Chapter 131
“Go ahead.”
When I abruptly sat up, small waves rippled through the bathtub.
[We have confirmed that Ms. NoName's account is not currently registered with Wearsoft as an official account. May I ask what model of capsule you use?]
-What do you mean, it's not an official account?
-Does that mean it's a guest account?
-Gathering, gathering.
-How did she even enter Nightmare as a guest?
My thoughts raced. Did they really have absolutely no information about me over there?
“It's a Samsung Stella A8.”
-Is that really a five-year-old model?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Doesn't it lag when you use that?
-World of Arseria actually runs on that thing?
-The ping must spike like crazy, so just how fast were her reaction times in-game?
-Even my grandpa wouldn't use that.
└ Grandfathers don't use capsules in the first place;;
└ My grandma does, though?
[Ah, yes, yes... I've confirmed it. Tsk, for now... We just confirmed through Wearsoft Korea that Ms. NoName submitted an account recovery request, and our headquarters was already aware that a bug had occurred during the story progression.]
-What do you keep confirming?
-Why are you being so roundabout?
-Get to the point!
[‘TodayAndTomorrow’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Ma'am, if you can't bring back our Adella, are you going to take responsibility?
[...? Is someone there with you?]
“No. I'm in the bathroom. I'm alone.”
[According to the report I received, Ms. NoName experienced a phenomenon in which the NPC Adella did not properly drop out during Part 1, and as a result, the Part 4 boss Mephistopheles did not appear. Is that correct?]
“Please, go on.”
[Here is what we would like to propose. On the condition that this account not be used in ranked matches, we will apply 100% of the experience and growth stats allocated to Adella to your player character.]
“What about Adella?”
[We plan to delete her so that Mephistopheles can appear normally on the Part 4 stage.]
What kind of ridiculous bullshit was this...?
-????????
-Are you in your right mind, ma'am?
-Ranked matches aren't the important thing right now!
-Are you worried that transferring 100% will inflate her combat power?
-You completely missed the point!
-NoName's pissed.
-Bring Adella back!!!!!
Phew...
I took another deep breath and organized my thoughts.
“Let me hear the other alternative.”
[As another alternative, instead of formatting the entire world, we can mark it as cleared for you. Since you did not defeat the boss, your combat power would be calculated lower, but you would still be able to enjoy ranked matches on your main account just like other users.]
“Is that all?”
[We do not support server recovery for guest accounts under our policy, but because we have determined that this is an unprecedented case, we have decided to make an exception after discussing it with our operators.]
Her tone pressured me as though she were doing me some great favor, but wasn't she really just deleting the cause of the bug and washing her hands of the matter?
This wasn't even a matter of fixing the barn after losing the cow. They wanted to cover the entire barn with a sheet of cloth.
“What I want is a little different.”
[What aspect were you dissatisfied with? We will provide as much support as our company possibly can, but...]
“I don't care about ranked matches or anything else, but let me proceed through the Part 4 boss battle together with Adella.”
[Unfortunately, we have no separate solution prepared for that matter. I'm sorry.]
“Then I don't mind not proceeding with the boss battle. Just leave Adella behind and mark it as cleared.”
[Because defeating Mephisto must always precede a story clear, that may be difficult as well. More importantly, Adella was never intended to remain after a clear, so we do not know what other errors she might cause on the server.]
-This won't work, and that won't work either. What the hell can you do?
-This is so frustrating.
-Can we just curse them out? You managers have to admit this is ridiculous.
-Why is it so hard to bring back just one Adella!!!
In the system code that formed the foundation of the open world, the ‘combat power tally’ event always appeared only after the final boss had been defeated.
The combat power tally was both a necessary and sufficient condition for clearing Story Mode, but Mephistopheles could not appear at the same time as Adella.
In other words, the ending could only occur once the time bomb inside Adella's body exploded.
“Is this all Wearsoft is capable of? I understood that user-centered story progression and a high degree of freedom were supposed to be the strengths of World of Arseria.”
[We ask for your understanding due to technical limitations. Since this bug was caused by ‘access for an illicit purpose’ using a guest account in the first place, we recommend that you accept the accommodation we are offering.]
“I had no illicit purpose from the beginning, so why are you suddenly blaming me? And even if the bug was caused by me, wasn't it your fault for allowing the story to continue progressing?”
[Because of the unusual nature of your account during the Part 1 boss battle, the previous data was not fully deleted, resulting in a bug where two open worlds overlapped.]
“So what? You're going to delete Adella now? Should I take it as Wearsoft's unified position that, for the sake of maintaining the server, it's acceptable to casually trample the memories a user formed with an NPC?”
I gnawed on my fingernail.
From the very beginning, the hostage and the information were both in their hands.
No matter how much I threw a fit here, I couldn't seize the initiative.
I wanted to go straight to headquarters and drop a meteor on it, but I was in no position to do that...
I was so furious.
[That may be disappointing to hear, but we do not view our users from that perspective.]
“Ha, that's exactly what you're saying right now.”
[Because of privacy protection laws, we are unable to know information about Ms. NoName either, so it is difficult for us to empathize with every aspect of your situation. However, regarding your claim that you had no illicit purpose, we would like to dispute that point.]
“What?”
[Didn't you violate the age-restriction terms for Nightmare content despite knowing about them? Ms. NoName, you aren't fifteen or older, are you?]
* * *
Name had not intended to hide her age at first.
However, because she still strongly saw herself as an adult, she had only a small wish that people would treat her like one even when she spoke in a child's voice.
But the main reason she had hidden her age until now was to avoid having her WoA account suspended.
She had skipped the age-verification process that was mandatory for playing Nightmare.
If the company found out about this, it was obvious that every card she held would become useless.
Her body remained utterly motionless, as if all the hot water in the bathtub had frozen solid.
Only her pitch-black pupils shifted sideways beneath her trembling eyelids.
Toward the chat window.
The screen froze for two seconds, as though it had lagged,
and then text began pouring one after another through the narrow bottleneck, like a massive dam collapsing.
-?????????
-She's not fifteen?
-What? I couldn't hear that. What did she say?
-???
-If she's not even fifteen, then how old is she?
-Is she a middle school girl instead of a high school girl?
-How old is fifteen, anyway? Ninth grade?
-LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
-No way, is this for real?
-(оﾟдﾟо)(оﾟдﾟо)(оﾟдﾟо)(оﾟдﾟо)(оﾟдﾟо)
-Was it really true that you were in ninth grade when you told Hyebam you were preparing for the Academy?
└ The foreshadowing... Holy crap...
-Even if she's a ninth grader, this still makes no sense.
-What the hell have we been watching all this time?
-Honestly, it wouldn't have made sense even if she were a high school senior, so what theㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Maybe the company just got confused?
[‘Kongnangkong’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Um... Teacher, are you really a middle school student...?
But not everyone accepted the raw information as-is. Considering the things Name had done until now, it was simply too different from what they had imagined.
-Not a middle school teacher, but a middle schooler who's a teacher. Holy crap.
-Don't overreact. The company just misunderstood.
└ The situation is so absurd that people are freaking out even more, for realㅋㅋ
-Now that I think about it, that head of division makes me even angrier.
-Did she deliberately try to change the subject?
-Whether this is true or not, the company is incompetent. If it's true, they failed to catch it, and if it's false, they made a stupid guessㅋㅋ
└ For real, they're completely cornered.
-LOL, middle schooler (casting wide-area magic)
-LOL, middle schooler (mentally calculating an inverse Laplace transform)
└ What does any of that even mean? Why is the education level of this audience so damn high?
-Just from her speech patterns, it's obvious she's not a middle schooler, but these Twissy bastards are so damn cringe;;
-Hey, no truth bombs.
Keeping my mouth shut was the best option.
What should I do in a situation like this?
Dozens of options branched out like tree roots in Name's mind every second, but not one of them was the right answer.
Just then, Michelle Badiou called out to her in a flustered voice.
[Ms. NoName, I think I just heard a real voice. Are you with your family?]
The head of division had been repeatedly asking whether Name was with someone else.
And Name was not so oblivious as to miss that, so she immediately clasped her trembling hand with the other and said,
“I am alone. But I am streaming.”
[What?]
“The platform is Twissy, and there are currently three thousand viewers.”
[Wait, why are you broadcasting the call in the first place...?]
This was it.
Name was certain.
Forgetting that she was bathing, she hurriedly stood up and took the call again.
Her head spun from the sudden anemia, but she could not contain her excitement at having found a breakthrough.
The unfiltered sound of water cascading from her naked body echoed through the stream and the phone.
“Then may I take it to mean that Wearsoft has neither the will nor the ability to resolve the situation caused by this bug?”
[That's not what I meant...]
“Based on what you just said, that's the only way it sounded. In the end, isn't the current situation that you can't freely generate or adjust even a single boss monster if it's outside the manual?”
Name had heard through the news that Wearsoft's stock price had plummeted.
Why else would the company have been valued so highly all this time?
People had expected it to lead the current virtual reality game market and guide the systems of the virtual reality industry from then on.
But what if it were revealed that the game was merely outsourced to a small team of ASI experts, and that Wearsoft was nothing more than a group of managers?
‘Of course, the company can't possibly run that simply, and it must obviously possess at least some level of technical prowess.’
But that's precisely what made public perception so frightening.
People did not think in the middle ground.
If there were people who believed WoA had been made entirely by Wearsoft, then it was equally possible to assume the exact opposite.
Name believed that if she was important enough to be the head of a division, she would fully understand what she was trying to say.
Her prediction seemed to hit the mark, as the head of division gave her the most satisfactory answer yet.
[...We will seek additional solutions, so we would appreciate it if you could trust us and wait, Ms. NoName.]
“By tomorrow. Tomorrow is all the time I can wait. Otherwise, I'll leak everything you said today to the reporters.”