―SPLASH!
―SPLASH!
He ran across the sea, moving his feet without rest.
―SPLASH!
―SPLASH!
At a speed that broke through the sound barrier.
There were no obstacles on the sea, so Han Woo-hyun accelerated to the utmost limit, stopping just short of raising tidal waves.
―SLAP···!
He slowed his speed in order to arrive quietly in his own way, but before long, he was able to reach the nearest coast to Beijing.
―SHWAAAAK!
As he slowed his body while raising waves, he saw the lights of a coastal city glimmering faintly beyond.
“Phew.”
While standing still atop a [Force-Field Body] made of Force above the sea, Han Woo-hyun recalled a certain player.
―Fuck, fuck, fucking trash world, fucking trash game···
The world’s first Villain Player and the Villain Commander.
The Priest ranker with a healer-damage-dealer hybrid class, whose talent was second only to Riley Granger’s.
The second reason he had to come to Beijing from dawn, and the starting point of all Han Woo-hyun’s plans.
―Riiip!
Cutting off that thought, Han Woo-hyun pulled open the zipper of his bag and took out a bag of potato chips. He had brought them because he thought his mouth might feel bored while he waited.
―CRUNCH!
“···Not great.”
Potato chips had been a snack he liked even before he became a player.
Of course, he had liked them after becoming a player too, but after that, he had often eaten something a bit better, which he had learned about through the recommendations of his American friends.
Because, to his mind, plain yet savory potato chips were the snack that paired best with various high-grade spices.
He used to grate white truffles from Alba, Italy over them as an accompaniment.
―Crunch, crunch.
But right now, he was not in a situation leisurely enough for that, so he decided to roughly enjoy the nostalgia of the past.
Returning once more to the past.
―Crunch.
Amid terrorist attacks by players who had suddenly obtained transcendent power, incidents began springing up like weeds all over the world.
―B-breaking news! All of Beijing has been devastated!
―According to eyewitness testimony, a brilliant light poured down, and every building collapsed...
China was the first country where that terrorism targeted the nation’s leadership.
At dawn on the first day, the Central Committee, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, was wiped out. Naturally, the inside of the Communist Party fell into extreme chaos.
But that did not immediately lead to the collapse of the Chinese government and the Party.
As was the case with any vast nation, the Chinese Communist Party was made up not only of the Central Committee, but also of many other bodies, such as the National Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
-(What the hell is happening? What, superhumans? From Korea? What kind of nonsense is this?!)
-(This is terrorism—no, this is no different from a declaration of war! Mobilize the People’s Liberation Army at once!)
They were quickly able to identify the mad superhuman terrorists who had attacked them.
And naturally, they tried to make a rightful response to terrorism committed without any proper reason or declaration of war.
―What? Those Chinese bastards are daring to look for me?
―Gather, friends!
―It’s time to clean up the cockroaches!
In other words, they tried to find the Korean player who had carried out the terrorist attack and retaliate against him.
Along with the comrades who had decided to share his will.
―A Chinese expedition force?
―···That sounds fun.
Korea’s mad game-addicted shut-ins gladly accepted that retaliation.
―A fight? I’ve got to join!
―Hehe, it’s a mess~!
―Everyone gather~!
At once, major cities across China, including Beijing, were punished.
Every building in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Chengdu was smashed apart.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army saw entire regions being crushed wherever they appeared, so they all stripped off their uniforms and fled.
The enormous aircraft carriers they boasted of were all sunk in barely a week.
Earthquakes struck, tidal waves swept in, and meteors fell.
Counterattack?
In the in-game setting, players above level 200 began accumulating a special energy called Yggdrasill Force.
Also, because every monster that appeared in hunting grounds above that level in the game possessed Yggdrasill Force, attacks would not work at all without Force.
In other words, the physical force one could inflict upon another was determined by one’s Force value.
No matter how many guns or missiles from reality, with no Force at all dwelling within them, were fired, the players did not take damage. It did not even tickle.
―We surrender, we surrender! We surrender unconditionally!
―We will accept any conditions you state, no matter what!
―Please stop!
In only two weeks, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was annihilated, and one hundred million casualties occurred.
In the end, the Chinese “provisional” government had no choice but to recognize reality through its tears.
Before even a month had passed.
Fortunately, that was enough to calm Korea’s mad slaughterers.
―Aw, that’s no fun.
―Well, we played plenty, so shall we start heading home?
―Hey, if you want to fire nukes at Korea, go ahead. Honestly, I hate Korea more than China.
―I mean it. I think it’d be more fun if Korea and China had a nuclear war instead.
If it had been a war between nations, China might have been able to wage a nuclear war.
But these were far too powerful superhuman players.
They were superhumans who did not even have much attachment to their own country, so threats of firing nuclear weapons at Korea did not work on them at all.
Even the nuclear weapons fired in desperation were all erased by the players’ domain declaration skills.
A fight itself could not be established. It was nothing but one-sided trampling.
There were many reasons why all those incidents had been so one-sided, but the greatest reason was only one.
The silence of most Chinese server players.
Because they hated and loathed the Chinese Communist Party and their entire country, including it.
The disposition of Chinese server players, who instead tolerated and welcomed the Korean players’ terrorist acts.
-(Players··· really are strong.)
-(They’re bold. I like them very much. We should have done that long ago.)
-(Hm? You want me to protect China? Why should I?)
-(Lie down~ We’re the lying-flat generation~)
Because the country that developed the game was Korea, the Korean server had the strongest combat power in the world.
Naturally, even if Chinese players were strong, they could not compare to Korean players.
Therefore, they did not try to stand against the Korean players, who were far stronger than they were and who were punishing the Communist Party they had never particularly liked in the first place.
-(Blocking the entrance? Welcome in~)
-(Good, good!)
Rather, they welcomed them.
Many people mistakenly believed that most of China’s youth were fanatical loyalists of the Chinese Communist Party.
-(Huge news! The chairman is dead!)
-(What, seriously?)
-(I’m not lying! The Forbidden City and the entire Chinese Communist Party Central Committee building have been completely turned to dust!)
-(Now that’s refreshing!)
-(But who did that?)
That was a great misunderstanding. There was no country in the world where the mainstream opinion among the youth was loyalty to and love for their country.
The only difference was whether that dissatisfaction was suppressed or not.
Many Yggdrasill gamers were antisocial, and the same was true of China’s players.
Naturally, gamers tended to be dissatisfied with state censorship and oppression, so their dissatisfaction was quite large.
-(Players··· I heard once those superhumans came in, no one could stop them. They say weapons didn’t work at all.)
-(When we tested our skills, they were strong, but players are that strong? Then what about us?)
-(Shouldn’t we stop them?)
-(···Why should we?)
-(This is a chance instead.)
So they stood by and watched as Korea’s overwhelmingly powerful players wreaked havoc.
They turned their backs and ignored it.
Beyond that, some even cooperated and joined in.
Of course, not all of them did so, but from the moment most Chinese players only sought to protect themselves, victory and defeat had already been decided.
Even the extremely small number of those who tried to actively resist soon chose “voluntary silence” because of Choi Yoon.
And so, long afterward.
Only after the Korean players, convinced that China was their playground, carried out destruction and slaughter against the Communist Party until they were satisfied.
Only after they left the continent and returned to their homes.
At last, the Chinese server players who had been hiding revealed their presence.
-(From today onward, I rule Chongqing!)
-(Should I build a human slaughterhouse in Shenzhen? Sounds fun!)
-(Starting today, a festival begins in Nanjing! Ah, what kind of festival, you ask? The Nanjing Festival, of course!)
They each seized the districts and provinces they had already divided among themselves by prior agreement and declared themselves lords.
By the time the players had ravaged all of China to their satisfaction and left, China’s entire industrial and trade structure had completely collapsed.
China’s mines, which produced rare earths, were all shut down, and its rice paddies and fields were devastated.
Not a single factory was operating properly, and production of textiles, steel, automobiles, ships, and machinery all came to a complete halt.
―Every contract we had with Chinese companies has been canceled! They’ve all gone bankrupt, so we can’t even get penalty fees!
―Then we’re bankrupt!
―They say production is complete, but they can’t move it to the port!
―They moved it to the port, but the port is blockaded!
―They loaded it onto ships at the port, but a player sank every ship···.
―At this rate, it won’t just be our company that goes under···!
Therefore, naturally, the economies of most countries around the world that traded with China fell into chaos as well.
Starting with countless global corporations, banks went bankrupt one after another. Then the trade balance structures of weaker nations collapsed, and sequential collapse began.
That deepened even further after the Chinese Communist Party shouted unconditional surrender and dissolved.
Because the entirety of China was torn to pieces by Chinese players who had declared themselves lords of their own regions.
The Korean players who had caused the first spark no longer interfered there either.
The divided state of affairs looked rather pleasing to them, so they simply watched while snickering.
The borders between Chinese provinces became half-lawless zones, and as a result, trade became outright impossible.
Naturally, with the largest country in the global raw materials market suddenly vanishing from logistics and transportation onward, the shock was far too great.
When two weeks had passed after the world became a game.
Prices around the world rose fivefold.
After a month passed, they rose tenfold.
―···What is this?
―They say it’ll double again tomorrow?
―You can’t get food even if you have money?
―Because all trade has stopped?
By that point, not only ordinary people but even players sensed that something had gone wrong, but it was already too late.
Because all manner of raw material-producing regions, such as Ukraine, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and South America, had followed in succession and been ruined completely beyond recovery.
―The entire world is at risk of national default?
―Then is it an IMF crisis?
―The IMF has collapsed too! The yuan, yen, euro, won—none of them are usable anymore!
―Th-then what happens now?
―···I don’t know.
Soon, a wave of inflation swept across the entire world.
It did not take long before every nation’s currency except the dollar became scraps of paper.
The chain collapse of complex global political, social, and economic structures.
For Han Woo-hyun, who had never graduated from university, let alone high school, all of it was far too difficult a story to understand.
There was another reason why someone like him had been able to roughly draw a blueprint of the world’s economic and political order.
―Listen. The way China collapsed was···.
―America has a slightly different political system from other countries. To explain it···.
―There is a place in Southeast Asia called the Strait of Malacca. Along with the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal, it is one of the most important places in the world...
―Some companies researched players’ powers and produced results. To be specific, those results were, most notably...
―There really were a lot of Korean players. Among them, the ones with particularly overwhelming presences were···.
―Isn’t it interesting? Truly···.
―Woo-hyun! Don’t ignore me. Listen carefully! This is all knowledge you need···.
Having thought that far, Han Woo-hyun felt his heart being torn apart.
“···Riley.”
While the two of them wandered the long-ruined world together, all they had to do was talk.
Most of those conversations had been started by her first. She knew many things.
Han Woo-hyun had only listened one-sidedly. While nodding his head.
The entire time they were together, Riley Granger had explained in concrete and careful detail how and in what order the world had collapsed.
At the time, he had thought her murmurs simply came from regret, remorse, or longing for the past.
But that was not it.
Now he understood.
All of that knowledge... had been planned from the beginning, taught to him with intent.
The sole owner of the [Maple Leaf of Memories].
Riley Granger had never once intended to go to the past herself from the very start.
That was why, whenever she had the chance, she taught him the analysis, history, and strategy of an overwhelmingly difficult world situation. She made him learn. In excessive detail.
“Kgh···.”
Han Woo-hyun felt a sorrow that could not be described in words.
A vast sorrow.
“What kind of hero am I···?”
A patient with depression, anxiety disorder, social phobia, and persecution delusions who had dropped out without even finishing high school and wasted his entire life on a trash game.
Those were the words that described Han Woo-hyun before the world became a game.
The one who had turned Han Woo-hyun, a mere game-addicted shut-in, into the world’s strongest tank and a raid leader was Riley Granger.
He owed her nothing but debts.
“···I swear. I swear I won’t fail. Everything···.”
Therefore, this time, he would rule and control everything.
The beginning of that was China.
Players who suddenly gained abilities went on rampages all over the world.
The trigger that made that line properly go berserk was the Beijing Terror.
An incident that proved to the entire world that even if one openly killed tens of thousands, no one could stop them.
At the same time, it was the moment the concept of the Villain Player was born for the first time in the world.
Therefore, the reason Han Woo-hyun had to visit China first, rather than Korea, the United States, Southeast Asia, Europe, or any other place, was clear.
Of course, that was not the only reason.
Han Woo-hyun’s plan required capital. A great deal of it, an enormous amount.
No matter how many gold ingots he had, it would be difficult to utilize them in Korea.
Because the Republic of Korea was a financially backward country where government-directed finance had taken deep root. Moreover, since the source of the gold was game items, he needed to process it in a more suitable way.
Therefore, he would pass through other countries specialized for that purpose.
He had to create overseas holding companies that would support the roots of his guild.
By doing so, he would wield both military force and financial power at once and eat away at the world.
China and Singapore, Asia’s foremost financial centers, were the starting points of that plan.
And above all, the most important reason was···
“···What the hell? You, what are you? Who are you?”
His recollection was cut off there.
By the Korean that had suddenly sounded out.