9

Chapter 9

Beep—beep—beep—.

The beeping that signaled an error repeated without end.

Researchers fully equipped with protective suits and gear reported in tense voices.

“Third attempt failed. It has been classified as an error, and forced measurement has also been confirmed impossible.”

An unfamiliar waveform appeared on a monitor to one side. Fear began spreading among the researchers.

Director Ham Jiwol of the Research & Analysis Headquarters hurriedly looked at Kwak Hanmuk after checking the readings.

Kwak Hanmuk waved to indicate that he was maintaining the binding without difficulty.

Ham Jiwol cautiously approached ‘it’ and replaced an attached patch.

She looked as though she were handling radioactive material.

‘Radioactive material would have been easier.’

Thinking that, Kwak Hanmuk looked through the glass.

The atmosphere was bristling with menace, but the person at its center remained peaceful.

Bound from head to toe in rosary beads, the sleeping man seemed one step removed from the commotion surrounding him.

Out of habit, Kwak Hanmuk rolled one of the beads around his wrist.

His rosary was a defensive item.

Made from lightning-struck jujube wood and imbued with the energy of thunderbolts, the rosary could extend to any length and could even be separated into sections within a certain range.

It was best suited to binding and subduing a target, but Kwak Hanmuk employed all sorts of wildly imaginative methods to use it for attacking instead.

In fact, he rarely used the Lightning-Struck Jujube-Wood Rosary for its fundamental purposes of binding and restraint.

The reason was simple. It wasn’t any fun.

Yet what had happened earlier?

“Hanmuk, bind him.”

The moment Mo Haein gave the order, he had bound the man without weighing anything at all.

His body had moved on instinct. The sensation of that moment, when he acted on intuition without passing through reason, remained vivid.

“Haein. What the hell did you bring back with you?”

When Kwak Hanmuk shook his head as he spoke, Mo Haein immediately refuted him.

“I didn’t bring him back. He appeared in front of me.”

Mo Haein had been forced to report to her superiors without even resting, and her face looked haggard. Her eyes alone burned brightly.

Only the exhilaration of permanently closing a Trial with the True Ending kept her upright now.

“Do you think he’s human?”

“…I don’t know.”

When Park Seonggyeon’s head burst into golden fragments, Mo Haein had seen it clearly.

The change that occurred in ‘its’ eyes.

It was impossible for a human.

At present, every available member of the Trial Response Agency was rushing to investigate the entity called ‘Han Goyo.’

Samra would soon begin an investigation, so that phenomenon should be analyzed as well.

They would discover whether it was an infected being carrying a Trial virus or a nonhuman entity.

Truthfully, Mo Haein did not care what ‘Han Goyo’ was.

Could he be used or not?

If he could help permanently close Trials by reaching their True Endings, Mo Haein was prepared to accept him no matter what he might be.

“You worked hard, Captain.”

She suddenly recalled the way he had congratulated her.

His faintly smiling face had belonged to an ordinary college student.

But Mo Haein pushed the memory from her mind.

Her feelings at that moment had been sincere, but now they would only interfere with her judgment.

While Mo Haein stared at the sleeping Han Goyo without blinking, Kwak Hanmuk—who had merely been turning a rosary bead in his fingers—abruptly spoke.

“You said the Trial’s NPCs displayed friendly behavior toward Han Goyo.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you happen to try attacking Han Goyo with the Black Moon Blade?”

Mo Haein frowned at the nonsensical question, but Kwak Hanmuk was serious.

“No, I know it sounds f*cking insane, but I keep… feeling it. From my rosary.”

Apparently finding his own words absurd, Kwak Hanmuk gave a hollow laugh.

“It wants to release him.”

Mo Haein’s lips parted.

Kwak Hanmuk pressed down on the rosary with his hand and looked at Han Goyo.

For some time now, his rosary had been making his skin tingle as it expressed its displeasure.

Kwak Hanmuk voiced the impossible hypothesis weighing on his mind.

“It might not be only Trial NPCs…. Items might be friendly toward Han Goyo too.”

“Ugh….”

I swallowed a groan and opened my eyes.

A white ceiling met my gaze. It seemed to be a hospital room.

…That was how I wanted to wake up, but the sight before me was nothing of the sort.

I had opened my eyes in an interrogation room. I was also wearing a straitjacket and bound to a chair.

‘I’m in serious trouble.’

Since the Trial Response Agency belonged to the Ministry of National Defense, its cases went before military courts, but the trials were little more than a formality.

Its special nature meant that it operated a separate military court and handled the judicial process independently.

In short, all someone had to do was shout, This bastard is a bad man! and the Trial Response Agency’s military judge would immediately order imprisonment, punishment, or whatever else they wanted.

The one silver lining was that my injuries had been treated.

After confirming that the pain in my thigh had eased considerably, I suddenly wondered about something.

‘Come to think of it, why can’t I register Kwak Hanmuk?’

Captain Kwak was an important and highly capable character, so he seemed worthy of Registration. Yet no System Window had appeared to tell me that he was eligible.

You believe you must proceed carefully with Character Registration.

You currently possess only ‘3’ Registration slots.

You judge that it is a little early to fill a slot with ‘Kwak Hanmuk.’ He may escape your ■■.

You want to improve your abilities as the System as quickly as possible.

You think it would be good to register ‘Mo Haein.’

My casual question received an exceptionally rigid answer. Having roughly satisfied my curiosity, I ignored the System Window as usual.

The closed door then opened, and a man in a Trial Response Agency uniform entered.

“Hello, Mr. Han Goyo.”

The man greeted me with an amiable smile and introduced himself.

“I am ■■■ of the Trial Response Agency.”

I heard his name, but he was a character I didn’t know at all.

Wait, what had he said his name was?

Even when I tried to think back, I couldn’t remember the name I had heard only moments ago.

The man looked at me, bound like a cocoon, with a sympathetic expression.

“You must be very uncomfortable. Cooperate with us, and we will release you immediately.”

I was overflowing with the desire to cooperate. After all, I had nowhere else to go.

‘This place is my source of food, clothing, and shelter.’

If I left, I would be homeless. Trying to look as harmless as possible, I answered,

“Yes. I’ll cooperate fully.”

The man seated across from me checked his tablet for a moment, then smiled.

“First… what does Gunbam mean?”

Ready to answer immediately, I ended up staring back at him stupidly.

“Pardon?”

“Gunbam.”

“Ah, Gunbam….”

I was flustered.

‘How am I supposed to explain Gunbam?’

I even wondered whether this was some kind of interrogation technique.

Unsure what I was meant to do, I merely blinked before opening my mouth hesitantly.

“It just means gunbam. You know, roasted chestnuts.”

The atmosphere turned cold.

In an effort to appear even a little more cooperative, I scraped together every relevant detail I could think of and explained.

“My name is Han Goyo, so—you know the carol, right? The one that starts with goyohan bam, ‘silent night.’ At first, they called me Gobam. Then, while my friends and I were eating gunbam, roasted chestnuts, it changed from Gobam to Gunbam….”

Wow, this was pathetic.

The more I explained, the more it felt as though I was ruining everything.

But stopping here would seem even stranger.

“…That’s how my nickname changed. Since it was a familiar word, I often used Gunbam as my username online too.”

Whenever I played one of the Archive games, I always set the player’s name to Gunbam.

“So you mean that Gunbam is a nickname you chose yourself?”

“Yes.”

“…….”

The man fell silent.

But I had nothing more to explain. I wanted to stop talking about Gunbam.

‘Let’s move on to the next question.’

I was waiting obediently when the man spoke.

“The names used in Trials reflect a Compatible’s characteristics or carry some symbolic meaning.”

He looked steadily at me.

It was the gaze of someone trying to detect a lie.

“And every one of those names is chosen by the Trial.”

That was news to me.

I had assumed everyone chose whatever name they wanted, just as you did when beginning a game.

I had played the Archive games quite diligently, but explanations of their universe were merely bonuses that appeared after each game’s Ending.

There were inevitably things I wouldn’t know as a player.

“There has never been a case where a nickname lacking any characteristic or meaning—one even chosen personally by the individual, as yours was—has been used inside a Trial. Not once.”

The man held the tablet out to me.

“During this run of , another Compatible besides you experienced an anomaly in his name.”

A photograph of Park Seonggyeon appeared on the tablet.

“Park Seonggyeon was given an entirely different name rather than the one normally assigned to him by Trials.”

Park Seonggyeon’s name tag in HSF had read Gyeonbon—‘Sample.’

A System Window immediately came to mind.

[‘Park Seonggyeon’ is a sample Character eligible for Registration. Would you like to register him?]

Sample, and Gyeonbon.

The name was so blatant it might as well have begged me to notice.

From the moment Park Seonggyeon entered HSF, he had been branded as a sample for my benefit.

It had been a good choice.

Because the target was Park Seonggyeon, I could choose Execution without any particular guilt or hesitation.

Even so, I didn’t like the situation.

I could sense the will of some entity that wanted me to develop my abilities as the System.

In any event, the interrogation seemed to have gone badly.

‘I can hardly claim that roasted chestnuts represent my characteristics and symbolism….’

Read only on MUGEX

Leaving me troubled, the man continued his questions.

“You knew how to clear with the True Ending. Is that correct, Mr. Han Goyo?”

“It was a coincidence.”

“Han Goyo demonstrated exceptional proficiency in the boss battle and knew a new strategy of which even the Trial Response Agency was unaware. Through that strategy, he brought about the True Ending.”

The man gave a faint laugh before finishing,

“…That is what Captain Mo Haein’s report states.”

“It truly was a coincidence. It seemed similar to a game I’ve always liked, so I tried something, and it happened to work….”

“Why did you make Park Seonggyeon’s head explode?”

The man cut me off with his question. He was asking under the settled assumption that I had caused it.

I denied that too.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

The man released a long sigh.

“Mr. Han Goyo.”

“Yes?”

“You don’t seem to understand your current position, so allow me to explain: torture is legal within the Trial Response Agency.”

I know…. I know that extremely well….

But I couldn’t simply admit everything, could I?

To make a proper confession, I would have to tell them the absurd story that I had entered a game—the Archive universe itself.

‘Can’t I register this man?’

I briefly imagined registering him and threatening him with Execution.

Beings that are not ■■ cannot be registered yet.

The System Window abruptly appeared.

When the rectangle blocked my vision, I lowered my eyes and pretended to be frightened so he wouldn’t notice my awkward gaze.

‘Those damned censor blocks.’

I had no idea why the text was being concealed from me. As though it had been waiting, another System Window appeared.

Lacking.

Now it seemed too lazy even to type the full six-character Korean phrase meaning ‘your abilities are lacking,’ sending me a single word instead. At this rate, it would soon send nothing but initial consonants.

I was about to dismiss the System Window.

Then I looked at the censor blocks again.

■■…….

Could it be ‘human’?

The instant the word occurred to me, realization struck my mind with tremendous force.

One of the Trial Response Agency’s major characters.

An entity the Republic of Korea had created to respond to Trials using an item obtained from one.

An AI System android, not a human.

I called the man’s name.

“Samra Mansang.”

At that moment, I saw properly the face of the man I had believed perfectly normal until seconds ago.

His face had been blacked out as though someone had scribbled over it.

The instant I recognized the incongruity, his dark Trial Response Agency uniform changed to white.

The coloring hiding his face peeled smoothly away, revealing the man’s true appearance.

His hair and eyes shimmered in holographic colors that shifted in real time with the light.

The being, clad in colors no human could ever possess, burst into laughter.

The gloomy interrogation room around us transformed.

An enormous wall rose to an impossible height.

It was made from every kind of monitor panel, smartphone, and tablet, joined together without rhyme or reason.

Every part of the world played in different footage across them. Before that wall, a backless chair stood atop an abnormally high platform.

Seated on the chair, Samra looked down at me.

“How did you know, Mr. Han Goyo?”