HACKED 14

‘Pervert.’

‘Per―vert.’

‘Pe―er―ve―ert.’

His words seemed to catch in a self-imposed slow motion, lingering in the back of my mind.

‘Am I hallucinating?’

It had to be an auditory hallucination. It was the kind of line that felt like it should be followed by a tilde and a heart symbol—the sort of thing people in subculture circles would call an ‘industry reward.’ The sense of cognitive dissonance was truly immense, coming from a male character with a build the size of a mountain and the Wild Beast trait.

It was a mental attack far more effective than any physical blow. The ‘Dear Husband’ I heard from the Gumiho earlier was actually better than this.

“Is Master Baby on the shy side?”

The bastard was cruel; he didn’t give me time to recover and landed a follow-up hit.

‘Baby?’

I suffered internal injuries in real-time from a bizarre title I had never heard once in my life.

‘Ugh… damn it.’

No, but, wait a minute. This punk? Why am I a baby? If we’re strictly talking about the day we were born into this world, aren’t I several decades older? After all, you’re just a piece of data I pulled from the Gacha… I mean, the [Incarnation Descent] menu in <No Lifer> terms, just a few months ago.

That’s right, a piece of data. For a mere game character made of a combination of zeros and ones.

Being pushed around by these guys happened once or twice, but at this point, I was getting angry. I’m done with this unrealistic situation, whether it’s a hallucination, a dream, or whatever. I just want to log out.

That’s right. What do I have to be scared of? I’m the player. I’m the master of this space.

Have courage, Yeo Myeong! Speak your mind with dignity…

“Mister, sorry to interrupt. Could you please put that sword away?”

…Was impossible. In front of a guy who could swing a sword with his remaining arm even after one arm had popped off like a Lego piece, any resistance was futile. A sense of self-loathing rose from the depths of my soul.

“Mister?”

After staring at me intently, <Tiger of the Deep Mountains> suddenly began to laugh.

“I’ve never had a disciple like you.”

“Then should I call you hyung-nim?”

“Just how old is Master Baby? You look like you haven’t even lived half a century. Are you even of age?”

“Of age?”

“I’m asking if you’re a minor. Do you even have an ID card?”

“An ID… it’s been over ten years since I got one. More importantly, your vocabulary suddenly jumped forward several hundred years; what happened?”

“For your information, I am roughly four digits old. I’ve been around since the moment you people living on this land began to perceive something called history.”

He sure obsesses over age. Spoken like a true Incarnation of Korean Origin.

“Calling me hyung-nim is actually fine. When was it, about 100 years ago… I once had a human younger brother. He was a praiseworthy fellow who worked as a woodcutter to support his widowed mother. He’s an example for the young people of today who live off their parents’ backs even past thirty.”

“I’ll stand corrected. I’ll call you Elder. You are very much an Elder in many ways.”

“Of course, he was a much sturdier and more energetic fellow than you. He spent the whole day roaming the mountains alone, cutting wood. This is something the punks of today, who lie around the corner of their rooms wasting time, should see and learn from.”

“Ah, I said I’m correcting myself.”

“Do you understand? Taking responsibility for the family members under you until the very end—that is a ‘real man.’ If you’re a man, work on the streets until you die and scatter like fragments.”

I realized it now. The <Tiger of the Deep Mountains> that I had raised so delicately while pouring in an enormous amount of money… was a severe old fogey. A thousand-year-old native old fogey at that.

What made it even worse was the way modern slang was strangely mixed in with words that sounded like they popped out of a folktale. How could such a terrible hybrid exist? He seemed like an Elder who had fallen deep into the spicy dopamine taste of the cyber world for the first time after his grandchild bought him a smartphone.

“Why did you suddenly swing your sword earlier?”

I asked while looking at the sword held calmly in his hand. Once I recognized that the opponent was in a state where some communication was possible and that he had no intention of harming me immediately, my fear vanished. In its place, curiosity filled the void.

The Gumiho, Dokkaebi, Hwarang, Twin Swords… who didn’t even provide a gap to attempt a conversation. I felt like I might be able to hear the answers to the questions I couldn’t ask them from this Incarnation.

“Because you won’t look at me.”

“……”

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you here? I’m disappointed, Myeong.”

I quickly retraced my memories from earlier.

First, I entered this space—the Central Command Room. Shocked by the wrecked environment, I discovered the corpses of two people lying on the floor. And… I made eye contact with the guy I thought was dead.

Right, it was fine up until then. Although he stood up unsteadily and picked up his sword, he showed no sign of harming me.

The point where the attacks began… was exactly when I turned my back and started running toward the panel.

‘Are you serious? You really started slashing for such a bothersome, obsessive lover-like reason as ‘because I didn’t look at you’?’

It made no sense by any common sense… no, wait. I shouldn’t expect common sense from these lunatics.

“Wait a minute. How did you know my name…?”

“Among the guys here, is there anyone who wouldn’t know their master’s name, Myeong? Are you going to keep saying such disappointing things?”

“……”

“But you don’t know my name, do you?”

“……”

“The birthday of the Tiger, whom we call the Tiger of the Deep Mountains, has come.”

The fellow even hummed a bar of a children’s song with a brazen face. I didn’t even have a clue how to react.

“Tiger of the Deep Mountains, San Gun, Mountain Owner, Mountain Spirit—call me whatever you want. Just don’t call me ‘Tiger.’”

“I understand, but why not ‘Tiger’?”

“Isn’t that a bit too ill-mannered, Myeong? You young brat.”

Wow, what a truly dreadful old fogey…

“Yes. I will call you San Gun.”

However, I am a Confucian Man who was born and has lived my whole life in a Confucian state.

“The reason you chose that one?”

“Because it has the fewest syllables.”

“You really are a fellow with no charm.”

“I don’t particularly want to be charming.”

“Right, my uncharming Master. Can I ask you to treat this now?”

He shook his arm, which was severed above the elbow. Since his clothes were originally black and the blood had dried on them, he looked even more ominous and somber. Between the fabric, the cross-section of the arm that was rotting away after being bluntly severed was vivid…

“…Ugh.”

My stomach turned. I couldn’t bear to see more and hung my head low. Anyone who had been living a normal daily life until just a few hours ago would show a reaction similar to mine. Unless their profession was a doctor, a police officer, or a medical examiner.

“While you’re at it, treat that scrap of a book you threw away over there too.”

“Scrap of a book…”

Belatedly, my thoughts went to Chirpy, whom I had left at the door. Earlier, I was so consumed by the thought of not wanting to die… that, I’m ashamed to say, I had forgotten him for a moment.

By the way, San Gun, who had been staying in this Pantheon all this time, doesn’t call that Chirpy fellow by his proper name either. It’s not just me. As expected, it seems that name Payday or whatever is indeed difficult to memorize.

“Looks like he took a hit from that ponytail brat?”

San Gun burst into a sharp laugh. It was a reaction that showed not even a shred of sympathy for Chirpy, who hadn’t even regained consciousness because an arrow was lodged right in the center of his wing.

“My Master has a real talent for throwing things away. That’s why you threw all of us away and vanished too.”

“…Pardon?”

I felt like words that shouldn’t be overlooked just passed by.

“Never mind. Just leave it on read.”

“Sorry to interrupt, Master San Gun. Do you realize you’re speaking like an Elder who just learned new slang? You’re jumping back and forth between the pre-modern and modern eras several times within a single sentence.”

“So, do you have a complaint?”

“No.”

If I said I did, I felt like he would rip me apart with that sword. Bears… no, Tigers rip people apart.

“Then let’s get back to the main point. The method to treat us is…”

“……”

“Did you forget this too?”

He laughed like a sigh. From him, who had only flashed his yellow eyes through his disheveled hair, I felt like I momentarily read an emotion resembling a very old resentment.

“The tools needed for treatment… what was it, right. Items. I don’t know where the items are. For starters, when I went to the recovery room before, there was nothing. Just in case, I even went down to the storage below, but that had been raided too. I suspect they might be in one of those locked lockers over there. I think we’ll have to look through them one by one.”

“For the recovery itself, can’t you just stay in the recovery room even without items? Though the efficiency would be terrible. Why didn’t you at least get emergency treatment somehow…?”

“It’s not that I didn’t try. But I failed because they said something like Compiler authority was needed, and everything was set so that nothing works without you.”

“……”

“That was only for the first few months. After that, the power for this entire place went out completely. Even the device controlling the entrance stopped… and it became a state where I could neither leave nor enter this room.”

San Gun’s explanation was brief. Even he, the speaker, had a nonchalant attitude with no particular emotion. However, I couldn’t take the content of those words lightly.

He said ‘the first few months.’ A few months would be at least dozens of days, or into the triple digits if long. If he spoke of it so dismissively as if it were a fleeting moment… just how long had the period I was gone been in this world? A few years? Decades? Or… even longer?

With this, it became certain. Time in this dimension seems to flow differently than in reality. I think I can understand the reaction of Chirpy, who was as shocked as if he were seeing someone who died centuries ago come back to life when he first encountered me.

He couldn’t leave or enter. In this horrific space splattered with blood everywhere. Together with a corpse whose head was entirely gone. Having suffered a fatal wound on the verge of death, in that exact state without healing even a little, with extreme pain gnawing at his nerves every single moment…

Enduring all of this, just how long had he been trapped?

I felt like I would vomit just from imagining it. I unconsciously blocked the branches of my imagination from spreading further.

Anyway, in such a situation, I suddenly dropped into this world… and operated the panel on the elevator to activate the power system. Although it was only 8%, a small amount of energy was supplied, making it possible to open and close the Central Command Room door.

“While you’re at it, do something about your own state too.”

“Am I just a ‘while you’re at it’?”

“Aren’t you? Aside from some scratches on your outer skin and some blood on you, you look perfectly fine.”

“How is this perfectly fi…”

“Then what about me?”

“…Happiness is always a relative thing. Let’s go.”

Forcing down the strange emotion that still lingered in my heart, I took a step forward.