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Illustrations: posted in discord

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The medical helicopter arrived swiftly. It hovered above Lee Yeonwoo, lowering a stretcher and a paramedic. They loaded Yeonwoo onto the stretcher and slowly lifted him away.

As the mountain receded into the distance, Yeonwoo stared at it blankly.

The mountain stood isolated by a transparent barrier. Nearby military and police swarmed like ants, controlling access to the area.

Another safety alert pinged his phone. Something about space debris falling.

Yeonwoo blinked.

\'Not space debris. Orbital weapons? Orbital bombardment? Spatial isolation?\'

The company could use such things. But why now? Even the great beings gave the company pause - why suddenly move for a mere bullet?

\'What could it be?\'

Strange and impressive, but it didn\'t seem like a weapon worth such extreme recovery measures.

\'...At least I got out.\'

With the sense of safety, his mind began to slow. As adrenaline and other hormones ebbed, pain started to flood in.

Yeonwoo\'s face turned pale. His eyes trembled incessantly. His mouth gaped open, drool trickling out.

"Ah, aaagh!"

"Don\'t move! You\'ll worsen your injuries!"

"Nngh, it hurts, it f*cking hurts! Help me! Aaaagh!"

"You won\'t d-"

The paramedic said something, but Yeonwoo couldn\'t hear a word.

His stomach churned as lightning bolts of pain danced through his entire body, searing him. His head was so full of agony there was no room for other thoughts.

The world turned white, then black. Consciousness sank into darkness.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in a private hospital room.

Whatever painkillers they\'d given him left his senses dulled and his mind hazy. Yeonwoo blinked vacantly at the ceiling, then shifted his body.

His body, wrapped in bandages and casts, moved awkwardly.

At that moment, the rapid-fire sound of keyboard typing stopped. The soft voices talking also fell silent, and he felt two gazes upon him.

"Yeonwoo, you\'re awake."

It was the team leader. And Mark Jung.

The team leader wore his usual expression, while Mark Jung looked haggard, like someone who\'d been through hell. The team leader spoke:

"You nearly died this time."

"No, he wouldn\'t have died. If it was truly fatal, the Green Association would have healed him. Anyway, to use the dice right away, Yeonwoo-"

Mark Jung started to explain, then abruptly clamped his mouth shut.

His eyes met Yeonwoo\'s as he rolled them towards him. Yeonwoo spoke in a hoarse voice:

"I really could have died."

Of course, for a company employee, such incidents were routine. He had no intention of complaining or protesting. He\'d been prepared for some degree of danger from day one.

The important thing was ensuring this never happened again.

Yeonwoo spoke:

"My information was leaked. They analyzed it and exploited my weaknesses."

"Like a specialized response team? But your information was secured..."

Mark Jung furrowed his brow, saying the Green Association shouldn\'t have access to such information. Yeonwoo elaborated:

"They said they bought the info from the Goldberg Club with gold."

A heated intensity smoldered in Yeonwoo\'s voice. The club that drained his money, leaked his information. He planned to recover the money when the opportunity arose, but the information leak couldn\'t be overlooked.

His information had been forged into a knife that now threatened his very life.

"Club."

"Those f*ckers. They\'d do anything for money."

Ignoring their reactions, Yeonwoo cut to the chase:

"Club or whatever, can you completely hide my information?"

"That\'s impossible."

A resolute answer.

Yeonwoo brushed it off casually. Even he thought it seemed impossible.

\'How many anomalies are there in the world?\'

How could one block every information attack from anomalies with different effects?

So Yeonwoo thought of another approach.

"Then what\'s the club\'s most important resource? What matters most to those bastards?"

Make it impossible to sell the information. Who would dare sell if the losses outweighed the gains?

Mark Jung answered:

"All types of assets that function in society. Currency, stocks, real estate, human resources, labor. Gold is most important though."

Yeonwoo closed his eyes. He sensed the dice in a corner of his mind. Dice with limits even he didn\'t know.

\'While messing with the Goldberg Club, I should test its limits.\'

How far could the dice\'s influence reach? What level of judgments were possible? How far away could it affect business establishments?

At that point, the team leader waved his hand dismissively.

"Is that what you should be thinking about now? First, get plenty of rest. You need to recover."

"Ah. Understood."

"Eat well. Sleep well. Anyway, I\'m leaving now. I\'ll come back later with Jiyoo and Jaemin."

Satisfied that Yeonwoo was alive, the team leader left abruptly.

Once he\'d gone, Mark Jung sighed and looked at Yeonwoo.

"While you were unconscious, we took action against the Green Association. We confiscated the Great Tree\'s seeds, and they\'re all participating in the war now."

The result of frantic action upon hearing they\'d lost an ordinary bullet.

They isolated the mountain where Yeonwoo was kidnapped, rounded up the Green Association, then searched and searched and searched. All to recover the most important ordinary bullet.

"We barely recovered the bullet too."

His voice dripped with exhaustion. He\'d participated in the bullet search himself.

Yeonwoo, satisfied with the price the Green Association paid, felt a strange emotion.

"What\'s so special about an ordinary bullet that you\'d use orbital weapons? Why such an extreme response?"

Impressive anomaly nullification, but a bulletproof vest could block it.

"That\'s, how should I put this."

Mark Jung chose his words carefully. There was no information to hide. They\'d already handed over the ordinary bullet.

If anything, things turned out this way because they didn\'t provide full information.

After thinking, Mark Jung spoke:

"The company created a weapon that only excludes anomalies. A company aiming to protect humanity from anomalies. What would happen if other groups learned of this?"

And what would they think?

Yeonwoo struggled to process Mark Jung\'s question through his clouded mind. After consideration, he replied:

"The company made another weird weapon?"

"No. In the world the company dreams of, the world the company aims for, there are no anomalies. They intend to erase us all in the end. They\'ve been researching and developing the power to do so."

Yeonwoo frowned. He sensed something dangerous was brewing.

"Then it would be war without rules or final limits. The world would split into the company and non-company factions, fighting until one side is annihilated."

Different from the war currently planned.

A war with its own rules, leaving Earth untouched, fought face-to-face in an almost old-fashioned duel.

If that became a war of extinction, betting everything...

"That was a close call."

Yeonwoo\'s fingertips trembled.

If things had gone wrong, he might have fired the shot that started it all, like the gunshot in Sarajevo that triggered World War I.

Mark Jung heaved deep sighs.

"We absolutely couldn\'t lose this. We had to recover it no matter what. It\'s largely my fault for not warning you properly from the start..."

He never imagined Yeonwoo would lose it, so he\'d handed it over carelessly. He never dreamed it would lead to this.

"Because of that, to the director, ah..."

Mark Jung stared into space with tired eyes. Aside from a major incident as a new recruit, he\'d never been raked over the coals like this.

Yeonwoo discreetly gauged the mood. He grasped the gravity of the situation.

"So, what kind of disciplinary action will I face...?"

"Just write an incident report after you\'re discharged. Your recovery ability is incredible, so you should be back on your feet in a few weeks."

They didn\'t pry about the Rain. The punishment was extremely light.

As Yeonwoo breathed a sigh of relief, Mark Jung closed his laptop.

"I\'ll be going now. Ah, the recovered ordinary bullet-"

"Forget it. I don\'t want to be responsible for that kind of thing. More importantly."

He was returning the ordinary bullet. Yeonwoo genuinely wanted nothing to do with potential catalysts for wars of extinction. Right now, he had more pressing concerns.

Yeonwoo looked at Mark Jung.

"Give me information on the Goldberg Club. Their stocks, workplace and warehouse locations. And the report speculating about the dice."

No matter how much of a company man Yeonwoo was, the company must have analyzed his dice based on what he\'d shown them.

Mark Jung fell silent, then nodded.

"Alright. It\'ll take a few days to gather the data. Rest up."

---

---

Being hospitalized left too much free time.

The private room was eerily quiet, with no sounds from outside. The bland colors and tasteless hospital food made time crawl agonizingly slow.

Yeonwoo spent most of his time alone on his phone, except when Yoo Jiyoo and Choi Jaemin visited. But even that grew tiresome.

Yeonwoo fiddled with his phone.

\'Nothing to do. Contacting Mom and Dad feels weird.\'

He hesitated to tell them he nearly died in a work accident. His sharp-eyed mother would immediately sense something was wrong.

Yeonwoo gave up on calling and pulled out his laptop instead.

"It\'s been a while. Maybe I\'ll play a game."

Searching for a game to pass the time, one caught his eye.

[Academy Survival]

- Enroll in an academy in a world facing doom, and try to prevent the apocalypse with charming supporting characters!

- The last player standing gets to incarnate into the game world!

An absurd claim about incarnation.

Yeonwoo skimmed past it, his mouse moving busily. The promotional video showed that while the gameplay was uncertain, the illustrations were stunningly beautiful.

\'Should I try it?\'

Yeonwoo looked for player reviews as a final check. Trash game, is this even a game, no one\'s cleared it, absolutely don\'t play it - such evaluations.

As Yeonwoo deliberated...

The game vanished.

The page itself disappeared as if it had never existed. In its place appeared a brief notice and a phone number.

[We\'ve temporarily taken down the game due to discovered issues. Gamers who have played, please call this number.]

A bizarre game and an abnormal takedown.

Yeonwoo stared at it with a subtle expression, then dialed the number on a hunch.

"Yes, Academy Survival speaking. Did you play the game?"

"No. The page disappeared as I was about to download it."

"I see. We\'re currently fixing an error, and we don\'t know when it\'ll be done, so if you purchased it, we\'ll refund-"

At that moment, the sound of typing abruptly stopped.

The person on the other end had traced the caller\'s number and seen their profile.

"Oh. You\'re an investigator. No need to investigate. Our department has taken action."

"I thought so. Was this an anomaly?"

"Well, yes. An entity that makes players believe the last one standing can incarnate the longer they play, driving them to hunt down and kill other players to become the final survivor."

The company employee handling this game said they were busy and ended the call.

"We\'re almost finished. Just a few who committed murder and went into hiding left to find. Take care."

"Right."

Yeonwoo stared at his phone and laptop with an ambiguous expression.

\'What a f*cked up world...\'

A world where you can\'t even play a game without worrying.