Gloomy, dark skies. Outside the window, a gloomy, dark street stretched out, looking as if an entire slum had been built from scratch.
A scene that was clearly alien to anything you could see in 21st-century Korea.
That alien feeling wasn't something I sensed only with my eyes. I could hear it too.
Guuuuung.
The bus's engine, as if hauled up from some deep place below.
"Hmph..."
Then there was the sigh of Vergilius, the bus's guide, who did not seem at all pleased with the current situation.
Tick, tock.
And cutting through all those sounds, the clock of our Manager, Dante. Every one of them was unfamiliar to me, sounds I had never had reason to hear before.
" Are you sure you're really okay? You've been pale since earlier."
"Yes, I'm fine. I just get a little motion sickness..."
When I said that and turned back toward the window, what I saw reflected in the glass was a plain-looking young man.
The young man's name was Saramago—or rather, should I say that was now my name.
Having your name change overnight is harder than you'd think.
Experiencing the moment when the name you know is no longer your name is neither pleasant nor easy to get used to. That much was only natural.
"Ha..."
As gloomy thoughts filled my head, a sigh slipped out on its own. And gloomy moods like this usually came with reflection.
Right. If I wanted to understand why I was in such a bizarre situation, I'd have to go back to before I became Saramago—further into the past.
It was February 27th, a day that still felt a little chilly, but with the mildness of spring slowly beginning to show itself along with its distinctive scent of grass. Today was the day a new game, one that had drawn the attention of many people, was being released.
The genre was "sin resonance brutal RPG," and the title was "Limbus Company."
Just from the genre and the name, you couldn't really tell what kind of game it was, but from the rumors I'd heard in the community, I'd been told that having a strange genre and being unfriendly to players was a long-standing tradition of this developer.
Which meant that if I wanted to know exactly what Limbus Company was, I'd have to actually play it.
I hadn't played the company's previous titles, but I had high expectations for today's release.
A dystopian setting where the world had been ruined by technology, unknown monsters spread across the City, and countless technologies that brought about that ruin while also returning a profit in equal measure.
Such elements were bound to stir a man's heart.
Although I hadn't touched the first title, "Lobotomy Corporation," because of its punishing difficulty, and I still hadn't played the immediately preceding "Library of Ruina" because it was a sequel continuing the story of that first, notoriously difficult title, "Lobotomy Corporation," the game being released now, "Limbus Company," was a gacha game. A mobile-supported gacha game, at that.
Wasn't it common sense for a mobile gacha game meant to draw in ordinary players to be playable even without knowing the previous titles, in other words, to keep the barrier to entry low?
For someone like me, who usually played gacha games, the fact that Limbus Company was a gacha game was extremely welcome news. A long-awaited new title from a developer I'd been looking forward to, and on top of that, a genre perfect for newcomers—what a perfect fit.
While I was thinking those pointless thoughts, a Steam notification popped up. It said Limbus Company had finished downloading.
Which meant it was time to finally play the Limbus Company I'd been anticipating for so long.
Click, click.
After launching the game, the first thing that came into view was probably the face of the game's protagonist, Dante, and the logo with "Limbus Company" emblazoned across it in huge letters.
Following the game's instructions, I clicked the screen, and the terms of service window that always appears in gacha games greeted me.
[Limbus Company Terms of Service
Chapter 1: General Provisions...
---
Like any other game, it seemed I had to read the entire agreement before I could proceed.
Of course, I ignored all of it, scrolled all the way down, and pressed agree and confirm. Companies usually don't bother sneaking anything into the terms, after all.
---
...Supplementary Provisions
By agreeing to this policy, you are deemed to have consented to its use as energy for the future construction of Project Moon's City.]
...Something ominous had just passed by, but I decided it was probably just my imagination. There was no way a ridiculous terms clause saying they'd turn people into energy could actually exist.
And such a clause couldn't possibly be legal under South Korean law.
Mm, safe enough.
What came after the terms was, as expected, the mobile game staple: downloading game data. And for me, who was looking forward to playing, the answer to a data download was obviously yes.
Click.
And then my vision went black.
...Yeah. By that point, you probably guessed it, but that was the last memory I had of my life in Korea.