| In an unknown time after Minjeong's supposed disappearance.

Everything was black and loud alarms were ringing. It was an unstoppable chaos. It was so loud that Minjeong felt like pulling her hair off. However, she couldn't feel her body and merely felt as if she was floating in a dark empty space.

*RING RING RING RING*

She wanted it to end, but that just seemed impossible. She only had her consciousness, nothing else. As the ringing continued, its volume became louder and louder to the point Minjeong thought she had ended up in hell.

Everything. Despite the chaos, she remembered everything. At one moment, she was sitting next to her beloved at a park and had one last pleasurable time with her. It was a farewell, at least, that's what she thought.

She expected herself to simply disappear once the countdown finished, though that didn't happen. Never would she have anticipated this moment, to have the feeling of floating in this space and getting tortured with these noises.

*̸D̷I̵N̶G̵*̴

Upon seeing a window pop up, Minjeong suddenly heard voices echoing within the chaos. It added to the volume, and she felt like screaming her lungs out.

"Damn it. Out of all possibilities, this just had to happen. I was doing something. This is so annoying."

"After a century, someone discovered an error."

"I'm sleepy..."

"Kim Minjeong? Oh, oh, oh! My favorite player is here!"

"Can you all shut the hell up?"

Just then, the ringing began to disappear and Minjeong gradually sensed her body. It still felt as if she was floating in a dark space until her feet suddenly touched the ground in a blink of an eye.

She came to her senses as her eyelids instantly opened and were met by a large square white glowing platform where she stood. She looked around the dark space and immediately noticed the five silver thrones before her eyes.

There were five people sitting on the thrones and four of them were wearing plain white masks to hide their identities. The one who wasn't wearing one was none other than Aeri, and she was seated on the second throne to the left.

When Aeri met Minjeong's eyes, she looked relieved and worried at the same time. She wanted to hug the latter, but that wasn't a very good time as she had to fulfill her duties as one of the administrators.

Knowing that Aeri was present, could it be that the other two main Goddesses are here? Minjeong looked at the four masked administrators one by one and realized there was only one man within the group.

They're the five administrators? Minjeong wondered what was her purpose to be meeting them here when she wasn't supposed to exist anymore. An error? What? All of it was confusing and she couldn't help but take a deep breath and exhale.

"You're confused, aren't you?"

One of the admins spoke, and she was seated to the very left next to Aeri. She introduced herself as "Haneul", the one who managed and kept all of the players' records within the system. She was in charge of looking for potential players, expanding, and balancing the system.

"You're asking her that? Of course, the girl's confused..."

Another spoke, and it was the person to the very right. He was the only man within the group and even if his face was concealed, Minjeong still discerned how sleepy and tired he was.

He introduced himself as "Wonshik", the one who keeps track of the players' behaviors whether they were following or going against the rules. No wonder his skin looked so pale and dead.

"I believe I was the first one to discover about you." Wonshik greeted sleepily with a subtle bow, "When you were starting out, you didn't know about the rules, right? You asked about the system and it automatically inflicted you a lot of pain."

Minjeong only looked at him in silence. She was still perplexed by the whole situation, and Wonshik noticed as he didn't press about the matter further and chuckled at her expression.

"Hellooo~ I'm Heeyoung, the Goddess of Affinity. I'm a big fan of your pair with Yu Jimin! Hehehe, you don't know how much I wanted to meet you in person!"

The girl to Wonshik's left introduced which so much enthusiasm that Minjeong could see her aura glowing despite the large distance between them. Then there was the last person in the middle, and she was the smallest among the five.

She looked like a middle schooler, and because of her pigtails, she looked much younger. She was dangling her feet, appearing to be interested in Minjeong as she's been staring at her from the very start before introducing herself in a calm tone.

"Youngil... I'm the Goddess who manages the dungeon category and is the marionette of the creator. I will be in charge of reporting the events here to the creator as well as his messages."

Marionette...? A puppet?

Minjeong was curious and as if Youngil read her mind, she gave the latter a nod. Promptly, she turned to look at Aeri, who's been quiet since Minjeong's arrival, waiting for her to introduce herself.

Aeri glanced at her, "What? She already knows me and you guys are aware of that." she looked a bit annoyed. "Please consider my feelings, I'm very good friends with her."

"Hmm, because you're very good friends with her... Could it be...?" Haneul didn't continue her words though her tone had a hint of tease.

Aeri sighed, "Even if we're friends, my decision wouldn't be biased, Haneul. Don't try to get on my nerves."

Haneul laughed, "Very well."

"Enough chatting, you two." Youngil stopped the two with a single clap before focusing on the confused girl in front of them, "We will begin the judgment."

She declared as five windows for each of the admins appeared before their eyes.

"Wonshik, what error occurred?"

"Let's see..." Wonshik began scrolling down on this endless text of windows, "Kim Minjeong. She was cursed with a status effect called Debut or Die. Her fate was decided and she was going to vanish from this world. However, the system has detected something within her outbreak countdown and got confused." he explained tiredly.

"Huh, our artificial intelligence is the most powerful... and it still got confused that it needed our judgment?" Heeyoung questioned and slightly tilted her head, "Haha! That has never happened before. That's amazing!"

Wonshik scratched his ears, "Noisy... You're being too noisy, Heeyoung." he yawned.

"Oh! Sorry!"

"Anyway." Wonshik cleared his throat, "Please look at this footage of what the system caught regarding Minjeong's outbreak."

He snapped his fingers as a huge window dinged and appeared in front of them. No one spoke as a video immediately started playing and Minjeong merely stood in place like a rock statue upon seeing Idol Factory's staff onscreen.

~~~

With a busy but joyous atmosphere, the office was flooded with workers inside UNet's main building. It appeared as if they were editing various footage from Idol Factory and on the other side of the spacious room, there was a long table full of workers.

There was a projector in front of them and a whiteboard. They were having a meeting, discussing their next move for the last episode. All of the judges in the show were also present, and they were attentively listening to the producer.

"Last time, we let the audience and fans online vote for their favorite and Jieun won."

He gestured at Jieun who gave him a puzzled look.

"Yeah, what was that about anyway?"

Jieun asked and the producer couldn't contain himself and smiled. He pressed the remote on his hand to change the current slide on the projector, which showed all of the eliminated contestants' profiles and the highlighted words...