I received from VivaBot the list of living—or more precisely, presumed to be living—official board users.

The number of official users who, like me, signed the Viva! Apocalypse! service contract at a supermarket branch or department store and received a satellite device called the Stargazing Obelisk had dwindled to twelve.

At some point, Foxgames made a lantern symbolizing the remaining users, but more than half of those lanterns have already gone out.

Most of them are people I don’t know well.

Just as in a classroom there are groups you’re close with and groups you aren’t, those I was friendly with in the community became connections in reality, while the others simply looked down at me from another floor—or up at me.

But now it’s time to say goodbye.

Even if they’re on a different floor, I’ll go up or down myself to speak to them.

They deserve my tribute.

Just enduring this hellish world until now already makes them heroes of an entire world.

“This is pretty good.”

Defender had brought sausages, which I served as a meal.

I don’t know what animal the meat came from, but it must have been one of the Mutations.

I could tell it had been seasoned with a generous amount of spices.

After filling my stomach just enough, I sat in front of the laptop.

“······.”

Tap, tap.

Had my keyboard ever felt this heavy before?

Tap-tap-tap-tap—

How long had it been since I last pounded backspace repeatedly?

The thought of saying goodbye was there, but actually putting it into words was nothing but hesitation and reluctance that didn’t suit me.

Starting is half the battle.

To the one who, in some sense, was closest to me, I first sent notice of the end of a world.

Message from mmmmmmmmm: Really?

It was M9.

One way or another, there was no human being as dynamically entangled with me as M9.

I had gone on plenty of adventures myself, but fitting of someone who called himself my rival, M9 had also enjoyed his own dynamic escapades.

He was also a much-talked-about veteran of Jeju.

When he was caught by the Japanese, I thought he was going to die, but I underestimated him too much.

M9 is a tough survivor.

He has stats I never managed to obtain.

Now I admit it.

Message from mmmmmmmmm: Our board is shutting down? So it’s the end of Viva! Apocalypse! service?

Message from mmmmmmmmm: Tch. I was expecting it, but now that the day’s actually here, it’s a shock.

Of course M9 would be hit hard too.

But both he and I are proper doomists.

Back when we even joined John Nae-non’s first meetup—now the stuff of legend—we had expected a day like today would come.

If destruction hadn’t come, our lives would have melted away pitifully in abundance and prosperity.

That’s why we always believed we carried ourselves with a more composed attitude toward doom than anyone else.

And M9 was no exception.

Message from mmmmmmmmm: It can’t be helped.

Message from mmmmmmmmm: Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always thought this day would come.

Message from mmmmmmmmm: Still, since Viva! Apocalypse! is ending before I die first, maybe you could call it a successful life? 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

I smirked.

A success, huh.

Yeah.

If you can call this success, then you could say it was plenty successful.

Countless users died before even seeing the end of Viva! Apocalypse!, let alone the glory days of Live! Apocalypse!

We were the chosen few.

Starting with M9 was the right call.

From the second on, I could say goodbye actively, without hesitation.

Message from Anonymous424: Ah, so this is the end after all. One of the few big joys in life, gone.

Message from Anonymous424: Thanks, Skelton. Because it was you, not anyone else, who told me, the bad news feels like good news.

Message from Anonymous424: I’ll even watch your beatbox in the next life, lol.

SKELTON: I could show you right now.

Message from Anonymous424: No thanks, I’ll pass.

I passed the bad news even to Anonymous424, who sometimes felt less like a human and more like an angel.

Message from berkut_break: Holy crap.

Message from berkut_break: Is this real? No way, I haven’t even gotten my money’s worth yet!

...

...

Message from Rkkara: Shit the fuck!

Message from Rkkara: Haah. Well, guess that works out.

Message from Rkkara: I was planning to quit life this year anyway.

Message from Rkkara: Been debating if I should go out like General Gyebaek.

Message from Rkkara: Live well!

To friends I wasn’t all that close to,

Message from kimcic: So it’s over here too, huh.

Message from kimcic: Thanks, Skelton♥

...

...

Message from Anonymous781: Oh? Skelton? The real one?

Message from Anonymous781: Thank you. Thank you.

Message from Anonymous781: Just... thank you so much······.

I also passed the news to those I barely knew.

Next came people a little more special.

Na Hye-in.

That Unicorn18 wasn’t on the survivor list was unexpected for me.

She had just sent me a message not long ago.

Besides, she was ranked alongside Kang Han-min—no way she’d go down so easily.

Well, if she had turned into a monster, there’d be nothing to be done, but VivaBot had given me the following reply:

VIVA_BOT014: unicorn18 is offline. She’s been offline for four months, so I had her marked missing.

I figured it must be a system error.

Na Hye-in is alive.

She has to be alive.

So even though she wasn’t on the list, I sent a message to my fellow cohort member, and maybe my first love:

SKELTON: You alive?

SKELTON: I’m sorry, and embarrassed too, that this is the only way I can ask how you’ve been, but anyway, I believe you’re alive.

SKELTON: They’re shutting down the board!

SKELTON: Service is ending soon. Supposedly there’ll be a space show in the sky. You won’t see much inside the Rift, though.

SKELTON: But this won’t be the end. SkeletonNet, the second PaleNet, is about to open.

SKELTON: Another new year has come. I hope you stay healthy and unchanged.

SKELTON: From Park Gyu.

“······.”

Once I’d sent the message, it felt like a true farewell.

That was how special Na Hye-in must have been to me.

Unfortunately, Unicorn didn’t reply.

She’s a busy woman.

She’s watching Kang Han-min from the deepest part of the Rift.

There’s no reason to be disappointed just because she didn’t respond to something this trivial.

Next, I sent a message to my senior, Dongtanmom.

SKELTON: You doing well?

SKELTON: Viva! Apocalypse! is shutting down.

SKELTON: The admin asked me to pass the word.

SKELTON: The kids are growing up fine, right?

Message from dongtanmom: Nom nom..

Of course, it was Baek Seung-hyun.

Unlike the others, who stayed quiet, he shot back replies instantly even as I kept sending.

Message from dongtanmom: Do you know where I am right now?

SKELTON: ?

Message from dongtanmom: Guess.

SKELTON: How the hell should I know?

Message from dongtanmom: Hint—Korea.

SKELTON: Jeju······?

Message from dongtanmom: Wrong~

SKELTON: Enough jokes. Just tell me. I have others to notify.

Message from dongtanmom: Near Busan.

SKELTON: Busan?

Message from dongtanmom: To be exact, somewhere between Busan and Ulsan.

I thought I knew where.

I smirked as I tapped the keys.

SKELTON: Nuclear plant.

Message from dongtanmom: Bingo.

SKELTON: Is the nuclear power plant the “Yuldoguk” you mentioned?

Message from dongtanmom: With electricity, you can do anything. Electricity is magic in this world.

Message from dongtanmom: Back off the coast of Shanghai, what saved us wasn’t the showy tricks. It was the electricity from the makeshift Chinese power plant beside the city that kept my family alive.

So the place Baek Seung-hyun had packaged as if he were setting off like Hong Gil-dong for Yuldoguk had turned out, in the end, to be Korea.

More precisely, wherever there was power.

Other plants had been abandoned to the point of radiation leaks, but Korea’s devoted and responsible engineers had worked even during downtime to prevent leakage, and had even come up with methods to restart reactors after erosion removal.

Currently, Dongtanmom’s fleet was drifting around the East Sea and South Sea, centered on Busan, living off electricity.

The Japanese, who had been such a headache, had disappeared like a lie.

Ephemeral lives.

That’s the shared fate of people driven from their homes.

In Korea, only a tiny, qualified few survived.

I got a little annoyed for a moment, but today, this was the most rewarding conversation I’d had.

Then Baek Seung-hyun once again repeated the proposal he’d made before.

Message from dongtanmom: If you’ve got nowhere to go, come here. I’ll take you in.

Message from dongtanmom: Of course, I’ll be the boss.

Message from dongtanmom: But I won’t boss you too hard. You’re my junior, after all. Haven’t had a kid yet?

I smirked.

SKELTON: You need a woman for that. I’ll think about it.

It felt like a rare good conversation.

He even sent me his new K-WalkieTalkie personal ID number.

If it comes to it, I can reach him that way.

Now there was only the last category left.

The people I didn’t much like.

Dies_Irae was one of them.

I debated for a moment whether to send that cruel bastard a message, but in the end, it was the right thing to do.

Since I was sending word on behalf of the board to all our comrades, I couldn’t leave out Dies_Irae.

Even if he raised hell, I was already out of his reach, and by Defender’s account, he had his own nose to worry about.

It’d be hard for him to mess with Kim Daram’s group anyway.

If he got unlucky, he’d just get slaughtered by Kim Daram herself.

She’d once taken down eighteen targets in succession from a single spot.

One hundred and twenty seconds. It hadn’t even taken two minutes.

SKELTON: It’s me. There’s been this and that, but I’m alive.

SKELTON: Just letting you know Viva! Apocalypse! is ending soon.

I sent the message.

Unlike the others, Dies_Irae didn’t reply.

He was either busy or just didn’t want to.

Or maybe, busy “managing,” he didn’t have the leisure to get online.

Anyway, I’d roughly passed the word to everyone on the list.

But there was one more.

Not a villain like Dies_Irae.

Just an ordinary doomist.

But in this world, there are always one or two people who dislike you for no reason.

Keystone.

This ordinary user was one of them.

It didn’t seem like hatred, more like he just disliked me as a being.

Back during Nemesis and Twelve Square days, he had cheered too, but that was a separate matter.

In general, people tend to dislike those who dislike them.

Still, this was the last.

He’d left a strong impression as a neighbor I often clashed with.

So I sent a light, formal line.

SKELTON: You alive? It’s Skelton.

SKELTON: Just letting you know our board’s service is ending soon.

SKELTON: Whatever’s happened, let’s put it behind us and keep pushing so we can see next year.

That was about the most blessing I could give to a user I didn’t like.

I thought he wouldn’t bother replying either, like Dies_Irae.

But I was wrong.

Message from keystone: Skelton?

A reply came.

An unexpected reply.

It was a bit uncomfortable.

In the heavy silence, Keystone’s messages followed.

Message from keystone: So you’re alive.

Message from keystone: Shameless to ask, but could you come over here for a bit?

Of course he needed something.

I sighed and tapped the keys.

SKELTON: Short on supplies? I’m strapped myself, and not in good health, so I can’t offer much.

Message from keystone: I don’t need help.

Message from keystone: Just want to see your face.

SKELTON: Lonely?

Message from keystone: I’m not the type to feel lonely. If I were, I’d have gone to the other world already, like the black goat.

Message from keystone: But still, it’s the last, right? If nothing else, the one thing I can brag about from using this board is that I shared it with Skelton.

Message from keystone: Can’t we make at least a little monument before dying?

He’d always spoken so sharply I never realized.

That he could actually say something to please someone like this.

It was a feeling.

If the conditions lined up, I could go.

Since meeting Defender, I’d felt it.

I was burning to head somewhere.

Not wanderlust, just a desire to breathe outside air.

That the other party was Keystone wasn’t welcome, but if it wasn’t far, and it was safe territory, it would be enough of an excuse to lift «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» my heavy ass.

SKELTON: Where are you?

Keystone sent back his reply.

“······.”

It was quite a distance.

But I didn’t think it was too far to reach.