A white screen shimmered before my eyes.
It was the internet.
After a brief, crackling sound, a post quickly appeared online.
[Author: 3rd Life]
[Title: What would you guys do if you lived three lives?]
[FYI, I’m 8 years old]
– Three lives? Damn, I’d obviously buy Bitcoin first.
– I’d memorize all the lottery numbers from my second life and become the youngest billionaire.
– Don’t buy the Korean lottery, go for the US Powerball.
– First, I’d fix my own hopeless life.
– I’d revive our chicken restaurant, which was ruined because of those damn bat bastards.
– You too? Me too!
– I’d probably enroll in an academy. The entrance exam? I’d just get a perfect score on the written test, right? I mean, it’s my third life, I’d remember all the answers, lolololol.
– [Author: 3rd Life]: Everyone’s just thinking about money or success. Don’t you have any fresh, unique ideas? And it’s not a ‘regression,’ it’s my third life.
– What novel is the author writing? ‘Third life’ and all that, sounds like a light novel.
– If you live three lives, you’d probably die of boredom. Aren’t you repeating at least several decades three times over?
– No, you don’t know what the previous lives were like. Someone might want to live feeling the exhilarating dopamine of modern civilization.
“……”
The internet is often called an ocean of information.
It’s a world where countless people can connect and converse simultaneously, leaving behind a multitude of traces that collectively form a kind of information.
Amidst it all, nonsense, genuine truths, and novel, unverified hypotheses run rampant.
While some true knowledge exists, it’s merely a handful amidst the overwhelming sea of data.
Nevertheless, the internet proves quite useful under the banner of ‘collective intelligence’.
By simply posting a single message, without any distinction between truth or falsehood,
it’s perfectly suited for gathering and synthesizing the opinions of an unspecified multitude.
There’s no better place to gauge collective intelligence.
With serene eyes, I calmly scrolled through the comments appended to the post.
People’s thoughts were all largely the same.
They sought to earn money, hoping to live a slightly more comfortable life,
or to rectify past regrets, striving for a successful life by forcibly seizing missed opportunities.
“Hmm…”
I felt the need to rephrase the question.
Moving my small, eight-year-old fingers, I typed on the keyboard.
[Author: 3rd Life]
[Title: 100 Trillion Won]
[So, what would you do if you had 100 trillion won in your hands?]
– I’d probably just spend money until I die.
– Only play Rio World.
– Spend real money (TL Note: ‘Hyeonjil’ is a Korean slang term referring to spending real money in a game to acquire in-game items or currency).
– I’d buy out the world’s 8 greatest guilds and then abuse my power, lol.
– Lolololol, do you even know what the current market cap is, zzzzzz?
– ?
– 100 trillion? You’d need at least 10 quadrillion won (TL Note: ‘1 Gyeong’ or ‘1 Kyung’ is a very large Korean unit of currency, equivalent to 100,000 trillion) to barely buy a few.
– Insane.
– If you have too much money, life would probably get boring. Wouldn’t you just live a normal life instead?
“As expected…”
I murmured softly to myself.
‘Everyone’s thoughts are all the same, after all.’
In truth, there was no need to speak softly.
For I was the only one living in this small house.
Perhaps because it was daytime, it wasn’t eerie,
but the house felt utterly empty.
The furniture, untouched for so long that it was thickly coated in dust like exhibits in a museum, imparted a sense of profound emptiness.
A laptop and a computer sat closest to the bed.
Were it not for the presence of a high-end chair, one might have mistaken the place for an abandoned house.
One might expect such a house to be quiet enough to hear no sounds at all,
yet, surprisingly, a house lived in alone was not silent.
On the contrary, it was rather noisy.
For…
[No! Everyone! Did you see today’s Tower Rankings? It’s insane, the 61st floor has finally been cleared!]
The sheer volume emanating from the white screen was considerable.
Modern civilization, indeed.
It was an era where one could live feeling the exhilarating rush of dopamine.
****
What does one become after living three lives?
I was supremely confident in my ability to answer that question.
Honestly, after living three lives, one naturally desires to do the things they couldn’t before.
As one might infer from someone repeatedly living lives others only experience once,
my own life had been far from ordinary.
First, let me make it clear: this ‘third life’ is not a regression.
It simply means I have lived three distinct lives.
I, for one,
was a poor back-alley Hunter in my first life.
In my second life, I was a Hero battling the Demon King in another world.
Having lived such lives, there was something I came to yearn for.
A comfortable, safe, and good life.
In essence, an ordinary life.
I, too, desired such a life.
Perhaps that’s why I found myself embarking on a third life.
While it was true I wished to live a life I hadn’t experienced before,
I hadn’t exactly wished to live *more* lives.
At this point, I had no idea how many more lives I would yet live.
During my second life, I had thought it was a sweet deal (TL Note: ‘Gaekkool’ is Korean slang meaning ‘a sweet deal’ or ‘very easy/beneficial’).
Yet, by the third time around, a vague fear began to creep in—a fear that this cycle of reincarnation might never cease, merely repeating itself endlessly.
Thus, I established a rule for this current life.
Unlike my previous existences,
I resolved to live as contentedly as possible.
In that sense,
it might seem a bit sudden, but the power of the internet’s collective intelligence truly is remarkable.
Why, you ask?
Because it roughly aligned with what I was aiming for.
I wanted to live an ordinary life.
Because I hadn’t been able to before.
And I wanted to live entertainingly.
Because I hadn’t been able to before.
I was searching for what people commonly call ‘dopamine’.
So, where does one find dopamine?
One finds it in hobbies.
[Did everyone see the league this time?!]
I subtly shifted my gaze to the monitor.
I closed the internet window where I had just posted.
On the monitor, a streamer, solely responsible for all the noise in the house, came into view.
Their name was Yura.
They streamed a game called Rio World.
They were a game streamer whose primary content revolved around a globally popular game currently sweeping the world.
[Alright! Since the 61st floor of the Tower has been cleared, I’m doing a ranked match today too!]
— ? What does a ranked match have to do with the Tower?
— Oh, Yura just wants to play, lolololol. Let them be.
— Not climbing the Tower? Abandoning the Tower climb? Are they really just going to abandon it like this?
Anyway, that was my current hobby.
— [Anonymous] sponsored 100,000 won!
[500,000 won for climbing 10 floors]
Manipulating streamers (TL Note: ‘Jwiheun’ is Korean slang for subtly manipulating or controlling streamers/content creators, often through donations or comments)… *ahem*.
[500,000 won?!]
No.
It was giving unsolicited advice (TL Note: ‘Hunsu dugi’ refers to giving unsolicited advice, often in games, sometimes with a condescending tone).
[C-cough… Everyone, today we’re climbing the Tower! Is everyone ready to ascend?!]
On the monitor, Yura, invigorated as if money had replaced the blood in their veins, shouted.
The chat window was plastered with messages like ‘Yura’s such a money-grubber (TL Note: ‘Donmisae’ is Korean slang for someone who is overly obsessed with money, often used humorously or critically), as expected,’ and ‘Money-grubbing Yura,’ but Yura paid no mind, lightly pressing the Tower Climb button.
Then,
=Ding!=
the game began with a chime.
Rio World, the shortened name for League of World, the game Yura was currently playing, had three distinct modes.
There was the Ranked Match, a player-versus-player mode, which Yura had initially intended to play.
The Exploration Mode, where players delved into the world of League of World.
And then,
the Ascent Mode, which involved climbing the Tower.
Yura first entered the first floor.
The first floor was generally uneventful.
It could easily be skipped through quickly.
It was merely a floor populated by slime monsters.
Even a new level 1 character could defeat a slime in just two or three hits.
Furthermore, Yura’s character was level 21.
And a mage at that.
Since fire magic was the weakness of liquid slimes, a single cast should have been more than enough to clear the first floor with ease.
Yet, the Yura on the monitor was using fire magic no less than twice.
Fundamentally, Tower Ascent was a time attack.
Despite this, Yura was committing the egregious act of casting Fireball, a skill with a cooldown, twice.
[Ugh! These bastards! Why are there so many again!]
— Lolololololol.
— It’s common knowledge (TL Note: ‘Gung-rul’ is Korean slang meaning ‘unwritten rule’ or ‘common knowledge’) that the first floor always has a lot of monsters.
— How did they even reach level 21?
— Ah, Yura, Yura, it seems breaking records is still a long way off for them this time…
[Argh! I don’t care! Take this! Fireball!]
— Yura, Yura… why do you shout out the skill name…?
— Just watching them makes me cringe…
— Our Yura even shouts out their status window!
[There’s no rule saying you can’t shout out skill names just because it’s a game!]
Yura, seemingly incensed by the chat, shrieked in protest.
By this point, everything was ready.
The fact that they were watching the chat while playing meant they could also see donations.
It was time to proceed.
Without delay, I sent a donation.
— [Anonymous] sponsored 1,000 won!
[Why are you using magic there? You could just take the hits and proceed. Even if a mage is low on health (TL Note: ‘Ttalpi’ is Korean gaming slang for ‘low HP’ or ‘critically wounded’), at ‘level 21,’ they wouldn’t die from slime attacks if they just drank potions. You should save your mana for when the Slime Queen appears later, then you can just sweep them all away with one Fireball, Yura, Yura…]
In my first life, I had climbed towers.
I had truly lived with grim determination.
Unlike the cheap towers in this game, those had been truly vicious.
Back then, ascending those towers to their very peak had been my life’s sole objective.
Perhaps that’s why.
Whenever I saw others climbing towers, my mouth would itch with the urge to give advice.
[Argh! Stop giving me unsolicited advice!]
Perhaps that was why I had become an ‘advice bug’ (TL Note: ‘Hunsuchung’ is a derogatory Korean slang term for someone who constantly gives unsolicited and often annoying advice).
These days, this was my small pleasure in life.
