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Chapter 3: Role-Playing Games (2)

Jisu stood quietly as if to process what I'd said. I looked at her, then looked around at my surroundings. It was about time that they appeared.

There they are.

Small eyeballs fluttered in the air under the blue sky. The problem was that there were a lot of them. As creepy as they looked, I was used to having them around.

The eyeballs were called the Observers, and they served as the eyes of the GMs and gods. The gods participating in the games surveilled the players' behavior through the observers, to decide whether to join the game or keep watching.

There were three types of observers: GM-controlled Observers; Universal Observers, which were controlled by gods with their points; and Individual Observers, which were available only to gods who had chosen Avatars. All Observers here were directly controlled by the GMs. The GM in charge of Korea was Akatus, a mid-tier GM that was neither extraordinary nor terrible.

Now that the Observers are here, they should show up at the servers soon.

As soon as I thought so, a notification appeared in the air.

[The Korea server, managed by GM Akatus, has opened. 53 users are currently participating.]

[You can now access the forums.]

Fifty-three users—I remembered this number.

"Users" refer to the gods participating in the games—those who chose us, the players, and enjoy the games. They watch the games through observers and make their favorite players their "Avatars." The Avatars get to take after the characteristics of their users, or their gods, and receive points funding from the gods.

Since points were important resources for improving stats or acquiring items, Avatars who received points from their gods had a significant advantage over other players. Not only that, players who couldn't become Avatars were considered NPCs, so everyone was desperate to become someone's Avatar.

Granted, I was one of them. Having had a bad start, I had been obsessed with growing stronger. While I had eventually become a god's Avatar, it was too late by the time I had realized that I had made a mistake.

I was deleting the notifications when I started wondering, What did they mean that I could access a forum?

I stared at the last remaining notification. One of the messages that had appeared right before I fought the goblin said that I had gained access to forums. General login instructions appeared when I opened the help icon at the corner of the notification window. The instructions were simple.

Should I say "Log Into Forums" or click on the icon on my status window?

The status window had an icon named [Log Into Forums]. While I was reading about accessing forums, Jisu snapped out of her thoughts.

"Sehan," she said.

"Yeah?"

"It's difficult to accept what just happened, but I think I know what's going on. There's no way such monsters would show up in real life. Plus, these notification windows..." Jisu lifted her finger and swiped across the air as if to close a window. "And the strange sounds we hear in our heads must also be related."

"Probably. It's unlikely in real life that we see such notification windows and hear messages, right?"

"Right." Jisu nodded. She didn't ask any further. She must be trying her best to accept what was happening.

She's pretty calm.

I was impressed that she had not panicked like others under such pressure. In fact, most people were busy running away from the goblins, screaming like they had lost their minds.