“Let's go clean up the city again today.”
Kim Woojin rolled his shoulders and looked at the monitor where the game had booted up.
A man in a fluorescent sanitation uniform stood holding a gun, his face set in grim resolve.
Behind the man was a garbage truck fitted with a robotic arm.
Blood and filth had dried onto the garbage truck, and the truck's yellow paint was covered in bullet holes and knife marks.
The game title rose up together with a THUD! of a sound effect.
[Steel Sweeper]
[Steel Sweeper] was a AAA-grade blockbuster with a vast setting, insane freedom of play, and graphics that all but rivaled a live-action film…… it was not.
It was a simple indie game of the stage-clearing variety.
That impressive-looking title screen was pure bait.
To put it more concretely,
[Steel Sweeper] was a cleaning game.
The player became a sanitation civil servant of “Lemming City,” a fusion-punk future city where magic, martial arts, and all sorts of other odds and ends existed.
And what did a sanitation civil servant do?
In the real world the job was to drive a garbage truck around, collect the trash the citizens had put out overnight, and haul it to the incinerator, but
in Lemming City you had to work a side job on top of that.
Driving the garbage truck around,
clearing away the gangsters and junkies who got in the way of the work,
digging broken prosthetics and martial arts/magic implants out of the trash,
repairing or selling them to build up money,
equipping more powerful prosthetics and martial arts/magic implants,
and then killing the test subjects roaming the sewers, the anti-establishment terrorists, and the corporate executives who exploited people, before hauling the collected garbage to the incinerator — that was a stage clear.
That was right.
There were all kinds of obstacles, but in the end it was a simple game about collecting garbage and throwing it away.
The play was even simpler.
The viewpoint was a top-down format that looked down on the city from above.
Stages were randomly generated within a fixed theme.
Push through all of those obstacles inside a city tangled like a maze, collect every last piece of garbage, and the stage was cleared.
The next stage got a little harder.
‘Objectively speaking, it isn't a blockbuster.’
The characters were three heads tall, and the 2D pixel graphics had a cheap, cartoonish feel.
There was no such thing as freedom of play.
There were plenty of ways to clear a stage, but you couldn't even get inside the buildings.
Well, a sanitation civil servant barging into buildings as he pleased in the middle of work would be strange too.
What would the citizens think?
‘Still, it's a god-tier game. The setting is insane.’
You could tell by watching the conversations with the NPCs that came up between stages.
The fact that [Steel Sweeper]'s setting was sturdier and deeper than you would expect.
‘It's like Lemming City actually exists.’
A world where the city's ruling class ruled from a position that could never fall,
where the elite class trampled colleagues and the underclass to win the competition,
where the underclass lost hope in the future and sank into drugs and amusements,
and where illegal residents committed crimes to earn money and died off miserably.
Technology had advanced, but life was hell.
The place where that vividness lived and breathed was Lemming City, the setting of [Steel Sweeper].
The development studio had probably been short on budget.
That had to be why they had made a simple stage-clearing indie game rather than a AAA-grade blockbuster, even with such an incredible setting in hand.
If only the studio had been given more time and budget!
……was, in truth, a thought that belonged to Woojin alone.
People didn't even know [Steel Sweeper] existed.
It was a game released more than twenty years ago, and even at launch it had been a brief talking point and nothing more.
Was Woojin perhaps the only person left in the whole world still playing [Steel Sweeper]?
Even searching in English turned up almost no information.
Even the internet post that came up as the most recent was ten years old…….
CITY CLEARED!!
Before he knew it, more than six hours had passed.
Game cleared.
Woojin stretched and cracked his neck.
“Finally did it. Cleared it with no prosthetics, no implants.”
There was no achievement notification or anything.
The game was so old that it had no achievement system.
Shackling himself and playing that way was purely for personal satisfaction.
It should have been…….
“What's this?”
An envelope-shaped icon had risen up in one corner of the game.
A phenomenon he had never once seen before.
When Woojin clicked the envelope icon, a fluorescent text window rose up.
[Title : Notice of Major Update]
―Sender : Developer Outer God―OUTER GOD
―Hello. To all users of [Steel Sweeper].
―No, to you, our user.
At that, Woojin let out a snort of laughter.
‘So I really am the only person in the world playing this game.’
How had the developer known that?
[Steel Sweeper] was a single-player game you played without an internet connection.
But Woojin took it lightly, figuring there had to be some method.
He had been gaming late into the night, so his head was hazy, and this situation of talking one-on-one with a developer was interesting enough that the small details didn't bother him much.
―It has been a very long time since our last update.
―It would be no exaggeration to say that this update transforms [Steel Sweeper] into a new game.
―We have added none other than a “First-Person Mode.”
“First-person mode?”
―In First-Person Mode, you, our user, become the protagonist of [Steel Sweeper]. You will be able to roam Lemming City freely, just like a AAA-grade large-scale roleplaying game.
“Oh! It's finally becoming a true god-tier game!”
―As a token of our gratitude to the user who has enjoyed [Steel Sweeper] for so long, we are granting you special benefits.
“So the studio does recognize my achievements.”
―The traits granted to you are as follows.
[Inexplicable]
You possess an inexplicably powerful capacity for growth.
[Absolute Mind]
Nothing can corrupt the absoluteness of your mind.
[Incomprehensible]
No one can grasp the true power you possess.
[Gold-Seeking Eye]
You can easily recognize items worth money even among the garbage.
―These absolute and absurd traits will completely change the game's play experience.
“Ooh……. Not bad?”
Woojin looked the benefits over carefully.
‘Is [Inexplicable] a trait for growth?’
Originally [Steel Sweeper] had been a money-is-everything, gold-supremacy game.
Characters had no level of their own; you could only grow stronger through gear.
And gear, in the end, meant money.
Weapons, prosthetics, martial arts/magic implants.
The player had to swap this equipment for stronger — for more expensive — versions as he played.
‘But if it becomes a first-person RPG, that changes in a big way. There will be levels and skills.’
Levels and skills would appear.
Which was to say, a new road would open up to growing stronger on his own, unbound by equipment and money.
And if the trait [Inexplicable] were added on top of that?
‘It grants growth potential so powerful it's inexplicable. This should be fun.’
Woojin smiled with satisfaction and shifted his gaze to the next two traits.
‘[Absolute Mind] and [Incomprehensible] are probably traits that prevent neural hacking.’
[Steel Sweeper] was a game set in a technologically advanced future city.
Cyberpunk with martial arts and magic mixed in, you might say.
With a setting like that, enemies appeared who attacked the player by hacking the neural interface connected to his spine and brain.
Once you took a neural hack, your character moved on its own.
Suddenly attacking allies, injuring itself, or stripping off every piece of clothing including body armor to stand defenseless in front of the enemy…….
‘A trait that blocks neural hacking is a damn sweet deal.’
Last was [Gold-Seeking Eye].
This one was easy to understand.
‘A trait that marks items worth money.’
Play [Steel Sweeper] and you would come across garbage with a glowing outline.
Such items could be repaired and used, or sold for money.
[Gold-Seeking Eye] had to be a benefit that let him recognize those items in first-person mode as well.
Of course, Woojin was confident he could clear the game even without these benefits.
Still, for the first playthrough he intended to take everything he was given.
They said it was an ability given to him alone, so shouldn't he take all of it and enjoy himself first?
Playing without the benefits could wait until the second run.
―Update complete.
―First-Person Mode is now available.
A notification window rose up in that moment.
Woojin moved his mouse naturally, and
Click!
Just like that, Woojin's consciousness cut out.
***
No, honestly,
there had been plenty of strange things.
A game with no updates for twenty years suddenly getting one, a developer sending a message as if he knew one single user, a massive update finishing in an instant…….
Even so,
I never thought I would be transmigrated into the game I was playing!
Only moments ago I was in my room burning through a Friday with cola and sweet crispy fried chicken,
and now I've been transmigrated into a game with a crappy setting where human lives are seen as shit?
Like hell!
BANG!
“Damn it.”
Woojin, who had been trying to run from reality, ground his teeth.
He pressed himself flat against the alley wall and hid.
Garbage strewn everywhere gave off a foul stench.
That had been a gunshot just now.
It had rung out from the hand of a punk who had swapped his left arm for a prosthetic.
Where the punk's middle finger should have been sat a gun barrel puffing up powder smoke.
BANG BANG BANG!
“Fuuuck! Come out and pay me back for my gear! You fucking civil servant bastards!”
That fuck-you gun punk's claim went like this.
He had left a box with his gear in it near the big steel garbage bin, and yesterday the cleaners had passed by and stolen the box.
Of course, Woojin knew nothing about it.
He had been in his room playing a game until a moment ago!
‘Though I feel like I vaguely remember something.’
It seemed to be the memory of the sanitation civil servant Woojin had been transmigrated into.
A single thread of memory pulled itself out of his jumbled head.
Yesterday the sanitation civil servant had collected the punk's box and loaded it onto the garbage truck.
Collected garbage went straight to the incinerator, naturally.
The gear that fuck-you gun punk cherished so dearly had long since broken down into acrid fumes and pitch-black ash.
Which meant the compensation the punk wanted was impossible.
And if it was that important, why leave it in a place like that?
Besides, that box looked like plain garbage at a glance.
‘Anyway…….’
That was the end of the complaints.
In [Steel Sweeper], there was only one way to settle a situation like this.
It came down to his death or the other man's.
He didn't entertain soft thoughts about talking it out.
The man was obviously a punk living with nothing to lose.
Bow his head to a bastard like that and he would end up with a bullet hole in his crown.
Running wasn't a good option either.
A sanitation civil servant must not go more than 300 meters from his garbage truck.
Break that rule and the City Public Service AI handed out staged penalties.
The worst penalty was dismissal.
Was dismissal better than being shot to death fighting a crazed punk?
In Korea that might have been true, but not in Lemming City.
Sanitation civil servants were treated like sewage too, but being fired and dropping back to underclass status was hell.
There was no future.
More than anything, the very fact that he had been transmigrated into a game was giving Woojin conviction.
If he had been transmigrated into a game, shouldn't he solve the problem the game's way?
“Hoooo.”
Woojin looked down at his hands and feet.
His weapon was one ordinary dagger.
Enough to take down a single shabby punk.
In the game, at least.
His armor was the fluorescent sanitation civil servant uniform.
Made of tough synthetic fiber, it had better defense than ordinary clothes.
Enough to stop a bullet from a small-caliber gun stuffed inside a cheap illegal prosthetic arm……
‘In the game it reduced damage, but who knows how it works in reality.’
And last, the most important thing in a fight.
Guts!
Unfortunately, Woojin was a man who had never once been in a fight in his life.
He had never even learned taekwondo, common as it was.
Fighting was something that happened in games and novels.
‘But I have to.’
If he didn't, he would die.
Woojin knew well how miserably the sanitation civil servants of Lemming City died off.
BANG BANG!
“Come out! Son of a bitch!”
Luckily the punk didn't seem to have noticed where Woojin was hiding.
He was firing at the wrong spot.
Woojin picked up a stone lying nearby.
The target was the metal device embedded in the back of the punk's head.
That was the device that connected a human nervous system to electronics: the neural interface.
‘Can I hit it?’
The punk's neural interface was a cheap one.
It was covered in scratches, and one metal fragment in the middle was floating loose.
He seemed to be using a secondhand piece picked up in some back alley and patched up roughly.
If he landed the stone squarely on the back of the punk's head, he might be able to end the situation in one stroke.
And if he failed?
There was a method.
It would just make the man that much harder to handle.
Which meant he had to succeed in one shot.
Woojin quietly showed himself from behind the alley.
And in that moment…….
―You have acquired [Silent Movement (Level 1)].
―Thanks to your [Inexplicable] growth potential, proficiency rises rapidly.
What?
Why am I getting a skill already?