Hidden Piece
"Ah, damn it, what kind of trash game is this?"
Staring at the words "Game over" floating on the monitor, I clenched my fist.
The moment a character I'd poured my heart into raising disintegrated into nothing.
It was a miracle I didn't throw the mouse, a violent surge of rage crashed over me.
But as if I were used to it, I calmed myself down and stuck a cigarette in my mouth.
"...Honestly, the fact that I've been clinging to this one game for over five years, my life is the real legend."
Lighting the cigarette, I looked out the window.
Yeah right, like I'm in a position to call anything trash.
My parents had named me Park Hyun-myung, telling me to live wisely, but I'd been spending my days anything but wise.
Outside the window, the sun was already high in the sky.
A weekday, not even the weekend, a time when everyone would be working hard.
And me, a total unemployed bum, unwashed like some wreck, absorbed in games.
"Time to quit."
Pangaenia, a game that had sparked for a moment five years ago.
Back at launch people cursed it as a crazy game.
Because if your character died, everything evaporated, and you had to start from the beginning again.
On top of that, it boasted an unprecedented, hellish difficulty, supposedly no one had ever cleared it.
Maybe that's why.
That brief popularity died out in an instant.
By now, I honestly wondered if anyone else even played besides me.
The concurrent user count on the site always reads 0 or 1.
For the record, 0 when I'm not playing, 1 when I am.
...It's kind of amazing they haven't shut down this dead game with a single user, but whatever.
And I happened to have plenty of time.
I quit my job, and I don't have a girlfriend nagging me every day anymore.
"Ha, damn it."
I squeezed my eyes shut at the memory that suddenly surfaced.
—Oppa, you're a good person but... I'm sorry. I can't keep dating someone with no future. I'm at the age where I have to think about marriage now.
I got dumped hard by my girlfriend of five years.
Guess I was the only one picturing a future together.
—All my friends are dating and marrying guys with fancy titles or big-name corporations, but you... haah. Forget it. Let's stop.
She wrapped it up on her own and left. That bitch.
Thanks to her, I trashed my no-future company too. What the hell am I supposed to do now, maybe learn a skill while I'm at it.
Click. I picked up the mouse.
Soon the message "Would you like to create a character?" appeared on the screen.
'Life is always the real last-last-last attempt.'
I'd thought the same thing when I made my previous character, but the last of the last is always the true last.
Of course, aside from the character that had just been deleted, the window already held countless others.
Some had hit max level, some were decked out in treasures, but even so, I was sure they still didn't have the specs to clear the game.
This insane game gets absurdly hard in certain sections.
Bosses that make you wonder if they were even made to be beaten, villains who pretend to be allies then stab you in the back out of nowhere, named NPCs that hunt you down and kill you if a bounty goes up, and so on...
For example, the game company managed test character "Overkill Conman" was max level and loaded with treasure-class items, but because he'd done so much ridiculous crap, he got a top-tier bounty from named NPCs, so the moment you log in, you get executed.
Some of the strongest named NPCs in the world surpass the player's max level, so if you get on their radar, you can basically consider it character deletion.
So I can't even log in right now.
Anyway,
"Let's just play for fun, for fun."
The character I'd built staking my life for a clear got deleted in the end.
Thinking of the items I'd equipped makes me want to cry. I'd swept every single one-of-a-kind item from my other characters to raise that one...
In Pangaenia, a total of fifteen one-of-a-kind items have ever been discovered, and I'd shoved eight of them into one character.
A legendary gamble, if you die you lose five years.
And I died. The character got deleted, and every item vanished too. Crap...
'Soul Points 1.6 million? Unique items really do give a ton of points.'
But when you lose something, you gain something too.
Pangaenia has a Soul Points (SP) system.
When your character dies, it converts the value you were holding into points.
With those Soul Points, you can give your next character advantages while creating them.
Over five years, after hundreds of characters got deleted, I'd only piled up about 80,000 SP. But when a character holding eight unique items got deleted, I ended up with 1.6 million Soul Points.
Not just the unique items, that character had the highest chapter progress too. It really was close to clearing, spec-wise.
'If one talent costs 10,000 Soul Points to max, I can do whatever I want.'
The main use for Soul Points is the "talent" section.
When you create a character, you can invest points into talents you want, and depending on how much you invest, your growth skyrockets.
The cap is the same, 10,000 Soul Points per talent.
For reference, "Pollack Roe Conan," I once invested 10,000 Soul Points into swordsmanship, died after earning the title of Grandmaster of Swordsmanship.
'Normally I'd invest in the safest lightning-type magic talent but...'
There are a few established routes, the most stable one is lightning-attribute magic talent.
But this game had hundreds of different talents you could invest in. With 1.6 million points, I could max out a huge chunk of them even if not all.
'If you invest over 3,000 points each into the Five Great Elements, the Void attribute opens. Then if you invest another 5,000 into Void, you can get the Emptiness trait.'
Talents beget other talents, a kind of Hidden Piece. Pangaenia is packed with designs like this. Even I, a fossil among fossils, hadn't figured them all out.
'With the Emptiness trait, I can use opposing magics. I can also max light and darkness affinity, so I have to take it.'
In this game, one character can't use conflicting attributes at the same time, unless you use tools or some other medium.
But if you have the "Emptiness trait," you can use those opposing magics and attributes together.
The problem is, just getting Emptiness costs 20,000 points, so you end up short on points for other talents.
In a game this hard, if your character dies, the SP you invested disappears too. That's why starting with clear, distinct talents is so difficult.
'But true fun is random. Let's go, all-random!'
Even if I plan routes and calculate everything, it just gives me a headache. If I want to truly enjoy the game and quit properly, nothing beats all-random.
Everything, including traits, completely at random!
A ruinous choice, but a smile crept onto my lips.
Not clearing, just having fun.
I bet all 1.6 million points on randomness.
'It's not like I can clear it anyway.'
I'd flailed and struggled every way possible to clear it.
The conclusion was simple, this game wasn't released to be cleared.
Back when Pangaenia launched, the developer had made a declaration to the users.
—To the person who clears the game, I will grant one dream.
Grant a dream, whatever it is. That one line drove countless people to challenge and despair.
Even now, five years later, the game still hasn't been cleared.
Up until about a year ago there were at least a few people around, but now it had become a game only I was challenging.
Still, I planned to enjoy it properly for the first and last time.
'Press it?'
I'd tried randomizing appearance before, but choosing "everything random" was my first time too. That "all-random" button was infamous as the most inefficient, pointless choice you could make.
Five years of time distilled into one decision, it wasn't easy to press even after I'd made up my mind.
I closed my eyes.
And then.
Click!
I pressed it.
Firmly. At once, dice spun, and everything started getting decided at random.
But that wasn't the end.
A message I'd never seen before floated on the monitor.
"Hidden Piece?"
[You who are brighter than light, darker than darkness, who stand within the vortex of creation and destruction, may you find happiness in Pangaenia.]
The game intro appeared too.
As I reached for the skip button like always—
"Uh... what the hell?"
Those letters bulged out of the monitor, writhing outside the screen.
That was the moment.
—You damn god! I'll burn down every world you made!
A voice like scraping metal rang out.
And along with it, a hellscape unfolded before my eyes.
The continent of Pangaenia was falling onto Earth, collapsing together with it.
The quality was so insane it didn't look like cheap graphics, it looked like the real thing.
Did the intro always have a video like this?
I barely had time to wonder.
My consciousness vanished far away.