Veterans and Newbies
I had plenty I wanted to ask Home Protector—plenty I wanted to tear into him over—but a public chat room full of other players was not the place for it.
More importantly, that was not what mattered right now.
The new arrivals in the chat were Shin, Dentist, Ssapasuble, IWontCryThatsCardio, and Druggy—
Plus Home Protector. Six in total.
Add me and Tibalom, who had already been in the room, and that made eight.
There were nine Safe Zones and nine meteorite items. If one player from each zone had opened the system, this chat should have held nine people.
Of course, it was still possible the last person simply had not managed to open their system yet.
But with six people flooding in all at once, that possibility looked vanishingly small.
Zones were not assigned at random—they depended on which item a player had chosen at the convenience store. Maybe there was a zone no one had picked at all.
Home Protector, thick-skinned as ever, was the first to call out to me.
That easygoing tone made it sound like he, same as Taejeongtaese, had no real complaints about being yanked into the game.
Well… in reality he had probably been exactly the unemployed shut-in his username suggested.
Ssapasuble, who used to leave comments on my guides all the time, took the transmigration just as calmly.
Great. Another one with flowers for brains.
Dropped into one of the easier zones, maybe?
That kind of panic was probably the normal reaction.
The new players all dumped their thoughts at once, and the chat window went rocketing upward in a frantic blur. Only after things finally settled did they start glancing my way, and the player with the gym-bro username carefully spoke up.
Compared to Tibalom, who had opened by declaring he would kill me, the question was almost painfully polite. So I answered straight.
I hesitated for half a second over whether to tell someone called Shin my zone—then decided honesty was safer.
There was no deep strategy behind revealing my zone.
Until the Second Apocalypse, we could not make contact with other zones. That was the unwritten rule between them.
Besides, once the Second Apocalypse began I was heading for the Unicorn Area anyway. Naming my current zone was hardly a real threat to me.
And Tibalom already knew I was in Cola. Bluffing here would only cost me the other players' trust for nothing.
On top of that, if this chat turned into a contest of who could hide the most information, that would be a problem. I wanted to face the Second Apocalypse with at least a rough picture of the other zones.
I would trade what I knew for what they knew. The fact that a public chat existed at all was as good as a system prompt telling us to share intel.
Since he had asked me first, Shin offered his zone without a fight.
That said… I had assumed the flower-brain landed in an easy zone. Love?
Just as Shut-inHoney and I had predicted, Home Protector had dropped into the Tobacco Area.
He said "I'm just a concept guy" like it was nothing.
Through all of this, the user named Dentist still had not typed a word. Reading the room? A careful type, then.
Only after I called him out did Dentist finally reply.
Someone who hadn't revealed their zone?
Ah—he meant Tibalom.
Beside the chat window, the current members were listed in order of entry. Just as I had been wary of Dentist's silence, Dentist had clearly found Tibalom's quiet suspicious.
The moment I said Tibalom was in Knife, even Shin—who had been chatting so lightly until now—seemed to jump.
I doubted Tibalom was missing these messages, but nothing came from him.
Of course Dentist would fixate on that. Tibalom looking shady was hard to avoid.
Hmm.
Was that caution, or just stubbornness?
The only zones left were Candy and Unicorn. What did he think hiding that would accomplish?
Fair enough—I was not swallowing every word from the other players either. But what I wanted was not Dentist's trust. I wanted Dentist's information.
Instead of trying to win his faith, I gently blurred the point.
Apparently the stalemate was too painful to watch, because Shin cut in.
I had not been about to gild my own name with "all-zone guide writer," but even I found Dentist's refusal to share a little surprising.
Maybe he was an anti of mine, like Shut-inHoney. Then Dentist sent an answer I did not expect.
Something was off.
I hated to say it myself, but there was no way a Safe Zone player would not know who I was.
…Ah.
No. This Dentist…
Something clicked. I asked him directly.
Ah.
I remembered.
The convenience store had not been listed on the online map, so I had sent Home Protector the address of the building next door. And that building had a dental clinic.
So the dentist from that clinic had wandered into the store and gotten transmigrated by accident?
In that instant, the same thought flashed through every veteran who had been yanked into the game.
Still, this told me where Dentist was.
The zones that had not appeared yet were Candy and Unicorn. There was no way a newbie had survived the Unicorn Area.
Smart as a dentist might be, a complete novice would not have gotten his hands on the Unicorn meteorite item in two days.
I must have hit the mark, because Dentist went quiet for a while.
Dentist did not jump to agree, but he seemed to have dropped some of his resistance to talking with us.
I did not have some grand reason for wanting to protect him.
A dentist was an important resource, full stop. Players might not need to eat, but other NPCs' teeth still rotted, did they not? He was a specialist in a narrow field, yes—but we still did not know how far a player's healing abilities went. Having a real doctor around was not a bad idea.
And he was a. New. Bie.
The Cocaine Area's meteorite item did not have a solid form, so it was no surprise Druggy did not realize he had made contact with one.
Either way, I had learned something new.
Opening the system was not limited to players who owned a meteorite item.
Just making contact with a meteorite item was enough to open it.
Which meant I might be able to open Taejeongtaese's and Shut-inHoney's systems simply by letting them touch my ring.
But……
Unless each of those zones only had a single player, it was strange that Beer and Candy each had only one person who had opened the system.
If he was not lying, Tobacco only had Home Protector. Unexpected. I would have guessed plenty of people bought cigarettes.
Ssapasuble hesitated, then added:
Ah.
Either Ssapasuble killed them, or they died to the failed-strategy penalty.
…What?
Every other player in his zone had decided to serve him?
Shin—what the hell had this guy been doing in the Love Area for two days?
Putting that aside……
Chicken and Love both had other players, yet only one person per zone had opened the system. Maybe only the player who made first contact with the meteorite could open it.
I should stop the information exchange here. They still did not have the intel I actually wanted.
Still, handing them one useful fact would raise the odds they would come to me first next time.
I shared something I had already told Tibalom.
Dentist seemed like the give-and-take type.
I wanted to ask how each of them planned to clear their zones, but that would mean admitting I was running the illegitimate-heir route myself. So I let it go.
We were cooperating for now, but they all knew the same truth I did.
Once we turned twenty, once the Second Apocalypse began, we might end up having to kill each other.
The fact that no one would say a word about their own strategies made that crystal clear.
Everyone except Dentist—who still did not know the story—was a veteran of this Safe Zone. Understanding each other's situations meant understanding exactly how dangerous those situations were.
The Second Apocalypse in the Safe Zone was only the opening act of a survival game.
Most of them were being friendly toward me. That did not mean I could let my guard down.
I was wrapping up the chat when a familiar child's voice called from the direction of the mansion.
"There you are, hyungnim!"
Ah. Taejeongtaese.
Thankfully, he still had not been thrown out.