The dull gray point of the sword chipped my shoulder. I felt a chilly hand squeeze deep within my chest as the thin line fixed to the corner of my vision shrank slightly. That blue horizontal line—my HP bar—was a visualization of my remaining life force. I still had more than 80 percent of my maximum health remaining, but a wiser perspective said I was 20 percent closer to the brink of death. Before the enemy's blade could begin its motion again, I darted backward to maintain the distance between us. "Huff…"
I forcefully exhaled and took another breath. My virtual "body" in this world required no oxygen, but back on the other side, my flesh-and-blood form was no doubt panting heavily as it lay prostrate on my bed. A cold sweat would be glistening on my outstretched hands, my pulse racing without end. It was only natural. Everything around me was a virtual 3-D object, the only thing I'd lost being abstract, numerical hit points, but my life hung in the balance all the same. In that sense, this battle was the ultimate injustice. The "enemy" before me—a half-man, half-beast monster covered in slick green scales with long arms, the head of a lizard, and an elongated tail—was not only inhuman, it wasn't even truly
alive. It was a mass of digital data that could be rebuilt by the system endlessly, no matter how many times it was killed. Okay, it wasn't quite that simple. The lizardman's AI program was observing my fighting style, learning my habits, and sharpening its reactions moment by moment. But the instant this individual creature died, that information would be reset rather than carried over to the next lizardman to pop into the area. So in a sense, this lizardman was alive. It was a unique individual, one of a kind. "…Right." It couldn't have understood what I was muttering under my breath, but the creature—a level-82 monster called the "lizardman lord"—exposed the needle fangs lining its slender jaw and hissed a laugh at me anyway. It's real. Everything in this world is real. None of it is artificial. I held out the long sword in a straight line, chest-high. The lizardman raised the buckler on its left arm and drew back the scimitar in its right. As we paused, a chill breeze emanated from beyond the dim labyrinth corridor, rippling the torches along the wall. The flame light flickered off the damp stones. "Gruagh!!" With a ferocious roar, the lizardman lord leaped forward. Its scimitar darted for my stomach in a sharp arc, a brilliant orange curve flashing through the air. "Fell Crescent" was a high-level heavy attack skill for curved swords, a deadly charging blow that covered a distance of four yards in just 0.4 seconds. But I knew it was coming. Keeping my distance was the entire plan—I was daring the enemy AI to use it against me. The scimitar blade passed just inches from my face, my nose wrinkling at the charred odor left in its wake. I ducked, pressing up against the lizardman's belly. "…Seya!" With a cry, I slashed my weapon sideways. The blade, glowing cyan, sliced through the scales of the creature's soft underbelly, spraying beams of crimson light in place of blood as a dull grak! sounded from above. But my combo continued unabated. The system automatically assisted my further assault, chaining into the next attack faster than I could have moved on my own. This is the advantage of sword skills, the most significant and decisive feature of battle in this world. As the sword leaped back from left to right, it found purchase in the lizardman's chest again. I followed that momentum into a full-body spin and drove my third blow even deeper into the enemy's core. "Urarrgh!!" No sooner had the lizardman regained mobility than it let out a roar of rage and fear, swinging its scimitar down from on high. But my combo wasn't over yet. From its full extension to the right, my sword shot diagonally left and upward like a spring, directly striking the enemy's heart—its critical point. This four-stroke combination left a square of glowing blue lines extending outward from me: Horizontal Square, a four-part sword skill. The brilliant light reflected off the walls of the labyrinth, then faded. At the same time, the HP bar displayed above the lizardman's head vanished without a trace. As it unleashed a long, final scream, the massive green form threw itself backward, paused at an unnatural angle— And exploded into a mass of delicate polygons with a blast like the shattering of a huge glass structure. This is death in the virtual world. Instantaneous and simple. Utter annihilation without a trace. A purple font in the center of my view popped up, listing my experience and item rewards. I swiped my sword back and forth before returning it to the sheath over my shoulder. Backing up several steps to rest against the wall of the dungeon, I let myself slide to a sitting position. When I released the breath I'd been holding and shut my eyes, my temples began to throb dully with the fatigue of the long fight. I shook my head several times to clear the pain before opening my eyes again. The clock display in the lower right-hand corner of my vision showed that it was already past three in the afternoon. If I didn't leave the maze soon, I'd never get back to town before dark. "…Better turn back," I muttered to no one in particular and slowly rose to my feet. It was the end of a full day's worth of "progress." Another day of successfully eluding the Grim Reaper's grasp. But once I returned to my bed and took a short rest, the next day would bring another endless series of battles. And when the combat is endless and the stakes are fatal, all the safety nets and backup plans in the world won't prevent Lady Luck from betraying you at some point down the line. The only real issue was whether or not the game would be "beaten" before I could draw the ace of spades. If survival was your top priority, the smartest play would be to remain in the safety of town until the day someone else beat the game. But the fact that I spent every waking moment testing the front line on my own, risking death for ever greater statistical rewards, meant one of two things: that I was either a tried-and-true VRMMO (Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online) addict… Or a damned fool so arrogant as to honestly think he could free the world with his sword arm. As I started making for the exit of the labyrinth, a self-deprecating grin tugging at the corner of my mouth, I thought back to that day. Two years ago. The moment that everything ended…and began.