Jaewon stood blankly for a moment, still clutching the crystal sphere.
The light was settling. Slowly. It was still licking every corner of the cabin.
Jaewon looked up at the ceiling.
There were broadly two ways for Constellations to participate in Arcana Online.
The first was indirect sponsorship. It involved sending items to specific characters, or delivering messages and revelations.
Instead of jumping in personally, they moved the board from behind the scenes. The unit cost in divine power was low. It felt like some cheap RTS game mixed with an idle mobile game.
That was how the Flame of the Red Furnace sponsored the tinkering old man of Boldur Workshop, and how the Pitch-Black Curtain and Frost of Dawn watched from the lounge, leaving the occasional comment.
And then there was the second way.
Direct possession, or manifestation.
The Constellation themselves entered the world. They made a body, walked the world, breathed and fought and died in person. It was on an entirely different level from indirect sponsorship, and the depth of what they could experience was different. Naturally, the cost was different too.
You could think of it as buying a VR device along with a full-body suit.
Jaewon looked down at the crystal sphere.
That cost, paid by a new user.
Right from the start.
They had splurged.
“……”
Ten indirect-sponsor Constellations consistently paying small amounts, versus one manifested Constellation entering the world.
The weight was different. The very unit of divine power flowing into the world was different. The divine power generated by a single manifestation easily surpassed that of dozens of indirect sponsors.
Which meant this situation was—
Jaewon’s mouth slowly opened.
“……This is huge.”
Of course, he couldn’t make it too obvious that he was favoring manifested users.
Log quietly watched him from the perch.
“This is huge, isn’t it?”
His voice trembled slightly. He noticed it himself. Still, he couldn’t help it.
One wyvern patch had touched the observing Constellations. The precious-metal cannon patch had heated up the lounge. That momentum had accumulated and accumulated until it drew in a newly manifested Constellation.
The divine power balance took shape in his mind. With just this one inflow, it would more than cover everything that had been shaved away this week by two emergency patches, reward payments, and monitoring costs.
Jaewon wrapped both hands around the crystal sphere.
“Log.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t hold back right now. Tell me I’m a genius.”
Log was silent for a moment.
“You did well.”
At that response, which was as positive as it could possibly manage, Jaewon said nothing.
He simply stared at the light inside the crystal sphere that still had not settled.
The cabin was bright.
---
Jaewon set the crystal sphere down and checked the divine power balance again.
He looked at the number, then looked at it once more.
“……Is this right?”
“It is.”
“Has it ever piled up this much since I became director?”
“No. This is the highest in history.”
Jaewon stared at the number for a moment.
Suppressing the admiration that was about to escape him, he touched the question creeping up from the other side.
‘But why? It’s so good that it’s actually suspicious.’
A newly manifested Constellation. A user who chose direct possession from the start. The fact that they chose manifestation for their first entry despite knowing the cost meant—they had a purpose. Someone who came just to look around wouldn’t buy a full VR set on the first day.
He did remember that this Constellation had marked Arcana Online as something they were interested in.
Jaewon tilted the crystal sphere and opened the account log for Pure White First Snow.
He skimmed through the community activity records.
A few comments on the Arcana Online board.
Responses to posts about wyvern sightings. Lounge comments related to the precious-metal cannon patch.
He dug further into the records before that.
Play history in other worlds.
“Hop-Hop Creature Party?”
They were games full of cute characters. Small-creature raising genres. Monster-breeding types. Worlds focused more on collection and bonding than combat.
There was nothing particularly special.
Jaewon set the crystal sphere down and muttered.
“Nothing’s really coming up. Is it just the simple whim of a Constellation who wants to try content from another game?”
Welcoming a new user was all well and good, but dabbling because of a simple change of heart was different.
Even if they were a whale, they were still only one participating user. It was difficult to put all his eggs in one basket from the very beginning.
While he was thinking, Log spoke from the perch.
“Shall we also consider the possibility of a targeted attack by a competitor?”
“……Huh?”
“They’re interested in cute things overall, and they suddenly invested a large amount of divine power through manifestation. They also seem quite attached to the name. I’m concerned that they may be trying to make us lower our guard, then stir up trouble from inside the world.”
“God-game vermin?”
“Yes.”
Jaewon’s eyes narrowed.
It wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t as if there had never been cases like that.
A Constellation from a competing world infiltrating and disrupting the internal ecosystem. Especially since this was an online game, the method of injecting a large amount of divine power all at once and upsetting the balance of the world—
“Fly over once.”
Jaewon said, picking up the crystal sphere.
“There’s a limit to what we can figure out from the crystal sphere’s own information and the community here, so I’ll confirm it while sharing your sight.”
Log spread his wings.
A moment later.
The crystal sphere’s screen shifted to Log’s field of vision. The outskirts of a human village. Beneath a hill softly covered in afternoon sunlight.
Pure white snow like frost was falling.
Jaewon looked into the crystal sphere where Log’s sight was being shared.
It was the Constellation’s manifested body. She had chosen the form of a human woman. White hair scattered in the wind. Her clothing, her posture—everything was so natural it was hard to believe she was a being who had just set foot in this world for the first time.
“I suppose the change in weather is a trait of the Constellation herself. That village’s harvest is ruined. Not that it has anything to do with me.”
“It does have something to do with me, since I’m flying there right now.”
“It has nothing to do with me.”
He responded splendidly to Log’s remark.
And before the sight of Log, who had flown over—
A wyvern, the one that had been given bread at the village entrance earlier, was sitting there.
The guard captain and the guards were shrinking back at the appearance of the extraordinary woman.
They, too, had realized that she was a being far beyond the average dragon.
Jaewon tilted the crystal sphere, looking at her from behind as he muttered.
She drew closer and closer.
“……What is she trying to do? Is she going to kill it?”
After making it lower its guard. Taking advantage of the opening when the wyvern relaxed—
Pure White First Snow reached out her hand.
Her hand touched the top of the wyvern’s head.
And then.
She stroked it.
Jaewon froze.
She stroked it. Truly. She stroked its head, and as if that wasn’t enough, she slowly leaned in—and pressed her own cheek against the wyvern’s cheek.
She rubbed.
She kept rubbing.
“……”
“……”
The cabin was quiet.
Neither Jaewon nor Log, who was watching from the sky, said anything.
Inside the crystal sphere, Pure White First Snow had her eyes closed, her face buried in the wyvern’s cheek. Her expression was barely visible. She seemed enraptured. No, she was definitely enraptured.
The wyvern was different.
—……Kkyu?
Its eyes said it had no idea what was happening. Something tremendous—something that its instincts clearly told it was an immense being—was rubbing its face against its cheek. The wyvern slightly turned its head, trying to create some distance.
Pure White First Snow’s expression collapsed.
It was despair. Only for a very brief moment. But clearly. On the face of a being who had poured divine power without restraint into manifesting in this world, despair flickered simply because the wyvern had turned its head away.
The wyvern saw that expression and flinched.
—……Kkyu.
In the end, it settled back into place.
Pure White First Snow carefully reached out again.
Jaewon slowly set the crystal sphere down.
He stared at the table for a while.
“……I don’t think she’s god-game vermin. Though it could be an advanced scheme to put the administrator at ease.”
“……Indeed.”
“She’s just.”
Jaewon chose his words for a moment.
“Let’s consider her a being who really, really likes cute things.”
Log said nothing.
Beyond the crystal sphere, Pure White First Snow began rubbing her cheek again.
The wyvern did not run away.
---
Jaewon tilted the crystal sphere again.
Pure White First Snow’s account log. He dug even deeper than before. Not just recent activity—from the very beginning.
He went back through time.
The older the records, the more posts there were. It was a game community. Jaewon knew the name too. A cute-creature raising type. Currently ranked in the top ten among Constellation rankings. It was above Arcana Online.
He skimmed the list of posts.
They were collection bragging posts. Photos of creatures she had raised. Accounts of capturing rare species. Shared growth trees. There were many comments as well. The reactions were good too. It seemed she had been a fairly well-known user in that world.
‘I feel like a stalker.’
But then.
Jaewon’s fingers slowed.
At some point, the posts began decreasing. The collection bragging posts disappeared, leaving only short comments, and even those grew increasingly sparse. There was a gap between the date of her last activity and the date she registered interest in Arcana Online.
A period with no records at all.
Jaewon stared at that gap for a while.
“Log.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me the recent patch history of that game.”
Log checked for a moment, then answered.
“There is one. Starting about two months ago, the paid-currency consumption structure was drastically overhauled. Several additional divine power consumption sections were inserted into rare-creature growth routes, and previously announced free update content was converted into paid content.”
“Blatant monetization.”
“That is correct.”
Jaewon matched the blank period with the patch date.
It fit perfectly.
“She turned it off without saying anything. Looks like the operation really got worse. Still, lying about running out of money is…”
“And her interest registration for Arcana Online came right after the wyvern patch.”
“Yeah.”
Jaewon set the crystal sphere down. “The game where she was raising cute things became a money-extraction machine. Then she saw that our wyvern had become cute. And she decided to splurge once. That’s how we can see it.”
However, his lips were still slightly dry.
“…The order of events is suspicious. The genres aren’t the same, but it’s true the pies overlap a little.”
Log said quietly.
“Through manifestation, at that.”
“Yeah. Through manifestation, just to pet it once.”
On the one hand, he wondered whether someone would really spend that much divine power to deceive them; on the other hand, she had spent so much divine power that it was suspicious.
The cabin fell quiet for a moment.
Jaewon looked up at the ceiling and opened his mouth.
“This is sweet. If she causes enough trouble later to justify a ban, we can ban her then.”
“Pardon?”
“Anyway, right now, at this moment, we did gain from it.”
“……I agree.”
“The competing work shot itself in the foot. It’s not like we did anything.”
“That is correct.”
“But we’re the ones who seized the opportunity.”
“Indeed.”
Jaewon lightly rolled the crystal sphere over his hand. The divine power balance took shape in his mind again. The highest in history. A single wyvern patch had flowed and flowed until it reached this point.
The competing work had blatantly shoved in monetization.
The user left without a word.
A cute wyvern caught her eye.
The manifestation divine power came in wholesale.
“Therefore, separate from our current gains, we must keep a close eye on that Constellation.”
“Isn’t that stalking?”
“Can you say an ant is stalking a human?”
“Don’t make me aware of my position…”