I Gave Up Being Stronger

“Don’t come this way! Please don’t!” Cha Jin-Sol shouted.

She seemed to be worried about Jin-Hyeok, to say the least.

When Jin-Hyeok drew close to them, one particularly vicious-looking guy shoved him back. Jin-Hyeok decided to call him Brute No. 1.

“Who the hell are you?” asked Brute No. 1.

“Me? I’m her oppa,” answered Jin-Hyeok.

Cha Jin-Sol struggled to free herself from her captors as she thundered back at him, “Piss off! This is none of your business! Oppa, my ass, you never came home once in seven years.”

It seemed her attitude was going as strong as ever.

Jin-Hyeok did understand how she felt, though. Jin-Sol was probably saying words like these because she was afraid he would be harmed.

The brutes chuckled as they watched the two of them.

“You heard her. Go on your merry way,” one of them said to Jin-Hyeok.

“Hang on. Let me report you guys first,” Jin-Hyeok replied.

Jin-Hyeok whipped out his phone and dialed 112[1].

Truth be told, Jin-Hyeok was just going through the motions of standard procedure—he knew that the police weren’t coming anyway. Any services that helped maintain the public order were practically paralyzed nowadays.

He was simply mustering whatever last shred of conscience he had left over from his days as an upstanding government agent with integrity, in order to do the bare minimum of following standard emergency protocol before anything else.

“You’re gonna report us? Pff, that’s a good one,” said one of the brutes dismissively.

“Did you hear that? He’s going to report us, scary! Hahaha!”

Having made minimal effort to report them to the police, Jin-Hyeok could check off keeping his conscience intact from the list. Now it was time for him to do whatever else he needed to.

Jin-Hyeok drew his dagger.

“Oooh, what do we have here?” said one of the guys, not the least bit intimidated.

Jin-Hyeok was confident he could roughly guess as to how strong they were even without the aid of Broadcaster’s Truesight.

With how new this Server was, everyone was still more or less in the Tutorial stages—and that meant Jin-Hyeok’s current strength was about the same as the highest rankers.

And he knew that the highest rankers didn’t have the time to mess around doing meaningless things like this. Otherwise, with how exhausting and difficult becoming a top ranker was, they wouldn’t have been able to make it to the cream of the crop in the first place.

Even if this objective truth was ignored, just seeing their stances, as well as the distance—or lack thereof—they maintained told Jin-Hyeok all he needed to know.

“What are you even gonna do with that dagger?” taunted one of the brutes.

“If you got the time to talk, you’d better off increasing the distance between us,” Jin-Hyeok replied matter-of-factly, “ Can’t you see I’m holding a weapon? You know I’m gonna use it to stab you soon, right?”

Oh, that’s right—he didn’t need to inform them about his intentions so nicely anymore. Habits were a frightening thing indeed.

Back in the days when he was an agent of the NIS, he was required to follow the minimum of standard contact procedure, maintaining his politeness when encountering opponents no matter how vicious or villainous they were known to be.

An attitude that was kind and informing, but a hand of justice that was merciless—that was what it meant to be an agent.

And with that in mind, Jin-Hyeok swung his dagger through the air without a moment of additional hesitation.

It sliced through one of the hoodlum’s right wrist.

“Arghhh!”

A loud shriek broke the air. A considerable amount of blood spurt from the area of the cut, probably because Jin-Hyeok had severed an artery.

‘Ah, this wasn’t it.’

The hoodlum’s hand was dangling, still partially connected to his wrist. Jin-Hyeok was a tad disappointed that he couldn’t cut it off with one clean strike. That was too bad, but it was only expected—his body couldn’t keep up with his mind.

‘And the scream should’ve come out a second later, too.’

A cut could only be considered to be properly executed, if it was so clean that the enemy didn’t notice right away that they had even been cut.

That had not been the case just then—the scream had basically accompanied the strike.

‘Man… I’m way too weak.’

This could not stand.

Jin-Hyeok wanted to be stronger.

…With a pang, Jin-Hyeok realized he was getting carried away again. He reminded himself of his promise to himself.

‘It’s only a given for me to be weak.’

This simply came with being a Streamer—there was nothing he could do about it.

“Y-you bastard, you think you’ll be safe even afte— GAAH!”

Shuk!

Jin-Hyeok stabbed the second guy in his side.

The side was protected by one’s ribcage, which made the task of penetrating the area substantially more difficult.

But that didn’t matter to Jin-Hyeok. He knew that if he aimed well and stabbed at the right angle, he had what it took to get between the ribs.

It was then that it also occurred to him that his sister Cha Jin-Sol could be so shocked by what she was witnessing, that she could lose her wits and perhaps even faint.

That would not be a problem: in Jin-Hyeok’s own humble opinion, he had a knack for reassuring and calming down citizens of the public in situations like this.

A great way to soothe the public’s nerves in a case like this was to explain what they were seeing in an objective manner, cool as a cucumber, as if he was explaining to a bystander with no awareness of what was going on.

“So basically, the ribcage serves the function of protecting the human body’s more important organs. Another way to look at it, though, is that the region inside the ribcage is a fatal weakness. In other words, if you’re just able to penetrate the area between the ribs, you’d be able to inflict a critical wound on your opponent. How does that sound? Not so hard, right?”

With a calm and level-headed explanation like this, Jin-Hyeok was assured that Jin-Sol would be less scared.

The brute before Jin-Hyeok seemed to be entering a state of shock from his profuse bleeding, unable to stay standing anymore. Now there was only one of them left.

The final guy must have felt he was backed into a corner, because he frantically grabbed hold of Cha Jin-Sol. He threatened Jin-Hyeok as he pointed a dagger at her neck.

“D-drop your knife,” the hoodlum stammered.

Jin-Hyeok was disappointed—this was a way too cliché turn of the situation. Nothing was remotely surprising about this development.

“I said drop the knife!” the guy shouted more firmly.

“Alright, I got it.”

Swoosh!

Jin-Hyeok threw his dagger with all his might.

‘Ooooh.’

Perhaps it was because he was sufficiently warmed up now, but his aim and timing were spot on.

The moment the dagger left his hands, he knew it would hit the mark he had wanted.

Shuk!

His dagger hit the assailant straight between the eyebrows, and he slowly toppled to the ground.

“When evildoers fully realize there’s a gap in strength that can’t be closed, they tend to hurry and try to capture a hostage. But what’s ironic is that the moment they get a hostage, they let their guard down. I was aiming to capitalize on that moment. Did that make sense? You can breathe easy now because I’m here,” Jin-Hyeok explained to her.

“…”

Cha Jin-Sol sank to the ground where she stood. Jin-Hyeok knew it must have been because she was finally relieved by his cool, collected explanation.

She was bawling her eyes out, but unfortunately, Jin-Hyeok didn’t know as far as how to soothe someone’s crying daughter.

And why was she crying in such a sad way? Weren’t they meant to be tears of relief?

“First off, let’s go home.”

“…”

Cha Jin-Sol was distant, her eyes dead.

Jin-Hyeok didn’t think she would be so shocked over an incident as trivial as this. He began to worry about how she was going to live in the harsh world that was to come with such a fragile psyche.

Another person’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Stop right there!”

‘Oh wow.’

Jin-Hyeok had reported the situation to the police without a shred of expectation that the police would come, but they had come indeed.

“D-drop your weapon and surrender immediately! I-I’m arresting you on account of being in the process of committing a crime.”

The police officer was shaking in his boots as he approached Jin-Hyeok, but it escaped Jin-Hyeok why on earth the officer was so frightened.

Jin-Hyeok placed the dagger down on the floor, and raised both hands in the air in an orderly manner.

“I’m the victim, and they were the assailants,” Jin-Hyeok clarified.

He put out his hands and didn’t raise a fuss as he was handcuffed. He felt something was missing, though.

“Oh, right. You should be informing me of my Miranda Rights[2] before arresting me.”

This was a bit of a pet peeve of Jin-Hyeok’s.

Before his regression, the media had pestered him an unfathomable amount over whether he had or hadn’t read people their Miranda Rights.

There was one time Jin-Hyeok was fighting a mass murderer who had used arson to kill 3000 people—a fight that was so difficult, that Jin-Hyeok himself nearly died in multiple moments.

Jin-Hyeok got his fun out of the fight, but he had been irritated to no end by the media attacking him for the simple fact that he hadn’t read the criminal his Miranda Rights before arresting him in the end. In fact, one of those journalists who criticized Jin-Hyeok had literally been rescued by him.

All that said… looking back now after all this time, it seemed like a good memory in its own way.

“Oh, we should be on our way home soon enough when this is over, so don’t tell mom and dad. There’s no need to worry them.”

***

Jin-Hyeok could accept being taken to the police station, but this was doubtful.

“I’m telling you, I’m the victim here,” Jin-Hyeok once again tried to clarify.

“Victim, my ass. Name?”

This detective had some rather deep, dark circles under his eyes. It was fairly obvious that he was exhausted from the onslaught of work coming in.

“You should have arrested them, too.”

“I said give me your name.”

It seemed that the world was becoming a mess in more ways than one. An innocent citizen such as himself was being arrested and talked to so rudely.

Jin-Hyeok admittedly began to feel a little annoyed.

“You don’t need to know,[3]” Jin-Hyeok said.

“Excuse me?”

The detective either didn’t have his head screwed on properly because he was just that exhausted, or he was in an overly sensitive state. Whichever it was, it made the detective decide to raise his hand with the intent of bonking Jin-Hyeok on the head.

“You better not hit me. Else you’re gonna hurt your hand.”

“…this crazy little shit!”

The detective chose to go ahead with hitting Jin-Hyeok anyway.

‘Broadcaster’s Barrier.’

Jin-Hyeok’s Broadcaster\'s Barrier was solid—in the detective’s shoes, it was probably like hitting a brick wall.

“OW!”

And that was exactly why Jin-Hyeok had warned the detective not to hit him. It was beyond him why the detective decided not to heed it.

‘It’s almost time for them to come.’

In truth, Jin-Hyeok had called a GM (Game Master).

This era immediately following the Cataclysm was one of change after change; and in a world of such change, order was needed.

As if right on cue, a magic circle appeared on the ceiling of the police station.

‘They’ve finally arrived.’

What was clearly a person slowly emerged from the circle starting from the feet, descending into this space.

‘Looks like I got Kihael.’

It was indeed GM No. 3 Kihael, who managed the Seodaemun-gu.[4]

He looked like a boy in his late teens, and he had a pair of wings on his back.

‘It’s been a while since I’ve seen him.’

Kihael was a GM with the quintessential personality of an unambitious salaryman who just wanted to clock in his hours and get paid.

He was the type that was perfectly satisfied with just doing what he was given to do, no more and no less. He truly embodied the attitude of an employee who pursued a work-life balance where they could just cruise along peacefully.

Kihael looked at Jin-Hyeok, but it was not a kind look.

“I’ve never seen a lunatic that smashes the call GM button when it’s still in the Open Beta service,” Kihael commented.

“As you can see, I was being oppressed by a state-level authority of a nation while playing the game.”

“Hold on for a minute.”

The police detectives had been creating a commotion as they yelled at Kihael, but this only lasted briefly before it died down.

Kihael was around Level 100.

No one could possibly challenge his undisputed strength in the present time. All Kihael needed to do was snap his fingers for everyone to shut up.

He nodded as he watched some kind of recorded video of what had transpired.

“With consideration to the fact that this was a situation of ordinary combat between Players, I hereby forbid the intervention of the state,” Kihael concluded.

Thanks to Kihael, Jin-Hyeok was able to walk free without much hassle.

Jin-Hyeok was aware that police commissioners all around the world were being murdered by the GMs at present. The GMs were unafraid to force humanity to adjust to the System in ways that were largely violent and brutally efficient.

To prevent governments from intervening in the business of Players, the GMs publicly executed those major politicians or police commissioners who meddled in Players’ affairs or opposed adherence to the System.

That was why at present, there was an official statement disseminated to all government departments to intervene as little as possible in interactions between Players—and to meet the GMs’ requests as satisfactorily as possible if one appeared.

“How did you know about the GM call function?” demanded Kihael.

“It’s all in the Player Manual,” Jin-Hyeok answered.

“You read that all already?”

“Wasn’t it made to be read?”

Kihael looked at Jin-Hyeok as if he was looking at an alien.

With time, countless people would be practically forced to become well-acquainted with the Player Manual. Whether they liked it or not, this was one of the primary ways to adjust to this new world.

Jin-Hyeok didn’t really remember what it was like when he first began playing, so he wasn’t sure when he had memorized all its details. Whatever the case, it was fortunate for him that the entirety of the Player Manual’s content was already firmly inside his head.

“Who said you could talk so informally with me?” Kihael asked.

“You did it first.”

Kihael frowned. He scanned Jin-Hyeok up and down with his eyes.

“The heck is this? Why’s all your Player information set to private?”

“What’s wrong with that? Not like there’s a rule against it.”

“The default setting for the info is public. People usually do as the System tells them.”

“You see, I’ve always been a bit of a misfit.”

Although the whole predicament with the police had already concluded, Kihael didn’t leave Jin-Hyeok.

This was all according to plan. Jin-Hyeok had succeeded in attracting his attention.

‘Good for me.’

Kihael, GM No. 3 in charge of the Seodaemun-gu, was a key component for Jin-Hyeok’s objectives.

Kihael continued to pepper Jin-Hyeok with questions to dig out info about who he was.

Kihael eventually resorted to using ‘Administrator’s Prerogative,\' something he couldn’t do from the start because it had usage restrictions, and got to mining out Jin-Hyeok’s identity in earnest.

“You’re Level 28? Wait, so you’re one of the current top rankers?”

Administrator’s Prerogative allowed the GM to see a Player’s Level, Awakened name, and Job.

“Your Job is Almighty Streamer. You chose Kim Chul-Soo as your Awakened name?”

“What? You’re able to see all that? Why did you so nosily ask me so many questions at the start then?”

Kihael rubbed his chin.

“You’re one of the top rankers at present, but you keep your information on private. You didn’t even put your name up on the ranking board. And fame is an important value for Streamers, but you don’t seem all that interested in it. When I watched the video just then, your movements weren’t that of some ordinary Player at your Level. You’re a real suspicious piece of work, aren’t you?”

“What exactly are you getting at?”

With all this buildup, Jin-Hyeok could feel the real question at hand coming.

It was clear that Kihael was finding the right time to ask his question—and that time was now.

“Hey, are you a regressor?”

The System did not officially recognize ‘regression’ as something that existed. Jin-Hyeok himself didn’t think it was real until he actually regressed.

In the later days of his previous life, Jin-Hyeok found out that even the GMs were divided on whether they believed regression existed.

However, one thing was certain among them.

Regardless of whether they believed regression was real or not, they all acknowledged it as an unintended bug, and regressors as a virus.

‘Regression’ was a term that caused the GMs serious alarm.

With time, some people would recklessly come out and shout to the world that they were regressors—but regardless of the validity of their claim, they would all be killed by the GMs.

“Did you say regressor? What’s that? You mean regression as in going back to the past?” Jin-Hyeok asked.

Kihael’s eyes narrowed.

“Are you really not a regressor?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

Jin-Hyeok received a notification.

[Do you choose to accept the GM Quest 「Room of Truth」?]

This was a mountain Jin-Hyeok knew he had to climb sooner or later when he came face-to-face with a GM.

The earlier in his playing that he got this over with, the better it was for him.

And it was even better that the one he had to face was Kihael.

1. Police-only emergency telephone number in Korea. Fire and medical emergency services are 119. ☜

2. Typical things police say in America and many other West-aligned countries when arresting someone, such as: ‘You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,\' etc. ☜

3. Jin-Hyeok switches from formal language to casual here, displaying his lack of respect for the detective. ☜

4. One of the 25 districts in Seoul, located near the city centre. ‘-gu’ actually means district in Korean. ☜