The Kirin moved.
The direction of the light seemed somehow off.
Even with the sequence of its head turning askew, its aim was clear.
It was exactly where those eyes had shifted.
The spot where the man in black and the crimson creature were tangled together.
The massive body kicked off the ground and shot forward in a single line.
That same weight which had been pushing back twenty Zero-to-Hundred boss squads now aimed squarely at the flanks of the two who seemed locked together, unable to budge.
With each step its hooves took, the ground beneath was savagely torn and distorted.
Kwa-deu-deu-deuk―!
― Huh? Huh? The Kirin is butting in
― WTF did you see? Seems like the Kirin's gotten weird too??
― Whoa, this is clip-worthy, total clip
In Zero's eyes, the picture was drawn.
The two were holding each other, so neither could dodge.
Both would be swept away.
At least, according to Zero-to-Hundred's movement chart, that's how it should be.
But then the man in black, in the midst of it all, subtly twitched the hand that wasn't holding his sword.
Seu-euhk―.
It was such a bizarre change that you couldn't tell exactly what he did.
Something unraveled and scattered from his fingertips, and the charging massive body stumbled over that scattered spot.
The horn that had been driving in a straight line twisted to the side.
From the spot where it should have struck dead center, by about two knuckles of a finger.
That was exactly the distance it fell short.
Ku-woong―!
Instead of sweeping both of them up together, the Kirin grazed past that tangled spot.
Its horn, having missed by that much, scraped between the two without striking head-on.
As the colossal frame scraped past their side, the weight carried in its flank lashed the man in black.
Had he taken it head-on, he would have been sent flying, but the glancing weight only shoved one of his shoulders.
Away from the direction the massive creature had come from, meaning outward from his stance facing the crimson creature.
The upper body of the man, who had been blocking the blood-colored mass with his sword, turned away from the crimson creature following that shoved shoulder.
That exact moment was it.
The mass the crimson creature had been pressing forward followed the turning man in black.
As the sword that had been holding against it lost the force that was pushing from the front, the blade that was receiving the blood-colored mass tilted and lay flat.
When faced head-on, the mass had caught on the center of the blade and held, but as the sword turned sideways, there was nothing left to catch on.
The mass of energy slid along the back of the lying sword and flowed inward.
The crimson creature hadn't deliberately aimed for that either.
It likely didn't know the Kirin would strike from the side.
It was simply that the force it had been pushing straight ahead, having lost its front, found nothing to support it and spilled out.
A physical impact from one side.
And then, where the Kirin had grazed past, there was something else that the massive body had dragged along.
Zero saw it.
In the path the Kirin had passed, the red floor shifted once.
It wasn't a broken texture.
It was deeper than that.
Something else that had been laid beneath the floor welled up through the spot the Kirin had scraped.
It looked like... 'a different board' that the Kirin seemed to have dragged in.
A corner of the world twisted once right there.
The physical impact and the twisted world struck the man in black at the same time.
Kwa-ang―!
― ?? The black dude's flying
― Where's he flying off to?
― Hey, there's a wall at that far end, the map boundary
The man in black was lifted into the air.
He hadn't retreated on his own feet.
Pushed by that mass and lashed by that twist, he flew, leaving a long, single afterimage.
Shwaa-ae-ae-ae-ak―!
Towards the very end of the Red Arena, the edge where no player had ever set foot.
Up to that point, all came into a single glance.
He crossed the boss field, went over the player camp, and in one leap, cleared a yard so vast that tens of thousands could rampage in it.
It was a terrifying speed, not flying, but as if distance were being folded haphazardly.
At the end of it was the invisible wall.
The wall that not only Zero-to-Hundred but countless players had tested with faint hopes or for fun, the one that could never be crossed.
There lay 'the end of the GOR worldview.'
The man struck that wall.
Teong―!
If he had struck it, he should have bounced back.
― Oh, hold on
― The wall...!?
― That! That! That!!
― ...Did it break through? I think it really broke through?
― That... that could be broken through? For real?
Just like the other players, Zero also couldn't believe what he had seen.
The man in black didn't bounce.
At the spot of impact, the wall caved inward.
The solid surface that had been blocking gave way, centering around where the man's back had touched.
It didn't stop there.
As if someone behind the wall were pulling that spot with a finger, the surrounding surface was sucked into the center along the dent.
It was like a tightly stretched screen being pierced at one point and dragged inward.
The drawn-in surface could hold no longer and crumpled.
The straight boundary line wrinkled along those folds, then, like a line drawn wrong and half-erased, folded inward and tore.
Jjeo-jeo-jeok―!
Through the tear, the man in black was sucked in.
Beyond the map's end.
To a place where no coordinates in this game were charted.
And the man in black disappeared within.
The noisy chat window fell dead silent for an instant.
As if tens of thousands right there had all lost their words.
― ....Then it exploded.
― WTF was that just now??
― Where did the black dude go? He disappeared.
― He went outside the map?? That's possible??
The crack that had split open there remained unmended.
The wrongly drawn line didn't smooth back out but gaped open.
Through it, beyond the wall, was revealed.
The end of the Red Arena, beyond that wall that had never been crossed.
There was nothing there that should be.
No loading screen to the next map, no warning message blocking the way, not even a pitch-black skybox.
It was just utterly dark.
Not something left half-colored, but a place where what to color was never decided from the start.
Instead.
Something was drifting.
At first, I thought it was dust.
Watching, it wasn't dust.
Lumps large and small were drifting slowly through that darkness.
As if dust floats in space, comets pass, and rocks roll, in that dark place, such things were floating.
There was no up or down.
They neither fell nor rose, each drifting at its own speed as if forgetting the concept of weight.
But they were neither stars nor stones.
They were things made and left unfinished.
A half-drawn mountainside was floating sideways, attached to nothing.
One slope had its ridges fully formed, but the opposite side was cut cleanly in mid-air, revealing through its cross-section that it was an empty shell.
A piece of a fortress wall, only half-textured, spun round.
The stone-stacked side was pristine down to every bit of moss, but the opposite side exposed its ashen base, alternately showing the finished and bare sides with each rotation.
Floor fragments that hadn't been assigned where to lie, a few trees without leaves, a building with only outlines drawn and inside left unfilled—all drifted weightlessly.
Scraps pushed aside somewhere during creation, before being assigned coordinates to settle in place.
They were fragments that had stepped one foot outside the finished world, pieces not yet become a world.
Zero realized what they were.
He had rolled around in this field for over ten years.
There was no map he hadn't visited.
No boss he hadn't fought.
And so, even though it was a scene he'd never seen before, he felt he knew what it was.
'That... looks like resources under development?'
Before being laid into the game.
Map fragments not yet finished.
Somewhere not yet released to the world.
'Unreleased area?'
Did that even make sense?
Why was an unreleased map visible?
And why was it beyond the wall at the map's end...?
It wasn't that there was another layer of wall.
Beyond the wall, there was another world.
A world the company hadn't opened yet, where no player had ever stepped foot.
And it wasn't a completed world locked away, but one left unfinished, drifting in the darkness.
― Hey, what's that? The map end broke open
― Something's floating around beyond the wall, what's that? Stars?
― Stars my ass lol That's like unimplemented data
― Unimplemented? Why is an unreleased map there
― Whoa, isn't this a new map leak? Spoiler alert, spoiler
― The black bastard got sucked in there; if we follow, is it first dibs on the new map?
― Crazy bastard, if you go in, the GMs will delete you? That's outside the map.
― How can there be a map outside the map, dumbass? That makes no sense.
The chat window boiled again.
Just moments ago, they were dying in droves, and already some were talking about leaks and first dibs.
Zero shut out everything except what he saw.
This was no time to mind those idiots.
Of course, under normal circumstances, he too would have been gauging the timing or method to dive in beyond.
Are there rewards to claim first?
Is there an angle for the last hit?
But this time, it wasn't that naive a situation.
It was long past seeing that man in black as something to catch.
Hadn't he concluded ages ago that it wasn't a bug, a boss, or a GM, but something that had rolled in from outside the rules?
So no thoughts of strategies or drops came to mind.
Instead, something else surged up like a mushroom cloud.
'Beyond that... what the hell is there?'
The end of this world was not the end.
Beyond the wall he believed to be the end, there was another world.
That world was left half-made, floating in darkness.
And.
'The man from outside the world' entered 'yet another outside the world.'
A sequence of situations was unfolding that, for now, could neither be caught, broken, nor understood.
Something beyond that gaping tear was overflowing, something utterly untouchable by the ways Zero had lived for over ten years.
● ● ●
The lights in the Pantheon server room hadn't gone out once in six days.
It had long since been forgotten how many shifts the duty rotation had gone through.
From the day the Kirin evaporated, an emergency had been declared, and rather than lifting, that emergency only deepened by the hour.
On every large monitor that covered the walls, the Red Arena was displayed.
Over a dozen screens showed the same chaotic mess from only slightly different angles.
Players turning gray in droves, textures that lost their coordinates and flickered, and in the very center, two markers with blank IDs embedded.
They had all been staring at such things for days.
"Are the GM logs sorted yet?"
The team lead asked, his headset hanging off one ear.
His voice was completely hoarse.
"Sorted, nothing. The operators who just went in... not a single one came back. They all just... turned off."
The server manager answered without taking his eyes off the monitor.
"They went in with invincibility on, right? And they all died?"
"That's what's driving me crazy. I just saw it with my own two eyes, you know? Not a trace of the invincibility buff blocking anything. They were just all deleted, in the same light as when players die."
The team lead swallowed a curse.
The swallowed curse had nowhere to go and just lingered in his mouth.
On one side of the screen, death logs were still streaming continuously.
Amidst the players turning off, several operator markers blinked and disappeared in the same color.
Wherever GMs vanished, the floor sank as if a tooth had been pulled, and countless empty holes the system couldn't process were being punched everywhere.
"How many refunds are there now?"
"...I gave up counting. I'm not even looking at the forums. If I look, I won't be able to work."
"Stock price?"
"It's hovering near the lower limit."
Someone let out a long sigh.
No sooner had that sigh fallen than the warning tone from the server manager's monitor rose another notch.
Bbi-bi-bi-bik―
"...What now?"
"Hold on. Hey, hey! Pull up the coordinate log for the Red Arena again. One of those markers just crossed the map boundary!"
The server manager pulled his chair closer, nearly pressing his face to the screen.
The hand holding the mouse stopped.
The eyes chasing the log stopped as well.
He was definitely tracking it with his own eyes, and the screen was clearer than ever, but his brain couldn't accept it.
"Crossed? Crossed to where? There's a boundary wall there; there's nowhere to cross to."
The team lead turned off his own monitor and moved over to the server manager's side.
"That's what makes no sense. The coordinates hit the boundary line, then crossed beyond it. To a place where they absolutely shouldn't be able to cross."
"...Coordinates appeared beyond the boundary?"
"They appeared. And not just one or two..."
The server manager swallowed once.
"Nearly infinitely."
The team lead's eyes followed the screen.
Amidst the familiar coordinate ranges, numbers he'd never seen before were embedded line after line.
Even after rolling in this field for over ten years, they were values he'd never seen a single line of.
The server manager clicked on one.
A window opened.
[Resource: Zone 2_Draft_Undeployed]
"..."
"..."
Both couldn't open their mouths for a while.
The server manager spoke first.
"Team Lead. Isn't this... that map we were going to open next quarter?"
"...Crazy."
"An undeployed draft just got scattered onto live coordinates. One that was locked in isolated storage. And it hasn't even been approved for release yet."
"Who opened it? Fuck!"
"Nobody. No record of a deployment command. That data shouldn't be touching the live line at all."
The team lead glared at the screen.
An undeployed area leaking into live couldn't be explained by a backup accident or a rollback mistake.
It was something that shouldn't be possible in code.
Yet it was happening right before his eyes.
Explanations aside, the screen was perfectly showing that event.
Just then, the server manager, scrolling down the screen, stopped his hand.
"...Team Lead. But this."
"What now?"
"What's floating... isn't just our map."
The server manager zoomed into the area beyond the boundary.
On the pitch-black empty coordinate field, besides the undeployed drafts, unidentified lumps were floating in abundance.
Not just one or two.
Some looked like terrain fragments, some like structures, and some were impossible to even classify.
"What the hell are all those?!"
"...I don't know."
The server manager clicked on one.
A window tried to open and shattered.
The same happened with others.
The coordinate values were captured, but the identity couldn't be read.
"They're not our resources. The format is different from the start. The engine can't read them. Those are almost like..."
After a long pause, the server manager continued.
"From another game... no, they look like they're from another world."
"Another world, what nonsense. Get a grip."
"Then you take a proper look, Team Lead... Those things... no matter how good our engine is, it can't implement stuff like that! But... those things are floating en masse inside our server. And if they were ours, why wouldn't they open?!"
The team lead closed his mouth.
He couldn't find anything to refute.
"Ha... So, what's the one that crossed over? Which of the two?"
The server manager back-traced the coordinates.
Then made a sound that was either a sigh or a hollow laugh.
"That... the pitch-black bug."
"That... crossed over to the unreleased map?"
"It didn't just cross over; it smashed through. The boundary wall coordinates are broken only at that spot."
The team lead threw himself back against the chair's backrest.
He looked up at the ceiling once, then dropped his eyes back to the screen.
There was no way the answer would be written on the ceiling.
"...We can't stop this anymore, can we?"
"...No."
"Respawns are dead, the boss vanished code and all, two things we can't even read crawled in and are rampaging across the entire server, GMs got wiped in one go, and now even an unopened map leaked, fuck. And on top of that, a ton of things that aren't ours are floating. What's next? The whole server just flies away?"
"If it ends with the server flying away... we'd be lucky."
"...What?"
"This isn't just one game blowing up. It's a board where the whole world is connected and running. How far this leak goes..."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Haven't you watched the news?"
"What news?"
"They say in all sorts of online games right now, something, whether bugs or viruses, is running rampant. It's not just us here in GOR."
"What...?"
What the hell is going on?
Beyond that broken boundary on the screen, on the pitch-black coordinate field that should have been empty, undeployed resources were blinking on one by one.
Beside them, unidentified things flickered along.
Even though no one had turned them on, by themselves.
If one line was turned off, two turned on.
The turning-on side was faster than the turning-off hand.
And straight into the center of it, that unknown thing, whether bug or virus, was flowing deeper in.