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Chapter 108 – The Start of Round 8
[Breaking News! National Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon kidnapped, then released…….]
[Crisis for the anti-Player bill—Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon kidnapped and threatened.]
[Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon narrowly escaped death. The four truths he testified to.]
[Who are the kidnappers of Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon?]
[Kidnappers of Assemblyman Lee identified as four Players.]
[Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon nearly publicly executed—fortunately, no trauma…….]
[Police: Three Players already confirmed dead. Remaining suspect being tracked.]
Right now, the internet was boiling over with the kidnapping case involving Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon.
└Assemblyman Lee ㅠㅠ Thank God you’re safe.
└Wow…… now they’re kidnapping even a National Assemblyman.
└Are Players seriously out of their minds?
└The world’s in the end times. We’re on the f*cked-up track.
└Don’t lump Players together and curse them. There are people who treat all Players like pre-criminals, but they’re humans just like you.
└That’s right! Stop Player-hate!
└Yeah, f*ck off. The fact is, ever since Players appeared, incidents and accidents increased by 10x+. That’s in the statistics.
└True. A lot of Players are hot-blooded guys in their 20s, so they cause all kinds of sh*t.
└Players should all just die.
└The answer is to stay inside and keep your head down. Those guys disappear after time passes anyway ㅋㅋ
└Hurry up and let 13 months pass so all those bugs get wiped out ㅋ
Public opinion flowed in a direction that was bad for Players.
It was a blunt example of how poor the perception of Players was.
But.
[Breaking News! The person who rescued Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon was a fellow Player: Black Scythe.]
[Player Black Scythe reportedly rescued him despite being offered the crime in advance.]
[Black Scythe rescued Assemblyman Lee even while betraying his comrades.]
As articles came out saying the person who saved the Assemblyman was a Player, the mood began to change.
└The one who saved Assemblyman Lee was a Player?
└Is this article real? If it’s fake, I’m filing a 국민청원 to the Blue House.
└It’s real, so the same kind of articles are coming out in a flood, you tryhard dumbass……
└Now the Player stans are gonna swarm in. “Not all Players are bad!” Waaaah!
└Why? Looking at the article, it seems like he helped with no reward. I don’t get why there are so many snide comments.
└Seriously. Feels like there are way more people who sneer at Players no matter what.
└The people sneering are probably street-stall owners who got extorted by Players, lol ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└But this guy called Black Scythe—apparently he’s famous among Players? A monster that takes Rank 1 every Round.
└ㄷㄷㄷ What is he? If he’s that level, he’s a f*cking veteran, isn’t he?
└Black Scythe-nim appeared in the real world? Holy shiiiiiit!
└There’s a Player in here, lol ㅋ
└Blac———k!
└Who the hell is Black Scythe, you weeb bastard.
Yamtti, who’d been reading the articles, lifted her head with a smile.
“Master. Look at this. There’s a comment praising Black Scythe-nim.”
“Yeah? Hand it over.”
Ryu Min snatched the phone and scanned the comments.
There were still plenty of posts sneering because he was a Player, but overall, the mood wasn’t bad.
‘It’d be greedy to expect the name Black Scythe to become widely known just from saving one person.’
From the look of it, Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon must’ve told the police everything.
Considering even his nickname was being mentioned.
‘Still, this isn’t bad. Things are flowing the way I intended.’
If, when people thought of Black Scythe, they thought of “the person who saved a National Assemblyman,” that was enough.
‘Name value can be built up over time. There’s no need to rush.’
With a faint smile, Ryu Min handed the phone back to Yamtti.
“Ah, thank you, Master.”
Even though three days had passed since the incident, Yamtti still trusted and followed Ryu Min.
‘She’ll live her whole life serving me as her master.’
Dominion really was something.
To think it could turn even a psychopath like this into a gentle lamb.
‘Though it seems each person accepts the conditions differently.’
He’d clearly told her not to call him “Master,” but Yamtti kept slipping and calling him that anyway.
‘Is it because of the command to become my slave?’
If she saw herself as a slave down to the bone, could she really speak casually just because her “master” told her to?
‘That must be unimaginably difficult for a slave.’
In other words, it was like the president telling an ordinary citizen to speak casually to him.
‘Of course she’d slip up.’
She was trying, but the “master” awareness might be making her slip again and again.
That was why Ryu Min had no choice but to allow her to call him “Master” again.
‘It was already unpleasant hearing casual speech anyway, so this works out.’
Even if he looked twenty on the outside, Ryu Min had, in reality, lived over a century.
‘It’s the same span repeated ninety-nine times, but if you count lived time, these kids are basically my grandkids.’
Watching Yamtti, Ryu Min warned her again, just in case.
“I’m saying this one more time. When it’s just you and me, you can call me Master. But when other people are around, what do you call me?”
“I call you Ryu Min, right? And I shouldn’t use honorifics either.”
“That’s right. You know it well. Remember it. Erase the thought that I’m Black Scythe entirely.”
“Yes, yes. Understood, Master.”
She said it while bowing so deeply her forehead nearly touched the floor, but Ryu Min didn’t tell her to get up.
Because he could read her thoughts and knew it meant she was submitting as a slave.
‘A slave is most comfortable staying in a slave’s place.’
When Yamtti finally lifted her head, Ryu Min asked,
“You told the Chairman properly?”
“Yes. Just as you instructed, I told him the plan failed because of Lostyak’s betrayal. He accepted it easily. Even without the influence of Fascination.”
Ryu Min nodded.
Sure—he’d ambushed the Chairman wearing Lostyak’s face, so calling him the traitor made everything line up.
“And you delivered everything else I told you to say too?”
“Yes. Starting the day before yesterday, July 9, we agreed to abolish Plseba’s ‘murder interview’ and change it to an interview that focuses on character.”
“Good, good. The regime’s changed, so we should correct what’s wrong.”
They would stop the insane act called a murder interview and conduct normal interviews from now on.
However, instead of judging applicants by level or performance at the time of joining, they would focus on the Player’s character.
“If someone applies to join the café, use the Chairman to run a criminal-record check first. If there’s even a hint of a problem, don’t even let them take the interview.”
“Understood.”
“That’s the interview handled…… the biggest problem left is what to do with the Players who already joined…… how many are there?”
“Over half died in the last Round, so there are about four thousand left now.”
“And every single one of them passed the murder interview?”
“Yes. Whether they participated directly or stood by and watched, they all took part in murder.”
“In other words, they’re not even worth killing—they’re that kind of trash. The problem is what to do with them.”
Ryu Min, thinking, grinned.
‘Then that’s it. It’s better to leave the trash to a cleaner.’
Even with waste, Ryu Min was the type to think about how to use it somehow.
Tap-tap-tap—
Heo Tae-seok normally didn’t use his phone much.
The only game installed was a Sudoku puzzle.
Even that—after becoming a Player—he hadn’t been able to bring himself to play it, and he also hadn’t deleted it.
Yet Heo Tae-seok was currently, for the first time in ages, glued to his phone.
└Black Scythe-nim appeared in the real world? Holy shiiiiiit!
Tododododok—
Heo Tae-seok’s fingers moved rapidly as he began commenting under article after article.
If an article had Black Scythe’s name, he commented without exception.
And then.
└Who the hell is Black Scythe, you weeb bastard.
Whenever he found a comment trashing Black Scythe, he immediately replied.
└How ignorant. To not know the great Black Scythe-nim. There isn’t a single Player who doesn’t know him, tsk tsk.
└So what, you bastard ㅋㅋ To civilians he’s a nobody, worse than a celebrityㅋㅋ
└You moronic idiot who doesn’t even know how famous he is.
└ㅋㅋㅋ Losing the argument so you jump straight to insults? You f*cking loser ㅋㅋ
“Ah, I’m getting pissed.”
This was already the fifth keyboard battle that started like this.
At this rate, he felt like he’d burst from sheer rage and die.
“Foolish bastards… not even knowing how incredible Black Scythe-nim is…….”
He clicked his tongue, but Heo Tae-seok also felt it, deep down.
Among ordinary people, Black Scythe was no different from a character in some niche game.
‘What should I do? What should I do…….’
He worried, but the answer was already there.
Wasn’t Heo Tae-seok the one who’d decided to establish a religion for Black Scythe?
‘To do that, I’ll need to gather followers.’
He couldn’t build a religion with his strength alone.
He needed people who would raise their voices together.
Not to mention the money issue.
‘I have to find them. People like me, who will build a sect for Black Scythe-nim.’
Where, and how?
The answer to that problem was already in his head.
‘If you want to catch fish, you go to the river.’
If he wanted to draw in Players, he had to go where Players gathered.
Time passed—August 1.
About two thousand Players gathered in one place.
Round 8 began.
Buzz-buzz—
“Where is this?”
“This isn’t a grassland.”
So far, the starting locations were often grasslands or forests.
But the place the Players were standing on now was a stark white, colorless space.
Not knowing what kind of Round was about to begin, their faces were filled with tension.
“Black Scythe-nim!”
Not long after Ryu Min arrived in the Otherworld, Min Juri approached.
“You found me fast.”
“Of course. If I use Tracking, I can find you right awa—.”
Mid-sentence, Min Juri shut her mouth as if she’d realized something.
“Tracking wasn’t on the skill list I told you to learn, was it?”
“Haha…….”
Min Juri couldn’t bring herself to admit she learned Tracking just to meet Black Scythe.
But there was someone else who learned Tracking for the same reason.
“H-hello, Black Scythe-nim.”
Heo Tae-seok approached timidly and greeted him.
‘That guy too?’
Ryu Min’s eyebrow twitched.
They weren’t learning the skills he told them to learn—they were wasting gold on useless things.
Then, while looking at Heo Tae-seok, Ryu Min learned something by reading his inner thoughts.
‘This guy recently applied to join Plseba, didn’t he?’
It seemed he joined for publicity purposes, to build a religion for Black Scythe.
Because it was recent, he was different from the other trash who’d passed the murder interview.
‘Hmm. Looks like I’ll have to classify members by assigning ranks.’
He would need to demote all existing members, while giving special treatment to those who’d joined recently with a special rank.
‘That’ll cause pushback from the existing members, but I don’t care. I’m going to leave them to a cleaner anyway.’
As Ryu Min grinned, Min Juri smiled and spoke.
“Oh, right—Black Scythe-nim, I saw the news. They said you rescued Assemblyman Lee Seong-hyeon this time?”
“Yeah. I did.”
“I saw it too! Black Scythe-nim! I was so happy I left cheering comments for you under every article. Hehe.”
“…….”
Seeing Heo Tae-seok’s rare bright, innocent grin, Ryu Min couldn’t bring himself to scold him for doing something useless.
“Still, you’re seriously amazing! The article said the criminals offered to team up and plan the crime together, right?”
“That’s right.”
“How could they even make a proposal like that? What did they think Black Scythe-nim was?”
“They didn’t know it was me. In the real world, no one knows my identity.”
Strictly speaking, Yamtti knew, but she was his vassal now, so it didn’t matter.
At that moment, a shared thought rose in both of their minds.
-I want to know Black Scythe-nim’s identity too.
Hearing it, Ryu Min shook his head inwardly, then lifted his gaze.
An angel flashed into existence in the sky.
[Nice to meet you, everyone. I’m Ariel, newly assigned to oversee Zone C2-ESKA003. You don’t need to clap.]
“…….”
When truly no one clapped, Ariel’s eyes narrowed.
It seemed she hadn’t been joking.
[I thought at least one person would clap. This is annoying.]
Clap— clap-clap—
‘What is this—begging for applause.’
With the clapping, Ariel’s expression eased somewhat, and she smiled.
[Thanks for the welcome! Then shall we all check the Round 8 quest together?]