Chapter 48

Chapter 48. I Feel Like I’m Going Crazy!

Lately, I had hardly ever seen those provocative messages asking me whether I was going to give up in reality.

That was only natural, since there was nothing that would warrant such a message in the first place.

The only thing that could qualify was probably the sudden physical activities with Junior Trainer, but even those were becoming somewhat familiar to me now.

If I were not working and just playing all day, I might be short on money and have to get a part-time job, which would bring all kinds of stress and make me see the message.

But the chairman had given me so much money that I had no reason to work.

Besides, I only spent around 20 to 30 a month, excluding rent.

The amount of money I had was so enormous that even if I spent it for the rest of my life, I would never be able to use it all before I died.

So there was no reason for me to get a part-time job.

I had seen the message a few times inside the game, but almost everything that had happened in the game had somehow reached an ending by now, so there was nothing left to give me a headache.

As for Pie, that was the reason I was playing this game in the first place.

There was no reason for me to give up.

And I was confident that I was currently in a fairly stable mental state.

So there was no reason for that message, which had even appeared in reality when I was mentally unstable, to show up again.

[Will you give up?]

That was what I thought.

The difference between ideals and reality.

'So was mental instability not the problem? I thought it was some kind of side effect caused by actually experiencing pain.'

These days, thanks to Junior Trainer, I had been looking at the sun even when I did not want to and meeting several people even when I did not want to meet them.

Because of that, I thought my mental health had been improving.

Not long ago, I had even been quite active, meeting Junior Trainer's senior.

I had forgotten her name, so I did not know what to call her exactly, but I had even met the former Trainer.

Yet despite all that, after encountering a huge event, wall, hardship, and pain…

Anyway, something happened that I did not want to face and wanted to avoid.

And then it appeared.

“Why does he suddenly want me to come?”

Yesterday, right after I had turned off the game, there had been a phone call that was more than enough to push me to the limits mentally.

Why hide it?

It was a call from the chairman.

To be precise, I think it had been his secretary.

Anyway, the chairman was looking for me.

He wanted me to come to the company because there was something he wanted to ask of me.

My head hurt so much that I felt like I was going crazy.

I was the kind of person who had read so many manga and novels that I sometimes worried that if I ever went insane, I might start believing the things from manga and novels were real.

But I had actually felt pain inside the game.

And now I was seeing message windows appear before my eyes.

What would I think?

Of course, I would think I had completely lost my mind.

Was there perhaps a reason why the chairman had not specifically said that he would fix this serious problem of being able to actually feel pain inside the game, and had instead only tried to silence me?

See?

I was having ridiculous thoughts like this.

Maybe Junior Trainer did not actually exist.

Maybe Junior Trainer was someone who did not really exist, and because I was on the verge of going insane, I had created her as an illusion on my own.

Maybe that was why I had never seen Junior Trainer getting along with anyone other than me.

Maybe the chairman was trying to do something through the game.

Something that I did not know about.

It seemed like something straight out of fantasy.

Perhaps that pit I had accidentally discovered was something that had been discarded during the process.

Or maybe it had been used as some kind of filter.

Perhaps things that I had only dreamed about in my head and known about through fiction actually existed in the real world.

For example, the guard who had been wearing real armor might actually have been a real knight.

Maybe Trainer, who had muscles so enormous that I wondered whether she was even human, was not actually human at all.

Maybe she had developed those muscles through something other than exercise or drugs.

Perhaps the AIs inside the game were actually real people.

Maybe that was why they were capable of such realistic interactions.

Perhaps the world inside the game actually existed somewhere.

No.

Maybe it was a world that had been created as an experiment to see if they could create an actual world.

Why had the company, which seemed like it would have trouble even renting one floor of a building, suddenly acquired land so enormous that I could not even see all of it at once?

It was practically as huge as a theme park.

Maybe the chairman had used magical powers.

And what about the people who had suffered mental problems after the test?

Perhaps they had reached something before I did.

Maybe that was why they had been isolated.

[Will you give up?]

It was not just these abnormal possibilities.

I could also think of a much simpler explanation.

Maybe my appearance had been exposed on Inbang's stream, and something the chairman did not want people to know had spread because of it.

Maybe that was why they wanted to harm me.

Of course, if that had really been their intention, they would not have specifically informed me.

Then perhaps this summons was a warning.

Maybe they were giving me one chance.

I did not own a car.

So if I traveled anywhere, I would have to use a bus, taxi, or subway.

Other than public transportation, which would leave a clear record of my route, there was no other way for me to travel.

If I disappeared, it would be easy to determine where and how I had moved.

But I had no family.

And there was no one who would naturally come looking for me at this house.

Even if something happened to me and I stayed away from home for a long time, nobody would come looking.

Junior Trainer might come looking for me.

But Junior Trainer might also be connected to the company.

Would she really try to find me?

So even if they called me somewhere and harmed me directly, nobody would discover the connection between me and the chairman.

I would simply become an unexplained death.

Or simply disappear without a trace.

Maybe there was even a car prepared by the chairman waiting outside right now.

Should I have stopped watching movies?

Should I have stopped reading manga?

Should I have stopped reading webtoons?

Should I have stopped reading novels?

Maybe I should have stopped playing games too.

But if I did that, I would make Pie, who might actually exist somewhere, wait forever.

Was this really the time to worry about someone else when something might happen to me?

Am I really crazy?

Please worry about yourself!

[Will you give up?]

I did not understand why he suddenly wanted to meet me.

Why had he specifically told his direct secretary that the chairman himself wanted to meet me instead of simply sending someone beneath him to meet me?

Had I done something?

Was I planning to do something?

The video?

If that was the reason, I had already stopped because it had become too bothersome.

My actions were so far removed from normal gameplay that I had stopped because I was worried they might cause controversy.

Yes, I had wanted to keep it exclusive too.

I would not deny that.

But more than that, I had simply found it annoying.

At that time, the 'Will you give up?' message had not even appeared.

So I had simply given up.

Then what was I supposed to do?

If I asked someone else to edit my videos, they would see all of my gameplay.

Then the unusually high stats that did not match my level would become a topic of discussion.

And even if the editor hid that part during the editing process so that it would not cause problems for the time being, what if the editor eventually exposed it?

Then the only remaining option was to do everything myself.

But that was annoying.

My days were already completely filled with exercise and gaming.

There was no room left.

I was living my life like a freshman who had just entered university and created some insane timetable with not even a single break.

Where was I supposed to find more time?

Reduce the time I spent gaming?

What?

Were they telling me to die?

[Will you give up?]

As I had said myself, when you have information that you do not know is true or false, thinking, 'Should I do this? Or should I do that?' without knowing the facts leads nowhere.

But what if, like now, I had discovered numerous circumstances that made me suspicious?

What should I do if, based on the circumstances, my suspicions seemed likely to be true?

No.

Maybe I was the only one who thought they were true.

For example, during the more than one month I had spent as a tester, I had never heard another tester say that they had experienced what I had experienced.

There was no way someone could go through such a shocking experience and remain silent.

I was currently in a state of severe shock.

I had not even realized it myself, but my thoughts had become heavily biased in one direction.

If that were the case, then even this state of panic I was experiencing could be explained.

Perhaps my increasingly narrow field of vision was causing me to judge all the information surrounding me as false and recognize only what I wanted to see as true.

Maybe the chairman really did not have any particular thoughts.

I had felt pain.

I had experienced something horrifying.

But all of that had happened inside the game.

Perhaps the chairman had simply discovered that information that was supposed to be revealed near the end of the game had been exposed too early and was only trying to prevent information from leaking.

But if that were the case, should he really have handled it like that?

If that were truly the reason, he should have explained the situation to me to some extent.

That would have made it easier to prevent the information from leaking.

But he did not.

Then…

No.

That could not be it.

Think again.

After that, I looked into the chairman a little more.

Even before coming to Korea, he had already experienced suddenly turning small companies into major companies in several different countries.

He had done the same thing here and produced the same result.

Perhaps, before long, the chairman would leave Korea and the company would go bankrupt.

That had happened before too.

But what if everything he had done with his previous companies had simply been practice?

No.

What if they had only been research facilities for creating a game called World Gate?

What if he had used those companies to develop the necessary technology, then left once the technology was complete, causing the companies to collapse because their technology had disappeared with him?

It made sense, did it not?

It was difficult to believe that such enormous companies could collapse so miserably simply because the chairman left.

They had not been companies without visible achievements.

The things they had done were not scams either.

It did not make sense.

No.

I did not know anything about business.

Maybe that was simply how business worked.

Perhaps when a person with such a grand vision, leadership, ability to act, and charisma as the chairman left, many talented people who believed the company no longer had a vision also left with him.

But even so, I could not understand why every previous company had ended up that way.

How could even a single company fail to survive and completely collapse?

Considering the chairman's history, it was only natural that capable people would gather around him.

And even if the chairman left, it was not as though every talented person would leave too.

In the first place, why was the game called World Gate?

Why had they deliberately used a word that tickled my fantasy-loving brain?

Was it because nobody except me would have any reason to be suspicious?

Well, there was probably no one who would look at the name World Gate and think, 'Huh? These days, games sometimes involve traveling to another world. Could this be…?'

The thing that had bothered me from the very beginning was this.

Why was a company with technology that seemed impossible for my era using all of that technology merely to create a game?

If money was the goal, they could create things that would make far more money than a game.

They were capable of creating artificial intelligence that was completely identical to humans.

An AI with human emotions, intelligence, judgment, and behavior.

Why would a company with technology that advanced only make a game?

If they simply announced the existence of such technology, money would come pouring in.

Even the police robots that I had only seen in movies might actually be possible.

Of course, for that, they would need bodies for those AIs to control.

But if I dared to guess, perhaps they already possessed the technology necessary for that too.

Maybe there were even golems with steel bodies powered not by electricity, but by magical energy.

“Aaaaaah!!! Enough! Enough! Am I crazy? Have I lost my mind? Am I even in my right mind?!”

I felt like my hair was going to fall out.

From stress.

They say stress-induced hair loss can be treated.

Was that really true?

Even if I wanted to tell someone, ask someone, or confront someone about this, the moment I spoke, they would laugh at me.

The moment I asked, they would ignore me.

The moment I confronted them, they would look at me with contempt.

Why should I spend my precious currency called time to buy those things?

[Will you give up?]

“…Let us go.”

I was not exactly an aggressive person.

But there was no other way to satisfy my curiosity except going there and finding out.

I had to confirm it before this crazy curiosity killed me.

It already felt like I was walking straight toward my own death, but I had to find out!

My curiosity was telling me so!

Go into danger and satisfy your curiosity!

Deal with what happens afterward later!

My instincts!

My instincts were ordering me!

I left my house, walked through the streets, used public transportation, crossed the huge iron gate I had visited before, and went to meet the chairman.

Yes.

Let us do that.

“You arrived right on time.”

“Yes.”

Thump, thump, thump.

My heart was pounding like crazy.

It felt as though it might burst at any moment.

I was so nervous that I thought even the chairman could probably see how heavily I was breathing.

“The truth is, I have something important to ask of you.”

“…Hoo… Yes.”

A request?

What kind of request?

I was extremely anxious right now.

Seeing an old man who looked like a character from a fantasy manga saying something like that right in front of me only made my head more complicated and my heart more uneasy!

What was it?

What was he planning to ask me to do?

Some kind of experiment?

No.

A request!

Was it fantasy?!

Of course it was fantasy!

Say it was fantasy!

The hidden secret of the game!

The secret of this world!

I have figured everything out!

“There is an NPC that we need to deploy soon, but its artificial intelligence just will not stabilize. Would you take a look at it? There is no other tester as skilled as you.”

“…Yes!”

…

Maybe I should stop reading novels.