HACKED 4

“…Wake up! Hurry!”

Something had been chirping next to me for a while. I came to my senses because it was so noisy.

It was a voice I’d never heard before. It sounded a bit like a voice actor artificially acting like a child, or perhaps not a human voice at all, but a computer-synthesized one.

“Can you hear me? You must open your eyes at once!”

Can you hear me? Warrior, I am speaking directly to your heart… Is it something like that? Shuddering at the cliché of the remark, I opened my eyes.

“…….”

…Did I actually open them?

Before my eyes was still darkness. Literally nothing could be seen.

I waited a bit with my eyes open for dark adaptation. However, still nothing entered my field of vision.

“Please pull yourself togeth…!”

“What’s with all the noise. Who is it?”

“Gasp!”

Beyond the darkness, the unknown opponent was startled. No, why are you the one getting startled? Aren’t I the one who should be startled in this situation?

“I asked who you are.”

I turned my head this way and that. I wasn’t even sure which direction the sound was coming from.

“Do, do you not recognize me?”

The voice, which sounded both like a child and a mechanical sound, became dejected. Of course I ask because I don’t know.

Now, what action should I take here?

Continue talking to something that I can’t even see because it’s pitch black? Run away quickly? Find something to use as a weapon?

None of the above.

“…….”

Before my brain could react, my body moved first. I grabbed the four fingers of one hand with the other and snapped them back toward the back of my hand. An RC—that is, a reality check.

“That hurts like hell.”

Why isn’t this a dream? It should be a dream.

“Wha-wha-wha-what, why would you suddenly self-harm!”

The unidentified opponent shrieked in the darkness. It was as noisy as the wake-up alarm I set in the morning. But for now, I ignored it.

Since I had eliminated the dream option, let’s think calmly. What was the last thing I did? A notification suddenly came on my phone, I checked it, and the content was…

Right, <No Lifer>. The game I had completely quit and even deleted the app for a long time ago. It was a notification for that game. It even explicitly mentioned the nickname of my hacked account.

No matter how much I try, the logic of how that’s possible doesn’t fit. What happened after that is even more so.

Now my thoughts turned toward the realm of the unrealistic. A game notification that shouldn’t have come arrived, and when I pressed it, I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was dropped alone in a black, strange place.

The conclusion that can be drawn is, as expected…

“By any chance… is this inside the game <No Lifer>? It’s a question that sounds truly insane, but did I perhaps undergo a possession or something like that?”

“Huh?”

“No. I asked the wrong question.”

If this is truly the world inside the game <No Lifer>, I shouldn’t ask like this.

It’s obvious. For example… Let’s take the “Cthulhu Mythos,” which has become famous even in Korea lately—so famous that it’s being milked like bone broth as something similar to a Deus Ex Machina in subculture creations.

What if I asked a character in a novel set in that Cthulhu Mythos, “Excuse me, by any chance are you a character in a horror novel written by Mr. Howard Phillips Lovecraft?”

A reaction like “Lovecraft? What’s that, you otaku jerk?” would come back. Of course, since that side is the early 20th-century West, they wouldn’t use a term like “otaku jerk,” but anyway, that’s what the example means.

“Hey, Chirpy.”

“Chirpy? I am not a Chirpy! How could you say such a thing!”

Chirpy raised its voice. It’s noisy as hell.

“Chirp. Lower your voice.”

“Yes.”

Since my sight was completely blocked, my hearing naturally became sensitive, and listening to Chirpy’s high tone right next to me was a bit difficult.

“What am I?”

“He-eh?”

“Tell me. What am I here?”

“Even if you suddenly ask that, what on earth do you mean…”

This Chirpy is incredibly slow on the uptake.

“I’ll give you choices. Master, Commander, Transfer Student, Trainer, Guardian, Lord, CEO, Summoner, Producer, Compiler, and so on.”

I roughly rattled off the player titles from the games I’d played until now. If the answer “Compiler” comes out here, then it’s <No Lifer>, and if not… then I’d have to think deeply about my history as a gamer.

“That, of course… You are the Compiler of this Pantheon.”

It really is <No Lifer>. And this place was the Pantheon.

“Pantheon.” The dictionary meaning is a temple to all gods, but in <No Lifer>, it refers to the player’s home ground.

Actually, among the users, there are very few people who use that “What-on-earth-is-that-otaku-stuff” title as it is. They call it whatever they want with familiar words like “Base” or “Main Base.”

“Compiler.” Similarly, it’s the title for the player used in <No Lifer>. It’s said that the title was given in the sense of gathering stories and narratives to raise and refine them in one’s own way.

Of course, this is also only used officially; users don’t use it. Among users, you and I are both “Nosaeng-ies.”

…So, I’m currently in the world inside the game?

“Compiler?”

Dimension traveling? Possession? The thing that comes out in mass-produced web novels? The kind where, if it’s the romance genre, you slap the servants who mistreated you, get revenge on the enemies of your past life, and later marry an Emperor or a Duke of the North to live a life of ease? If it’s the fantasy genre, you have SSS-class stats, hit 999,999,999 money, rank 1 on the whole server, and monopolize hidden pieces to live a life of ease?

“I feel like you are thinking about something far-fetched, are you sure you’ve come to your senses?”

Is this for real. I desperately hope it’s not for real. Whether it’s a hallucination or a dream or whatever, please.

“Yes? It’s making me anxious, so please give me an answer…”

That chirping voice. A way of speaking that strangely provokes a person’s irritation. Somehow it’s familiar. What was it, really.

Because of my profession, I am sensitive to sounds.

It doesn’t mean my hearing is good. Since I work while wearing a headset every single day, my hearing itself is actually worse than average. It would be more accurate to say I am sensitive to things like tone, beat, and melody.

While tracing my memory for where I’d heard this voice, something suddenly flashed through my mind.

“Are you by any chance that thing? That one. The <No Lifer> mascot.”

“Mascot?”

As most other games do, <No Lifer> also had a helper/mascot character.

It looked like a fairy, or to be precise, it was a form with things like books attached to both sides of its body. A guy that flies around using the open books as wings… Anyway, that kind of guy.

I don’t know the name well. Roughly, when you first make an account and start the game, it shows the worldview explanation along with the opening PV and then pops out to handle the tutorial… but since I’m a veteran in the gaming world, I skipped all the tutorials.

I’ve seen it a few times after that when there were notices or events. Of course, I skipped everything then too, so I don’t remember.

“I am Fabley, Fabley. Have you forgotten already, Compiler! No matter how long you have been absent!”

Now that I think about it, it seems like that was the name.

“Right. Fay-something-or-other.”

“It is Fabley!”

“Whether it’s A-Pay or Apple Pay or whatever.”

“Could you please not call me by names that seem like they could actually exist!”

“What, how do you know that. Isn’t this a meta-remark? It’s a break in the setting.”

“Ahem, ahem, anyway, I am Fabley!”

“But didn’t you originally glow? In the game, I think there was an effect where you glowed round like a firefly…”

“That’s right! Like this, right?”

Flash!

Chirpy said, let there be light, and there was light.

A pure white light that filled the entire field of vision burst out. A warm and holy baptism of light wrapping around the whole body… It wasn’t anything like that, it just hurt my eyes like crazy.

Is this what it feels like when someone pulls back the blackout curtains of a sleeping person and suddenly thrusts a fluorescent lamp in front of their eyes and turns it on? Is this what it feels like when you trip at a standing concert and ram your eye into the person in front’s lightstick?

It was because I had been in the darkness where I couldn’t see an inch ahead for too long. I reflexively covered my eyes and let out a scream.

“Aaaaargh!”

“Compileeeer!”

Chirpy also let out a scream in unison. Why you.

“Turn it down, turn the light down!”

With my eyes closed, I reached my arms into the air and flailed. After a moment, the intense light that was hitting my eyeballs subsided a bit.

Only then did I gingerly open my eyes. A few tears that had pooled inside my eyelids trickled out. My vision was still mottled because of the light attack I just took.

However, I saw something shocking enough to make me forget that.

In front of my eyes was truly that mascot I had seen in the game. A living being emitting a soft light while incessantly fluttering wings that looked like book pages.

Looking at that dreamlike and mysterious existence that seemed to have popped out of a fairy tale, I… spat out a curse.

“You jerk, you just blasted me with light out of nowhere? Samsung Pay, are you crazy? If I had HP, it would have gone down by 50 just now!”

A K-gamer’s life, currently about 10 years. I have lived in a hellish ecosystem where if you play a game poorly, you hear remarks asking about your parents’ well-being, and if you play well, you hear that you play the game like a piece of shit. For the record, I don’t have parents, so the former had zero impact, and the latter was just a compliment, so it had no impact.

Anyway, to a K-gamer, this level of cursing is not even cursing. It belongs to the category of being so correct and refined that it could be published in a textbook. However, Chirpy seemed to have received quite a shock as its wings trembled. The light Chirpy emitted trembled along with it.

“No, what is that weird title again! Didn’t I tell you it’s Fabley! And, and you were the one who mentioned the light first, Compiler… how could you say such harsh thing-s…”

“I didn’t know it would be this bright!”

“That is why I had the light turned off!”

It was while I was bickering and glaring face-to-face with the fist-sized Chirpy.

Thump!

A heavy impact was felt from above. Goosebumps broke out all along my spine.

“…….”