the Murim that had been pressed down beneath it were revealing themselves once more.
'I see it's only to this extent for now.'
The countless worlds he had just come back from seeing beyond the wall—places where two moons rose, places where spires blazed, places where stars were swallowed—the beast's talent certainly did not extend far enough yet to summon and overlap places like that onto a single coordinate.
'It doesn't matter.'
He could simply investigate the rest gradually while leveling this beast up.
Everything that had been crimson was pulled away completely.
The collapsing crimson world turned to a gray hue all around before turning off and fading away. The remnants of what had been users, the topography that had warped as the two boards fell out of alignment—entirely faded and retreated.
Pffrrr, phruk.
The Kirin, which had been bowing beside him, straightened its folded legs. The colossal frame rose slowly to stand by his side. The violet radiance flowing from the font of recovery beneath its six-foot horn traveled down its white mane, faintly illuminating the beast's back in place of the fading crimson light.
The ground beneath his feet felt soft to step on. It wasn't dry crimson soil, but soil that had been soaked and softened for a long time. The tips of his feet sank slightly as water seeped up.
The sound of rain echoed.
Before he knew it, he was in the dead center of a narrow valley. On both sides, sheer gray cliffs soared, leaving only a single piece of the sky, and between them, thin streaks of rain were driving down diagonally.
It wasn't a heavy downpour, nor was it rain that had stopped—a permanent rainy season that always came in just this amount. The mud pooling at the bottom of the valley formed tiny ripples under those streaks of rain.
Superwind Cliff (Cho-pung-a).
Dong Bong-su scanned the wet valley once. The sheer gray cliffs, the rainwater pooling in the mud—not a single thing had changed; it was in the exact same state as when he had left.
'I've returned. Now, it's time to finish what I was doing.'
However.
There was something that had changed.
"This..... I didn't expect something like this."
Dong Bong-su smiled yet again as he looked around.
Heh. Heh.
A chuckle kept leaking out. He shouldn't be doing this.
But looking at the sight entering his eyes, what could he do but laugh?
Heh-heh-heh-heh, khahahahaha.
* * *
"And that is how it was settled for the time being, Chairman."
Having heard the entire report from the server operations supervisor, Pantheon Chairman Choi Dong-ryul buried his body deep into his chair and lightly tapped the desk with his index finger.
"Is that considered settled for the time being?"
"....Excuse me?"
"...."
"Three GOR servers totally destroyed and 73.6% of the stock price evaporated, plummeted that is."
"Ah, whatever, forget it. What can you do about a landslide that has already happened? Now we just have to clear it out one by one."
Choi Dong-ryul raised his buried body and asked the supervisor again.
"Did you find out what those anomalies were?"
"Ah, yes. It's not exact, but..... our programmers have decoded a portion of their code."
"Oh! Really? What were they?"
"Not all of it. We managed to read a peculiar trace of code from one of them."
"Ah, so I'm asking what that is."
The supervisor hesitated for a moment before his lips parted.
"I don't know if this makes any sense, but.... a data pattern from another game was discovered within the anomaly that disappeared at the very end."
"What? Another game!? What game?"
"A game that terminated its service a few years ago..."
A game that had once enjoyed sensational popularity.
In a certain sense, a game that was like a parent to GOR.
Because using the release and monumental hit of that game as a starting point, virtual reality games equipped with perfect AI-based NPCs and physics engines began to crop up everywhere.
The name of that game was.
"Murim Online."
[Welcome to Murim Online, the world of true martial masters.]
Amidst the vast amount of noise, the code containing this phrase had been clearly identified.
Murim Online.
It was exactly as the name implied. A virtual reality game that transplanted the entire martial world, where one gripped a sword and mastered martial arts. By the standards of those days, it was an insane game. Each and every NPC moved with their own personal backstory. If cut by a blade, flesh parted and bone was exposed.
Excluding the pain, there was no way to distinguish it from reality.
The problem also originated from there. The sensation of cutting and killing people was far too vivid. The sight of limbs flying off and necks rolling was shown without any filtration. The controversy that murder within the game incited murder in reality followed it constantly, and in fact, several grim incidents were spoken of in connection to this game. Ultimately, it failed to last a few years before the servers were taken down.
"Murim Online? Isn't that a game whose service ended a long time ago?"
"...Yes, that's correct."
"Why would that suddenly show up?"
"We haven't been able to figure that part out yet. This incident was so global in scale..... and every aspect of it lacks logic."
"True, that's true."
Choi Dong-ryul quietly uttered the words Murim Online several times before shifting the topic elsewhere. After all, it was something they couldn't possibly know yet.
"Keep investigating that part and continuously follow up with reports."
"Yes, Chairman."
"At any rate, everything turned out well. Dozens of games went down into the abyss together, didn't they?"
".....Excuse me?"
"No, think about it. Didn't the games of our competitors completely lose it all at once alongside us?"
"Ah, yes, Chairman. That's correct."
Tap, tap.
"But you see. Did it happen to all of them too?"
"Yes? What are you referring to?"
"Those game companies I just mentioned. Did they also get hit by that... what is it. Coma. That thing."
"Ah, yes. Are you referring to the mass comas?"
"Hey, hey, calling it mass makes it sound scary. Let's just call it a coma here."
The supervisor hastily bowed his head and continued the report.
"Ah, yes. Chairman. For now... they say everyone is in that state. The exact tally just hasn't been clarified yet, but it seems certain that a global 'blip' has occurred."
Blip.
"That's an interesting expression. Well, it's quite appropriate. Good for using on a crowd, too."
It was an expression that appeared in a certain movie franchise.
A cosmic catastrophe where half of humanity vanished.
And this situation, similar to that cosmic catastrophe, was highly favorable from Pantheon's perspective.
Because the servers of multiple games had evaporated simultaneously, it was treated as a natural disaster while simultaneously acting as the eradication of latecomers whose foundations were weak.
Pantheon? GOR?
'We just have to restore it.'
Pantheon was a company whose financial power was just that overwhelmingly dominant.
At the same time, natural disasters and major catastrophes serve as excellent political justifications and excuses. With this, any interrogation by the National Assembly or the international community would disappear.
Even so, curiosity remained.
"How many were blipped?"
".....Excuse me? What do you mean by that?"
"Ah, how many people fell into a coma. Exclude everything from the other games, and just give me the count for our GOR."
'You tearless, cold-blooded psychopathic piece of shit. Do you seriously want to talk like that in this situation, fuck.'
"From what has been grasped so far...."
The supervisor replied, chewing over those thoughts only internally.
"It is 30,174 people."