Chapter 10: Virtual

It may be sudden but, let’s talk about a story.

It is a common understanding that humans inherently require a certain amount of sufficient sleep, and almost everyone struggles to secure this time.

However, as society progresses and various reasons emerge, infringements on the right to sleep have accelerated.

For soldiers, it might be due to night duties or guard duty.

For students, it’s to finish assigned tasks.

For working professionals… well, there could be various reasons.

Anyway, as diverse people enter modern society, they face interruptions to their sleep for various reasons, leading to mental fatigue and stress.

And most people would express these stresses as anger and irritation.

So.

The reason why I suddenly brought up this story is because—

__________!!!

Me.

I suddenly woke up coolly due to the glaring Icarus device emitting light and vibrations from my left wrist, as if the end of the world had come.

When I regained my senses, I found myself holding a tactical tomahawk in one hand, my eyes scanning the surroundings.

In a posture ready to swing at virtual enemies if necessary.

…Sigh.

I’m irritated.

“…What kind of nonsense is this at three in the morning.”

But in my mind, I was already analyzing what type of alarm it was, as trained.

Normally, when wearing special lenses, it indicates what that is. Besides, there was no reason for sound or light when exposing the location during operations.

Since it was information I had never encountered before, it was easier to deduce by reverse reasoning.

“…Information leak alert?”

Why would I be getting this alert now, unless the entire Icarus data center was hacked or nodes were thoroughly compromised?

Feeling dizziness creeping up belatedly, I sat down and turned on the monitor I had turned off,

The computer linked to the device displayed the warning message abruptly.

Countless unreadable scripts filled the screen endlessly.

Roughly speaking… it seemed to be a comparison between data researched on the internet and data inside the device, to check for matches or similarities.

The problem was that it was exceeding five digits.

If it were just a month ago, I would have rushed somewhere immediately, but now I’ve transcended the world itself.

Which means….

“There’s a lot of relevant content on the internet….”

What’s certain is that this alert… is no longer something I need to care about. As soon as I manipulated it a few times, the red light and vibration that filled the room disappeared quickly.

It was three in the morning, and naturally, it was pitch black outside, but… given the vibration, it probably meant that significant data aggregation had been completed.

Since I’ll have to spend some time without any major schedules anyway, I’ll investigate and then go back to sleep.

The computer was still processing, and opening additional windows could cause it to shut down for real.

So most of the checks had to be done through the device’s hologram interface.

Excluding completely irrelevant content.

Lee Yoojin, New York, Washington, terrorists, Artemis, Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, etc… Things that are not related when searched individually.

Things unrelated to my life or the previous world.

Excluding trivial or difficult-to-categorize items and selecting meaningful information, the result was:

“…Dark Zone?”

What is this word again?

There was no need to dig deep into memory. It was a word I heard while pondering which gun to shoot just before today’s shooting.

However, to recall the entire context of the conversation at that time… certainly required more effort than before.

Memories began to revive one by one.

…Wasn’t it said to be a very popular game?

Though it had been a long time since I played the game, echoes of my memories before facing the cold New York winter were faintly resonating.

My hand, about to search for it on the internet, suddenly stopped.

After a moment of silence, the sound of typing resumed.

“In the middle of a TreeWiki search….

…A distant memory in my mind spoke,

The game, after all, recommended referring to websites written from the users’ perspective.

Although the name of the site differed slightly from what I remembered, the layout of the main homepage unmistakably hinted at its usage.

The search bar in the upper right corner. I carefully entered the keyword “Dark Zone.”

Even before hitting enter, numerous related search terms unfolded.

And───

“…Ha.”

Found it.

You rascal.

***

Almost everywhere in the world,

There exist media and works that deal with a person’s life, their era, and the world at that time, including autobiographies, memoirs, and creations related to one’s life.

Whether processed or actual, involving people or events, individuals consult numerous data and references to recreate them anew and present them attractively.

They are movies, books, novels, or the lives of numerous people thus reborn, and the world they lived in.

While observing such things, I sometimes harbored curiosity.

It was stories from the past and just simple questions.

Well, what if… if one’s life or information about where I existed were processed into a new form of media and shown to people.

And if the person themselves witnessed it.

What would they think?

…But even that was quite common in this world.

By the time their own lives were turned into movies, many people were already gone from this world, but given the times, there were cases where it wasn’t so.

Yet, in a way… it was something that had no connection to ordinary people forever.

Right away, I also thought I would feel the same way.

But,

Thump.

“…The sun’s already up.”

Seeing that for real, it felt quite different, and pretty damn new.

Enough to forget the passing of time.

It’s a sudden story, but… I used to like FPS games.

Aim, put the enemy in the center of the sight, and fire.

If it’s a bit more realistic game, consider bullet drop and flight time.

And then, eliminate the enemy.

Among the myriad things in the category of games,

Only the field of FPS games, where only graphics, systems, and UI have advanced, retains the clarity of the goal… that is, the premise of shooting and killing opponents remains unchanged over time.

Of course, as times change and technology advances, various elements have been added to this field.

Such as limb damage or healing, needs like hunger, and pursuing survival rather than the premise of killing enemies….

But even these cannot deny the basic foundation of the FPS genre.

So, I didn’t care about other complicated things and liked FPS games belonging to the simple category where you just need to kill enemies.

However….

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Dark Zone, now beyond just a game, a massive platform….

Maintaining a simultaneous global user count of 15 million for a year… Dark Zone, what’s the secret?

Opening new horizons in virtual reality: overwhelming backgrounds and worldviews, endless updates and continuous balance patches!

Dark Zone becomes the first to surpass the $7 billion mark in the global esports market!

The CEO of Icarus International, Mark Henslow, completely denies any similarity between Dark Zone and the real US military!

Implementing numerous past FPS games in virtual reality!

Next in line is the survival FPS genre, Quarentine Escaping, to escape from closed contamination zones… [6 months ago]

….

…………….

…New York, Washington, and countless other major cities that I roamed through countless times, trying to normalize.

To think that all of those things have turned into virtual reality FPS games,

“Sigh….”

What is there to hide?

All the information and storyline I gathered while browsing this wiki, all of it was what actually happened there, what I experienced.

It felt quite disgusting that it was all being consumed as just a game.

But more ironic than that is why exactly this exists where I’ve returned to.

The world remembers my past. And not in a very pleasant way.

It felt like facing a giant black box. But unlike electronics that you could choose not to confirm… I had to go in here to figure out what this game really is.

Even the way I returned, not even sure how to live on from here, suddenly faced with an assignment.

I wanted to shrug it off but couldn’t.

I wanted to turn away but couldn’t.

Search results derived from the keyword Dark Zone were akin to fishing hooks. Once you witness it with your own eyes, you’re just drawn in.

This game was inseparable from me, and whether I ignore it at this point or not, it will eventually come back to me like a boomerang.

Whether sooner or later, it seems inevitable.

Taking a deep breath, I grab the mouse once again.

If I have to go in eventually, there’s no hesitation. I’ll cast aside all trivial concerns and keep only the methods converging towards one result in mind.

It would be a long and arduous investigation. Given my lack of talent in gathering information, it might take even longer. And even when I reach the end, I might not get the answers I want.

But I didn’t care.

“…So be it.”

First off, let’s find out how to log in.