“Huck! H-how did you block Indra’s……?”
“Your Master might’ve created New World but you are just his body you idiot!”
Ark smiled and penetrated the Red Man with his sword.
Kwa kwa kwa kwa, kwa kwa kwa kwa!
Huge flames exploded from Ark’s body and sucked out the Red Man’s health. The fire hit everywhere as the Red Man ended up kneeling on one side. Then he looked at Ark with disbelieving eyes. He finally noticed how Ark had stopped Indra’s Lightning.
“U-unbelievable!”
Ark was standing in one spot with many swords surrounding him. That’s right. Ark had experienced Indra’s Lightning before and came out with a way to defend against it. It was placing swords all over the place! Those swords acted like a lightning rod and absorbed the attacks from Indra’s Lightning.
“You’re a computer program so you might have stronger combat abilities than users but you don’t know how to use the game. Huhuhu, a person with wisdom is indeed better than someone with knowledge. Isn’t that right?”
Ark murmured. The battle between Ark and the Red Man was equal so the ‘game mechanics application’ meant the difference between victory or defeat.
-Kuooong!
At the same time, Lucifer deflated like a balloon after receiving the concentrated hits of JusticeMan, the rehabilitation members and the attack squad. Both the Red Man and Lucifer had been defeated.
“Now, let’s finish this.”
Ark muttered with a relaxed expression. Despair rose in the Red Man’s eyes after seeing what happened to Lucifer. Then something suddenly bubbled from Lucifer’s body and shrank. The sight of it caused the Red Man’s eyes to flash. He suddenly got up and ran towards Lucifer.
“Eh! T-this bastard…!”
Ark overtook him and swung his sword. However, the Red Man agilely squeezed between Lariette and Roco. Meanwhile, the attack squad were embracing each other with joy as one of them prepared to drive his sword into Lucifer’s body.
“You bastard! Why can’t you just give up?”
Ark caught up to the Red Man again and attacked. No, he was about to attack.
“Kuwaaaaaaaah!”
The Red Man suddenly screamed and his white mask exploded. Ark retreated after seeing the Red Man’s face and stuttered.
“What, what the? His face?”
0100010101000010101111011010101001011110…….
The Red Man was faceless. It was just a void filled with numbers. But the surprising thing happened afterwards. The world froze the moment the Red Man’s mask exploded. The explosion, dust and all the people moving suddenly froze. The only thing that moved was the numbers forming the Red Man’s face.
‘What, what the? Why can’t my body move?’
Ark used all his strength to try and move his body. Lucifer who had deflated like a balloon began to gradually rise. The thousands of tentacles on the ground also attached back onto him. Then Lucifer’s low health started climbing?’
“T-this is back server?”
Back server….. It was the phenomenon where the system returned to a previous state because of an error! It was a phenomenon that occurred in the 2000’s when online gaming was still unsafe. But the phenomenon in front of him wasn’t a simple back server. The only thing returning to its original form was Lucifer. If this continued then Lucifer would change back to the original state that they encountered him in….. And it was a long battle so Ark and the attack squad’s stamina and skills were already depleted.
‘T-this isn’t possible!’
The stiffened Ark silently screamed.
——————————————————————————————————————
“I’ve found it!”
A pair of eyes sparkled in the darkness. The person looking at the laptop was a man in his late 30’s.
“I never thought it would be in a place like that. Global Exos, you shallow guys….! I’ve finally found it. If this comes into my hands then nobody can stop me now. Lucifer will revive and New World will disappear!”
The man typed on the laptop keyboard at an absurd speed. Then a message appeared on the screen.
-Do you want to start the Master code ‘Project: Lucifer’? Yes/No
“Now disappear. You ugly group of data!’
The man’s cold eyes danced with joy as he prepared to hit the Y key. All of a sudden he heard shouting from behind him.
“Stop!”
The man flinched and hurriedly turned his head. At the same time, 10 people appeared after climbing a mountain slope. They were blond south east Asian foreigners wearing a badge on their chest. The initials G.A.S.P were engraved on the badge. G.A.S.P….. They were the special security agents from Global Exos. Confusion spread over the man’s face as he saw their badges.
“H-how did you get here?”
“New World told us.”
A man in his thirties wearing a suit went in front of the SP and replied. He showed the screen of a MP (Movie Player) and continued talking.
“I’ve been looking for you over the past 2 years. But I never thought you would be in a place like this. Then we saw a video that a user in New World shot a while ago.”
The video of the grave that Ark saw in the Idea Maze was shown on the MP screen. The grave was the one the man was sitting next to. The man in the suit sighed as he saw the MP.
“This is where you were….. Yuna’s grave, Park Woo-seong ssi.”
“Ha Myung-woo……”
That’s right. The man wearing a suit was Ha Myung-woo from Global Exos. The man holding the laptop was the one who went missing a few years ago, Park Woo-seong. Park Woo-seong looked at Ha Myung-woo and smiled coldly.
“You dug through the videos and finally found me.”
“I remembered the moment I saw the grave. This is Yuna’s hometown. You disappeared and took Yuna’s body from the hospital. After watching the video from the Idea Maze, I realized that you must’ve made her grave before New World was commercialized. You love her more than your life so I thought that you definitely wouldn’t leave her grave.”
“You really are resourceful, just like the rumours say.”
Park Woo-seong laughed. But it was a hollow laugh as his eyes became sharp.
“However, it is too late. The situation is already over.”
“I know. I already guessed it after seeing the current situation in New World through the MP.”
Ha Myung-woo sighed and nodded. He looked at Yuna’s grave and murmured.
“In fact, everything we know has been a big illusion. The master key is the key to New World’s main system and we thought you were the one to hide it.”
“What nonsense are you saying? That……”
“Yes. You thought we hid it. While we were afraid that you got your hands on the master code and hid it somewhere. And you probably tried to back into the main server to obtain the master code. Isn’t that right?”
“…..It’s not like that?”
“No. The person who hid the master code was someone else.”
“Someone other than Global Exos hid the master code?”
“Yuna ssi.”
Ha Myung-woo replied in a bittersweet voice. Then Park Woo-seong’s face warped with derision.
“Shut up! How dare you bring Yuna into this?”
“It is true. I also only discovered this fact recently.”
Park Woo-seong looked at Yuna’s grave bitterly while Ha Myung-woo continued.
“And I finally discovered the whole truth behind this event.”
“The whole truth?”
“Yes. You might understand better than me. When we were originally designing New World’s scenarios, there was no Dark Lord or 7 heroes. But then the existence known as the Dark Lord suddenly showed up in the scenarios. And the existence of the 7 heroes followed. The Dark Lord is the presence that you, Park Woo-seong created.”
Park Woo-seong’s forehead wrinkled at those words.
“The Dark Lord didn’t exist in the development phase so his identity isn’t that of a simple NPC. He was a computer virus planted by you to destroy the date on the main server of New World. The ‘Project: Lucifer.’ And Project: Lucifer tried to destroy the main server when New World was on the verge of commercialization.”
“I had to do it! I shouldn’t have made New World in the first place! She….that game if the devil that killed her!”
Park Woo-seong suddenly shouted angrily. Ha Myung-woo didn’t pay any attention to him and just continued talking.
“But Project: Lucifer was stopped before it could destroy New World’s data.”
“That was quite surprising. You stupid and slow guys noticed my plan. But you guys couldn’t completely remove Project: Lucifer.”
Park Woo-seong snorted and muttered. Ha Myung-woo just shook his head and said.
“No, it’s embarrassing to admit but we didn’t even know the existence of Project: Lucifer until recently.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Of course, we knew that the main server was being infected with a virus at the time. However, we didn’t understand that Project: Lucifer was something you made. And we didn’t know how to stop it. We could only watch from the sidelines as the virus blew up the server data. Yet Project: Lucifer was suddenly sealed up.”
“Spontaneously sealed up? Nonsense. That is impossible!”
“Yes. It is impossible. If we had known the cause at that time then this situation wouldn’t have occurred….. But at the time, we weren’t able to connect to the main server to examine everything. And now we barely found the reason why. At the time, the virus was stopped by the existence of the 7 heroes.”
Park Woo-seong looked strange by the end of Ha Myung-woo’s words.
“…..Is this a hoax? The 7 heroes are just data from a scenario!”
“That’s what I thought until now. However, that isn’t the actual reality. Just like the Dark Lord was a computer virus, the 7 heroes was an antivirus program disguised as a scenario.”
That’s right. This was the reason why the heroes’ skills were specialized for the demons. The 7 heroes were a program designed to fight back against Project: Lucifer. While Project: Lucifer was spreading through the main server, the 7 heroes had sealed it up. This was the 1st Demonic War that the NPCs in New World. It was known as the Dark Century.
Park Woo-seong muttered wi