"We're finally here. Everyone, get ready for battle!"
Foldram, a ranker sitting at number 20 in the user rankings, spoke in a serious voice to his party members. Behind him, tense users were getting into formation, preparing for combat.
"Good work getting us this far, everyone. We've only got the final boss left, so let's push through just a bit more!"
"Yes sir!"
Their discipline was so tight you'd never guess they were just regular players.
The bond they'd forged over the past month was practically military-grade, and Foldram was leading the charge.
"Let's end this damn raid with this attempt. We're taking down Balum!"
The raid they were attempting was an infamously difficult dungeon that no one had cleared yet—Balum's Underground Labyrinth.
The dungeon was divided from the 1st floor to the 5th floor, and you could only reach the final 5th floor by breaking through each level.
1st floor: Inferno of Flames.
2nd floor: Inferno of Ice.
3rd floor: Inferno of Blades.
4th floor: Inferno of Darkness.
And finally, the 5th floor: Absolute Inferno.
Each floor had a different environment, and they had to figure out the strategy for each one step by step. Since existing information only covered up to the 2nd floor, they'd barely managed to discover the strategies for the 3rd floor onward through repeated attempts.
The problem was that if they failed even once along the way, the dungeon would reset and they'd have to start over from the beginning. Thanks to this brutal difficulty, the consumables they'd been carefully rationing since the 1st floor had run out ages ago.
"How many potions do we have left?"
"We've used up almost everything."
"Damn... If we just clear this, all the first-clear rewards are ours."
Foldram ground his teeth as he stared at the door where the final boss waited. Behind that house-sized iron door, the last boss, Balum, was waiting for them.
"Ten-minute break. Then we go in!"
A brief rest to catch their breath and ease the tension. During this time, Foldram organized the information they'd gathered so far.
'No one's beaten Balum yet. If we just get past this hurdle, we've got it!'
The game they were playing was Yggdrasil, a game that had taken the world by storm.
Yggdrasil was a virtual reality game, and since its release, it had reigned as the pinnacle of VR gaming, beloved by countless people.
On launch day, the development team made the following statement:
[There will be no updates for Yggdrasil. It's a complete game from the start. The difficulty will be extremely high, and honestly, the final clear might not happen until Earth is destroyed.]
It was incredibly arrogant. Games were supposed to be completed through updates.
Plus, they were taunting people by claiming it was insanely difficult. Regular folks might've just laughed it off, but gamers? Not a chance.
[What kind of game talks like that?]
[Are you challenging me with my 30,000 hours in Dark Souls?]
[I've cleared Getting Over It 10,000 times.]
[Fus Ro Dah!]
The moment Yggdrasil opened, hordes of hardcore gamers rushed in. They planned to hit max level in no time, conquer every piece of content in the game, and tell those arrogant developers a thing or two.
[BunnyQueen: Ugh, this game is boring as hell. Why's there so little content?]
[Guess I'll just carry newbies around. Noobs, come at me.]
That was the plan, anyway. The devs' bait worked—from day one, they hit 100,000 concurrent players.
And then, about a week in, the hardcore gamers realized something.
[This game is perfect! - Hardcore gamer and game blogger Issysis.]
So many VR games had been released over the years. But contrary to everyone's expectations, there hadn't been a single proper VR game.
Most NPCs had stiff dialogue and only did predetermined actions, and monsters had set behavior patterns that were easy to exploit.
Games with rich content were rare, and most would run out of content after about a month of play—they were all over the place like garbage.
Most importantly, VR games up until then only gave you the feeling of flailing around in a dream, which really tarnished the name "virtual reality."
Unlike lightweight survival combat or small-scale educational VR experiences, a proper MMORPG in VR had too many things to manage, and the more complex it got, the harder it was to make.
Still, people enjoyed VR games. Why? Because they were novel. Anyway, since most VR games released so far were basically all the same, there wasn't much room to complain.
[But Yggdrasil was different! If God exists, and if God made a game, it would be Yggdrasil! - Hardcore gamer Ramada.]
But Yggdrasil was different. From the moment you logged in, it gave you a vivid feeling like you were actually there in reality, meeting everyone's expectations.
On top of that, the lifelike NPCs made people wonder if Yggdrasil had hired part-timers to play them, and the diverse monsters and endless continent satisfied even hardcore gamers.
Most of all, there were tons of hidden elements.
No matter how many classes you discovered.
No matter how many monsters and raids you found.
No matter how many new regions you explored.
New stuff kept appearing to the point where you couldn't see the end of it.
[All that needs to remain is this. In this world. Just one game. And that is Yggdrasil - Game critic Waldo.]
A game that pushed out countless trash games and now reigned as the undisputed number one game worldwide.
That game was Yggdrasil.
"Boss, we're splitting the rewards evenly, right?"
"Of course."
"I wonder how much fame we'll get? Hope it's a lot."
There were many reasons people were crazy about this game, but for Foldram and his crew, there were only three reasons.
The first reason was gaining fame and achievements through first clears.
Users who were the first to discover a new system or defeat a boss monster could earn achievements. Plus, you could get first-clear fame points, and with high fame, you could gain favor and trust from NPCs.
NPCs who liked and trusted you would give you new quests or sell items that weren't available before, so everyone was gunning for achievements.
"This might boost our guild ranking too."
And the second reason was guild rankings. For raid dungeons that required guild-level hunting, you could earn guild fame points. When your guild's ranking went up, you'd get benefits in various ways.
"It was a tough dungeon, so the rewards should be sweet. If we're lucky, I could trade in my car. Or maybe even buy a building?"
Finally, the third reason was money.
Being popular worldwide meant the user base was enormous. Even now, there were 100 million concurrent players and a total of 500 million users—a massive scale.
With so many people, in-game currency gained real-world value. In America, the exchange rate had stabilized at approximately 1 gold to 1 cent.
You could make this game your actual job.
Foldram was one of those users, and he'd earned enough money so far to afford a house in the New York metro area.
"Alright, let's go! Everyone double-check your buffs."
"Yes sir!"
Foldram approached the massive iron door first. The moment they opened this door, Balum would reveal himself.
As everyone tensed up, Foldram slowly pushed the door. The massive iron door slid open smoothly like an automatic door.
And then...
[You've come again? You mortals!]
Balum's roar slammed into them. The buffs they'd carefully applied vanished in an instant.
It was a new pattern they'd never seen before.
'Damn! As expected from a hidden boss. Another new pattern while we were gone!'
[Foolish mortals. Do you covet my treasure that much? Your greed will be your death!]
Balum opened his jaws wide. His signature move—Breath of Death.
Foldram and his party members stayed on their toes. Breath of Death was a fan-shaped attack. They just needed to charge forward and dodge to the side quickly.
But at that moment, a small lure appeared among them.
[What is this?]
"What the heck? What's that?"
A plastic artificial shrimp.
The lure that appeared out of thin air danced quietly, mesmerizing the audience.
It was just a shrimp moving around, but no one could take their eyes off it.
"I'm, I'm taking that!"
Right then, one of Foldram's party members rushed forward. The way he reached out toward the shrimp looked just like the human in that famous painting, The Creation of Adam.
The moment his hand touched the shrimp, the party member who'd rushed out was sucked up into the sky.
"Ahhhhh!"
"Oh for crying out loud. Why's a person getting hooked?"
The party member fell back down. Already on death's door, he was in no condition to fight anymore.
And the shrimp descended once more to dance.
Now everyone knew exactly what would happen if you touched that thing.
[What is this! Are you mocking me?]
Balum opened his jaws. He was about to use Breath of Death.
His target was the plastic shrimp.
[Die!]
But Breath of Death never came out.
Without realizing it, Balum had bitten the lure.
[Wait, why did I—?]
"Got him!"
Balum shot up into the sky. Before anyone knew it, that small plastic shrimp had a terrifying hook attached to it.
The hook piercing through Balum's upper jaw and sticking out. Blood poured out in streams from Balum's skewered mouth—just looking at it was painful.
When the vanished Balum fell back down like a rock, he was already dead.
"Balum... died?"
A person descended onto Balum's corpse. The man who'd rappelled down the fishing line like a special forces operator quietly dug through Balum's body.
"Found it. Heart of the Black Dragon. This'll work as bait."
"Who, who are you?"
"Me?"
The man answered Foldram's flustered question.
"I'm a fisherman."