The rain of gold coins didn't stop.
Players in the Lower Plaza weren't looking at Starforce anymore. They were on their hands and knees, scrambling for the loot. It was a frenzy of greed.
Elves, knights, and cyborgs trampled each other to grab the digital currency spilling from the shattered remains of the Gatekeeper.
"Look at them," Min-ji sneered, wiping pixelated dust from her bat. "They'd sell their own mothers for a stat boost."
"That's the business model," Yoo-jin said coldly. "Mason built a world where dignity costs extra."
David's voice crackled in their earpieces, breathless.
"Yoo-jin! The real-world Zenith stock just dipped 0.8%. The algorithm panic-sold because of the loot glitch. We just wiped out 40 billion won of their market cap."
"It's not enough," Yoo-jin stepped over a crawling avatar. "We need a crash. Where is the main liquidity hub?"
"The Vault," David replied. "Sector 4. It's the central bank where users convert real cash into 'Sanctuary Credits.' If you hit that, you freeze the entire economy."
"Mark the waypoint."
A red pillar of light appeared in the distance, cutting through the artificial skyline. It was far. Between them and the Vault lay the Commercial District—a neon jungle of advertisements and premium shops.
"Move out," Yoo-jin commanded. "Formation B. Sol, Luna, center. Eden, point."
Eden stepped forward. His gray eyes scanned the data stream.
"Warning," the android said. "System hostility increasing. The environment is... angry."
They entered the Commercial District.
It was blinding. Every surface was a screen. Massive holographic idols danced on the sides of skyscrapers, advertising 'Emotion Packs' and 'Memory Clouds.'
Feeling sad? Buy the Joy Bundle for 500 Credits!
Want to be loved? Rent a Virtual Boyfriend today!
The music here was louder. It was a sickeningly sweet pop track, looping endlessly.
"My head," Sae-ri winced, pressing her hands to her headset. "It hurts. It feels like... scratching."
"It's a subliminal frequency," Sol noted, her virtual ears twitching. "18kHz. It triggers dopamine cravings. It makes you want to spend money."
"It's weaponized elevator music," Luna added, disgusted.
Suddenly, the billboards flickered. The dancing idols froze.
The sweet pop music stopped.
A deafening silence fell over the street.
"Audio driver failure?" Min-ji asked, tapping her bat.
"No," Yoo-jin looked up. "A Moderator."
From the digital smog above, a figure descended. He didn't fly; he walked down invisible stairs.
He wore a pristine white tuxedo and a mask that looked like a musical treble clef. He held a long, thin baton.
[Admin Enforcer: The Maestro]
[Status: Invulnerable]
"You are disrupting the harmony," The Maestro's voice didn't come from his mouth. It came from everywhere, vibrating directly in their skulls.
"We prefer live vocals," Yoo-jin stepped forward.
The Maestro flicked his baton.
ZIP.
A black bar appeared over Yoo-jin's mouth.
[Status Effect: MUTE]
[You cannot speak. You cannot command.]
Yoo-jin tried to shout, but no sound came out. He clawed at the black bar. It was solid code.
"Silence is golden," The Maestro declared. He pointed the baton at Sol and Luna.
Two more black bars slammed over the twins' mouths.
"Hey!" Min-ji swung her bat. "Don't touch them!"
The Maestro conducted a sharp downbeat.
Gravity multiplied by ten.
Min-ji slammed face-first into the pavement. Her avatar flickered red.
"Heavy, isn't it?" The Maestro floated closer. "The weight of your irrelevance."
Yoo-jin struggled against the gravity. He looked at Eden.
Eden was still standing. As an AI, his "weight" was different. He was struggling, his servos whining, but he wasn't pinned.
Think, Yoo-jin signaled with his eyes. The weakness.
This was a world of sound. The Maestro controlled the output. But he couldn't control the source.
Yoo-jin pointed at the massive holographic billboard behind the Maestro. It was a generic ad for a soda brand, pumping out visual noise.
Eden understood.
The android didn't attack the Maestro. He turned and punched the billboard's control panel.
He ripped out a bundle of glowing fiber-optic cables.
"Interface," Eden said mechanically.
He jammed the sparking cables directly into the port on his neck.
"What is he doing?" Sae-ri gasped, fighting the gravity to look up.
Eden opened his mouth.
He didn't sing. He didn't speak.
He became a terrifying, living amplifier for the corrupted data.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—
It was the sound of a dial-up modem mixed with a jet engine, amplified to stadium levels. It wasn't music. It was pure, raw glitch.
The Feedback Loop.
The Maestro flinched, clutching his masked head. "DISSONANCE! CEASE!"
The gravity spell faltered. The sound was shattering the code logic of the area.
"Min-ji!" Yoo-jin messaged through the party chat text. "NOW!"
Min-ji scrambled up. The "Mute" bar on Yoo-jin's face shattered from the sonic pressure.
"I hate classical music!" Min-ji screamed.
She didn't hit the Maestro. She hit Eden.
She slammed her bat against Eden's metal shoulder, using him like a gong.
BOOM.
The impact combined with the feedback scream. A shockwave of distorted bass ripped through the street.
The store windows exploded. The holographic idols disintegrated into pixel dust.
The Maestro was blown backward, his white tuxedo shredding into binary code.
"System... Error..." The Maestro glitched, his baton snapping in half.
[Admin Defeated.]
[Zone 'Commercial District' Muted.]
The terrible pop music died. The silence that followed wasn't oppressive. It was peaceful.
Yoo-jin rubbed his jaw where the mute bar had been.
"Nice track," he panted. "A bit experimental."
"My ears are ringing," Sol complained, rubbing her head. "But I can talk again."
Eden pulled the cables out of his neck. Steam hissed from his joints.
"Processor temperature at 98%," Eden stated. "That was... unpleasant."
"You did good," Sae-ri touched Eden's arm.
Yoo-jin looked at the path ahead. The neon lights were dead. The road to the Vault was dark, but open.
"Let's go," Yoo-jin said. "Before they send the next one."
Sector 4. The Vault.
It wasn't a building. It was a fortress of black glass, floating in the center of a data lake. Bridges of hard-light connected it to the mainland.
But as they approached, they didn't see guards.
They saw people.
Thousands of them.
"What is this?" David whispered in the earpiece. "I'm detecting massive bandwidth usage."
The plaza in front of the Vault was packed with identical avatars. They were all wearing gray jumpsuits. They all had the same blank face.
They were sitting in rows, staring at floating screens, tapping rhythmically.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Are those... players?" Luna asked, horrified.
"No," Yoo-jin walked to the edge of the bridge. He zoomed in with his Producer's Eye.
[Entity: Streaming Bot]
[Task: Generating Views]
[Value: 0.0001 Won per click]
"It's a click farm," Yoo-jin realized, his stomach churning. "This is how Zenith inflates their numbers. These aren't people. They're ghosts of banned accounts, repurposed to stream Mason's content forever."
It was a sea of slaves. A digital sweatshop generating fake popularity to boost the stock price.
"That's cheating," Min-ji growled. "That's chart manipulation."
"It's the industry," Yoo-jin corrected grimly. "Scaled to infinity."
Suddenly, the sea of gray bots stopped tapping.
Thousands of heads turned in unison. Thousands of blank eyes locked onto Starforce.
A siren blared from the black fortress.
[Intruders Detected.]
[Defense Protocol: SWARM.]
The bots stood up. They didn't pull weapons. They opened their mouths.
"OPPA. OPPA. OPPA. OPPA."
The sound was a low, terrifying drone. The chant of a mindless fandom.
They began to run toward the bridge. A tsunami of gray bodies.
"They're going to zerg rush us," David yelled. "There's too many! You'll be buried!"
Yoo-jin looked at the narrow bridge.
"We can't fight them," Sae-ri grabbed Yoo-jin's arm. "There are millions."
"We don't fight the fans," Yoo-jin said, his eyes scanning the code of the bridge. "We change the stage."
He looked at Sol and Luna.
"Can you sing?"
"Always," Luna said, though she looked terrified.
"Not a ballad," Yoo-jin said. "I need an anthem. Something that wakes them up."
"Wakes them up?" Sol asked. "They're bots, Yoo-jin."
"They were accounts once," Yoo-jin said. "They have user data buried deep down. Memories. Favorites."
He turned to the onrushing wave of gray.
"Eden," Yoo-jin commanded. "Beatbox. Give me 128 BPM."
Eden didn't ask why. He started a heavy, mechanical beat, stomping his foot on the digital bridge.
Thump-thump-CLAP. Thump-thump-CLAP.
"Sol, Luna," Yoo-jin pointed at the horde. "Sing 'Starlight.' The original acoustic version. The one you sang in the subway when you were nobodies."
"That song?" Sol blinked. "That's old."
"It's the root code," Yoo-jin said. "It's the first song Starforce ever released. If anything can pierce the Zenith firewall, it's nostalgia."
The wave of bots was fifty meters away. Forty.
"Sing!"
Sol and Luna closed their eyes. They harmonized.
In the dark, where no one sees...
I found a light, inside of me...
The vocals were pure. Raw. No auto-tune. No effects. Just two sisters singing for their lives.
The sound wave hit the front line of the gray horde.
The first bot froze.
Its gray jumpsuit flickered. For a second, it turned into a school uniform. A flash of color.
"OPPA... Op... pa?" The bot stuttered.
"It's working!" Min-ji shouted, strumming a chord on her bat to support the melody.
"Keep pushing!" Yoo-jin ordered. "Turn the bots back into users!"
The gray wave slowed. The chant of "OPPA" dissolved into confused murmurs. Ripples of color—blue, pink, yellow—began to spread through the crowd as the 'Streaming Bots' remembered who they used to be.
But from the top of the black fortress, a single slow clap echoed.
Yoo-jin looked up.
Standing on the roof of the Vault was a figure clad in gold armor. Not an Admin. Not a bot.
It was a player.
[User: KAI]
[Class: Assassin]
[Guild: Zenith Eternity]
The assassin who had tried to kill them in the real world. The traitor idol.
Kai leaped from the roof. He landed silently on the bridge, right between Starforce and the awakening crowd.
He drew two glowing daggers.
"Nice concert," Kai grinned, his avatar looking even more perfect and cruel than his real self. "But the encore is canceled."
He looked at Yoo-jin.
"Ready to pay your debt, Hyung?"