As soon as I spoke, fierce opposition erupted from both sides.
The Young God and CEO Cha were both unhappy with the plan.
But there was no other way.
In our current state, our range of movement was far too limited.
I had gone so far as to bring out the Acorn Compass, yet we were at a standstill, unable to do anything with it.
I scolded the Young God, asking if he really couldn’t endure this when his kin were waiting for him.
After half-forcing the Young God into agreement, I explained to CEO Cha how efficient this operation would be.
The plan was to temporarily hide the divine power and then reveal it in a location far removed from the banquet hall.
Once the Young God’s power flared, the other gods would swarm toward it.
In the meantime, I planned to track the Black Block.
Even if the power was only shown for a moment before fleeing, it still required someone to face the gods.
It was a difficult operation, but I felt CEO Cha could handle it.
He did it back then with the Eyeball Alien, too.
I found myself looking at him with a glimmer of expectation.
Then, I realized it immediately.
Whenever these moments occurred, I was expecting the same reaction from a real world entity as I did from Kwak and Mo.
However, I figured CEO Cha was also partly to blame.
After all, he was the one who kept acting so strangely.
"How do we do it?"
The way he spoke as if he would agree to anything I said...made me unconsciously act as I had in the past.
Recalling the memories of the PTB, I spoke.
"Just accept it."
I meant he shouldn’t reject the power, and CEO Cha nodded silently.
At his gesture telling me to go ahead, my eyes narrowed instinctively.
As if he knows what I’m about to do...
It seemed his distrust of humans didn’t apply to me.
I stared silently at CEO Cha.
The terrace seating, consisting of separated independent spaces, wasn’t very wide.
Because the light was dim, the shadows cast upon the white mask were deep.
I reached out and placed my hand on CEO Cha’s chest.
My palm touched him. I could feel the thumping of his heartbeat vibrating beneath.
I felt a sudden impulse to reach inside and seize his heart.
I thought it would be amusing to see this arrogant human suffer.
Fortunately, the impulse wasn’t strong, and I was able to ignore it easily.
The Young God grumbled, but since rescuing his kin was urgent, he gave up his stubbornness and remained quiet.
I soon began to push the power in. A golden aura flowed through my hand.
The moment the light touched him, he stopped breathing. I could tell by the way his body stiffened instantly.
Until now, CEO Cha had been suppressing his aversion.
He had been humoring me while pushing down his feelings toward the Young God.
But the moment the energy touched him directly, he could no longer hide his inner thoughts.
Pushing against the rejection, I wondered,
Why does he keep denying me?
I could guess what CEO Cha was thinking.
He wanted to separate the Young God from me.
He still couldn’t accept me and was searching for a way to peel the Young God away.
I stared intently at CEO Cha, who sat within the shimmering gold.
If I push more divine power into him...
Won’t he have no choice but to acknowledge me?
Suddenly, I felt a gaze.
Meeting the eyes staring directly at me from behind the white mask, I froze.
A delayed sense of dissonance hit me.
I had been manipulating the divine power as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
This wasn’t even a method Dominic had taught me.
I had been acting on instinct, and only just before causing an incident with CEO Cha did I realize how strange it was.
I hurriedly scolded the Young God, but his reaction was odd.
He snapped back, asking why I was only getting angry at him.
Then did I do it?
Warning the Young God to stay quiet once more, I slowly reduced the power.
The gold vanished, and the terrace returned to darkness.
CEO Cha followed my retreating hand with his gaze for a moment before looking at me.
"Why?"
The mechanical voice prompted me, pretending to be indifferent.
"Do it more."
I answered a bit slowly.
"...I’m finished."
Seeing that he accepted my power so readily, I figured that while he wouldn’t become obedient just by a little torment, it was worth a try.
Regardless, I added a pathetic excuse.
"I’m perfectly fine and sane."
Instead of an answer, a short, dry chuckle returned.
CEO Cha habitually stroked the handle of his briefcase.
Then, he vanished. He had raised his perception degradation to 100%.
The invisible man spoke to me.
"You’re trying too hard, Han Goyo."
I didn’t know how to respond to the casually tossed remark.
Since I didn’t know where he was, I looked vaguely into the air, and then the door to the terrace opened and closed.
CEO Cha had gone outside.
Left alone, I looked down at the banquet hall.
It was still filled with the Young God’s media. My image was mixed into the videos every now and then.
As if proving he had been watching me for a very long time, old footage of me in a player’s uniform was being broadcast.
There I was in the past, expressionless and focused on the game.
Having won the match, I took off my headset and smiled confidently.
Perhaps because of the arena lighting, I almost seemed to sparkle.
I quietly turned my eyes to another video.
I let some time pass while watching the videos of the Young God.
It was only a few minutes, but because of the tension, it felt much longer.
I waited, staring in the direction CEO Cha had likely headed.
And when exactly the promised time had passed, I released the power I had stored in CEO Cha.
In a place far removed from the banquet hall, my energy flashed for an instant.
Screeeech!
At that moment, a sharp noise erupted from the pseudo-network violin playing the symphony.
Immediately after, the sound in the entire banquet hall cut off.
Every guest, dressed in luxurious attire and behaving elegantly, stopped their movements simultaneously.
The hands tilting glasses, the low hum of conversation everything froze.
Everyone turned their heads in the same direction.
A suffocating, absolute silence.
And then, I saw it.
Time stretched, and space began to melt.
The shells the guests wore like pretty wrapping paper were peeled away.
What was revealed were forms that could not be explained by human common sense.
The mask of a refined gentleman flickered, and the facial skin hidden beneath split horizontally and vertically.
An esophagus lined with jagged fangs opened wide like a blooming flower.
Mucous membranes spewing bluish slime, skin boiling black and emitting the smell of sulfur, dozens of legs with crustacean joints, wings twisted at impossible angles, violently undulating darkness, and eyes!
Eyes! Eyes! Eyes, Eyes, Eyes! Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes! Eyes, eyes! Eyes! Eyes!
Countless eyeballs aimed greedily at the same spot.
Anyone situated under that distant gaze would have been crushed into nothing.
Without leaving a single trace, without even realizing they had been erased from the world.
Before long, the violin music resumed.
The melted space returned to its place, and the nightmare-like truth faded like an illusion.
The banquet hall returned to its previous state as if nothing had happened.
The guests donned their noble shells once again.
However, a frenzy that could not be hidden by masks covered the hall.
They moved with grotesque gestures.
As if they had forgotten the shape of the outer skins they wore, their joints bent backward and their strides were tangled.
The sight of them swarming toward the place where the Young God’s power had flashed was surreal.
Staring blankly, I snapped back to my senses as if I had been hit by a bucket of ice water.
My heart was beating too fast. I pressed my hand against my chest and swallowed hard.
Cecilia...
And then, I understood.
I understood what had happened when I tried to climb the tower with Cecilia in the game.
While playing City of Frame, I had become famous as the most renowned stringer in the bottom slums.
Confident that only the True Ending remained, I declared that my final report would be from inside the tower.
Though terrified, Cecilia could not abandon her desire to be the first to report on the tower.
She eventually headed to the tower with me.
And upon arriving there...
What happened? Ah! Someone opened the door? Who? Who? Who was it? Who opened the door for me? Why did they let me look inside? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?Why? Why?
I hadn’t even set foot inside.
The moment Cecilia looked into the tower, she melted.
Literally, she could not maintain her form and flowed away. I barely managed to grab Cecilia’s remaining eyeball and flee.
It was a crushing defeat.
Having barely survived, I spent every penny I had earned as a stringer to purchase a Body Regeneration Package.
In City of Frame, as long as an eye or a heart remained, even the dead could be revived.
But that was not an action permitted for the labor class.
One wouldn’t be imprisoned or executed, but a price had to be paid.
The revived Cecilia burst into tears the moment she saw me.
Because my labor grade, which I had raised to S-level, had plummeted to F-level.
F-level meant you were a waste that had failed in Hyper Eden.
It was a level where no activity within the city was possible; one could only be pushed to the outskirts and die as trash.
Cecilia managed to find a transport ship and sent me to another planet.
A stringer who failed his final report leaves Hyper Eden, vowing that one day he will reveal the truth of the tower.
The game ends with a scene of looking at the brilliant night view of the city from the transport ship.
That was the True Ending of City of Frame.
At the time, I thought it happened because I entered a forbidden zone.
I believed that if City of Frame 2 came out, I would be able to enter the tower with Cecilia.
But now, I think I know.
Cecilia must have encountered a god in the tower.
She probably saw the Black Block.
That’s why she melted.
I touched the area around my eyes.
The gods revealed their essence for less than a second.
Even so, it was enough time to melt someone, yet I endured.
I don’t think it was just because the Young God was merged with me.
Because I had seen Dominic transform into a non-human form several times, I seemed to have been able to protect myself.
I surveyed the banquet hall after the gods had left.
Melted waiters were scattered across the floor like filth.
A few guests who weren’t gods were also pooled into puddles.
Glitches flickered through those slimy masses like corrupted data.
Unlike the waiters, who melted without a trace of form, the guests had some parts of their bodies remaining.
Security androids and other waiters entered the empty hall to clean up.
The melted waiters were roughly processed and thrown away as waste, while they
collected things like eyeballs from the guests. The guests would likely be revived using Hyper Edens Body Regeneration Package.
I searched the hall several times, but I saw no one who looked like the captains or Cecilia.
Fortunately, it seemed they weren’t in the hall.
While relieved, I worried about CEO Cha.
Even though I knew he would handle it well, I couldn’t help but feel anxious.
But if I went to find CEO Cha now, it would only result in both of us dying.
As per the original plan, I had to track the Black Block.
Just then, a faint vibration occurred in the Acorn Compass in my hand.
The needle was spinning.
The needle, which had been rotating frantically, came to a dead stop.
I immediately tried to follow the direction the Acorn Compass pointed.
However, as soon as I opened the door to the terrace, I saw the Eyeball Alien lingering on the second floor.
Unlike the other aliens who had swarmed toward CEO Cha, the Eyeball Alien was wandering here alone.
Three of the six eyes drawn on its mask were looking in the direction where CEO Cha was.
’The Eyeball Alien opened the terrace doors one by one. It will reach me soon.’
I need to track the Black Block quickly and find my kin...
What a nuisance.
The Young God insisted that he should show that guy a thing or two, but I rejected it.
If we used power loudly here, we’d be noticed immediately. It would be like jumping into a trap.
Instead, I decided to use the terrace’s secret passage.
It was a waste ejection duct that was no longer in use.
As soon as I lifted the metal finish embedded at the bottom of the service console in the corner, a passage appeared, just wide enough for one person to crawl through.
I squeezed my body into the duct.
The moment I covered the metal finish, the terrace door opened.
I was about to crawl through the duct but stopped dead.
Step. Step. Step...
The sound of footsteps walking inside was heavy.
Clang.
A slight vibration occurred right above my head. Of all things, he had stepped on the metal plate.
I killed even the sound of my breathing.
The Eyeball Alien stood still like that for a while.
While he stood there for a long time, as if guessing my location, a light of a sickening color leaked through the gap in the metal.
As the light brushed past, the Young God struggled, but I suppressed him firmly.
While I waited without reacting, noise came from the direction of the banquet hall.
The Eyeball Alien reacted to the sound and turned away.
Only after I heard the footsteps heading toward the banquet hall did I begin to crawl through the duct.
The narrow, suffocating duct had old waste discarded here and there.
Most of them looked like android parts.
I crawled slowly, checking the direction of the compass.
After advancing while occasionally getting stuck in the duct, I listened for any presence nearby.
Confirming no one was there, I climbed out of the duct.
Pushing the metal plate aside and coming up, a place I had never seen before, not the terrace lay before my eyes.
The Acorn Compass was pointing exactly toward the control room.
The Black Block is here?
I thought he would be with Dominic in the VIP area.
I placed my hand on the control room door. Then, a system window appeared.
[Please enter the password!]
[Hint: The Master of Hyper Eden.]
It seemed the password for the control room was the Black Block’s name.
I glared at the system window.
I suspected it would be wrong, but I tried the name I knew.
"Mad Messiah?"
Beep. With a notification sound, the system window popped up.
[Incorrect. One chance remaining.]
What? Only one chance left?
Isn’t it standard to give at least three tries?
Flustered by the sudden announcement of the final chance, I hurriedly reasoned it out.
The Black Block knew I was trying to interview him.
He probably meant that he would only grant access if I could figure out his name.
I sank into thought.
Hyper Eden, a city of provocative media, and its master, the Black Block.
The strange spelling of "Mad Messia."
There must be a reason why the final ’h’ was missing.
While staying in Hyper Eden, I learned more about him and came to understand.
I grabbed the floating thoughts and gathered them together.
The spelling of "Mad Messia" was reassembled in my head.
As if possessed, I uttered the Black Block’s name.
"Massmedia..."
A loud fanfare erupted, and the system window popped up.
[Correct! Mad Messiah and MAAAAASS MEDIA!]
[That is the Master of Hyper Eden!!]

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