Chapter 2
I was just as startled as they were, for two reasons.
The first reason was Mo Haein.
Mo Haein was one of the major characters in the Archive universe that connected all of the developer’s games.
The story of Archive began when calamity suddenly descended upon Earth one day.
At midnight on February 29, Korean Standard Time, a meteor shower poured across the entire world.
It was a meteor shower that no astronomical observations had predicted.
The shower that had formed without warning resembled a festival of light. Humanity marveled at the beautiful sight, but….
It was a calamity that had come from outer space.
The calamities that fell to Earth hatched in random sequences and forms, creating spaces from other dimensions.
Rules resembling those of a game governed those spaces, which were much like other worlds.
They were structured so that people collected items, completed Quests, and achieved a Clear, just as they would in a game.
If a calamity was not cleared within a certain period, it exploded and mutated the surrounding region into the same form as itself.
In other words, it spread an infectious virus that mutated both living creatures and inanimate objects.
It was quite literally a calamity—something impossible to explain through modern science.
People regarded the calamities from outer space as ordeals sent by a god and named them ‘Trials.’
As the Trials began hatching, humans also awakened special talents.
People capable of seeing System Windows began to appear.
They were called ‘the Compatible,’ and the System Windows enabled them to clear Trials.
Within the Archive universe, the player awakened as one of the Compatible and entered various Trials.
The premise was that entering each Trial meant playing a game of a different genre.
Mo Haein was a soldier in the Trial Response Agency, an external agency under the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of National Defense.
Captain Mo Haein, one of the Trial Response Agency’s elite, would either appear inside a Trial to help the player or show up at the Ending to speak with them.
I could hardly help being amazed when a character I had only ever seen in pixel art was now alive and moving in front of me.
And my second reason was the System Window.
‘Mo Haein’ is eligible for Character Registration. Would you like to register her?
As I stared at the System Window radiating its hazy light, I recalled the last thing I had seen before losing consciousness.
[You are the System of planet ‘Earth.’]
A message visible only to the Compatible in Archive.
Something that guided them through Quests in Trials and delivered various notifications, collectively known as the System.
I was that System…?
This was something I had never experienced even after playing the countless games in the Archive universe.
I couldn’t understand any of it, but one likely possibility occurred to me.
Perhaps I had entered the game…….
Like the possession of a game character that so often appeared in subculture stories.
The headache that had barely subsided began throbbing again at this overwhelming situation.
For the time being, I ignored the suspiciously glowing registration window. I couldn’t recklessly register something when I didn’t even know what it was.
When I continued ignoring it, the registration window quietly faded away on its own.
Just when I thought it was finally gone, it abruptly began displaying a new window.
‘Han Goyo (Gunbam)’ has entered !
◆ Main Quest: Clear the factory of murderous toys with the True Ending.
You have entered your first Trial as the System.
You must prove the System’s capabilities by clearing the True Ending.
Quest success means survival!
The consequences of failure are unknown.
However, you have a feeling that nothing good awaits a loser.
…What kind of insane nonsense was this?
After checking the System Window, I did my utmost to control my expression.
As I struggled not to betray anything strange, I heard the two of them speaking.
“Second Lieutenant Park, there were no applications to enter HSF, right?”
“Absolutely none, ma’am. I checked several times.”
“Then he must be a civilian.”
Click, click. Mo Haein flexed her pincer hand as she looked at me.
A toy arm made of plastic was attached to her left shoulder.
The toy arm, tipped with a pincer like the claw in a claw machine, was an item obtainable in . It was also what had strangled me moments earlier.
Between the System Window that had appeared before me and the toy arm—both were far beyond anything that could ever be produced with special-effects makeup.
While the realization that I was truly inside a game left me reeling, Mo Haein looked me up and down.
“This is unusual, isn’t it?”
She tilted her head to one side, making her bobbed hair sway briefly.
I knew why she was examining me so suspiciously.
It was exceedingly rare for a civilian to become entangled in a Trial that was periodically managed.
There were mercenaries hired to clear Trials and smugglers who secretly entered in pursuit of the items obtainable inside them, but hardly anyone ever wandered in all by themselves like this.
A Trial was precisely what its name suggested.
Since entering meant risking one’s life, the standard procedure was to have at least two people go in so they could back one another up.
Smugglers possessed inferior equipment compared with the government or private corporations, so they usually compensated with sheer numbers and rushed in by the dozen.
Of course, when I had played it as a game, entering alone had been the norm.
In any case, I could tell I wouldn’t be treated well if I simply stood here in silence. I arranged my face into a frightened expression.
“Um, where are we…?”
My confusion about the current situation was genuine, so a convincing expression came naturally without my needing to act very hard.
Mo Haein, who seemed to be weighing and measuring me as though I were sitting on a set of scales, raised an eyebrow.
Then she gave an answer that might have made me faint if I truly were a civilian who knew nothing.
“A toy factory crawling with deranged, murderous toys.”
I gasped at her bold reply, and the man beside her chuckled.
“It’s true that killers appear here, but don’t worry. We’ll get you out safely.”
“We’re soldiers,” he added, holding out his military identification for me to see.
“The Trial Response Agency…?”
“It’s under the Ministry of National Defense. It was only established recently, so you probably haven’t heard of it.”
He was spouting whatever he pleased because a civilian’s memories would be erased once they left the Trial anyway.
I nodded at his words while examining both their uniforms.
Employee: Morae
Employee: Gyeonbon
Mo Haein wore an orange work uniform with a tag reading ‘Morae,’ while the man wore a yellow one with ‘Gyeonbon’ written on his tag.
Mo Haein’s name tag, however, was slightly different.
The smiley face on it wasn’t smiling.
Its mouth formed a straight line instead of a curve, a shape that did not belong in .
The smiley on the name tag served as a kind of life counter.
In —HSF for short—you were given three chances, and the smiley’s expression changed every time you made a fatal mistake.
The Happy Smile became expressionless, then turned into a Sad Smile with the corners of its mouth drooping downward.
The Sad Smile state was your final chance.
Make one more mistake after that, and it was an immediate game over.
I couldn’t believe a character like Mo Haein had already lost one life this early.
“May I ask what that loud noise just now was?”
I asked in a timid voice, as though cautiously gauging their moods.
What I honestly wanted to ask was what kind of insane stunt they had pulled, but unfortunately, I didn’t receive an answer.
“A civilian doesn’t need to know.”
Cutting me off coldly, Mo Haein took something from her Inventory and tossed it to me.
I reflexively caught it and found a toy arm identical to the one she wore.
Cherry Picker: Unleash the power of Happy Smile! Let’s share a happy time together!
“Put it on.”
At Mo Haein’s words, the man’s face twisted with irritation. He apparently disliked the idea of handing a valuable item to an ignorant civilian.
It didn’t matter to me.
“I’m all right.”
I had intended to refuse the item anyway.
“I don’t know much about this, so shouldn’t the experts use it? It frightens me a little, too.”
I even clenched my fist and promised to follow closely behind them, saying the flashlight at my waist seemed like it would be enough.
The man appeared satisfied by my answer, while Mo Haein narrowed her eyes as if she were looking at an oddball.
The reason I refused the item was the True Ending.
HSF had several Endings, and the requirements for seeing the True Ending were especially demanding.
‘First of all, you mustn’t equip any of the toy limbs obtained inside the game.’
As the game progressed, NPCs handed the player toy-limb items one by one.
Because these items ‘appeared’ essential to the game, the player would naturally equip them.
They were incredibly convenient, but if greed led you to replace every limb with a toy one, the Bad Ending immediately appeared.
It was the Ending in which you became one of HSF’s toy employees and worked in the factory forever.
Mo Haein surely knew at least that much.
But since she had equipped a toy arm, it seemed she didn’t know how to reach the True Ending.
For the moment, I planned to follow Mo Haein and the man around while fulfilling the True Ending’s conditions.
It wasn’t solely because of the System Window’s bizarre threat.
‘If I can only see one Ending, it has to be the True Ending.’
After all, I was a staunch supporter of happy endings.
In games, the True Ending was usually the Happy Ending as well.
Even while playing games from the Archive universe, I always finished with the True Ending after seeing all the others.
I could only feel at ease ending a game after seeing the characters happy.
Read only on MUGEX
‘I’m curious about that man, too.’
I had a fairly good memory.
I loved the Archive enough to remember nearly every little detail, yet I had never encountered a man with the nickname Gyeonbon before.
I had seen him neither inside a Trial nor in any post-credits scene after an Ending.
That wasn’t especially strange.
Some died in Trials, some were trapped forever, and others made it out alive only to be quarantined after contracting a virus. Any of those outcomes was commonplace.
The man called Gyeonbon had probably vanished from the Archive universe before I ever became aware of him.
Mo Haein spoke while staring intently at me.
“Second Lieutenant Park, you put it on.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The man eagerly took the toy arm and attached it to his right side.
The moment he brought the item to his arm, his human limb disappeared and the toy arm took its place.
He clicked the pincer smugly.
“If you want to live, stay right behind me.”
Mo Haein clicked her tongue without another word and took the lead.
The man and I followed side by side behind her. As we did, I quietly shifted only my eyes to the side.
Smiley was embedded in the wall.
Smiley, with its smiling face, was ’s main toy.
The colorful plastic doll had arms tipped with the same pincer hands as the items given to players.
The first NPC you encountered after entering the factory was Smiley. Unlike the mass-produced toys, which stood fifteen centimeters tall by default, the NPC Smiley was one meter tall.
About the size of a young child.
You did fight Smiley later, but at this point, all you were supposed to do was exchange a little dialogue and receive a toy-arm item.
I couldn’t imagine why they had attacked Smiley and even lost a life.
Judging from Mo Haein’s poor mood, I suspected the man had made some sort of mistake.
With its head lodged in the wall, Smiley’s toy arms and legs hung limply toward the floor.
A crackling mechanical voice emerged from it.
“S-Smiley-welcomes-you-all-to-Ha-Happy-Smile-Factory-let’s-be-happy-happy-together-….”
It was hardly a pleasant sight.
I had grown somewhat attached to the NPC while playing the game, and seeing it half-broken in real life bothered me.
It felt as though Smiley might visit me in my dreams tonight.
Unlike me, the man and Mo Haein thought nothing of it. The man addressed me with an amiable smile.
“Why don’t we introduce ourselves? Park Seonggyeon. Call me Second Lieutenant Park.”
“I’m Han Goyo.”
“That lady is Captain Mo Haein….”
“Second Lieutenant Park. Are you here on a picnic?”
“My apologies, ma’am.”
Park Seonggyeon hurriedly apologized and closed his mouth, though his eyes rolled with discontent.
Seeing that gave me a rough idea of why I didn’t know this character.
It looked like he had caused trouble and died inside the Trial.
If I was unlucky, today might even be the day he caused it.
While Park Seonggyeon walked on with a stiff expression, I bent down, pretending to tie my shoelaces.
At the same time, I scooped up a handful of candy scattered in piles here and there.
The wrappers bore the shape of hexagonal nuts.
Nut Candy: Whirr, whirr, toy repairs in progress….
Nut Candy, which could easily be found throughout the map, was HSF’s recovery item.
It supposedly tasted like nuts when eaten, though unfortunately, I couldn’t try it myself.
That was because it could only be used while a toy arm or leg was equipped.
As I passed beside Smiley, I discreetly let the candy fall onto his pincer-shaped hand.