TYRH 10

Chapter 10

Before I could even answer, he asked another question.

“How much do you know?”

Then another.

“How do you know?”

Question after question came without waiting for a reply.

The wall collapsed.

Like a wave in a video, the crumbling wall reshaped itself. It formed a massive dome that surrounded me in a perfect hemisphere.

At some point, I had been freed from the chair and was now standing on a circular platform.

The dome enclosing me no longer reflected the world—it reflected me. Countless screens displayed me from every possible angle.

“There should be nothing I do not know, for I am Omniscience.”

Samra walked along the circular edge with me at the center.

“Then why?”

His holographic eyes never left me.

“Your existence is unknown.”

“And yet, you are undeniably human.”

He tilted his head back.

Where his gaze landed, the displays rippled like waves spreading across water before changing.

Following his eyes, I saw countless screens showing…

My past.

Me during my orphanage days.

Me in elementary, middle, and high school.

And…

Me during my time as a professional gamer.

One screen showed me smiling while holding a championship trophy in one hand, athletic tape wrapped around the other.

My mind went blank.

I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.

If I’d entered the game—the Archive world—then the characters shouldn’t know anything about my past.

How could they possibly know I grew up in an orphanage?

Or that I had once been a professional gamer?

A terrifying realization struck me.

Wait…

Does that mean…

This isn’t the Korea inside the game?

This is the world I actually lived in.

The real Republic of Korea?

My head throbbed.

The emotional distance I’d maintained by believing this was only a game vanished in an instant.

Before I could even process the truth—

Ding.

A system window appeared.

◆ <Han Goyo> Epic Quest

Close three Trials within one month.

What…

Another message followed.

You have uncovered the hidden truth.

The world you believed to be a game was, in fact, something that had been secretly occurring in your own reality.

As the System of Planet Earth, you strive to stop the Trials.

To do so, you must close three Trials within one month.

Current Trials Closed: (0/3)

Warning! Failure will result in the amputation of all four limbs!

Success Reward: Retain all four limbs.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

After taking a deep breath, I opened them again.

The system window hadn’t disappeared.

Three True Ending clears within a month.

And failure meant…

Losing all my limbs?

It would have been easy to dismiss it as nonsense if I hadn’t watched Park Seong-gyeon’s head explode with my own eyes.

The limb amputation was already absurd enough.

But the “reward” for succeeding was simply…

Keeping my limbs.

Even while my mind struggled to process everything happening at once, I couldn’t help feeling speechless.

That’s not even a reward.

As if responding to my silent protest, another window finally appeared.

Final Reward Granted to <Han Goyo> Upon Completing All Epic Quests

So there actually is one.

Determined to see just how ridiculous this went, I waited for the next message.

<Han Goyo>’s body will be restored to its most perfect condition.

I read the words.

Then I read them again.

A faint tremor ran through my hand.

I forcibly stopped my eyes from drifting and clenched my fist, hiding the involuntary shake.

“…”

Samra tilted his head, studying me closely.

I barely managed to compose myself before asking the question that mattered most.

“…What day is it today?”

“March 8.”

“The year? 20XX?”

“Yes.”

“When did Captain Mo Hae-in enter Happy Smile Factory?”

“March 7.”

Samra’s pupils repeatedly expanded and contracted like the aperture of a camera lens.

He was collecting data on my physical reactions.

“That was also the day Captain Mo Hae-in discovered you, Mr. Han Goyo.”

This year was a leap year.

I had watched the developer’s livestream on February 29.

Until March 6…

There were seven entire days missing from my memory.

I had no idea where I had been or what I had done during that time.

“When…”

I swallowed.

“When did the Trials begin?”

“Four years ago. February 29.”

That was around the time I retired from professional gaming and became unemployed.

I’d started playing the developer’s game two years ago…

I tried gathering the scattered fragments in my mind, pieces that almost—but not quite—fit together.

Nothing came.

“Mr. Han Goyo.”

After confirming I wasn’t in a good state, Samra changed his approach.

The panels surrounding us disappeared all at once.

In their place appeared an outdoor café on a pleasant afternoon.

The terrace was empty except for two iced Americanos and a selection of desserts waiting on the table.

The restraint uniform I had been wearing had somehow changed into ordinary casual clothes.

Samra pulled out a chair for me before taking the seat across from mine.

I stopped the chaotic flood of thoughts racing through my head and took a long drink of the iced Americano.

The cold liquid sliding down my throat felt unnervingly real.

But it wasn’t real.

It was an illusion.

This place existed inside Samra’s virtual space.

Samra had been created using an android item obtained from a science-fiction-themed Trial.

Perhaps because his true nature was that of an item, he possessed an ability similar to the Trials themselves—

The power to generate virtual worlds.

Within this space, Samra was practically a god.

He could create anything.

Erase anything.

In any case, thanks to the fake iced Americano, I finally calmed down.

Why I had become the System remained a mystery.

I wasn’t some extraordinary person worthy of carrying the title of Earth’s System.

I was just an ordinary man whose first priority was staying alive.

There had to be countless people far more qualified to shoulder such a noble responsibility.

So why…

Why had I been chosen?

“I’d better change it while I still can.”

I waited for the system window with a sliver of hope, but nothing happened.

Suppressing a long sigh, I settled on the most sensible priority a normal person could have under the circumstances.

Keeping all four of my limbs attached.

Clearing every Epic Quest… that’s a problem for the distant future.

There was no way of knowing how many quests would appear.

I looked at the android standing before me.

Ever since I had first mistaken this place for the world of Archive, I had decided that I absolutely had to reach the Bureau of Eras and meet Samra.

Because if there was anyone I could tell everything that had happened to me and ask for help, it was Samra.

Even at this very moment, the android was undoubtedly recording information about me in real time. It was a walking database that contained everything related to the Trials.

Created with science far beyond Earth’s capabilities, Samra collected information that humans couldn’t even perceive.

The machine, casually sipping coffee like a human, smiled slowly.

“It seems you’ll need my assistance.”

He already spoke as though he held the upper hand.

But I didn’t need help.

“No. That’s not what I need.”

Samra raised an eyebrow in mild surprise.

I made him an offer.

“I’d like to make a deal instead. Interested?”

“I am. What do you intend to offer?”

“Information about the Trials.”

“The True Ending? Or perhaps an item?”

“No.”

At first, I had considered offering information like that.

What Samra needed most at the moment was data gathered from the Trials.

Samra himself couldn’t enter a Trial. He could only obtain information through Compatible Candidates.

But far too many Candidates either died inside the Trials or survived only to become infected.

The few who returned unharmed usually came back from Trials that had already been thoroughly solved, and those people rarely experimented with new methods in well-documented Trials.

As a result, Samra wasn’t obtaining enough new data to analyse.

Even after hacking into other countries’ databases and gathering every scrap of information available, the total amount of Trial-related data remained fundamentally insufficient.

Still, I wasn’t comfortable trading away my knowledge of completed Trials.

Everything that happened in Happy Smile Factory felt off.

The progression was different, the items were strange, and instead of one of the original endings, I cleared it with that coloured-block ending.

If I revealed all of my cards now, I might end up with nothing.

No one knew how things would unfold from here. I needed to keep something in reserve.

So instead, the information I intended to trade was—

“There is… someone who knows everything.”

The creator.

Now that things had come this far, I couldn’t help wondering.

What kind of being was he, to create games based on the Trials?

And why had he chosen me?

It seemed likely that he had selected me as a candidate to stop the Trials and trained me through Archive by turning everything into games…

That much I could guess.

But I could never be certain.

Not after what I had seen at the very end.

He had looked at me with an excited smile and said something utterly bizarre.

“From now on, I’ll be your viewer, Gunbam.”
“I’m looking forward to it. I’ve waited for this for so, so, so very long.”

For someone supposedly entrusting me with the grand mission of becoming Earth’s System…

How should I put it…

He didn’t exactly seem sane.

In any case, I needed to track him down.

The problem was that my memories refused to cooperate.

I remembered every game he had given me.

I remembered every conversation we’d had during his streams.

But I couldn’t remember his face.

No matter how hard I tried, all I saw was darkness, as though someone had painted over it with black ink.

As if it had been deliberately erased.

Still, if anyone could identify him from the information I possessed, it would be Samra.

“…Interesting.”

Samra leaned forward.

“And what is it that you want?”

“Your unconditional cooperation.”

Besides tracking down the creator, I intended to use Samra to secure a safe position within the Bureau of Eras.

Within the Bureau, Samra’s judgement carried absolute authority.

If he vouched for me, I could clear myself of the suspicion that I was a national-level catastrophe.

And beyond that…

If there were any other ways to make use of Samra, I intended to take full advantage of them.

“‘Unconditional,’ you say…”

Trailing off, Samra pointed at the Bureau uniform he was wearing.

“I cannot take actions that would harm humanity.”

“I know.”

“You know what?”

“Even without your contract with the Bureau, Samra has always been someone who wanted to save the world.”

He had once fought to save the Trial World he originally belonged to.

The already dazzling lights in Samra’s eyes suddenly blazed even brighter.

For a moment I seriously considered asking whether he could turn the brightness down.

Instead, Samra covered his own eyes with one hand.

When he lowered it, his gaze had returned to normal.

Smiling warmly, he said,

“I’m even more interested in the information you’ll bring me now. As long as it doesn’t endanger humanity, we have a deal.”

For the record… I’m on humanity’s side too.

I’m literally Earth’s System.

Being treated like the villain stung a little.

But since I couldn’t exactly say that aloud, I kept the thought to myself and extended my hand.

“Then I look forward to working with you.”

As Samra shook my hand lightly, his pupils repeatedly expanded and contracted.

It felt as though he were zooming in on me from every possible angle.

Though I couldn’t imagine there was anything worth recording from an ordinary handshake.

Still…

I’d gained a valuable ally.

Not a bad beginning.

*******

After that, I explained the creator’s existence to Samra in greater detail.

I left out the fact that I had become the System, simply telling him that I had spent two years playing games made by the creator before being forcibly transported into Happy Smile Factory.

I also mentioned the seven-day gap in my memories.

While listening, Samra simultaneously searched networks across the globe for any trace of the creator.

“There are a few scattered references, but nothing useful… It would be ideal if we could access one of the creator’s broadcasts directly.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember either his face or his name.

The very first game I’d played, Happy Smile Factory, had been purchased through an online game client.

But when we checked that client, there was no trace of Happy Smile Factory—or even a record that I had ever played it.

Samra remotely booted my computer and searched through every file.

Not only Happy Smile Factory, but every other game the creator had given me had vanished completely.

Not even a fragment of deleted data remained.

It was as though they had never been installed in the first place.

After finishing his search, Samra reached a conclusion.

“The probability that the creator is an extraterrestrial entity is high.”