Chapter 115 : Chapter 115
Chapter 115
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun was half out of his mind.
The surreal situation he had encountered had shattered his common sense.
He was trapped in a small, old building, and he was in a position where he could not take a single step out of it.
“Delivery! I’m leaving it at the door!”
What drove him even crazier was the fact that other people came and went from the building as if it were nothing.
When he ordered food delivery, or when he ordered daily necessities.
The delivery drivers freely came and went from the building, helping Choi Ho-jun to live in this cramped studio apartment.
CLICK. CREAK.
Choi Ho-jun brought the bowl of black bean noodles that had been placed in front of the door inside.
With a gloomy face, he tore the plastic wrap, opened the lid, and picked up the chopsticks.
“Haa.”
And he let out a deep sigh.
It was because of the trash bag that had come into his view.
“Damn it. The trash has piled up again.”
He could not even go out to throw away the trash.
The recycling area was outside the building.
To dispose of those, he had no choice but to wait until Han Yura came.
Until she got off work from the company, drove her car all the way to Gangbuk, and arrived after traversing that long distance.
SLURP.
Choi Ho-jun roughly sucked in the noodles. Still, with something in his stomach, he felt much better.
Then he flinched.
He picked up the bowl and moved to the front of the computer.
[Warning: Insufficient Quantity of Reinhardt.]
The unpleasant message was still there.
He minimized the screen and opened the internet.
The Soul Calibur community was bustling as usual.
“So he was experiencing this kind of situation all alone.”
Reinhardt had been transmigrated into the game.
That absurd claim was the truth.
There was no way to deny it, having come to this point.
Choi Ho-jun read through all the posts that [Reinhardt] had left one by one.
He checked the record of him falling into an unknown world and constantly rolling forward.
Trials were given, but Reinhardt endured them alone.
He built connections, solidified his position, and brought in and nurtured every promising talent he could find.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it like that.”
He tried to imagine it vaguely, but he could not get a feel for it at all.
If he had fallen into the game.
And if he had become Reinhardt, who could die at any moment.
“Recently, he’s been raising Dirk. That’s a good decision. Is he planning to pair him with Irien?”
Reinhardt was doing what he had to do even in this situation.
Even though he had made contact with reality, he had not stopped struggling to survive.
Because the threat was real.
If he could not solve the problem right away, he was in a position where he had to overcome the given situations one by one.
The bowl of black bean noodles was empty in no time.
Choi Ho-jun quickly cleaned up and sat back down in front of the computer.
CLICK.
With a feeling of ‘just in case’, he brought up the Soul Calibur screen.
[Rejection failed.]
But the situation had not changed.
Some entity did not want Choi Ho-jun to leave this place.
And it would probably continue to be so.
Until he was meekly dragged into the game like Reinhardt.
“That can’t happen. If I die there, I’ll really die.”
Choi Ho-jun was good at self-assessment.
If he were in the same position as Reinhardt, he would die in no time.
And death in that world was not a light matter.
It was not a space one could escape from with a simple phrase like ‘logging out’ or what have you.
[Unread messages: 175]
His phone was blowing up.
Most of them were from the team members he worked with.
He had told his family that he was going on a business trip for a while, and as he got older, his relationships with his friends had naturally grown distant.
[Team Leader! Regarding the ad placement today…….]
[Should I proceed with it like this?]
[Contract processing completed. We will focus on banner ads for the time being…….]
Choi Ho-jun handled his work remotely.
He gave various instructions and received reports on the results.
He was going crazy with frustration because he could not be there in person.
And around 6 PM.
A time when he would normally still be tied up with overtime or something.
“Team Leader!”
Along with the sound of the door lock being pressed, a welcome voice was heard.
“……Director.”
“You’re here. That’s a relief. I always get that worry whenever I come. That you might get dragged in there in that short time. Nothing special happened, right? You were okay?”
“Yes. I just had two bowls of black bean noodles.”
“Just a moment. I need to throw out the trash first. Is there anything else besides this? Any items you need?”
“I’ve ordered everything I need. I’m sorry, Director.”
“Don’t be sorry. This all happened because of me.”
“Fundamentally speaking, isn’t it ultimately my fault? I tried to cover it up with a clumsy lie and ended up in this mess.”
“Then let’s just say we’re both a little at fault.”
Han Yura put on vinyl gloves and took out the piled-up trash.
There was no sign of hardship. In fact, her expression seemed bright.
‘She’s not enjoying this situation, is she.’
Han Yura was a unique person, but she was not a sociopath.
He recalled an evaluation he had heard from a development department employee in the past.
-The Director? She’s an amazing person. When work gets tough, she actually gets more excited. She says she’s already looking forward to how good it will feel when it’s all done.
When faced with a huge problem, Han Yura was said to feel joy.
It was because she imagined the pleasure of finishing her homework.
“Phew, all cleaned up. Nothing else, right?”
“Yes. Nothing.”
“There’s not much. Any contact from Reinhardt?”
“There was no contact, but a new post was uploaded.”
“I saw that too. He said he started raising Dirk?”
“Yes. It seemed to be for the purpose of dealing with Magical Beasts.”
“That’s good. I didn’t expect Dirk to awaken so soon, though. But if he can be raised properly, he can be paired with Irien, and with the set effect…….”
Han Yura muttered so, folding her fingers one by one.
Then she nodded as if it were a good plan.
“It will be helpful. He also started running the alchemy workshop and the smithy, right?
Spreading the materials he acquired this time.”
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t mention the Dark Order?”
“Not at all. He’s keeping his promise.”
“That’s a relief. Then shall I get to work too?”
Smiling brightly, Han Yura took a laptop out of her bag.
“Just hang in there a little longer. I’ll get you out of here somehow.”
“……Yes.”
Han Yura sat in front of the computer. She connected her laptop to the computer, then soon ran some program and began typing busily.
Choi Ho-jun, who had no connection to the development side, had no idea what kind of work she was doing.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m finding the reason why this message was displayed. It’s a situation that we can’t understand with our common sense, right?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s an effort to bring that situation down to our level of common sense. If we find the cause, it won’t be difficult to find a solution either.”
Han Yura’s goal was simple.
Find the reason why the message about a substitute was displayed, and if possible, internally prevent that message from appearing.
Or find and fix an error within Soul Calibur.
“Anyway, it offered a choice here. The method of offering is a warning message displayed on the game screen.”
“Yes.”
“Actually, really, um, if it’s a god-like being, let’s say. The being that created this situation.
Then they wouldn’t need to go through such a troublesome process, right? They could just go whoosh, and take you, Team Leader.”
“That would be so.”
“We’re pinning our hopes on that. If the other party is in a position where they have to go through such a cumbersome procedure, we’ll respond accordingly.”
Choi Ho-jun rounded his lips and made an ‘oh’ sound.
A story that would have sounded like absurd nonsense in the past.
But to him now, it was a very persuasive explanation.
“I’ll be cheering for you.”
“Thank you.”
Humans live on hope.
Choi Ho-jun thought that expression was accurate.
Just a moment ago, he had been moping around like a sick chicken, but now, watching Han
Yura’s work process, his eyes were shining.
“Found it.”
After a long while, Han Yura said.
Choi Ho-jun, who had been crumpled on the bed, sprang up like a spring and stuck to her side.
“You found it?”
“Yes. You see it here, right? The message we saw.”
The screen was full of a combination of indecipherable characters, but among them, there was content that could be read.
It was about needing a substitute or the rejection having failed.
“From now on, I’m going to fix this. So that it doesn’t display at all.”
***
The work proceeded in a way that Choi Ho-jun could not understand.
Han Yura typed frantically, tested, and frowned as if disappointed.
It was a repetition of that process.
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun finally understood what it meant for one’s mouth to go dry.
“It’s not working again.”
“Uh, in what way is it getting stuck?”
“To put it simply, there’s something like a security program installed. To prevent the content from being modified carelessly. Just a moment. There’s still a method I can try.”
Another painful period of time passed.
The clock was already pointing to around 10 PM.
TAP-
Just then, Han Yura strongly pressed the enter key as if finishing her work.
“……Done.”
“I-is it done?”
“Yes. Success. Would you like to try it again? Like we did at the beginning.”
“Should I just reject it?”
“Yes.”
Choi Ho-jun sat in the seat Han Yura had vacated.
He brought up the Soul Calibur screen and gave the answer ‘reject’ to the message asking if he would input a substitute.
And.
“It’s not showing up.”
The message saying the rejection had failed was gone.
“It’s not showing up. Is it done now?”
“We have to check.”
NOD.
Choi Ho-jun quickly opened the front door and went out.
He flew down the stairs and faced the glass door at the entrance of the villa.
CREAK-
He pushed the door, opening it.
Choi Ho-jun walked out. Confidently, with his chest puffed out.
“I’m out.”
He looked up at the sky. The moon was shining brightly.
“We succeeded, didn’t we?”
Just then, Han Yura’s voice was heard from behind.
When he whirled around, he saw her smiling face, looking satisfied.
“Yes, we succeeded.”
“I’m glad my prediction was correct. That being, anyway, yes. It seems that being also has to follow a minimum set of rules.”
“……Will it work for Reinhardt too?”
“Well? We’ll have to go back inside and try first.”
Choi Ho-jun’s face turned pale. He instinctively took a step back.
“If you’re uncomfortable, I can go alone.”
“No, it’s alright. Let’s go together. I can come out now.”
“Shall we?”
This is a matter of human decency.
Thinking so, Choi Ho-jun forced himself to follow Han Yura back inside.
As soon as he entered the cramped studio apartment, he felt his breath catch in his throat, but he endured it.
“Team Leader, you should let Reinhardt know first. I’ll be trying various things on my end.”
“Understood.”
Choi Ho-jun grabbed his phone.
He left a comment on Reinhardt’s latest post.
ㄴ(Aslan): This is Team Leader Choi Ho-jun. I just escaped from the building.
As he did so, he realized.
He had been liberated, but Reinhardt had not yet been.
ㄴ(Reinhardt): You escaped?
ㄴ(Aslan): Yes. And Director Han Yura is looking for a way. To get you out of there somehow.