D.I.O

/Your spiritual force (Type: Magic Power) capacity has decreased by 170 points!/

After being imbued with magic power, the golden glow of the spiritual force ball started shining brighter, and a moment later, a pinky-sized gold-colored core landed in his palm. It was his third planet, Earth.

“Success. The blue Earth~.”

Merlin felt a sense of emptiness within him once his internal energy was gone, but he’d expected this, so he casually put his new core in his inventory. Then, he withdrew Mercury and Venus from his dantian region and out of his body, placing both of them into his inventory as well. Initially, Merlin had planned on converting the precious stone that was his spinel into a magic stone. This way, he could place it in his inventory as well, but after creating Earth, he had depleted all the magic power in the spinel, making it unusable.

“It would be nice if I could convert my life force and physical strength into items as well… should I try draining my blood?”

If others were to overhear his current mumblings, they would’ve thought Merlin had lost his marbles, although a few may have thought he was onto something. Regardless, Merlin stuffed his inventory with everything he owned. And right when he was done…

Rumble.

The sound of thunder rumbled. However, this didn’t originate from a storm but the resonance of mana. Even with his Enhanced Eyesight, Merlin couldn’t see the ferocious battle occurring far in the distance.

“I guess they’re still fighting.”

After completing his internal energy expulsion process, Merlin checked the time. A whole three hours had passed, which meant the red dragon had arrived in Starting roughly three hours ago and was still fighting.

“Is the dragon going easy on the users and giving them a handicap?”

The dragon’s formidable aura had convinced Merlin of the users’ inevitable defeat, and when it flew past him, he felt an unbeatable force emanating from the monster. If DIO had been running for five years in reality, with the average user playing for at least ten in-game years, then the players may have put up a fight against Igniz. Yet, the users had only played for two months, so battling a raid monster like Igniz was an insurmountable task.

“Well, the users have hung on for quite a while, but the end should be arriving soon… Oh, yeah. What should I do about this egg?”

With all his items put away, Merlin looked to the side to see the egg on his shoulder. Obviously, he couldn’t put the egg in his inventory, as it contained a living organism. Merlin could hold the egg while logging out, but would that prevent it from disappearing after the reset? As he was contemplating this matter, Merlin was suddenly interrupted.

Whoosh!

A powerful wave passed through Merlin, and since he didn’t possess an iota of magic power or internal energy, his ability to sense qi and other energy had become virtually nonexistent. Yet, despite this, he felt a strong aura of spiritual pressure crushing down on him. If he felt this much pressure from so far away, it just showed the overwhelming amount of spiritual power that was being outputted.

“What the hell is this…?”

Merlin then noticed that the air had changed. It wasn’t a change in mood or ambiance; the air itself was different.

“The air has become… warm?”

To be more specific, the temperature of the air had risen. After the wave of magic power passed, the surroundings had become warmer by about four to five degrees Celsius. Of course, this change didn’t affect Merlin too much, but if he could feel a difference 250 kilometers away from Starting, he couldn’t imagine what the atmosphere was like there. A four to five-degree change here meant that the temperature must have been astronomically high on the battlefield.

“Wow… so scary. I guess that’s the power of a red dragon.”

As he felt the atmosphere abruptly change, Merlin expected that the battle had winded down. It must have. With such a formidable attack, Merlin would’ve been surprised if the whole village wasn’t incinerated into nothingness. It was highly likely that the entire village and its grounds had been liquified, turning the whole area into a volcanic region.

However, a text message soon popped up that went against his assumptions.

/User Arthur has defeated the red dragon Igniz!/

/Congratulations! The users have won the battle!/

“… What?”

Regardless if Merlin understood or not, the sky started darkening. Moreover, he could see darkness and emptiness approaching from the distant horizon. The server was shutting down.

/With this, the Closed Beta has ended. We’ll see you at the Grand Opening!/

The bright and cheery-sounding message was juxtaposed with the darkening world. Yet…

“What?”

Merlin couldn’t help but continue to look perplexed.

***The One Who’s Running Away***

Yongno got on the bus, something he hadn’t done in a long time. Of course, only two weeks had passed in real life, but Merlin had experienced over 60 days. Was this feeling because of that? Yongno felt that everything around him seemed fresh and new.

“Oh, is that you, Yongno?”

“Hey.”

After entering his high school and going to the second floor, where all the graduating third-year classrooms were, Yongno saw his first familiar face. Even if Yongno didn’t recognize their face, he could easily tell if they were a third-year graduating student, as all third years wore street clothes rather than the school uniform. Technically, the third-year students were required to wear the school uniform on campus, but the teachers were the ones who enforced this rule, and they let it slide.

“Wow, epic. I’ve also been absent for a few days since the entrance exam, but still, I’ve never seen you until now. You haven’t even come to school once after taking the exam, right?”

“Correct~.”

Although he smiled good-naturedly while responding, Yongno fell into thought.

‘What was this guy’s name….’

It wasn’t that Yongno didn’t recognize this person. No, actually, Yongno had a close friendship with him. Although they hadn’t been in the same class for all three years, they had only been in different classrooms in the second year. Furthermore, Yongno recalled having many conversations with this friend.

‘Ah, his name is….’

Yongno knew everything about this friend’s interests, personality, family background, and even his nicknames. Yongno didn’t have any trouble talking to this person at the moment, but he couldn’t remember their name. This wasn’t the first time this happened, either. Other than a few who were closest to him, Yongno had trouble remembering all of his friends’ names. He had mostly gotten away with this since their names were embroidered on their school uniforms, but now that everyone was wearing plain street clothes, Yongno was at a total loss.

“Are you losers all sleeping in the morning~!”

“Ugh, you losers. This thoughtful friend of yours has brought a couple of baseball game recordings. Do you guys want to watch?”

“Wow, such a thoughtful friend, indeed. Thank you for bestowing your grace and consideration on us.”

“Get your fat ass out of here.”

The classroom atmosphere was light and carefree. Each third-year classroom contained 30 or so students, but there were only around ten present in each. And even then, most of these students had their heads on their desks or were reading comic books.

“Anyway, did you do alright on the university entrance exam?”

“I crashed and burned, as expected.”

“You seem way too happy for that to have actually happened.”

From the guy with the baseball game recordings to the students trading and reading comic books, everyone seemed to state one or two things about the university entrance exam. As third-year students in the Korean education system, the main topic was the university entrance exam, so this type of behavior and ensuing conversations were expected. And when Yongno was asked the same question….

“My grade is around this.”

After Yongno wrote down a number, the friend he couldn’t remember the name of gasped aloud.

“Oh my god, really? Wow, you screwed up. Did you fall asleep in the middle of the exam?”

“I got what I deserved.”

“But didn’t you get the top score on the first-year midterm exam?”

Yongno was surprised that this friend of his had remembered such an obscure memory.

“Yeah, but that was by accident.”

“By accident? You can get first by accident?”

“I guess I got what I deserved for fooling around the past three years.”

After offering a general answer, Yongno focused on the television that was affixed to the wall. The television was placed to the left of the chalkboard and was only to be used for educational purposes. Students were not allowed to watch anything non-education-related, but since the third-year students had all taken their university entrance exams, they could watch whatever they pleased.

“Hey, did you hear? There’s some kind of new virtual reality game coming out.”

“Uh… yeah, I heard.”

“Do you think it’s real? I feel like we’re getting trolled. How can a virtual reality game be abruptly released without any marketing or news around it beforehand? I didn’t hear a peep about it until now.”

His friend’s expression seemed to state, ‘Are we living within a movie?’, but Yongno, having beta-tested DIO, smiled awkwardly while responding, “Eh… Uhm, I heard that there’s been a few people who have been testing out its systems recently.”

“Oh, you’re talking about that interview that’s making the rounds, right? It was just an interview, though. There was no accompanying video or clips; the interviewee just said that the virtual world was great. Once we get into the game, don’t you think it’ll feel weird? Based on the rumors floating around, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be that expensive to play, but can they really offer a quality game if the price isn’t high?”