Chapter 39

“Ah.”

I blinked. It was hot and humid. My breath fogged my vision. When I felt around my head, my fingers touched something hard.

The VR helmet.

I pulled it off, revealing the dusty interior of the capsule.

Sitting in the old capsule chair with its collapsed cushions, I calmed my pounding heart.

Reality? Really?

Logout after exactly thirty days. Fear surged through me.

Was this really reality? When I pressed that button and the capsule opened, would too much have changed? With my heart in my throat, I opened my mouth.

“Open Status Window.”

Silence.

No familiar notification. No System Window.

Only then did it finally sink in.

I had successfully logged out.

“Huuup.”

I took a deep breath and pressed the button. The capsule door opened with a click, and stale air greeted me.

“…Huh.”

A dark, cramped room. A small TV on the desk. A single bed. And one person asleep, reeking of alcohol.

“Khrrr. Khrrrrooo.”

Who would’ve thought those bizarre snores could sound so welcome?

I’m back. Back to reality.

Everything was exactly as I remembered it, as if the last thirty days had been a dream.

After staring blankly around the room for a while, I walked over to Jinho hyung. Then I slammed the edge of my hand into his uvula.

Whack!

“Khrrr… gack!”

If it hadn’t been for this bastard’s snoring, I never would’ve crawled into that capsule. I grabbed Jinho hyung tight as he thrashed around.

“Take one more. No, two.”

Whack! Whack!

“Gack! Grrrgh!”

“You of all people should know better. And you’re supposed to be the goshiwon manager, no less.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“Let’s not make this something to be embarrassed about, all right?”

Bang.

Once the door closed, Jinho hyung turned around with a sigh.

“Are you insane?”

Before he could say anything worse, I beat him to the punch.

“For the record, it was self-defense.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?”

“I’m perfectly normal.”

“Then why the hell did you hit a sleeping person in the neck and—!”

Thump, thump, thump.

The man next door pounded on the wall. Judging by the rhythm and force, the message was clear: I want to kill you.

Jinho hyung lowered his voice.

“Why the hell are you throwing a fit? In the middle of the night, too.”

“The middle of the night?”

“Yeah, you lunatic. It’s only three in the morning.”

With an incredulous look, Jinho hyung held out his phone.

July 25. 3:02 a.m.

I checked the date and time, and my mouth fell open.

Only three hours have passed?

I’d spent a month in Murim. Exactly thirty days. Yet only three hours had passed in reality.

“…Hyung.”

“Don’t talk to me. My throat hurts.”

“What’s the usual time ratio for a game capsule?”

“You’re like Hong Gil-dong, you bastard. Your conversation keeps flashing east, then west. All over the place.”

“What’s the ratio?”

“Huh?”

My grim expression threw him for a moment, but he answered.

“The latest capsule that came out last month? Five to one, I think.”

“What exactly does five to one mean?”

“What do you think? Five hours pass in the game for every hour in reality.”

This was driving me crazy.

“Is there anything higher?”

“No. That’s the limit of current technology… Why are you asking?”

Because something impossible had happened.

How am I supposed to make sense of this?

Even looking at it again, the capsule was ancient. That piece of junk, made more than twenty years ago, had left current technology in the dust.

Thirty days in only three hours. What kind of time ratio was that? My head was too scrambled to calculate.

“Unbelievable.”

“What is?”

There was no way I could understand it on my own. Maybe Jinho hyung could come up with some kind of answer. After a moment’s hesitation, I began.

“A month ago—no, three hours ago—I went into that capsule…”

I’d been through so much that I had plenty to say. Even after hearing the whole story, Jinho hyung stayed silent for a long time.

Then he said one thing.

“Unbelievable.”

“Exactly. Does this make any sense? Isn’t that some illegally modified capsule or something?”

“No. Not the capsule. You.”

“Huh?”

Jinho hyung gave me a grave look.

“Just apologize cleanly. Say, ‘Sorry. I hit you because your snoring was too loud.’ Be cool about it, you bastard.”

“…”

“What, you couldn’t log out, so you spent a month risking your life in a game? Go write a novel.”

Right. I knew it was going too well.

I sighed.

“I’m telling you, it’s true.”

“Come on, Taekyung. Let’s think about this rationally.”

Jinho hyung adopted a serious tone.

“Some guy smacks a sleeping person in the uvula to wake him up, then says he was trapped in a game for a month. But he checks the clock, and only three hours have passed? And the capsule is an antique that belongs in a museum?”

“I know it sounds insane. I get it. But…”

“Then try to understand me too. My head hurts from the hangover, my uvula hurts, and looking at you makes my heart hurt.”

“No, just listen to me!”

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Before the man next door could smash through the wall, I lowered my voice.

“Then try it yourself.”

“What?”

“If you try it, you’ll believe me.”

Nothing was faster than experiencing it firsthand. If I pulled him out after about ten minutes, he’d have no choice but to believe me.

Jinho hyung stared intently at me, then spoke.

“Fine. Let’s try it, then.”

He climbed into the capsule and even put on the VR helmet. As he grumbled that it smelled sour inside the helmet, I said,

“I’ll pull you out soon. Stay holed up at Honghwaru.”

“Honghwaru, my ass. Just close the capsule door.”

I was curious what face he’d make when we saw each other again a little while later. I closed the capsule door, took out my phone, and turned on the stopwatch.

The instant I pressed start, the numbers shot up.

One second, two seconds… ten seconds.

Ten seconds in reality had to mean minutes, maybe hours, in the game.

By now, he must be losing his mind at Honghwaru, trying to figure out what’s going on…

Clunk.

“Huh?”

The door opened.

What? Why is he already out? No, how did he get out?

Jinho hyung sighed when he saw me standing there flustered.

“What are you doing?”

“Uh, uh?”

“The power isn’t even on. What game were you playing?”

What was that supposed to mean?

“The power isn’t on?”

“Move.”

While I was still stammering, Jinho hyung came out the door, bent down under the capsule, and picked something up.

“What does this look like to you?”

A cord.

An unplugged power cord.

Was I seeing things?

I scrubbed at my eyes furiously, but nothing changed.

“Why is this…”

“Taekyung. Jin Taekyung. You poor, pathetic soul.”

Jinho hyung spoke with a distant look on his face.

“Go to a mental hospital as soon as the sun comes up. I’m going back to my room.”

He tossed the power cord aside and walked off. I stared blankly at his back.

The power cord hadn’t even been plugged in.

Then what was the game I played?

I felt like I’d been bewitched by a ghost. Goose bumps rose all over my body.

I lay on the bed and thought.

Am I crazy?

I’d played a game for thirty days in a capsule that hadn’t even been plugged in.

I could understand Jinho hyung’s reaction. But everything that had happened there…

It was all real.

Jin Wikyung, Wolhwa, Hyuk Mujin, and the Head Elder. I remembered every NPC’s face, the way they spoke, and how they acted. It hadn’t been a delusion I’d cooked up on my own.

Then what’s the problem?

There was only one answer.

The problem was the game capsule built twenty-seven years ago—a piece of junk that should have been retired long ago and put in a museum.

The date of manufacture was suspicious, too.

January 1, 2020.

The day the Demon King Asmodeus fell at humanity’s hands.

Who the hell would’ve been making capsules back then?

It was an era when hundreds of millions of people had died in the five-year Great War, and monsters had roamed downtown.

In my opinion, the bastards who heard the breaking news that the Demon King had fallen and fired up a factory going, All right, let’s make game capsules now! belonged in court.

Back then, I thought it was a misprint.

I froze.

A misprint?

The product manual!

How could I have forgotten something so important? What an idiot.

I shot to my feet and started turning the room upside down. At last, I found a familiar little booklet under the bed.

Product User Manual

Product name: Virtual Reality Access Device
Model name: Ark - 2020
Manufacturer: H Soft
Date of manufacture: January 1, 2020

Then the next page.

Precautions

• The player cannot log out at will.

• If the player dies during play, resurrection is impossible.

A month ago—no, three hours ago—I had thrown the booklet aside at this point.

This time was different. With trembling hands, I turned to the final page.

Key Features

• A custom capsule made for one person only! Once a user is registered, the capsule is permanently bound to that user until death.

• Time-ratio adjustment for comfortable play! Upon login, time in reality passes very slowly. The reverse is also true.

• Character Synchronization System! By synchronizing with their character, the user experiences a greater sense of unity.

“What the hell is this?”

My eyes could read the words, but my brain refused to process them. I started again from the beginning.

First, permanent binding.

It meant exactly what it said: it was mine until I died. Once I got some answers, I decided, I was going to smash that goddamn capsule to pieces.

Next, the time ratio.

That was the part I’d been most curious about. But instead of an exact figure, all it had was the vague phrase passes very slowly.

It said the reverse was true as well, so time in the game had to be passing now too, however slowly.

Then is the war still going on?

Jin Wikyung came to mind. The Head Elder’s betrayal was already a given, and he would try to stab Wikyung in the back at the critical moment. Had Hyuk Mujin and the reconnaissance squad gotten that news to him?

Ah, that’s still a long way off. The time ratio has reversed.

More than that, I had my own crisis staring me in the face. I checked the last key feature. Unlike the ones before it, I couldn’t understand this no matter how many times I read it.

Synchronize with a character?

Just in case, I even looked it up in a Korean dictionary. It meant exactly what I thought it did.

That only made it sound crazier.

How the hell do you synchronize with a game character?

I couldn’t make any sense of it. In the end, all I’d done was add another question.

One thing was certain: I wasn’t crazy.

I flopped onto the bed and read the front of the booklet again.

“Manufacturer. H Soft.”

In the end, every road led to the same place. If I investigated these bastards, something was bound to turn up.

I searched the internet for H Soft, but aside from a porn studio with the same name, I couldn’t find a thing.

“…”

First, I needed to lock the door and think.