"....."
Jin Seon-ah could not take her eyes off the man assumed to be Kim Rae-won.
She had no way of knowing why he had just slain that figure. But one thing was certain: it was by no means out of chewing over a grudge or because it was an enemy he attacked.
Strictly speaking, it was.... a gaze akin to reading a book. The eyes of someone sitting in a study, turning the difficult pages of a book one by one. Among those, what just happened took the form of turning that very first page.
'Is he trying to examine something?'
It was an assumption, but somehow it felt correct. It was because his eyes still bore that same light as he looked upon the other Descent Clan members.
At a glance, he seemed similar to the martial historians or Daoist scholars Jin Seon-ah had met often, but far more devoid of emotion than them—feeling like an observer, and in some aspects, a seeker.
When her thoughts reached that point, her fingertips grew cold.
There were many devilish beings in the Martial World. Naturally, there were countless madmen as well. It was only natural that death was a daily occurrence.
However, a person who slays a human to read them like a book and uses that to forge his own path. She had never heard of such a person. No, such a person might exist, but not only was it her first time seeing it, it was a appearance far too different from the recent rumors circulating about Kim Rae-won.
The man did not withdraw his eyes from the dead figure, nor from the surrounding Descent Clan members. Clothed in that gaze, he began to move his feet. The Kirin followed behind him. The place he headed toward was deep within the valley, inside where the darkness gathered damply.
Soon, the sheets of rain thinned.
The rock beneath her prostrated elbows had grown lukewarm with body heat before she knew it, and the dusk rose up from the valley floor.
The sound of rain beating against the cliffside also grew sparse. The shrieking that filled the valley had long since subsided. What remained was the low murmurs of tens of thousands. It was a sound like an overturned wet beehive.
Beneath that sound, the crowd was splitting apart.
Jin Seon-ah remained clinging to the cliffside, still watching the scene intently.
And beyond that, assumed to be Kim Rae-won—no, honestly, she was certain. Yes, that man is Kim Rae-won. No matter how she looked at it, he could be no one else.
The other absolute masters were all familiar to her eyes, and her sharp instincts were telling her.
That man is him.
Like that, Kim Rae-won naturally traversed between the crowd that split apart like parting waves, receding deeper inside.
There was no shouting filled with doubt, no crowd blocking his path, and his steps were not rushed in the slightest.
"Press it. Keep pressing it. A hundred times, a thousand times."
"I'm telling you, it won't press…"
"Earlier, someone said the menu glitched half-open. Doesn't that mean it will open eventually?"
"Just once… just let it pop up once, please…"
Naturally, the crowd that had moved far away from Kim Rae-won soon lost interest in him.
Among them, figures pressing, swiping, and tapping at empty air could be seen everywhere. She wondered if they were making gestures to fondle something.
But it was not that. A sense of madness could be felt from the spectacle of hundreds of people obsessively tapping at a similar height at similar times.
'Is it a unique ritual of their own?'
Of course, it was an etiquette Jin Seon-ah had never seen before.
On the other hand, there were factions that sat down entirely.
"A notice will pop up. It definitely will. For an accident of this scale, the compensation will be mind-blowing."
"The developers are coming to rescue us. Would Pantheon just leave an accident of this scale alone? If tens of thousands file a lawsuit, even Pantheon would stumble, no matter how big they are."
"So don't move. You saw that scene earlier, right? The answer is to wait, so don't go messing around and get killed for nothing."
There were also crowds sitting on the wet, bare ground with their knees pulled in. They were neither injured nor exhausted. It was a posture of waiting. Though there was no way to know what they were waiting for, they kept looking up at the sky among themselves. It was not a look of waiting for the rain to stop.
There were also those who crawled in to avoid the rain.
Everywhere in the valley, there were unique structures that had surged up at the same hour as them earlier. Houses with roofs and doors, yet built in the style of no land in the Martial World. A portion of the crowd crawled in there and squeezed their bodies beneath the eaves.
"Hey, let's just stay here for now. If we take any more rain in this situation, we're going to die like this."
"Don't push! It's full, I said it's full!"
Is that bizarre house their den?
As the valley grew darker, a different sound spread.
"...I'm hungry."
"What are you talking about? It's a game."
"Why the hell am I hungry if it's a game!"
That distress caught on far and wide.
".....I've been feeling weird since earlier. I'm thirsty too."
"You saw him die earlier. But now we're even hungry, if this is a game, why the fuck are we hungry?"
"Stop it."
"It means this place is real. Dying... and being hungry..., it's all real."
The number of people clutching their bellies increased everywhere.
The area near the first corpse that had died earlier remained empty all the while.
Then, around the time the dusk fell dimly across the entire Superwind Cliff, a few gathered there.
".....Hey, what about him? Since he died, didn't he log out?"
"What are you talking about?"
"He probably woke up in reality by now. Since his connection here was cut."
"Are you crazy? His breath stopped!"
"That's his body here! His real body should be outside!"
"Where is outside and where is inside?"
"Ah, I don't know. How should I know? It's my first time too."
"Then check it out. See if he woke up or couldn't wake up. Someone go check, please."
"Ah, man, crazy. How the fuck do we check?"
No one could answer.
"No one knows.... What comes after death, no one knows."
A low utterance fell over the silence.
"Since logging out doesn't work, we just have to try dying. Try dying."
As those words fell, the noise died down starting from beside the person who said it. The man who uttered the words drew a blade from his waist. Before anyone could stop him, he brought it to his own neck.
"I'll try it. I'll check for you guys."
"Hey! Are you crazy!? Put it down!"
"Let go of me! Let go! I'm telling you, you wake up if you do this!"
Three or four rushed forward and pinned the man down in the mud. A sharp basic gear dropped hurriedly from his hand. Even while pinned down, the man shrieked savagely, and the side holding him was crying.
Jin Seon-ah atop the cliffside was still watching that scuffle.
Just when she thought an argument was breaking out beside the dead figure, one suddenly placed a blade to his own neck. Those beside him wept and clung to him to snatch the blade away. The one seeking to slit his own neck and those holding on with all their might to stop him were tangled together as one lump atop the mud.
Earlier, they were shocked as if death were not their affair, yet now one tries to die by his own hand and others try to stop him.
Just what is death to those people?
She had roughly heard of it. That for some of the Descent Clan, the death of others becomes the source of their own strength. But isn't that one's own death?
The fallen blade was half-buried in the mud. Over it, the sheets of rain were growing thick again.
It was before that scuffle could even subside.
There were a few who shook off the stopping hands and broke away from the crowd.
Three or four. Pushing each other's backs, they advanced little by little. The place they were heading toward was deep within the valley, the direction Kim Rae-won had headed.
The few who approached arrived before Kim Rae-won, who was examining here and there in the valley, and fell to their knees as if collapsing.
They were begging.
There were those who prostrated so deeply that their faces were fully submerged in the muddy water. There were also those who pulled something from their chests and held it up with both hands. What it was could not be known because it was far. She could barely tell that it was an item she had never seen before. An item exceptional enough to be considered a treasure of a foreign world even at a glance.
"Do you know the way out of here? You know, right? Please...."
"Save us. If you save us, we'll do anything."
"We'll give you anything. We'll do everything. It's true. Anything at all."
Jin Seon-ah still could not understand their words, yet that posture alone was a universal language. They were begging.
Moreover, they went and prostrated themselves before the very person they feared the most. That is... pleading for something even if it meant risking their lives.
The man, Kim Rae-won, did not even spare them a glance and continued examining the surroundings.
Then, he suddenly stopped moving.
His head turned, and his eyes settled over the kneeling figures.
Kim Rae-won's mouth opened toward them.
"Your server is closed."
It was not a high-pitched voice. Yet it crossed over the sound of rain and rose clearly all the way to the cliffside. It was a voice infused with internal energy.
However, that was not the problem.
"....That man...?
Jin Seon-ah almost blurted out a loud exclamation.
'He can communicate with them?'
Unlike the words he spat out earlier, the current words were clearly... the language of the Descent Clan.
Naturally, she did not know the meaning. But that nuance, the pitch, the foreign pronunciation. The sound she had been hearing continuously since earlier.
It was their language that filled the valley.
Those words came from Kim Rae-won's mouth.
The Descent Clan immediately proved that her thoughts were correct. Starting from those closest to the man, they froze one by one. They had understood.
"The server is... closed?"
"Language. He spoke our language just now, right? He did, just now!"
"How the hell do you know that!?"
"What are you... what are you. Are you an admin?"
Kim Rae-won did not answer. The question dropped into the rain alone and grew cold.
"I told you he erased all the admins... ask something worth asking..."
Someone muttered so beside them, and that sound spread farther than the question.
Kim Rae-won carelessly added one more line.
"There is no longer any place for you to return to."
This time, no one asked back.
The ones who were kneeling collapsed where they knelt. Crying erupted again, but the resonance was different from earlier. It was not a sound of weeping while hoping for something, but a sound of having ended the act of hoping itself. It did not take long for that weeping to spread to the outside of the crowd. The number of people sitting down increased.
Jin Seon-ah asked herself while clinging to the cliffside.
Kim Rae-won knows their language?
'Does that mean he originally....'
Her thoughts broke off there.
It was because among the weeping, shrieks, and desperate murmurings of the Descent Clan, movements and voices of an entirely different atmosphere began to burst forth.
"...That bastard knows."
"He must know the way out, too. Since he even knows the server is closed!"
"Grab him. We just have to grab him and make him talk."
"Are you crazy? Didn't you see him? Didn't you see even the GMs getting shredded?"
"Then are we just going to sit here and dry up till we die? Where the hell is an event like this without rewards? If we take that guy down, something will drop."
"Fuck. It's do or die anyway. Do or die."
Weapons were raised again. As one raised theirs, ten raised theirs. The ten quickly increased to a hundred, a thousand, and beyond.
A desperate struggle they had to undertake even while knowing they would die.
As many as ten thousand of the Descent Clan surrounded Kim Rae-won. Unfamiliar metal cast a wet sheen beneath the sheets of rain.
Behind them, short words were exchanged among the crowd that had stepped back.
"Hey, it's Zero. Is he joining too?"
"Zero has to take the lead. He's the server's top player."
"....He's over there, since earlier. He's just standing like that."
"Looks like he's not joining, dammit."
Outside that surrounding circle, there was one standing alone. Without joining or retreating, he merely looked at Kim Rae-won.
Meanwhile, Kim Rae-won—no, Dong Bong-soo—looked around at the Descent Clan—no, the users—stacking layer upon layer around him, and opened his mouth once more.
"There are no respawns. Are you coming knowing that?"
It was neither a growling sound nor a threatening sound. It was a voice asking for a price, a tone that seemed closer to bargaining, perhaps.
Weapons thrust out in unison from the front row. Thousands of users surged forward.
At the exact same time.
Slash.
Dong Bong-soo's sword was drawn. Light was drawn once. That was all.
The necks of the users standing in the front row erupted into the sky all at once, blood spurting up like giant fountains.
Mixing with the rainwater, it created a surreal spectacle.
Along the path the sword passed, the momentum surging inward folded in on itself and collapsed.
A massive silence arrived immediately afterward.
"....."
'Empty' eyes lightly surveyed the area.
A silence consumed by terror, as if the previous chaos had never happened.
This is why humans are ridiculous, terrifying, fascinating, delightful, and beautiful.
They always repeat the same mistakes and always repeat the same failures, but among them, a few will always succeed and grow.
Those who were cut down in one sweep were laying their bodies in the freezing mud of a foreign realm before they could even realize they had been cut.
The back row hesitated.
Over that silence, Dong Bong-soo's voice was laid.
"Don't turn any random place into your grave. Survive. Just as I did."
Held high, the weapons and the postures meant to unleash skills all froze as they were.
"Of course, if you want to die right now, I won't stop you. Because that is the only rule here."
"...."
"Survive. Even if you try to live, most of you will die here. If you dislike that...."
"..."
"Grow strong. Just as I did.
Fatten up, and keep fattening up. So that one day, you will be easy to harvest."