They say that no one knows the creator of Necropolis, nor can they ever find out.
The only clue is that he supposedly uses the userna Death_Lord98 within Necropolis, but even this is debated among its own users.
Now, the person presud to be this mysterious administrator has appeared before .
ssage from Deadman_working: Who am I? That doesn’t matter. What matters is that, by chance, you caught my eye. Your userna looked familiar to .
Was this magic?
The creator of Necropolis was said to possess skills so formidable that even lon Musk, once hailed as a genius entrepreneur, would have felt despair in comparison.
Just now, for a brief mont, he made my screen go black.
SKELTON: (shocked) My screen just turned black?! How did you do that?!
I asked.
What kind of trick had he used?
Deadman responded with a casual indifference.
ssage from Deadman_working: Why did your screen go black? Simple. I embedded a small code into the ssage. It’s sothing like ASCII commands—just a line of code that changes the screen’s color.
ssage from Deadman_working: Like this.
The screen turned blue.
ssage from Deadman_working: How about this?
Now it was green.
ssage from Deadman_working: I don’t like this color.
Then, it changed to purple.
ssage from Deadman_working: This board was sloppily made from the start. Changing a color is nothing.
And then, it returned to normal.
ssage from Deadman_working: Recently, soone’s been posting a lot in Necropolis, hinting that they are TwelveSquare.
So now we were getting to the point.
I adjusted my posture and waited for his next ssage.
ssage from Deadman_working: Many people have impersonated TwelveSquare before, but only two have been consistently claiming to be him. And one of them...
ssage from Deadman_working: Their signal was picked up from sowhere unusual.
ssage from Deadman_working: That’s right. From Korea.
ssage from Deadman_working: The legendary broadcasts of TwelveSquare were made from within Korean territory.
ssage from Deadman_working: That’s why I contacted you.
So that was it.
I had assud so all-knowing hacker had accessed all of Viva! Apocalypse!’s records and decided to reach out to .
But in reality, there was a reason behind it.
It wasn’t as if so omniscient god had peered into my life and chosen to talk to .
Still, this guy knew that the transmission from and Ballantine to Necropolis had originated from Korea.
Even if he wasn’t the actual creator of Necropolis, he certainly had administrator-level access.
It made sense.
In Necropolis, when a post is made from a region outside of the U.S. or Europe, it appears like this:
Dead73609(???): I have information about TwelveSquare. If any administrator sees this, I request contact.
Whereas for users in the U.S. or Europe, it looks like this:
Dead10851(MD): There’s plenty of trash around, but is there a way to burn it without worrying about toxic fus?
Dead59231(GER): Like last year, should we just burn people instead?
Dead5413(FRC): Mutations stole all my harvested crops.
Dead43219(IN): A guy in my area died yesterday using homade bullets. His gun exploded.
...
...
As you can see, posts from Arica and Europe display regional markers, while others do not.
And that’s not sothing an individual user can manipulate.
Necropolis operates on the bare minimum of resources—besides posting, no other functions are supported.
Users can’t send private ssages or access each other’s information.
Only an administrator could interpret the aning of the ??? location marker.
Of course, this alone wasn’t enough to confirm that Deadman_working was an administrator.
But I wasn’t looking for an administrator.
I wanted to find the creator of Necropolis.
Because I had a request to make.
SKELTON: I am TwelveSquare.
I told the truth.
But the truth doesn’t always sound convincing.
And sure enough—
ssage from Deadman_working: Proof?
He imdiately questioned .
A reasonable doubt.
The person who broadcasted as TwelveSquare and my current self had different accounts, different usernas, different location data.
And in my current state, it was impossible for to log into that old account.
The satellite equipnt was still abandoned in a remote outpost on Hallasan, in a place where no one would ever go.
There was only one thing I could do.
SKELTON: What would it take for you to believe ?
I had to prove myself.
That wouldn’t be easy.
ssage from Deadman_working: I already know the account information for TwelveSquare. Both from an account level and the satellite terminal’s serial number, you and TwelveSquare are completely different people.
As expected.
SKELTON: Is there any way around this?
I asked again.
Silence.
No response.
“······.”
I kept waiting.
Right now, the only person we could realistically consult about network and communication issues was the creator of Necropolis.
The idea of building a second PaleNet was a romantic notion, but the physical limitations were overwhelming.
For a group of our size, it was simply impossible.
At least for now.
Unless we had soone like King on our side.
Then, after a long stretch of waiting, a new ssage arrived.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
ssage from Deadman_working: But I do believe you genuinely want to help people. And, honestly, I wouldn’t mind if more people started using Necropolis.
“!!”
As soon as I read that, I clenched my fists without realizing it.
ssage from Deadman_working: But there’s a condition.
SKELTON: A condition?
ssage from Deadman_working: I’ve been watching your Korean ssage board.
ssage from Deadman_working: You know that guy, mmmmmmmmm?
SKELTON: Yeah, I know him.
ssage from Deadman_working: Are you friends? Close acquaintances?
SKELTON: Not at all. Just rivals.
ssage from Deadman_working: Good.
What was this suddenly about M9?
Before I could ask, Deadman continued.
ssage from Deadman_working: Kill him.
“?”
I tilted my head.
It had been a while since I last encountered sothing so incomprehensible.
The ssage he sent was so far removed from my usual train of thought that I felt like I was reading sothing written in an entirely different language.
ssage from Deadman_working: Kill him, then verify it using his account. If TwelveSquare could take down dozens of soldiers and monsters alone, this should be an easy task.
I imdiately replied.
SKELTON: You’re joking, right?
A thought crossed my mind.
This man, Deadman_working—
Maybe he was far more broken than I had imagined.
ssage from Deadman_working: I don’t joke. I buried my sense of humor alongside my comrades long ago.
SKELTON: Are you even really connected to Necropolis?
ssage from Deadman_working: If I am, will you kill mmmmmmmmm for ?
“That’s not the point.”
I typed the sa words into the chat.
And then I asked.
SKELTON: What’s your real motive? Why are you saying this?
The feeling I got from him...
It reminded of Defender.
That sa scent—
Sothing I could neither understand nor ever hope to.
ssage from Deadman_working: Humanity is already dood.
ssage from Deadman_working: No one can survive. No matter what hope you hold onto, no matter what values you believe in, this truth will never change.
ssage from Deadman_working: Humanity cannot win against the Rifts. The Rifts don’t exist to fight humans—they exist to compete with Earth itself. And the idea that humans, re parasites on this planet, could represent Earth and fight back?
ssage from Deadman_working: Now that...
ssage from Deadman_working: That’s the real cody.
“······.”
Deeply unpleasant as it was, Deadman Working and I shared similar thoughts.
I had no intention of denying it.
My view on humanity’s future wasn’t all that different from his.
Humanity would lose.
We couldn’t win this fight.
Even now, beings like Kang Han-min and Na Hye-in—practically gods among n—were struggling, unable to close a single minor Rift on Jeju Island.
ssage from Deadman_working: In the end, we all walk the sa path toward destruction. Does it really matter who dies first, who lives longer, or who maintains their morality? We don’t look at dinosaur fossils in a museum and discuss the virtue of individual specins, do we?
“······.”
I had finally found it.
The difference between us.
They say that while languages may differ, human thoughts are ultimately the sa.
But language is just a tool to express thought.
With the wisdom of lon Musk behind , I sent my thoughts to this distant, unknown acquaintance.
SKELTON: I don’t think that’s true.
ssage from Deadman_working: Why?
He asked in return.
I let out a short sigh and typed.
SKELTON: Even if I am going to die, I will die as a human being.
Without hesitation.
ssage from Deadman_working: The definition of "human" varies from person to person.
SKELTON: I trust you have enough literacy to understand my point. Besides, I have no interest in discussing philosophy with soone I barely know.
SKELTON: What I need is a way to share what we know with as many people as possible. Whether that’s Necropolis, or your mother’s police station, I don’t really care.
That was my stance.
My firm, unwavering will.
A brief silence stretched across the monitor, the network cables, the satellites.
Ding—
A notification popped up.
But it wasn’t from Deadman.
ssage from COOKIEMONSTER18: Skelton~
It was from Rebecca. Or Sue.
Soone I knew. Soone I cherished.
By so miracle, in the exact mont I needed it most, their ssage arrived.
And despite its sudden appearance, it overwheld with emotion.
Taptaptap—
SKELTON: (Skelton shocked) What’s with the sudden ssage?!!!!
It made react with exaggerated excitent, sothing completely unlike .
This was one of the small miracles I had learned about after the war.
Even if we were all dood, even if we could never escape that fate—was there really a need to shatter these connections with our own hands?
Ignoring Deadman, I focused on waiting for Rebecca and her daughter’s response, staring at my monitor.
Soon, another ssage arrived.
ssage from Deadman_working: I do agree with the idea of keeping at least one person alive.
I tilted my head.
SKELTON: Suddenly?
ssage from Deadman_working: It’s not for altruistic reasons like yours, Skelton.
SKELTON: (Skelton confused)
ssage from Deadman_working: Necropolis is the city of the dead. The more echoes that reverberate forever within the city of the dead, the better. That’s what I want as its builder.
ssage from Deadman_working: Can you secure a location with at least the broadcasting capacity of a small regional station for 72 hours?
The conversation advanced abruptly.
And I hadn’t done anything.
I hadn’t persuaded him. I hadn’t even presented a logical argunt.
Yet, out of nowhere, he had suddenly agreed.
SKELTON: I can try, but why the sudden change of heart?
ssage from Deadman_working: You’re mistaken. I never changed my mind. Didn’t I already tell you? I welco more users in Necropolis.
I scrolled up.
He had, indeed, said that.
ssage from Deadman_working: If there’s soone willing to act as an agent in the Necropolis wasteland of East Asia, I’m willing to work with them. As I said before, the more voices echoing in the city of the dead, the better.
“······.”
He was still speaking in a way I couldn’t fully understand.
But he had reached out first.
He had knowledge and resources that I didn’t.
SKELTON: So if I secure the broadcasting equipnt you ntioned, Necropolis will be usable in Korea?
There was no reason to refuse.
If we judged every deal based on morality, few transactions in this world would ever be made.
ssage from Deadman_working: As long as you et my requirents. The process involves connecting one transmission stream to another.
SKELTON: That’s all? You’re not going to demand any unnecessary sacrifices?
ssage from Deadman_working: Why would I?
SKELTON: Then why did you bring up M9 earlier?
ssage from Deadman_working: Because I don’t like people like him giving others hope.
SKELTON: ?
ssage from Deadman_working: It’s been proven in multiple regions—false hope only makes people live longer.
SKELTON: And you don’t want people to live longer?
ssage from Deadman_working: That’s not it. It’s just...
SKELTON: ?
ssage from Deadman_working: I want to be the last human left, as quickly as possible.
“······.”
As much as I hated to admit it, we shared a similar dream.
Deadman Working continued speaking.
ssage from Deadman_working: Imagine it, Skelton. The day when every last human is gone, when mankind is extinct.
ssage from Deadman_working: Whether it takes ten million years or hundreds of millions, eventually, sothing like us will erge again. Maybe our distant relatives. Maybe visitors from another world.
ssage from Deadman_working: And when ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) that ti cos, they will hear it. The highly digitized ssage, carried by Earth’s magnetic field for eons.
ssage from Deadman_working: That is Necropolis.
ssage from Deadman_working: In the city of the dead, there is no good or evil. No order to the dead. None of it matters.
ssage from Deadman_working: What do you think, Skelton?
Despite our similarities, we could never mix.
All I could sense in his words was a denial of humanity, a delusion bordering on self-indulgent nihilism.
Ding—
[New ssage received.]
Once upon a ti, I had similar thoughts.
That’s how I knew.
Deadman Working was, without a doubt, a very lonely person.
ssage from COOKIEMONSTER18: I want sothing juicy.
A faint smile crept onto my lips.
And I responded.
SKELTON: (Skelton bewildered) ?
Reviews
All reviews (0)