Obviously, the new continent that the announcement spoke of was Atlantis, where Merlin presently was. Merlin checked the time by stroking his left eye. A clock appeared in his vision, displaying both real time and in-game time. The current time in the real world was six-o-clock in the evening. In other words, he had one hour in real-time, or twelve hours in DIO, before the start of the event.

“The announcement was released… this morning. They sure rushed this one out.” commented Merlin.

“Still, those who are logged into the game will feel as though a few days of advance notice was given. Also, since there are so many users, I’m sure the developers weren’t concerned about gathering enough participants.” said Quiet Heaven.

“Come to think of it, the current number of users exceeds four-hundred million, and the game hasn’t even hit its peak. The user base numbers are growing larger with every passing moment.”

Indeed, the number of users playing DIO was huge. Considering that the population of Earth was slightly less than eight billion and that many countries didn’t have access to the technology, a user base of four-hundred million was mind-blowing. Just a few weeks prior, the user base was two-hundred million. In roughly two weeks, DIO was able to double its user base through the expansion of real-world infrastructure and direct contracting with several countries.

“If things keep going like this, they’ll hit a billion users in no time. Of course, there’ll always be some countries that won’t allow the game to enter their markets, but still, about one in five people on Earth will be a DIO user…”

In Korea, with its extensive internet infrastructure, and strong gaming culture, more...