Chapter 6 : Revenge
Chapter 6: Revenge
After advancing through the burning research facility for a while.
Baek Woohyun lowered his body at the presence of someone felt in the distance.
It was a ready stance to immediately rush in and tear them apart if they were research facility personnel.
‘Not… an enemy.’
Baek Woohyun discovered Etinel debris and a man sitting slumped beside it, then narrowed his eyes.
If nothing else, at the very least he could immediately tell the man wasn’t research facility personnel.
If he were research facility personnel, he couldn’t have fought such a battle with the Etinel, which would be on the same side.
“Who’s there…”
The man, who belatedly heard the sound, raised his hand. Hwaryureok—flames rose above his hand, but they didn’t feel very threatening.
Because the arm he’d raised trembled, seemingly having sustained considerable injuries fighting the Etinel.
Even the flames themselves, despite burning vigorously, swayed precariously as if they’d go out at any moment.
“……”
Baek Woohyun, who had been contemplating whether to ignore him and pass by, soon approached the man.
Since this was inside a game, not reality, everything placed had an appropriate ‘reason’ for it, so it was to confirm him.
Moreover, he was confident that with the man’s current injuries, even if he were hostile, he could tear him apart in an instant.
“You’re a victim… Keuuk.”
The man also soon realized that Baek Woohyun was a Test Subject, not a researcher, and lowered his hand.
After gasping for breath for a moment, he spoke.
“The fact that you came this far means… you intend to escape, right? Just so happens… Keulleok! I can help.”
When the man, who vomited blood with a gush, touched the tablet he had, the door beside him opened.
Inside the space beyond the door were numerous weapons.
From personal firearms like assault rifles and submachine guns to heavy weapons like grenade launchers and rocket launchers.
Cold weapons were no less numerous than firearms.
Not only melee weapons like swords, spears, axes, and clubs, but also ranged weapons like bows and crossbows, and even exotic weapons like chain scythes, jamadars, and chakrams.
Baek Woohyun realized this was one of several armories existing inside the research facility.
Probably this man had been assigned the role of sealing this place and preventing research facility personnel from arming themselves during the Otherworld Management Bureau’s attack on the research facility.
Then he’d encountered the Etinel and fought it, ending up in his current state.
“Any… thing, take your… pick freely…”
“……”
“And, this too—”
The item the man threw to Baek Woohyun was a radio.
He muttered in a weakened tone while leaning his back against the wall.
“If you don’t know what to do after you get outside… at least try talking through that.”
The man’s head drooped after adding “The Bureau will come get you…”
His life finally ended due to injuries sustained in the death struggle with the Etinel.
It was an appearance of dying to the very end merely as an agent of the Bureau, without leaving behind a single word of last words for himself.
Baek Woohyun overlaid the dead man with visions of the Test Subject comrades he’d been with in the past. Those who had absolutely never yielded even before death.
That’s why, even though he’d obtained a radio he hadn’t been able to get in reality, he paid it no attention.
After silently looking down at the man for a while, he soon struck the ceiling hard.
The ceiling, already weakened by successive explosions, collapsed instantly, and concrete debris that fell down with a crash covered the corpse.
“……”
Before the simply made grave.
Specters appeared around Baek Woohyun standing alone.
As always, they were shedding tears of blood from their haggard eyes.
—”Revenge.”
—”Terrible revenge.”
The specters surrounding Baek Woohyun whispered to him.
Revenge. The sweetest revenge.
Even if it’s false, it will be enough to release our indignation.
Baek Woohyun slowly raised his head.
At some point, his eyes had changed to inverted eyes.
Murderous intent and madness swirled within the two eyes with black and white reversed.
Eventually.
The ‘Superhuman’ took a step forward.
“I never thought I’d start this game.”
Perhaps she was just in her early twenties?
A woman with a youthful look still remaining throughout her face muttered as if sighing.
She was a woman with an impressive appearance: neat black bob cut short around the nape, somewhat haughty-looking eyes, and a tear mole marked below her left eye.
Enough to be called a typical cat-like beauty.
“Haah— does anyone know why this happened?”
The woman, who sighed deeply, threw out a question as if someone were beside her. Even though clearly no one was around.
If someone who didn’t know the situation saw this, they would doubt whether her mind had gone, but that wasn’t particularly the case.
There were over fifteen hundred people present here, merely not visible to the eye.
The viewers who had come to watch her personal broadcast.
“Why did this happennn—!”
—ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—So funny for realㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—You’d know better than anyone elseㅋㅋ
—It’s all karma coming back around~
At the woman’s scream that burst out suddenly, the chat window displayed on one side of her vision was plastered with ridicule.
Though it was a reaction she’d somewhat expected and induced, actually seeing chats full of ridicule wasn’t a pleasant thing.
The woman pouted her lips with genuine feeling.
“For me to play Reverse Planet. A hipster’s pride weeps, it weeps…”
—You chose this mainstream game, deal with it
—Why is this person reacting like this when starting the nation’s god game? (genuinely don’t know) ← You get out
—At least she knows she’s a hipster
—Who threatened with a knife to pick RePla as a penalty?
“This isn’t a penalty I set! You guys arbitrarily decided it!”
At the woman’s outcry that exploded again, the chat window filled once more with ‘ㅋㅋㅋㅋ’.
They seemed quite pleased to be able to tease her after a while.
Well, if one learned their circumstances, it wasn’t incomprehensible. They’d always only suffered from the non-mainstream hipster pick games the woman brought.
After bickering with viewers for a moment like that, the woman soon patted her cheeks repeatedly. It was to come to her senses, realizing the conversation had gone off on a tangent.
She couldn’t keep doing this forever, so she needed to pull herself together and proceed with the game.
“Anyway, a promise is a promise! And I, Kang Soyul, am a woman who has never once broken a promise with viewers!”
—???
—? Bullshit ㄴ
—How many times have you lied about the next game being a really famous game;;
—ㄹㅇ Her shamelessness is insane
The woman, Kang Soyul, subtly turned her head at the viewers’ cold reaction.
Since it was her own matter, it was a reaction that came from knowing very well how absurd what she’d just spouted was.
As one viewer’s chat said, was it just a day or two that she’d brought some strange non-mainstream game claiming it was a famous game?
Just the game she’d enjoyed during the previous broadcast had been a hipster pick game started with the same method, so there was nothing to say.
But that was only for a moment.
“…Ahem! Anyway, starting now, I’ll begin tasting Reverse Planet, commonly called RePla, right? RePla tasting as the penalty for failing to turn it on! Waah—!”
—Look at her changing the subject
—This will be somewhat controversial, won’t it?
—Kang Soyul/Controversy/Viewer Deception
—Going down we goooo
Kang Soyul, who coughed, changed the topic with her characteristic shameless attitude. It was a shameless attitude of not continuing the conversation disadvantageous to her any further.
Naturally, the viewers didn’t just watch her deception.
Ignoring her as she even clapped her hands, they filled the chat window with the two characters ‘na’ and ‘rak.’
However, this also didn’t last very long, because Kang Soyul, who had plastered shamelessness on her face, quickly started the game.
“Let’s see just how godly this god game is!”
—Kya, RePla addicts attain nirvanaㅅㅅ
—What if she falls deep after tasting the god game??
—Gasp! Absolutely not; if she plays RePla too, who will do non-mainstream games;;
—Games by developers with Hongdae disease don’t really need anyone to play them, do? they? maybe?
Thus, what first greeted Kang Soyul, who started Reverse Planet, was the intro trailer.
The video began with a dimensional gate rippling with blue light opening in the middle of a city, and green-skinned monsters pouring out.
People screaming and running away, soldiers despairing because firearms didn’t work passed by in succession, and what came next were people in ordinary clothing.
Though their features were blurred and hard to see clearly, they wore confident smiles and defeated monsters by shooting fire from their hands or releasing wind.
The video briefly went dark while showing people cheering as they watched them.
But the intro trailer didn’t end there.
In the video that brightened again, scenes continued of people in white coats bustling about, people trapped in rooms crying out, and ‘Project: Transcendence’ written on documents.
“Oho.”
Kang Soyul, who understood the rough game worldview just from the trailer, nodded.
Still, up to here it was no different from other games.
Even the hipster pick games she’d played before had intro trailers at least.
—Is it now?
—Soon…
—The big one’s comingㄷㄷ
‘The big one’s coming?’
Kang Soyul, who had been watching the video without much thought, realized at some point that she was standing in the middle of an alley.
Even alone in a dark night with not even the moon risen.
The moment she thought ‘Could this be?’, someone covered her from behind, blocking her vision.
She was about to struggle instinctively when she soon realized her body wouldn’t move as she willed.
And when her vision cleared again, she was inside the room she’d seen in the video earlier.
The very room where people had been trapped and crying out.
Even the clothes she was wearing had changed to an ashen prison uniform.
“What the…”
—What else, you’re kidnapped
—Welcome, first time in a lab?
—Lolㅋㅋ this brings back memoriesㅋㅋ
—I was totally shocked at firstㅋㅋㅋㅋ
‘Kang Haesang’ donated ‘1000 won’!
[You’ve been kidnapped]
“Thank you for the donation, Kang Haesang! That’s a famous movie line from the old days, right? Or not? Well, anyway, does it normally start like this?”
Kang Soyul, whose jaw had dropped, asked. The answer was ‘yes.’ All players start the same way.
Scratching her cheek, she thought it was quite a decent production anyway.
Because there was no better way to intuitively inform players that they were Test Subjects forcibly dragged into the project.
Though someone she didn’t know had at this very moment fallen into reality rather than a game and rolled through hell, that wasn’t the case for her.
And above all.
“An experiential intro trailer. As expected, when you have a lot of development budget, you do all sorts of things.”
—Your indie games don’t have this stuff, do they?
—Ah, this is what they call the class of an ‘AAA game’
—The production is GOAT from the startㅋㅋ
—Do you feel the difference in power?
Even Kang Soyul, who prided herself as a hipster, couldn’t refute the viewers’ mockery this time.
Because the production connecting from the intro trailer to the actual start was quite excellent to simply deny.
The fact that they put this much effort into production that players would see once and move on showed Reverse Planet’s prowess.
“……Just because the packaging is amazing doesn’t mean the contents are amazing too!”
—RePla’s contents are amazing too
—It’s not the nation’s god game for nothing
—Mental victory buildup has startedㅋㅋ
—Pathetic, so pathetic ㅉㅉ
“Oh my, mental victory!”
While bickering with viewers, Kang Soyul skillfully proceeded with the game.
After creating a new character, the process of setting appearance in front of the full-length mirror—though she didn’t actually change anything!—continued like flowing water.
And when it came to the next process, she instinctively looked at the chat window. Because the moment she read the content, she expected the chat window’s reaction.
[Please set your combat assistance percentage]
[Combat Assistance Percentage: 50 percent ▲/▼]
*[Combat assistance is a system that provides overall help in combat, including posture correction, movement support, and supernatural ability usage correction. The higher the percentage, the greater the help you can receive]
[Will you finalize it as is?]
[Yes/No]
“……Everyone?”
—0! 0! 0! 0! 0! 0! 0! 0! 0! 0!
—0 percent ㄱㄱㄱㄱㄱㄱ
—Lolㅋㅋ don’t tell me you’re scared?
—If you don’t assist, I’ll make a big decision…
As expected, the chat window was in chaos.
True to viewers who found teasing Kang Soyul the most fun, they were uniformly crying out for 0 percent, in other words, no assistance.
Since chats were going up at a faster speed than any time since starting Reverse Planet, there was no need to say how serious they were.
Even viewers who noticed her gaze started spamming.
—This has to be 0! This has to be 0! This has to be 0! This has to be 0!
—Clear tutorial with no assist ㄱ? Clear tutorial with no assist ㄱ? Clear tutorial with no assist ㄱ? Clear tutorial with no assist ㄱ?
—Scared? Scared? Scared? Scared? Scared? Scared? Scared? Scared? Scared? Scared?
—Mom, I want to do no assist when I grow up! Mom, I want to do no assist when I grow up! Mom, I want to do no assist when I grow up!
“……”
Before the madness where persuasion seemed impossible, Kang Soyul found herself at a loss for words.
It was obvious what would happen if she chose a number other than 0 percent here.
Spam of the two characters ‘na’ and ‘rak’ would continue endlessly until the tutorial mission ended, no, until Reverse Planet ended.
Of course, she could ignore it if she wanted to.
She just wouldn’t look at the chat window until it calmed down.
But what made her hesitate was the broadcast entertainment value that no assist play could provide.
‘Clear the tutorial mission with no assist… is it possible? If it works, it’ll be huge.’
Kang Soyul was proud of her gaming skills.
Among hipster pick games, there were quite a few that demanded high physicality without consideration for players, and she thought she was nearly semi-pro level, having been trained through them.
In fact, even viewers acknowledged her physicality if nothing else.
Yet it was questionable whether she could clear Reverse Planet’s tutorial mission without the help of the combat assistance system.
From what she’d researched beforehand, using supernatural abilities without supernatural ability usage correction was said to be like using a suddenly appeared third hand at will.
It meant it was that difficult, so she couldn’t help but hesitate.
Clear it smoothly with assistance?
Or show struggling without assistance?
‘Yeah, what no assist.’
After pondering, Kang Soyul soon made a decision.
To take some assistance regardless of what viewers said.
It was a decision made thinking that viewers who giggled at her suffering at first would eventually urge her to move on if she only attempted the tutorial mission dozens of times.
“No matter what, no assist—”
[Mission ‘No Assist Tutorial Clear<150,000 won>’ has been created]
“—is something a broadcaster should try at least once! Yes! I’ll go with no assist until tutorial clear!”
—Which is to say, it was too much money to scold about
—She changed her words as soon as the mission came inㅋㅋ
—Didn’t she deliberately drag time to get a mission?
—Kingically godheartical;
“What do you mean on purpose? What do you take me for to say such things!”
Kang Soyul, who deliberately ignored chats like ‘money detector,’ ‘specter of capitalism,’ and ‘Capitalism Ho!’, set the combat assistance percentage to 0 percent.
She didn’t know whether it would work or not, but anyway, shouldn’t she at least try challenging for 150,000 won?
After she entered the name [Kang Soyul], Reverse Planet finally began in earnest.
—Test Subject No. 48.
Kang Soyul, who naturally ignored the researcher’s voice coming from the speaker, smiled broadly and spoke.
“Then let’s proceed quickly with the basic tutorial from now on!”