Chapter 30

Chapter 30. I Want to Play the Game

I opened my eyes to the faint sunlight coming through the thin blackout curtains.
It had been a really long time since I had heard the sound of sparrows chirping.

“Uuugh… Morning workout….”

After being trapped as a tester for almost a month and then coming back outside, I wanted to shut myself inside my studio apartment and spend every day being lazy.

Because of my promise to Trainer, I went to the gym every day and exercised, but other than that, I was not doing anything particularly meaningful.

Somehow, I just didn't feel like doing anything.

Yeah, I couldn't even think properly.
There seemed to be a better word that would fit the sentence I had just thought of, but I gave up trying to remember it.

[Would you like to give up?]

“Ah, I said I'm not giving up… Get rid of the message….”

The aftereffects of the game were seriously insane.
Sometimes, I even suffered from aftereffects so badly that I would see a message window with an exclamation mark floating in front of my eyes.

Apparently, there had been quite a few testers like me, because Super Real seemed to be taking care of the testers' mental and physical health.
But I refused their help.

I couldn't trust that chairman, so I naturally rejected any kindness he offered as well.

For example, when I told him that I had felt pain during the game, he spoke as if he already knew everything.

“However, I would prefer it if you never mentioned this matter again.
I even overlooked the fact that you left your character behind in that world.”

“What?
B-but!
That pit!”

“You must have read too many novels.
There is no such pit in the game as the one you described.
That's all there is to it.”

“???”

That was a threat.

He knew exactly how much those words, “Should I delete your character?”, would affect me after I had endured the pain and still forced myself to leave my character inside the game.

Still, those words also meant that even though the testing period had ended, the things I and the other testers had done inside the game would not disappear.

For some reason, that made me feel strangely proud.

There was just one thing bothering me.

None of the employees, including the chairman, knew about that pit deep beneath the forest.

Seriously, this wasn't some fantasy novel where everything suddenly turned into an otherworldly-transmigration story at the very end.

I wished they would stop joking around like that.

Some of the testers already seemed confused because of how realistic this game was, so I really wished they would stop pulling pranks like this.

“The official opening date of Super Real's game ‘World Gate,’ which has attracted attention from all over the world, has been postponed once again.”

“…I fell asleep without turning off the computer….”

Even though they had never directly experienced pain or realistic sensations like I had, some people became so immersed in the game that they confused reality with the game.

There were even cases where people repeated actions in reality that they had repeatedly performed inside the game for testing purposes.

No matter how much people liked realistic elements, if the game had side effects to this degree, then it obviously needed to be improved, even if that meant delaying the opening.

“I want it to open quickly so the embargo can finally be lifted.”

And then I could go meet the kids again.

…No, but no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't shake the feeling that Pai could have been a little more affectionate toward me.

Of course!
Of course, I had kept a certain distance and stayed somewhat detached from her.

But if she was going to cry and call out to me so sadly when I was leaving, couldn't she have shown a little more of that normally…?

No, well, I hadn't exactly done anything right either.

Thinking about it, she hadn't been completely incapable of expressing herself like that.

Perhaps I should consider that she had expressed her feelings in her own way, even though I had failed to properly respond to them.

Even dating someone virtually was difficult.

If it were a dating simulator, it would have been easy.

Now that I had plenty of money in my bank account, maybe I could even date using money…

Wait, what exactly did I mean by dating with money?

I had said it myself, but was something like that even possible?

At this rate, I was probably going to live as a bachelor forever.

The thought of the bloodline that had continued all the way to my generation ending with me sent a shiver down my spine.

“There's no way I can find love when I just stay at home.”

These days, I was going to the gym as well.

The junior of the trainer I had met at the company kept dragging me around and making me exercise until I was exhausted, so I was meeting more people than before.

However, most of the people I met that way lived in a completely different world from me.

I felt like I couldn't approach them at all, so every time I met someone new, I simply wanted to go home.

Anyway, that junior was even more intense than Trainer.

These days, he kept dragging me around until late at night, saying that we should learn martial arts.

I exercised until my legs were trembling and felt like I was about to die.

Meanwhile, that person became even more energetic, as if he had only just finished warming up.

There was no way I could keep up with him.

“Ugh, my eyes hurt….”

On days when the weather was this nice, I would probably have to run alongside Junior Trainer as he ran around like a puppy that had come out for a walk along the riverside for the first time in a long while.

“Our junior needs to lose some weight!
Haha!
Skinny fat is dangerous!”

After spending several weeks together, I had finally gotten a rough idea of what he was like.

It was hard not to know, considering that whenever alcohol entered his system, he would endlessly tell me the story of his entire life.

When I was with Pai, even after spending several weeks together, I couldn't figure out what kind of person she was.

The things she occasionally said clearly showed that she had some goodwill toward me.

But during normal conversations, she only said sharp words, as if she were testing whether a few words could kill me.

So I could never tell whether she actually disliked me or not.

If I had only shown her my good side, maybe things would have been different.

But I was a human who had gone wild while becoming friends with Hayang, the embodiment of madness.

When I returned to reality in a calm state and remembered how I had acted inside the game, it was enough to keep me awake at night.

If I felt that way, how had I looked through Pai's eyes?

By ordinary standards, I must have been a villain who shouldn't have been allowed to exist in two places under the same sky.

Because of that, I had expected Pai to reject me when I tried to remember her face during our final moments.

Something like this.

“Let go!
You never told me anything important, so don't pretend to care about me now!”

Or perhaps this.

“I don't even want to look at you!
Get lost!
Disappear!
You said you would keep your promises, but everything you say is a lie!
There's nothing truthful about you!
Liar!”

Or even—

“What the hell are you saying, you idiot?
Why don't you just go die?
I thought you were trash that could still be saved, but you're an irredeemable maggot with nowhere to throw you away!”

…Those were the kinds of words I had expected to hear.

I was so busy clutching my heart, which felt like it was about to burst.

What kind of image had Pai actually had of me?

Either way, it was certain that she had cared about me.

She always listened to my requests, and whenever I looked back, she was always somewhere nearby.

Having her there had made me feel secure.

If time had continued flowing inside the game world even after the testing period ended, I wondered how Pai was doing right now.

During the testing period, the game's time had been accelerated to a level where users would feel less fatigue.

So now that there were no users, hadn't several decades already passed in that world?

Perhaps everything that happened during the test would end up being treated as something that happened hundreds of years ago.

Maybe it would even become something that happened during the creation of the world.

As a tester, that would be quite interesting.

But as a user who had grown attached to one NPC, it was rather sad.

What if I officially started playing the game, entered the world, searched for Pai, and found that she had become a hunched old grandmother?

“Well, whatever happens then will happen then….”

“Oh, Junior!
Is it okay to think about other things while we're destroying your lower body?”

“Ah!
Sorry….”

“Haha!
If you're sorry, let's do one more set!”

“What?”

I shouldn't think too deeply about this.

If I wasn't careful, I might end up unable to even walk home.

Still, there was one more thing.

How on earth had they implemented the system of mental power in that game?

Unlocking a path toward a specific class by repeatedly performing certain actions was one thing.

But the position of this power called mental power within the game was far beyond that.

The Indomitable Will I had felt—the ordinary words for it would be persistence or effort—was definitely frustrating and painful.

Yet it was difficult to escape from.

It was similar to those rough chains that had been used to represent it inside the game.

Then how had they created something like that for the users?

Was there some way of reading the user's thoughts?

Not only did the game have an absurdly advanced AI, but was there some mysterious system that even surpassed that AI?

No matter how much I thought about it, Super Real's transcendent technological abilities were impossible to understand from an ordinary perspective.

During the testing period, I hadn't thought deeply about things like this, as if I had been possessed by something.

But now that I had some free time, my thoughts were expanding.

“Junior!
There are still two laps left!”

“Haaah… Hah… P-please, stop….”

“Haha!
Since you still have enough breath to talk, I guess you can run three more laps!”

“?!!!”

This person was also impossible to understand by ordinary standards.

I mean, did ordinary trainers really use their personal time to exercise with their clients?

Come to think of it, Oehorn wasn't normal either.

He was several times stronger than me, yet a few words from me could shake him.

He even proudly used as his own name the nickname I had given him just to tease him.

From the beginning, Oehorn hadn't exactly harbored any particular hatred toward me.

Still, I had been the human who broke off his own horn and fought with a gauntlet made from that horn.

How had he been able to remain so calm while standing in front of someone like me?

And when I told him to help Pai, whom he seemed to hate to death, he understood just from a glance even though I hadn't specifically said anything.

Had he somehow developed a strange friendship with me?

Or had he also been infected by my madness?

Still, even if that was the case, I had a feeling that he would never become my subordinate.

I had no particular basis for that feeling.

It was simply my instinct.

“…It's a full moon….”

Late at night, I dragged my exhausted body home.

Sometimes, it felt as if the strength suddenly left my legs, making every step unsteady.

How much longer would I have to wait like this?

How much longer would I have to keep lifting weights?

I didn't dislike the feeling of my body becoming healthier, but it was so exhausting that I felt like I was going crazy.

It wasn't as if I had only played games for one or two years.

There had been plenty of times when I had eagerly anticipated a legendary masterpiece, only for it to turn out to be such a terrible game that I couldn't even bear looking at it after release.

Because of that, whenever I heard about a new or highly anticipated game, I had learned to take a step back and watch from a distance.

But this game had pulled me right in, made me sit down in front of it, and kept showing me nothing but heart-pounding trailers over and over again.

Please, just open a little sooner.

If I hadn't actually experienced pain during the testing period, I probably would have been even more excited than I was now.

I would have been overwhelmed with anticipation, my eyes sparkling with excitement.

So in a way, I should consider my current excitement to actually be somewhat cooled down.

And yet, it was still this intense.

Anyway, events that made my normally lukewarm emotions race like this were painful.

I wanted the game to come as soon as possible, but I also wanted it to approach carefully and slowly, giving me some warning first.

Bzzzt.

“Huh?”

[Tomorrow is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu trial!
Look forward to it!]

…You should stay a little farther away from me.

As far away as possible.

And even farther.