All along, Dante had thought that “continuation” was affected by two elements.
One was time. How long it had continued from long ago... how long it had been wished for... added to the power of continuation.
‘This world inside the game, from the very start, is a struggle between destruction and salvation.’
The second was intensity. How intensely power wished for it... how many people’s hearts felt resonance... also added to the power of continuation.
‘Even if it’s only for a brief moment—if the whole world sincerely wishes for it, something continues.’
When his thoughts reached this point, Dante believed it was something that only applied inside the game. Like the will of Setian, who was nothing but a demon but tried to become a Demon King, or the will of Abraxas, who was nothing more than a constellation but yearned for the path of a Hero—continuing into him.
But that wasn’t all.
A place, End Ocean.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwang!!!
A massive explosion went off.
“Ghk! It’s dangerous!”
“Hurry and raise the sails!”
As users from Easy difficulty hurriedly raised the sails, one man turned his gaze into the distance.
Far away, dozens of enormous cannons were aimed this way.
Having learned from the last miss, the gun ports were being finely adjusted.
‘Damn it...! At this rate, we’re finished...!’
End Ocean—
As you can tell from the name, it is a world made of a vast ocean.
Countless players who cleared their own worlds receive one “island” of their own here.
An “island” floats on the water and can drift or move like a ship. You can interact with or attack other people’s islands and seize parts of them.
If you discover a neutral island that doesn’t belong to a player, you can defeat sea monsters there, obtain treasure, or even get a new premium currency called “Star Runes.”
- Stop.
At that moment, a broadcast that rang in their ears boomed from a tall building on a gigantic island.
- Easy-difficulty users, stop your rebellion at once and surrender peacefully.
At those words, one user raised his middle finger and shouted.
“X off! You crazy Xs! Who the hell are you to tell us what to do?!”
- Why do you refuse our protection so strongly?
“What protection is that?! Go play king with yourselves!”
- Don’t resist, please. A society where people gather needs rules. And you are breaking those rules.
“Don’t make me laugh! You call it rules to tell us to become your slaves?!”
What was over there was an alliance of Hard-difficulty users.
- Are we asking for that much? We only told you to do one thing. Just one.
Originally,
End Ocean didn’t have this kind of collective movement.
Everyone opened their eyes in an unfamiliar world, having saved the world alone in loneliness—those were the players.
After finally seeing the game’s ending, the fact that you could connect with each other was, by itself, something joyful.
‘Ah, you cleared Easy difficulty?’
‘Wow, Normal must’ve been even harder.’
‘The world inside the game is fun, but...... it doesn’t beat the fun of having a community.’
‘Hahaha. Nice to meet you too.’
Amazingly, at first they even spoke politely to each other!
They even talked about real-life stocks and politics.
‘By the way, this X-ass game unexpectedly has post-ending content, huh.’
‘Ah, there’s an abandoned-island-looking place over there with a mine. Want to go together?’
‘Shall we? There might be rewards...’
That was the beginning of misfortune.
Before long, it was revealed that there was a “premium currency” you could only earn in End Ocean (Star Runes).
And right after everyone realized that with that “premium currency” you could raise character specs or grow influence. (Transcendence Market✯)
The situation changed sharply.
The strong stole the weak’s islands and currency.
To resist the strong, a faction of the weak formed.
But factions were always the strong’s property. When the strong made a faction, the weak’s faction was absorbed into it.
The weak had to drift across the endless ocean, find islands, earn currency, and offer it up above. In other words, they became slaves.
The Hard-difficulty clearers were shrewd.
They knew how to work slaves.
They discriminated between the treatment of Normal-difficulty clearers and Easy-difficulty clearers.
And using the phrase “we protect you” in a subtle way, they spread rumors like, if you go under another Hard-difficulty user, the damage will be worse.
Hey, you punk.
If you leave our company, do you think anyone’s gonna take you?
With how hard it is to get hired these days, you should be grateful~
Workload’s tough? This is easy! What, did playing games make you not grow up? You can’t even do this one thing here, and you think you’ll survive somewhere else, you little X?!
...Even if you die in End Ocean, you don’t die forever.
But what gets taken from you is hard to get back.
The world that had gone to ruin after the admins disappeared wasn’t patched.
The enraged weak began to refuse continuation. They left End Ocean as-is.
‘Xck! What kind of bullshit is this! Is this a game?!’
The Easy-difficulty users enraged at the system increased one by one.
And when they were hiding in subtle places, resisting in their own ways—
A savior appeared.
None other than a Hell-difficulty clearer.
- Just one thing.
A warrior in heavy armor standing on the gigantic island spoke.
- Just tear up that one piece of anti-system propaganda.
The tip of his finger pointed at a massive “H”-shaped flag placed in the center of a small island.
That was...... the focal point of the Easy-difficulty users who had scattered everywhere for years.
A token of faith that said the savior of Hell difficulty, once he saw the game’s ending before long, would come to End Ocean and save us.
- I’ve been letting you slide while you roam around. But is it really that hard to get rid of that one thing?
- We’re having a hard time too. Saying we couldn’t find you even though we were told to take you out from above—having to lie like that—do you think that sits easy with us? We’re holding it in and holding it in while letting you slide, and you can’t even get rid of that one thing?
The heavy-armored knight complained about the hardships of being a middle manager stuck in between as a Normal-difficulty user, but the Easy-difficulty user didn’t listen.
“Yeah, suuuure—!!”
After that, the chase began again. Cannons fired, and the Easy-difficulty islands fled.
There’s no way to escape this world inside the game anyway. In the middle of this, End Ocean is the only space where you can connect to others, and it is a world of enjoyment where new currency and content exist in decent amounts. Depending on how you use it, it can be heaven. It should have been heaven. It’s a game! A world made for you to enjoy! But what is it now?
This world—End Ocean—is wrong.
It creates an atmosphere that oppresses people and calls it society.
There was no way to accept that.
If oppression and exploitation are society, then I’ll break society.
If I can’t break society, then I’ll pray for someone who can to come.
- Hey, you dumb Xs! That’s a stupid idea.
- I’m telling you, that guy’s probably already dead.
- How many years has it been since then? Hell difficulty doesn’t even have a single clearer, and on top of that he was the guy who got hit by a bug and got kicked out offline, right? You’re waiting for that?
‘X off!!!’
It was a tiny ember that appeared for only a moment, a single point in time.
But to the Easy-difficulty users who had resisted for so long, it still remained as a fiercely intense hope.
Even a moment, if it’s intense, continues.
‘He’s not dead, right?? He cleared Hell difficulty, right??’
The Easy-difficulty user “Rabbit,” who had once entrusted his sense of self to him, prayed desperately.
- Stop, you little X!
“Go eat shit!!”
If he comes.
Under this H-shaped flag, under his big, beautiful island.
Countless Easy-difficulty users who suffered will gather.
‘Please come and kill those X-bastards, please...!!!’
He could be sure.
‘The flag!’
So he hurriedly took the flag down, rolled it up tight, and held it to his chest. Flags in End Ocean were extremely expensive, and if it tore even by mistake, there was no money to restore it.
***
After the request for offline transfer came down, the next day, I asked Ran and chose the offline route.
Heading offline was the same as before. The 『Game System』 turned off. My mind drifted. And when I opened my eyes, it was a pure white space.
“Hyung!”
“It’s been a while. Have you been well?”
I could feel everything normalizing. Dino, who had disappeared last time, was back perfectly fine.
As he greeted me, this time I didn’t need to ride a dinosaur and go far. The sea was spread out nearby.
The users in there had a high chance of knowing about “bugs.”
According to Ran, the higher the difficulty, the more bugs occurred, so I would probably need to find Hard-difficulty users.
Splash!
I jumped into the sea.
< ⧉ Connecting to [End Ocean]. >
When I opened my eyes, it was a lonely island on the sea.
The island looked like it was about 330 square feet, and there was a single palm tree behind me.
‘......So this is End Ocean.’
Just like Ran explained. An ocean so vast it was hard to see the end, and unique islands given to everyone.
But in places where there were lots of people, islands gathered and gathered to form land, apparently.
When I raised my hand, there was a smartphone. Surprisingly, there was an [End Ocean Community] app.
And to log in, the visitor’s records would be made public too.
‘Me showing up will be a pretty big issue.’
I remembered people freaking out last time.
What’s unique becomes an object of attention.
As many people as there are who like you, there will be people who hate you too.
From Ran, I’d heard that people could attack each other here. And from the vibes last time, it seemed like users were at odds with each other.
‘For now, being discreet is better.’
First I needed to understand this world. And once I judged it was okay for me to step in, then I’d step in.
More importantly, where’s Ran?
‘Although I belong to online, it seems I can share consciousness with offline in a specific way.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘It is presumed to be using a backdoor made by the developer.’
A loophole made to possess a Mary Sue. He was using it in reverse.
And he said that once the island was created, Ran would be there—
“I’m here.”
The voice came from—of all things—the beak of a blue pigeon perched in the tree.
“Ran?”
“Yes.”
“Why a pigeon of all things.”
“Generally, users cannot find direction. So I decided to possess an animal with a sense of direction.”
Then he added that even finding direction was something you had to gather currency for and buy from the shop.
“Then how do normal users start life in End Ocean?”
“Since they cannot know direction, they begin by drifting and encountering other islands. They can fight or cooperate.”
“So everything about living here runs on those ‘Star Runes.’”
“That is correct.”
Just in case, I called it.
“Transcendence Market.”
—— Transcendence Market✯ ——
- Star Runes Owned: 0
- Purchasable List (D ~ S Tier)
————
Looking down the list, it had everything.
The cheap stuff started from bread you could buy for 1 Star Rune.
The most expensive stuff ranged from a random box of [Myth] grade weapons (90,000,000) to a blueprint box (15,000,000) for a ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) <Dragon Totem> that could float your island in the air.
‘......And one Star Rune is one dollar?’
Of course, since the game became reality, you couldn’t whale anymore.
But selling a weapon item for nine hundred million dollars—this was a deranged game.
And even the blueprint box was something where you had to collect all five blueprints to make the totem.
The blueprint appearance rate was “fairly” 1/5.
‘So even if you spend one billion, two billion, you might not be able to make it....’
Insane.
It really did go under perfectly. Trash game.
“Do you see that up there?”
I focused my vision toward where Ran pointed.
Up in the sky, between the clouds, it looked like I could faintly see a gigantic island.
“There are two major factions in this End Ocean. The Lords and the Anti-Kings. That is the island of the Lord ‘Balthazar.’”
“...He’s a Hard-difficulty clearer?”
“That is correct. The first time the earliest players connected to End Ocean was already ten years ago.”
So he really did collect all five blueprints and float an island into the sky.
Among the expensive items, there was also this.
<Book of Awakening Authority (Hell Difficulty Exclusive): 25,000,000 Star Runes>
“...This.”
The Hell-difficulty ultimate skill that unlocks when you become a one-digit-ranked constellation and meet the conditions.
I, too, currently met those conditions with ease.
The problem was that I had only met the “unlocking conditions,” and hadn’t gained the enlightenment toward authority itself.
‘Normally, you’d have to grind for at least a few months to gain enlightenment—end content, basically.’
But if you had Star Runes, you could obtain it in one shot.
Normal and Hard difficulty didn’t have that item, but there were plenty of usable things, including Stigma weapons.
‘So that’s why they said everyone fights like hell....’
Now I could feel why.
Just this shop alone massively expanded the amount of content.
And there were a lot of things designed to make you lose your mind and want them.