Healer Wanted
“Luna Moon might have been a player?”
Shut-in Honey repeated the words as if he couldn't make sense of them.
“Luna Moon — that's your mom, right? The grave NPC.”
“That's right.”
“How the hell would an NPC be a player?”
“I'm not certain either. But everyone, including the Commander, says I look like Luna Moon. Which means Luna Moon was East Asian, just like us. On top of that, she was apparently called the ‘Hero of the Subjugation Campaign.’”
“Hero of the Subjugation Campaign?”
Something seemed to click. Shut-in Honey's expression turned strange.
“That's… a player title.”
“Exactly. In the game, no NPC was ever called the Hero of the Subjugation Campaign — only players.”
“Okay, but that alone doesn't—”
“More importantly, she supposedly had the same ability as us.”
“The same ability?”
“Healing.”
“What?!”
The moment healing came into it, both of their faces went grave. Taejeong spoke first.
“If Luna Moon truly possessed a healing ability, that is… strange. Who told you she could heal?”
“The Commander. I don't know if she was the same eat-to-heal type as us, but she definitely had a healing ability.”
“The Commander has no reason to lie to you about something like that, so it's probably true.”
“No, but you know! We've all run the bastard-son route, right?”
This guy… didn't he start out calling me a Dopamine Addict strategy cultist or something?
“I've cleared the Cola Area as the bastard son — as Luna Moon's kid — more times than I can count!”
So not just once or twice, either.
“Luna Moon having a healing ability? I've never heard that! If she'd had a power like that, it would've shown up in the game script for sure!”
“That's exactly why I brought up the idea that Luna Moon was a player.”
Shut-in Honey's argument was sound. If Luna Moon had possessed that kind of ability, it would have appeared in the strategy scripts, and players like us would have known about it. But that only held true if this world was an exact match for the game Apocalypse: Safe Zone.
“There seem to be stories in this world that we don't know. Our knowledge probably isn't everything.”
“……”
Shut-in Honey thought for a moment, then asked,
“Then… does that mean all the strategies we know are useless? If this is different from the game…”
“No. Players have died failing strategies, so the strategies still work. There are differences from the game, but nothing big enough to break the strats.”
“So maybe Luna Moon just had an ability in this version that she didn't have in the game?”
“Wouldn't that be even weirder? Everything else matches the game, so why is only the information about Luna Moon different? If she really was a player, this kind of possession might not be the first time.”
“…My head hurts. Can't we just stop the apocalypse and call it a day?”
I wish.
But as long as the secret of the apocalypse was tied to Luna's Ring, we couldn't afford to leave Luna Moon as a blank spot.
Still, there was nothing we could do about it right this second…
“Just keep it in mind for now. My priority at the moment is getting into the Subjugation Campaign event.”
“Ah, the first subjugation. We've gotta go. Survive it and you get a title just for that.”
“Good. I've got a proposal related to that.”
“A proposal?”
“Not something to discuss here. After the meal, Taejeong, bring Assa to my room. I'll let the servants know ahead of time.”
“Got it.”
“Understood!”
Lingering as a trio too long would draw attention, so we were about to split up when Shut-in Honey caught my sleeve and whispered,
“Hey. Next time, don't throw a pork-belly party.”
Don't throw a pork-belly party?
Is it because there might be other players besides Luna Moon?
Just as we weren't the only ones possessed in our generation, there might be other players already living as existing NPCs. If those NPC-players were all Korean too, a pork-belly party alone would be enough for them to guess we were players.
It was something we absolutely needed to be careful about. I was about to feel a little impressed that Shut-in Honey had thought that far when he continued,
“I can't even taste the stuff, so it just pisses me off. Dish out some slop and be done with it.”
This bastard has a truly rotten personality.
After the pork-belly party wound down, I went back to my room to wait. Before long, Taejeong arrived with Shut-in Honey in tow.
Except…
“…Why do you look so pleased with yourself?”
Shut-in Honey seemed oddly triumphant, so I asked. He answered with a grinning face.
“I came here with my senior earlier. Soldiers aren't allowed to peel off alone, so while we were eating meat, he had to wait outside.”
“And?”
“You told me to come back after the meal, right? So I said I'd probably have to stick around longer, and he completely lost it.”
“Don't tell me you—”
“I told him the Commander's son had summoned me, so quit bitching. He shut right up. Pwahaha!”
“……”
How does he land exactly on the behavior I predicted, without a single deviation?
My condolences to every soldier who has to serve with this guy going forward.
“So what are we gathered here for?”
At Shut-in Honey's question, I pulled a cookie tin out from under my pillow.
“Cookies?”
“You didn't call us here for dessert time.”
“We're going to practice eating.”
“Practice eating?”
“Practice… eating?”
The reason was simple. We didn't eat for meals — we ate for healing. If we could absorb food faster in an emergency, we'd be that much safer, wouldn't we?
“From what I've tested, when you focus on the act of eating, both the speed and the amount absorbed change.”
Simply holding food to your mouth produced more wasted energy that dispersed without being absorbed than energy that actually went in. And when you concentrated on consuming it, the wounds healed a fraction faster as well.
I opened the tin, took out cookies, and handed one to each of them — along with a fork.
“Why give us forks? We can just use our hands.”
Shut-in Honey asked, but Taejeong — who had already experienced what I used forks for — resignedly stabbed the back of his own hand with his.
“Gyaaah!”
Shut-in Honey yelped and jumped nearly a full meter straight up.
“What the hell?! Why are you suddenly self-harming?! Are you insane?!”
“You should stab yourself too, little brother.”
“What? Why would I?!”
“You need a wound to tell whether the healing works properly or not, don't you?”
“……!”
Shut-in Honey looked back and forth between me and Taejeong, stunned.
“This isn't your first time… You two are actually crazy. Completely unhinged…”
“You'll get used to it.”
He refused, insisting it was ridiculous, until I offered to do the stabbing for him. Only then did he grit his teeth and put a wound in the back of his own hand.
For a while, the only sound was the three of us crunching cookies.
“Oh. It's true. When you focus on eating, the quality of the healing is different.”
“Ugh… Why did they have to give us a perk like this…”
“Right? It would've been nicer if they just made us immune to pain.”
“That is a genuinely sociopathic thing to say.”
I didn't care whether Shut-in Honey thought I was a sociopath — but Taejeong nodding along to the muttering stung a little.
“Also… our purpose isn't meals, it's healing. Having to press food to our mouths every time feels way too inefficient.”
“So what are you planning?”
“If we can train ourselves until just holding food in our hands is enough to heal, our odds of survival go way up. Of course, whether absorption through something other than the actual mouth is even possible is still unknown.”
“Hmm… That's definitely worth trying.”
“Right?”
“Why are you looking at me like that… Ah, shit. I have to stab myself again, don't I.”
I'm stabbing myself this time too, so try not to feel too wronged.
“Is it because you're a Dopamine Addict cultist? The way you run strategies is just like that sociopath bastard.”
Taejeong and I both ignored the remark. We each put a fresh wound in our hands with a fork, then clenched cookies in our fists and waited for the injuries to close.
“……Huh?”
Unlike Taejeong and me — who couldn't absorb so much as a scrap unless the food touched our mouths — Shut-in Honey's hand wound was healing, however slowly, just from gripping the cookie. The edge of the cookie in his fist was shrinking as if something had been nibbling at it.
“Why… does that work?”
“You're the one who told us to try it, and now you're asking why?”
Shut-in Honey scowled, then added under his breath, as if it were nothing special,
“I was always… weak. Spent more days on an IV drip than actually eating. I just thought about that feeling, and it worked.”
Ah.
So he was already used to taking in nutrients somewhere other than his mouth.
…This guy was frail in the real world, huh.
Is that why he became a shut-in game addict?
The thought made me feel a little sorry for him…
“I've decided.”
“When you say that, it makes me extremely nervous. Decided what?”
I looked at Shut-in Honey and grinned.
“From now on, you're the healer.”
Both he and Taejeong stared at me as if I'd lost my mind.
“What kind of bullshit is that? Just because I can heal myself with food in my hand doesn't mean I can heal other people. How the hell am I a healer?”
“No. You can heal other people too.”
“Okay, how?”
“When everyone gets hurt, you're the only one who can self-heal fast without the whole eating process.”
“And that somehow makes me the healer?”
Tsk. Can't even do this simple math.
“The first one back on his feet shoves food into the other guys' mouths. What else would you call that but healing?”
“…You are genuinely not right in the head. Every single idea that comes out of you is pure insanity.”
I braced myself for another long persuasion session — but to my surprise, Shut-in Honey simply nodded.
“Fine… I'll do it.”
“…For real?”
“It's not like I can snipe mid-size monsters the way you can, and I'm not built like him. If there's something I can do, I should do it.”
Oh.
Against my expectations, he might actually be growing up a little.
Feeling a touch of pride, I added one more piece of advice.
“Your control is good. You might even be able to transfer these blue particles to someone else.”
“I hope so. Even I don't want to become the lunatic who jams food into a dying person's mouth without warning.”
“Haha.”
He won't manage it by the first Subjugation Campaign, so he's a lunatic for now either way — but I decided not to say that out loud.
After we finished talking, I sent the two of them off and went back to bed. The moment I lay down, an unbelievable system message floated up in front of my eyes.
A friend request has arrived from T-balnom.
Do you accept?