"Ugh…"
After fainting and coming to, Joo Seong-tak blinked his eyes.
His vision blurred, then returned to normal.
'What? Was I dreaming?'
He didn't feel any pain. It really felt like he'd just woken up from sleep.
'What kind of shitty dream was that…'
He'd tried to kill the buyer, only to be counterattacked instead.
And he'd been utterly, pathetically crushed.
It was the first time his Fear Curse hadn't worked on someone.
'Well, if it was just a dream, whatever.'
He shook his head to clear away the delusion and looked around.
The place felt strangely familiar.
'This place is…?'
He was inside the two-story building he'd earmarked as an escape route.
'Huh? Then it wasn't a dream?'
He put his hand on the floor to push himself up—
"Huh…? Where'd my arm go? Ah."
He remembered.
'That damn buyer cut off my arm.'
But his arm wasn't the only thing he'd lost.
"Ah, fuck, my leg."
His leg was gone too.
In an instant he'd become a cripple with one arm and one leg.
"Ah… ah."
Absurdity, futility, rage, emptiness.
Maybe it was because too many emotions surged up at once.
He wanted to scream, but the sound clogged in his throat and wouldn't come out.
'Wh-where are you… where are you, you fucking bastard…!'
He'd confirmed now that this wasn't a dream.
He wished it were, but this was harsh reality.
Rage, then bitter resentment, finally forced its way up his throat.
"Where the hell are you! You fucking, bug-like piece of shit!!!"
He looked around wildly, searching for the bastard who'd done this to him.
Who it was, at least, was obvious.
"You damn buyer, you son of a bitch! I could tear you apart and it still wouldn't be enough!"
With bloodshot eyes, Joo Seong-tak tried to get up.
But with one leg missing, even that wasn't easy.
"That fucking bastard did this to me? I'll definitely ki—"
Just then, something neatly folded caught his eye.
When he unfolded it, a long letter filled the page in dense handwriting.
[Your name's Joo Seong-tak, right? I saw your ID. Your address was written on the back too.
You're not thinking your leg ended up like that because of me, are you? You did that yourself, asshole.
Why the hell did you hide a bomb in the clothing collection box, you idiot? Were you trying to kill me with that?
Honestly, I wanted to kill you for being so disgusting, but with your limbs already gone you just looked pitiful, so I decided to let you live.
Who in this world treats the guy who tried to mug him, huh? Consider yourself lucky.
From now on, stop pulling robberies and live a decent life. I know your name and home address, so don't go causing any trouble. If you get caught, you really will die.]
"W-what the hell is this?"
Judging from the contents, it was clearly from that buyer.
But…
'My leg ended up like this because of the corpse explosion?'
A wave of emptiness washed over him.
He'd been caught in his own trap.
He couldn't even properly blame anyone else; it was about as shitty as it got.
"But does this bastard walk around with paper and a pen all the time or what? Why leave a letter behind?"
Muttering in disbelief, he rummaged through his pockets.
'Huh? It's gone. My wallet's gone.'
The wallet with his ID inside had vanished.
'Fuck, all my money was in there!'
He'd even made off with the full three hundred thousand won in cash.
And after that, who was he to tell anyone not to rob people?
'Son of a bitch. He thinks I'm a joke, is that it?'
He could admit the leg was on him, but the arm was definitely that bastard's doing.
He had more than enough reason to hate him.
On top of that, the guy had taken his material items, his wallet, and beaten him to a pulp.
In that situation, how could he not hold a grudge?
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuuck!!!"
He screamed loud enough to make the building shake, but it didn't fill the hollowness of his missing limbs.
'I'll kill him. Definitely. I'll kill that son of a bitch even if it costs me my life.'
His face, his build, his voice—
He remembered everything about the guy.
He was strong, but Joo Seong-tak was sure that if they fought again, he could win.
'If that corpse explosion had just hit, he'd be the crippled one right now!'
He decided he'd only lost because he was unlucky.
Who could have guessed that not taking a single extra step would cost him the fight?
Vowing to repay today's humiliation no matter what, Joo Seong-tak took an unsteady step forward, lost his balance, and fell.
Thud—
"Fuck."
Pushing his shame aside, he hobbled his way out of the building.
Completely unaware that the very man he was so desperate to find was watching him under invisibility.
Watching from behind and reading Joo Seong-tak's thoughts, Ryu Min smirked.
'Just as I expected, he's set on getting revenge on me.'
Well, if you cut off someone's limbs, anyone would end up bearing a grudge.
'Not that there's anything you can actually do to me in reality.'
How was someone who couldn't even walk properly supposed to get revenge?
Especially on an opponent who'd already overwhelmed him with sheer power?
'Looks like he thinks he could win if we fought again. Not a chance.'
He thinks he would have won if he'd just used his corpse explosion properly?
'Like I'd really fall for such a cheap trick.'
Granted, that Fear Curse that inflicted a status condition just by seeing it was dangerous.
But even that wasn't something he considered overwhelmingly threatening.
'I've got eighty-two percent resistance, after all.'
The reason the Fear Curse had failed earlier was thanks to that resistance.
'Sure, it's not a hundred percent, so if I'd been unlucky, it could've hit.'
He wasn't particularly worried.
'Because that resistance would've reduced the duration of the fear by the same percentage.'
The Fear Curse lasted for five seconds.
With eighty-two percent resistance, it would be reduced to only 0.9 seconds.
In other words, even if he'd been one of the unlucky eighteen percent who got hit with fear, it would have lasted barely a second.
'One second is more than enough time to die, but the guy was way too off guard.'
That was why Ryu Min had confidently let the Fear Curse hit him.
Even if he had fallen into fear, it would have worn off in the time it took him to go, "Huh?"
'Anyway, to still decide to get revenge on me in that condition… I'll give him points for guts.'
Of course, since he'd fought using Hwang Yong-min's face, there was no way Joo Seong-tak could actually find him.
'Let that thirst for revenge drive you to work hard in the Otherworld. If you get any items, put them on the market right away. That way it benefits me too. Your body's a mess, so you'd better at least earn your living expenses, right?'
Watching Joo Seong-tak struggle along on his mangled leg, Ryu Min grinned.
Before taking on Round 7,
Ryu Min had a meal with Min Juri.
"This Korean set-menu place is good, right?"
"Yeah. It's the best I've ever had!"
"I'm glad you like it. Let's come here often."
"O-often?"
He hadn't meant anything by it.
But Min Juri didn't take it that way. She rolled the word around in her head and her thoughts started to stray in a strange direction.
Ryu Min hurriedly corrected himself.
"Not often, just sometimes."
"Ah. R-right."
Inside, Min Juri was a little disappointed.
"By the way, Min, you seem busy these days. Every time I call, you say we'll meet later."
"Ah, there's just… stuff going on."
Ryu Min brushed it off vaguely.
He really was busy.
Every weekend he had to attend Players' Haven Café meetings, and as the top executive he also had to sit in on Player Place meetings.
'And I have to worry about the tailing too.'
Even at that very moment, Ryu Min knew there were eyes watching him.
He'd already figured out who it was.
'Jeffrey Bishop, a level-28 assassin. And behind him, Christine's father, Nathan Craig.'
Nathan had set a tail on him to gather information.
At first, he hadn't noticed the tail.
But with his Presence Detection skill, he realized someone had been following him for days.
'But I couldn't see him. Which meant…'
It meant an assassin with an Invisibility-type skill.
There was no other way to see it.
'The question was who it was, and why they were tailing me…'
Figuring that out hadn't been all that hard.
He just had to tail the tail.
'He probably hasn't learned Presence Detection. If he had, he wouldn't tail me this obviously.'
If he'd known stealth could be caught by Presence Detection, he would've kept his distance from the start.
Not follow so blatantly from up close.
It was something you could figure out with just a bit of thought.
So he shadowed his own tail in reverse, waiting for the Invisibility to run out.
'And then I found out. The guy tailing me was a foreigner, and Nathan, Christine's father, was the one who sent him.'
By reading his inner thoughts, he'd also discovered his objective.
It wasn't an assassination or anything so grand—just simple tailing to gather information.
'Looks like Christine talked to her father about me. Nathan got offended because of that.'
He could understand.
Suppose some fortune-teller had made the outrageous claim that his daughter would die in Round 11.
Even he would want to track down that fortune-teller and check if it was true.
'Well, unless he comes clean about his purpose first, I've no reason to deal with him. Let them keep tailing me. To their eyes, I'll just look like an ordinary executive shuttling between work and home.'
Even though he had to attend Players' Haven Café meetings on weekends, as long as he knew about the tail, he was confident he wouldn't get caught.
"By the way, Min. Remember the info you gave me last time about Round 7?"
"Yeah, I remember."
"Is that really all there is? Just 'don't get swayed by temptation'?"
"Yeah. You just need to keep that one thing in mind."
From Ma Kyung-rok, An Sang-cheol, Seo Arin and Russell, to Christine and Min Juri—
Ryu Min had given them all the same information.
Because for Round 7, that really was all they needed to know.
'Any more than that would actually be unnecessary.'
They might wonder why he didn't reveal the quest itself, but there was no helping it.
'If they found out about the quest, they'd actually end up getting eliminated from the round.'
Elimination meant erasure.
He couldn't let people who needed to survive until Round 20 vanish.
'Still, it'd be best to keep as many alive as possible, if we're going to have at least five people left for the final round.'
Of course, he only planned to save the ones worth saving.
"Juri."
"Yeah?"
"Let's survive all the way to the final round."
The remark came out of nowhere, but Min Juri soon answered with a shy smile.
"Okay…."
Midnight, July 1st, 2022.
Round 7 began.
The players summoned onto the grassland looked around.
There were fewer people than they'd expected.
[Hello, humans! Have you been well this past month?]
Priscilla spoke with a bright, fresh smile, but the players only kept silent.
With people dropping like flies every round, there was no way anyone felt fondly toward an angel.
[We've got 434 survivors this time, huh? As you can see, there just aren't enough humans for the game to work, right? So we'll be merging zones again. Right now.]
The moment the angel finished speaking, the ground rumbled.
Rrrrrumble—
Even after seeing it before, the process of ten zones merging was still fascinating.
It was like watching scattered puzzle pieces fit together without a hair's breadth of error.
Maybe because of that, the players watched with curiosity rather than fear.
Having seen it once before, they'd gotten used to it.
[We've merged ten zones. The total number of people is 4,922, and the new zone name is C2-ESKA003. As you can see, you're all Koreans, so there's no need to be that wary of each other.]
People nodded briefly at the kind explanation.
[Then, before we start the round, we should pick a zone representative, right?]
The current zone representatives frowned as they realized they'd have to kill each other yet again.
All except for Ryu Min.
'As expected, we're having a representative selection match again.'
Since they did it every time zones merged, it almost felt like an annual event.
'This time I absolutely have to become the zone representative.'
It wasn't as if he'd ever been uninterested in the position, but this time he could not afford to miss it.
Because the reward was enormous.
'Because it would let me use the Zone Representative's Domination Authority in reality.'