I left the company today.
I remembered a month ago, when I told the director I intended to resign.
‘Team Lead Jo, you’re not leaving because you’re upset with me, are you? It’s nothing else. I’m only saying this because I’ll miss you. You thought about it a lot before deciding? Haah, what am I going to do when the office feels so empty after Team Lead Jo leaves?’
I was not leaving because I disliked the working conditions or my relationships with people.
I was leaving only because I felt drained.
By my own standards, I had been fairly sociable, and in terms of work, I had gotten by well enough, raising results that trended upward, whether by a lot or a little, without any major incidents.
My colleagues around me did not usually show it, but many of them recognized that I had worked hard.
As proof, over the past month, whether they were above me or below me, I had often heard words from people trying to send me off warmly, even if only as empty pleasantries.
‘Team Lead! Just because you’re going somewhere else doesn’t mean you can cut off contact! I’ll contact you separately next time!’
‘Haah, I’m starting to wonder if I should quit too. I was only managing to keep it together because you looked after me, Team Lead... Haah.......’
‘If you’ve worked as hard as you have, Team Lead, it’s legal for you to rest. Honestly, I’ve said this before, but you take on way too much hardship by choice. It’s not like your salary even matches your level, either. Team Lead, you’ve truly worked hard. I’ll be cheering for you wherever you go.’
Handover, farewell parties, sorting out personal belongings.
I had spent the month so busy taking care of the essential procedures before leaving that I barely had time to breathe, and before I knew it, a whole month had flown by.
With today as the last day, I had completely cleared out my things and had just returned home.
After arriving home, I took out the wine I had long been saving to drink when something good happened.
A gift ribbon hung near the mouth of the wine bottle, with the words “Commemorating 10 Years of Service” written on it.
I had worked there for a long time.
Since I had joined the company at twenty-seven and had stayed there all this time, I had essentially devoted all my brightest years to going back and forth between home and work.
I had never used a corkscrew before, so it took some time to open it.
POP!
The cork came out with a pleasant sound ten minutes later.
“Phew.”
This feeling of having wasted time unnecessarily.
It did not feel bad.
I turned on the computer and lightly poured myself a glass.
Mm. Bitter grape juice.
Leaning back against the chair, I chewed over the past ten years.
A middling salary, middling relationships.
Maybe, because I was the kind of person who generally handled work in a smooth and rounded way, I had considered all my past days to be middling ups and downs.
If I had not announced my resignation, I would have continued living smoothly like that for a long time.
When I hit exactly my tenth year, an unexpected turning point arrived.
I suddenly found myself wondering if this was really right.
It was not so much that I did not want to work. Rather, I realized that I had been running without any time to catch my breath.
I felt that, at this rate, I was no different from a shark that had to keep swimming without rest just to breathe. At some point, I had begun constantly watching for a chance to create an opportunity to feel that I was not a shark.
Now that I had gained that chance, there was one goal I wanted to accomplish.
“Let’s spend about a year traveling.”
I had been making plans for it since several years ago.
They were vague, roughly drawn plans, like sketching on a blank canvas.
For the past few years, the plan had been nothing more than a hastily scribbled rough sketch, but the moment I reached my tenth year, my desire caught fire, and detail was added to the sketch in an instant.
Over the course of one year, I would travel for a month and rest for a month, for a total of six trips.
My goal was to visit every continent once.
After that, I would cleanly return to society.
Fortunately, it was not an industry where finding a job was difficult.
Besides, if I used the ten-year-old network I had built amid those middling storms, I should be able to find at least one office desk to entrust myself to.
So I planned to think about what came afterward later and set off with an easy mind.
When I turned on the computer, sipped my wine, and moved the mouse, a travel agency’s website soon appeared on the monitor.
The various travel agency links packed tightly into the favorites section on the right reflected the time I had spent researching.
Click, click.
The mouse moved busily.
There was not the slightest waste in the movements with which I made the reservation.
Over the past several years, I had tried to make a reservation and then hit the back button on the payment page more than once or twice.
The first destination was Argentina.
One travel agency had held an event where it would provide one person, chosen by lottery, with a free ticket to ARG on the condition that they write a travelogue.
I applied without expecting anything, but I ended up winning, so there was no need to agonize over my first travel destination.
Since last month, whenever texts came asking me to choose a departure date, I had answered that I would decide soon. Only today did I finally have enough leeway to settle on a date.
I followed the procedure described on the website, entered my personal information, and agreed to the terms stating that I would sincerely write the travelogue.
[KOR-ARG travel flight reservation request received.]
The departure date was early next month.
While the fact that I was no longer an office worker had not yet reached my skin, I drank half a bottle of wine by myself, eagerly waiting for the day I would leave on my trip.
***
When time passed and the day came for me to board the plane.
I had to run my brain at full capacity to accept what had happened to me.
“So when a person is startled past their limit, they actually calm down. I didn’t know that.”
I had definitely packed my luggage the night before and gone to sleep early in order to take a morning flight.
But then I suddenly woke up because something felt alien, and even though there was no one around me, a mechanical voice flowed into my ears.
[Notice to customer. As the time at which the dimensional rift formed has moved forward, the scheduled departure time has also been moved forward. Departing now.]
[Airline flight Dimensional Monster Bird, flight number EA981, has been dispatched to your current location.]
[Beginning transfer to the Ravos Continent.]
When the mechanical voice ended, the space inside the room split open. Something like a pelican’s bill emerged from the crack and swallowed me.
Then time passed, the pelican spat me out, and that led to the present.
I looked around to the left.
“Look here, and it’s nothing but grassland.”
I looked around to the right.
“Look there, and it’s nothing but grassland.”
The place where I currently stood was a green plain.
In the middle of the field, a dirt road about two lanes wide stretched all the way to the horizon, and the green carpets spread out on both sides of the road swelled gently like calm waves in the wind.
I was dressed exactly as I had been, in the tracksuit I used in place of pajamas.
As I was wondering how I should accept this situation, a mechanical voice that would resolve my questions flowed into my ears.
[Mr. Jo Seong-jin, thank you for participating in Ravos Travel Agency’s travelogue production event.]
[This Ravos Continent is a world that exists in a dimension entirely different from your original world, and Mr. Jo Seong-jin has been selected as a sample for collecting data on the travel methods of dimension travelers.]
It did not feel real, but there was no room to deny that all of this was reality.
Before hearing the mechanical voice, I had performed all sorts of actions to confirm that my senses were normal.
It was a reality with no room for denial.
I gathered the information in my own way and tried to confirm whether I had understood correctly.
“So Ravos Travel Agency was not the ordinary travel agency I knew, but a travel agency from another world that had the means to cross dimensions?”
[Correct.]
“And I personally applied with my own hand for an event where I travel to another dimension?”
[Not only that, but you also agreed to all mandatory terms, excluding the optional ones.]
Well, well.
My habit of clicking agree to all and then unchecking only the optional items had backfired.
But telling an office worker who had just gotten off work to read through every single term and condition was no different from torture.
“But I applied for an event for a ticket to Argentina.”
[ARG is an abbreviation for the Alhen Region, located in the southern part of the Shining Kingdom on the Ravos Continent.]
“The event poster on the website had the Argentine flag drawn on it.”
[That is the flag of the Shining Kingdom. There are some slight similarities.]
It was too identical to call them slight similarities.
A trip to another world, all of a sudden.
After I had painstakingly made plans, it had abruptly turned into an unplanned trip.
Surprisingly, I found myself feeling excited in this situation.
No plan, raw hardship.
If a trip around the world was only comfortable, how would it be any different from domestic travel with a greater distance?
Still, if there was too little to fall back on, that would be a problem in its own way.
“How do I return when I want to go back?”
[You may return whenever you wish. A dimension traveler growing frightened and fleeing immediately can also be considered a sample, if one chooses to call it that.]
Frightened? Fleeing?
That word choice had quite a bite.
What did they take someone who had just resigned for?
The famous saying(?) that one little mark was all that separated being jobless from being invincible did not exist for nothing.
The mental invincibility buff granted immediately after resignation still had quite a lot of time left on its duration.
“I don’t mind taking this trip for you, but as you can see, I don’t have a penny to my name or a single piece of luggage. If I start like this, I’m going to end up writing not a travelogue, but the memoir of a wandering homeless man.”
[Minimum equipment and funds will be provided shortly.]
[Before that, we will explain the ‘Exploration Rate’ and ‘Travel Reward Fund,’ which have been prepared for this sample collection and, furthermore, to compensate you for your efforts, Mr. Jo Seong-jin.]
[Through negotiations with a transcendent being, we have designated ‘exploration points’ in each region of the Ravos Continent. The number of exploration points differs by region, and when you arrive at an exploration point, your Exploration Rate increases.]
After that, I learned how to check the Exploration Rate through the mechanical voice.
As the mechanical voice instructed, I repeated the words ‘View My Information’ in my head and imagined the shape of a notebook.
Then, as if I had carefully memorized it, clear information was imprinted in my mind.
-Jo Seong-jin (LV.1)
-Owned Skills: Traveler Package (LV.1).
-Exploration Rate: Current location: Alhen Region / Remaining exploration points: 4 / Current Exploration Rate: 0 percent.
-Travel Reward Fund: 0 won.
Hm. So this was the kind of system it was.
Thanks to the familiar proper nouns, the distance I felt from another world suddenly shrank.
[The Travel Reward Fund accumulates each time you raise your Exploration Rate.]
[The Travel Reward Fund is a reward granted to you, Mr. Jo Seong-jin, when the trip ends. Whether you visit every exploration point in the relevant region before leaving, or skip several and move on, is entirely your choice.]
[Travel Reward Fund amounts vary according to exploration difficulty, and at times, rewards that will help with travel in another world will be provided in addition to the Travel Reward Fund.]
In other words, the more exploration points I visited, the more I stood to gain.
I gained because I could pile up a lot of rewards.
The travel agency gained because it could obtain various samples through me.
[Changing attire to ordinary adventurer clothing suited for travel in another world.]
The tracksuit I was wearing emitted light, and the mass of light writhed and changed shape. Soon after, the light disappeared.
A beige shirt, brown leather pants, a chest guard carved from wood, and a cloth pouch.
On the holder attached to the pouch’s strap was a self-defense dagger, and on my back were a quiver and a wooden bow.
No matter how I looked at myself, I looked exactly like a hunter just before setting out to hunt.
There was also one gold coin and fifteen silver coins inside the pouch.
[You may think of a gold coin as equivalent to a 50,000-won bill in your original world’s prices, and a silver coin as equivalent to a 10,000-won bill.]
[Also, we have placed ‘Traveler Package,’ Mr. Jo Seong-jin’s exclusive perk, in the skill window. It is a skill with the ability to increase adaptability and automatically translate all languages so that Mr. Jo Seong-jin can quickly adapt to another world. The package does include an option that opens events in certain situations, but whether or not you participate in those events is your choice, Mr. Jo Seong-jin.]
[The first exploration point is 500 meters ahead. If you want to check the locations of other exploration points, you need only repeat the location of the exploration points in the same manner as checking the Exploration Rate.]
When I repeated the words ‘Check Exploration Points’ and imagined an image, a clear map appeared in my mind.
It was a map showing an extremely long vertical region, bulging at the top and slender at the bottom.
Four red dots were marked on the map, and each dot had a place name written beside it.
-Alhen Northern Plains (Unexplored)
-Inside the Cypher Village Adventurers’ Guild (Unexplored)
-Deep Inside Cat Forest (Unexplored)
-??? (Unexplored)
Among the four points, the Alhen Northern Plains lay 500 meters straight ahead.
I decided to go as if taking a stroll, leisurely enjoying the scenery around me.
After all, this was a trip.
When I walked up the gently rising slope and arrived on top of the hill that was my destination.
I was able to witness the spectacular view spread out beyond the hill.
“Oh.......”
A green plain cradling an emerald lake. Beyond the lake, in the far distance, rounded hills were tangled together like loosely stitched thread.
Some of the hills had farms raising sheep or cattle, and the barking of sheepdogs herding livestock was faintly echoing.
It was scenery that called forth the urge to go casual trekking.
A moment later, a message flew in congratulating me on reaching the exploration point.
-Arrived at the exploration point in the Alhen Northern Plains.
-Alhen Region Exploration Rate increased to 25 percent.
-1,000,000 won has been added to the Travel Reward Fund.
I had wondered how much they would really give me, but after walking 500 meters, I received 1,000,000 won.
Others spent money to travel, but I was traveling while earning money.
For the first time in a while, I inhaled so deeply that my lungs felt as if they would burst, and I wore the smile I considered most like myself.
An utterly mischievous smile.
“A trip to another world? Hell, why not. Since I was born anyway, wouldn’t one trip around another world be all right?”