Chapter 58 – Hospitalization

Harden puffed on his cigar angrily as he stared at the television, remote in hand.

Another possibly Eclipse Online related hospitalization hits Seoul’s business district. The affected is a twenty-five year old accountant named Kim Taek-yong, online ID ‘Spoon’. The young man collapsed in an elevator at work, suffering a sudden seizure, and was taken by ambulance to Seoul National Hospital. This incident draws similarities to the previous case from last week, where the patient was also an Eclipse Online player. Currently, patient Kim Taek-yong is in critical condition and is being held on life support. 

Government officials quarantined off the section of the hospital Kim Taek-yong is currently being treated in, and militarized police have been called in to repel journalists from the area around the hospital, which is similar to last week’s protocol. The official government statement about the matter is that this militarized police force is to ‘prevent any misinformation and panic from spreading’. 

The likely cause for this incident, according to government officials, is a chemical leak from a local plant that has poisoned the drinking water in certain Seoul apartments. Health inspectors have been deployed to the patient Kim Taek-yong’s apartment for examination of the pipework and signs of water contamination.

One of Kim Taek-yong’s coworkers who was present during his seizure declined an interview request. We will continue to report on this incident as events develop. 

A representative from Eclipse Corporation declined to answer our questions. 

“Damn right we did...” Harden mumbled, taking in another puff of the sickly sweet cigar. He was, after all, that very representative from the Eclipse Corporation that told the reporters to fuck off when they started calling him earlier this morning. 

“What in the world have I gotten myself into,” Harden sighed, knocking off some ash into an ashtray. In the past week, his old smoking habit really came back in full force. He couldn’t help it–smoking was the only way he could calm his nerves in such precarious times. 

“Seriously,” he sighed, muttering to himself again with his hand pressed to his forehead. “What… in the fucking… world… have I gotten myself into?” 

This was way too soon for the first eclipse. It was only June, for fucks sake! The game just barely released in April, where things immediately took a turn for the worse when the AI unleashed the monster coalition world event. 

But this was not the AI’s doing. No, definitely not. Harden knew it from the bottom of his heart. This whole fiasco had to be directly related to her, and the ‘first eclipse’ that she told him about. 

Harden shook his head in regret. Eclipse Online was a devil’s gambit from the very beginning. It was impossible to create such a technological gap between the Eclipse Corporation and the rest of the gaming market without the help of something… abnormal. Yes, quantum computing and the super-ai did play a role, but even they were just unrefined sources of power that needed to be harnessed correctly for a company to actually derive any value from them. 

After all, give a monkey a nuclear power plant, and what did you expect? Did you expect the monkey to spoon out the power from the power plant, one scoop of molten uranium at a time, to fuel his futuristic space bike? Obviously not. 

In this case, quantum computing was the nuclear power plant, and software developers were the monkeys. Even a thousand monkeys climbing and shitting all over a nuclear power plant weren’t enough to actually fully utilize its potential power. 

It would take at least twenty years before humanity would be able to create something like Eclipse Online with current technology. 

It would take a miracle… or a deal with the devil herself. 

Two years ago, a single woman wearing sunglasses and holding a briefcase showed up at the company headquarters, which was then known as Abyrinth Development, completely unannounced. In fact, she didn't even sign in through reception downstairs. She just appeared in the lobby and walked into an ongoing meeting Harden was holding with several engineers and developers. 

That woman, dressed sharply in a striped business suit, introduced herself simply as Elizabeth. 

From that point onward, the future prospects of the company completely changed. For starters, the name of the company was changed to Eclipse corporation. From the outside, it was unclear how the company began its transformation from a small tech company into the behemoth it was now with such a small team. 

Very few people were privy to the real story behind the company’s meteoric rise. Despite how much investor hype the company gained, it exceeded expectations in all facets time and time again, and repeatedly beat projected quarterly earnings before the game was even released. Hell, stakes in something as obscure as an exclusivity contract on the game’s official live stream coverage on weekends were being auctioned off months before the game even launched. 

Harden was one of the only people in the world privy to the knowledge as to how this all came to be. It began with one word, and ended with one word. Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth came to Abyrinth Development with just one offer… one promise.

I am Elizabeth. Allow me to guide you, to prosperity beyond your wildest dreams. Accept me, and all that you wish for will be yours. Reject me, and all of humanity will suffer. 

The initial reaction was expected. Who the fuck is this? One of your girlfriends? Huh? Throw her out! 

Harden reminisced on his own words with a grimace on his face. 

Actually, there was nothing wrong with his reaction. Any reasonable company executive would’ve said the same thing if some random person bursted into their private company meeting and started spouting nonsense.

The problem was that this wasn’t just some normal random person.

Immediately after hearing what he said, Elizabeth lowered her sunglasses. And that’s when he saw them.

Red. 

Her pupils were red. 

Not only were they red, there was also a spiral pattern on her eyes that gave her a deathly, ethereal look. 

Again, he had a natural reaction. Was this bitch cosplaying or something? Some elaborate prank? 

And once again, he was proven wrong beyond his wildest imagination. 

You dare? A mere human, dares challenge me, an angel? 

Elizabeth’s eyes expanded to an inhuman, bulging size, as her smile widened freakishly, the tips of her mouth reaching almost her ears as her mouth curved in a perfect smiling semicircle, revealing a set of sharp teeth. A grotesque beauty highlighted her face. 

If what he was seeing was true, every single religious manuscript on earth needed to be rewritten. Angels were not the kind, benevolent white creatures with fluffy wings and halos above their heads, smiling modestly and gracefully floating around. 

No. If Elizabeth was an accurate representation of her race, then angels looked and acted more like demon spawn than anything else. 

One of Harden’s subordinates, a young intern called Davin, dialed 110 underneath the conference table in an attempt to contact the police. 

Before he managed to get to the third digit, Elizabeth’s head snapped towards him, her red spiraled eyes locked into his, and her pupils constricted. 

“Aaah!” 

She leapt towards him, closing the distance faster than Harden’s eyes could register that she even moved, and yanked the phone out of his hand and crushed it. Even her fingers and nails were slowly transforming to be unnaturally long. 

Let me show you what it means to defy an angel~

With one clean uppercut movement, Elizabeth stuck her long hand into the intern’s jaw, killing him instantly, his eyes rolling backwards as he foamed at the mouth. 

She withdrew her hand and cleared her throat, putting back on her sunglasses which she had clipped to the area near her cleavage. As if nothing even happened, she walked back to the front of the conference room and began her presentation anew. 

I’ll give you one last chance to make the right choice. Do you accept my guidance, or will you fall to the wayside, little black sheep? 

Elizabeth’s tone emphasized the word choice. And that’s when Harden got a gut feeling, telling him that she truly needed their approval for anything to proceed in their relationship. But it wasn’t like she would let them live if they rejected the choice either. 

Did he go with this angel, allowing her to fulfill her promise to give them everything they ever desired? Or did he reject her, standing his ground as a rational human in defense of his entire race, at the expense of his own life? 

That day, he made a choice that would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. 

-----------

Beeeeeeeep.

The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the harsh lighting. Blinking painfully, I squinted and looked around at my surroundings. 

I was on a hospital bed, with an IV drip attached to my arm, as well as a bandage on my head. 

Patient is awake. I repeat, patient is awake. Copy. 

What sounded like military speak radio static came from the right of the room. I turned my neck painfully to see what was going on. 

Two SWAT team members dressed in full gear were standing guard in front of the entrance to the intensive care unit room I was residing in. With full masks on and protective balaclavas attached with gas mask respirators around their mouths, it was impossible to see what they looked like at all. One of them had a radio clipped to his chest armor, and both of them were carrying SMGs in their hands with their gloved index fingers just above the trigger in resting position. To the side, I saw that both were armed with pistols, flashbangs, smoke grenades, and HE grenades. 

This made no sense at all. Why were there heavily armed SWAT team members in a hospital ICU bed room? And why was I the only patient in the entire ICU unit? Where were the nurses? 

“H-hello?” I said to the SWAT team members, waving my hand in an attempt to get their attention. Neither of them responded. In fact, they didn’t even move their heads to acknowledge my existence. 

I guessed that it was probably prudent for me to just rest for a bit longer. I closed my eyes, and fatigue took me once more. 

…

I woke up about an hour later. Squinting once more as my eyes got accustomed to the harsh lighting in the ICU, I glanced around the room and noticed that the two SWAT team members were still standing guard, seemingly unmoved from the last time I saw them. 

I adjusted myself into an upright position and reached down for my phone, before realizing that the nurses must have changed me into patient scrubs, removing all my personal belongings and clothes. Well, hopefully the nurse that changed me was a busty female nurse, at least. I snickered to myself internally. 

Without much to do, I leaned back and just relaxed for a while. This was definitely the same situation that happened with the Eclipse-Unihealth seizure scandal from last week, down to the quarantining of the hospital and the government summoned police that shooed away journalists and news reporters. 

Although from what I heard, the government only summoned additional armed police, not straight up SWAT team members. Why the hell did they need this kind of firepower just to protect me? 

Half an hour passed rather uneventfully. The two SWAT team members barely moved at all, not even shifting in place. It felt like I was being watched by those stone gargoyles in the Forgotten King’s Tomb. 

Well, I guess they didn’t mind if I stretched my limbs out a bit, right? 

I took out the IV drip from my arm and got off the bed, stretching and yawning. It felt good to be able to stretch after what felt like such a long time just strapped to a bed, unconscious. 

Ugh.

Stretching managed to contort my bladder just a bit, making me realize that I really had to pee. 

I began walking over to the SWAT team members and pointed downwards at my pants. “Uh… I have to use the bathroom?”

When I reached about a meter and a half away from them…

“Stop! Don’t move any closer!” 

Both SWAT team members raised their SMGs at me. 

“Put your hands above your head and step back!” 

Their sudden outburst startled me, but I managed to follow their directions. 

“Step back!” 

Huh? I was already so far from them with my hands behind my head. Why were they still pointing their guns at me? 

“I repeat, step back! We have authorization to shoot if you do not comply. This is your last warning!”