HG Ch 3

<3> Title: Ja-Gwi

Even after being forcibly relocated to Nonyeok Village, he kept shouting “Logout!” and “Customer Service!” over and over again. By the time he came to his senses, the once bright blue sky was tinted with the hues of sunset.

「Pathetic. Are you planning to live out your life as a mere commoner? Hurry up and choose a Class. I have no idea what you’re trying to achieve by behaving this way.」

The mutant butterfly spoke, scolding him like a parent reprimanding their jobless adult child sprawled on the couch.

However, Eunho had a lot to say too. Who in their right mind would adapt and move on with a cheery “Wow, a total reset of my life! Sweet! Lol,” after being tossed into a bizarre world without any warning? Anyone with such adaptability wouldn’t be human—they’d be a cockroach. Sure, there might be some lunatic out there who’d survive another Ice Age with a breezy “Oh, the weather’s gotten a bit chilly,” and endure it with cold baths. But Eunho wasn’t one of those creatures.

Moreover, Eunho was a recently liberated high school senior, fresh off the college entrance exams and on the brink of entering the golden years of his life. He’d been a model student, blindly trusting the adults who told him that once he got into college, he’d lose weight, get a girlfriend, and maybe even win the lottery. He had poured every ounce of himself into studying. His biggest act of rebellion in life so far was bleaching his hair to celebrate finishing the college entrance exam. For someone like him, this situation was far too high-level to comprehend.

“Ahhhhh!”

「Are you seriously getting angry over a little prodding? You’re as petty as a useless commoner would be.」

“Shut up, you damn meow-spewing bastard! Wait, hold on. What even is meow supposed to mean? Just turn off this shitty filter already—Argh, why is the filtering system here so messed up? It’s driving me crazy!”

To make matters worse, some of the filtered words would come out with a nasal tone, which made it all the more revolting. Just moments ago, the curse word “d*ck” had come out of Eunho’s mouth as a cutesy “nyaaang♥,” sending shivers down his spine.

“And this kind of one-size-fits-all filtering is nothing but a barrier to proper communication! Thanks to this system, normal phrases like ‘prime time,’ ‘from the start,’ and ‘where are you running off to’ all get censored! It just ruins the mood for no reason!”

But oddly enough, now that he was ranting, some of his words weren’t being filtered. Eunho frowned.

“Don’t tell me this is a game where only ‘meow‘ gets filtered while ‘woof‘ doesn’t… Wait, they do?!”

If that’s the case, then shouldn’t “prime time” be filtered to “prime woof-woof”? Deciding to test his theory, Eunho enunciated “from the start” and “where are you running off to” again—this time as deliberately as he could.

“Meow. Nyaaaah.”

What the heck.

“Prime time, from the start, where are you running off to.”

Now these phrases worked fine. What kind of twisted logic was this system based on?

“Is this just to piss me off on purpose? Seriously, this really is like some meow nonsense.”

At that moment, a hazy system window suddenly popped up in front of Eunho’s eyes.

[Lesson: Polished speech is an important skill! (In Progress)] [SYSTEM] You have used profanity 10 times within 10 minutes. [Status Effect] Loss of Voice (00:29:59)

What?

“…!”

Shocked, Eunho frantically tried to shout. But no matter how hard he tried, it was as if his vocal cords had been paralyzed; he couldn’t make a single sound. While he was left flapping his mouth like a fish out of water, a system message appeared to taunt him.

[SYSTEM] Profanity in voice chat is identified and filtered by a deep-learning AI, which takes into account the overall context of sentences. [SYSTEM] Please refrain from using violent language, sexual language, gender-based hate speech, racial hate speech, and insults toward others.

You could’ve told me that sooner…

Eunho collapsed onto the ground, his face etched with despair. Now stripped of his nationality, his family, his friends, his home, and even his voice for the next 30 minutes, he sprawled out helplessly on the dirt. The sky he stared up at was an annoyingly brilliant shade of blue.

How much time passed like that?

[Status Effect] Loss of Voice (00:21:57)

No, damn it. I didn’t literally mean it! It’s just a figure of speech. Wait… Can this thing read my thoughts too? Ugh, this is so frustrating.

Still, lying there in a daze helped Eunho untangle his chaotic thoughts, if only a little. Here was what he had pieced together so far:

1. There was no way to log out.

Even after shouting “Logout!” until his voice might as well have given out (well, theoretically, since no matter what he did in the village, he never seemed to tire), there was no response. He tinkered with everything he could think of, but there wasn’t even a settings button, let alone a logout macro^[1] to exit the game. He tried squeezing his body into gaps between objects in the village, hoping there might be a glitch allowing for an emergency escape through a map error. But no—the game was too well-designed for that. No stuck-in-the-wall glitches, no buffer overflows. Not a single exploitable bug in sight.

2. Joo Eunho was currently trapped inside the game that appeared in the game-based BL novel.

What kind of nonsense was this, like something out of a “fantasy novel where someone possesses a romance novel character”?

Joo Eunho felt exactly the same way. It would already be infuriating to get stuck in just any game, but to have it be this of all things? He could only pray that it wasn’t true.

[SYSTEM] The seasons in “Ja-Gwi: Monster Hunter” follow the Chiljeongsan[2] (Seven Celestial Bodies) calendar, divided into 24 solar terms[3]. [SYSTEM] Current Season: Spring, Rainwater (Usu)[4] [SYSTEM] Current Time: Noon (Hour of the Horse) [SYSTEM] Current Weather in Nonyeok Village: Clear skies

However, no matter how hard Eunho tried to deny it, the periodic automated system messages kept kindly reminding him exactly where he was.

Does this even make sense? Have I actually gone insane? Or maybe I’m in a coma or something.

If he had at least a memory of being hit by a truck, he might have been able to accept it. But no—he had been relaxing at home, scratching his belly while reading a web novel. The idea that he might be experiencing some kind of psychotic break didn’t add up either. He’d finished the college entrance exam and was on the cusp of an easy life; why would he suddenly develop a mental illness now, when he’d been perfectly fine even during the stress of exam season? Just thinking about it made his blood boil. For the sake of his own sanity, Eunho decided it was best to stick with the explanation that he was trapped in a game.

But of all the games out there, why did it have to be the one from a BL novel?

This was a serious problem. Joo Eunho, a seasoned reader who had read six different game BL novels cover-to-cover, understood the core theme of the genre all too well.

“While playing the game, the protagonist inevitably ends up falling for another man.”

It didn’t matter if they were originally enemies, childhood friends, strangers, or acquaintances—by the end, everyone turned gay. Even if one of them adamantly insisted they were only into women and had zero interest in men, the relentless pursuit of the other would eventually turn them gay.

Trying to keep personal information hidden within the game was pointless too. The two characters would eventually cross paths through academic ties, regional ties, familial ties—or, if all else failed, sheer coincidence.

In such a terrifying world, Joo Eunho couldn’t help but feel deeply uneasy—especially since he’d already triggered a flag by sharing the same name as a character in the novel.

Let’s say I manage to escape. Honestly, it’s just a game, so if I clear all the endgame content, I should be able to get out, right? That’s the cliché, after all.

But here’s the thing—what if he worked himself to the bone to escape, only to end up falling for a man as the final twist? Would that really be an escape? Eunho didn’t think so.

That was why he avoided interacting with others and stuck to skulking around in shady alleyways.

“Let’s stay calm.”

It seemed that during his mental spiral, the 30-minute timer had finally run out, as his voice returned. Eunho continued, “For now, I, no, ‘Joo Eunho’ in the novel is… Lovely, so I just have to avoid the Shou, right? That means the key must be the in-game name…”

Muttering feverishly in an attempt to reassure himself, Eunho suddenly froze mid-sentence.

“…What was it again?”

He shot upright, feeling a strange sense of unease.

What the hell? How can I not remember the protagonist of the novel I just read a few hours ago?

It wasn’t just the protagonist either. There were several supporting characters with distinctive, quirky roles, but not a single one of their in-game names came to mind as if someone had deliberately erased them from his memory.

That being said, he hadn’t forgotten the novel’s storyline. He still remembered most of the game’s settings.

“Ja-Gwi: Monster Hunter” was an MMORPG game based on the alternate-history fantasy novel of the same name, “Ja-Gwi”. In the novel, the game was described as a PC game, not a virtual reality one, so Eunho had no idea why things had turned out this way.

The novel “Ja-Gwi” was praised for its meticulous historical accuracy regarding the 17th-century Joseon Dynasty. However, the game itself was criticized for failing to uphold that same level of authenticity. Instead, the focus had been placed on item design and variety over historical accuracy. For instance, prior to King Jeongjo^[5]‘s reign, bamboo spears (jukjangchang) and wooden spears (mokjangchang) were all simply referred to as spears (jangchang). Yet, in the game’s world, which was set during the reign of King Gwanghae^[6], an item called jukjangchang blatantly existed.

“Well, honestly… The greedier the developers are for money, the less they care about accuracy. Damn greedy adults.”

It wasn’t a Steam game—it was an MMORPG. Of course, they had to churn out as many item types as possible to squeeze money out of the players. So who cared about historical accuracy? A meticulously rendered “Ddeoguji Hairstyle^[7]” wouldn’t sell as well as “Cotton Candy Mint Hair,” after all. Sure enough, the players wandering around Nonyeok Village were dressed in traditional Korean garb, but their hairstyles looked like they were from a sci-fi future.

“Anyway, this is driving me nuts. Why can’t I remember their in-game names?”

Grumbling, Eunho instinctively summoned his status window, something he was now familiar with doing. A 3D hologram of Joo Eunho, scaled down to one-tenth of his actual size, materialized in front of him, semi-transparent.

Eunho looked at the miniature version of himself as if staring into a mirror. The jade-colored beginner’s robe was fairly decent in quality, but his messy bleached hair and sharp, slanted eyes made him look more like a modern tourist visiting a Hanok village^[8] for a short while. If this game had been historically accurate, he’d be deafened by NPCs screaming, “Have you seen such an insane commoner?!” every time he set foot in the marketplace.

Shuddering at the thought, Eunho opened his detailed profile.

[Profile] Name: MwonGaeSori Spiritual Power: 4 Class: Commoner HP: 30/30 MP: 28/28 Strength: 3 (+2) Agility: 2 (+3) Intelligence: 2 (+3) Defense: 3 (+3) Recovery: 2 (+1) Distributable Points: 3 Exclusive Traits: – Passive Traits: <■■■■>, <■■■■■■■> Abilities: – Special Notes: <■■■>, <■■> Currently Active Overall Assessment: You have not chosen a Class, and thus have not been assigned any exclusive traits or abilities.