The Absolute Worst Kind of Human

After retiring from the Organization, T-balnom started a game called Apocalypse: Safe Zone on a junior colleague’s recommendation.

Even the nickname “T-balnom” had been his junior’s idea; he didn’t have the faintest idea what it actually meant.

His junior had promised a game so brutally hard to clear that he’d never get bored.

This is nothing special.

Starting his run in the lowest-level Candy Zone, T-balnom quickly grew restless during the long growth period. Being stuck as a ten-year-old kid was already infuriating enough—and no matter which dialogue options he picked, everyone fawned over him and treated him like royalty.

But the moment the Second Apocalypse began and a surprise attack from another zone wiped his entire region into a dead ending, T-balnom finally felt the spark of fun.

Pick a low-level region and you’re inevitably screwed when the survival phase hits.

He liked the lesson—that living like a spoiled flower in a land of plenty would get you killed the second survival began. So he gradually pushed into higher-level zones. By the time he’d worked through Candy, Cola, Tobacco, Beer, Chicken, and Cocaine, he’d reached one conclusion.

I need a guide. There’s no clearing this without one.

Safe Zones didn’t officially support multiplayer. Yet the survival phase felt uncannily like playing against other people—because each zone’s AI learned from previous players’ clear strategies and spun those datasets into the survival scenario.

That was where the real problem started.

The AI was scaled to a player’s clear level. Up through the earlier zones, he’d faced a mixed bag of player AIs. Around Cocaine Area, though, one specific player’s AI started dominating everything.

“You again, Dopamine Addict…!”

T-balnom got absolutely demolished by AI Dopamine Addict. At that point he had no choice but to dig deeper, so he logged into the Safe Zone community—and discovered that the other names he kept seeing, “Home Protector,” “Ssapasuble,” “TaejeongTaeseBeyonce,” were all derivative guide-runners of Dopamine Addict’s routes.

Is Dopamine Addict’s guide really that good?

A few community posts claimed overseas players were even ripping and reposting the Dopamine Addict guides. But Safe Zone was a high-freedom game. Blindly copying another player’s route should have killed the fun of playing.

Thinking that, T-balnom opened Dopamine Addict’s Cola Area clear guide—and recoiled in horror.

What the hell is this? There was a grave in the Slums? Why would you even dig up a grave? And this—max out their goodwill, then poison the NPC? Is this guy sane?

By the time he came back to himself, he was already hunting down Dopamine Addict’s other guides. Along the way he learned something else: a lot of people said Dopamine Addict’s strategies were the kind only Dopamine Addict himself could pull off. The high view counts weren’t because the guides were good—they were because they were unethical, immoral, and pure shock value.

I think I know what strategy to use going forward.

All T-balnom had to do was counter-strat Dopamine Addict’s own guides. Every single successful clear of Love Area and Unicorn Area so far had been players copy-pasting Dopamine Addict’s routes anyway. Using those same guides in reverse, T-balnom barely scraped through Cocaine Area.

There’s a Dopamine Addict guide for Cocaine Area too… but I’d rather die than follow that bastard’s route.

Then a new guide dropped from Dopamine Addict.

“……!”

The second he saw the post, T-balnom shot up out of his chair.

Knife was… a hidden zone?

It hadn’t been an unselectable region after all?

No—can you even survive a zone ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠full of nothing but homicidal maniacs as a ten-year-old start?

A storm of thoughts hit him, but T-balnom hastily typed a comment first.

“…….”

He’d thought it before, and he thought it again: this Dopamine Addict bastard was genuinely the most punchable person alive. Then he saw the reply under that comment and smiled.

That feels good.

But Dopamine Addict kept replying in that same insufferable tone.

T-balnom fully agreed with BedroomHoney, but if he got blocked and lost access to the Knife guide, he was screwed—so he kept his mouth shut.

I have to open the hidden zone before anyone else.

Right now, the only player who’d cleared Knife was Dopamine Addict. If T-balnom became the second…

Then AI T-balnom would get matched into Dopamine Addict’s Knife Zone run.

Driven by the single-minded goal of showing up on Dopamine Addict’s AI list and nothing else, T-balnom skipped meals and pulled all-nighters clearing Love Area and Unicorn Area. He threw every scrap of pride in the trash and followed Dopamine Addict’s guides to the letter. His head already knew it was the fastest path.

After several trial-and-error runs, he finally unlocked the hidden zone. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠He logged into the community to announce he’d been the second to open Knife Zone—and an unexpected piece of news was waiting for him.

“The heavy users… have gone missing?”

Ever since Dopamine Addict had dropped the address of the Safe Zone collaboration convenience store into the community, the heavy users—Dopamine Addict included—had vanished like smoke. An absurd story. But when T-balnom checked community activity and game login records and found zero signs of life from any of them, he decided he ought to visit that store himself.

Not every heavy user disappeared. But every heavy user who posted that they were going to check out the convenience store did.

Their last destination was that store. Meaning something was there.

Dopamine Addict was weirdly obsessed with broadcasting his guides. Maybe he was farming recognition to lure people in.

Dopamine Addict was probably just an attention whore. But T-balnom had lived a life that taught him to smell conspiracy, so the thought came naturally. When he tracked down the address and arrived at the store, someone else was already there.

“…You look familiar. Aren’t you a former national athlete?”

“Ahaha, I’ve been retired for ages. You’re here because of Safe Zone too, right? My in-game nick’s TaejeongTaeseBeyonce. What’s yours?”

One of Dopamine Addict’s fanatics.

A retired national athlete hanging around a game collab convenience store was already suspicious—and he was a Dopamine Addict devotee on top of it? T-balnom’s guard shot up. Pretending to browse the shelves, he took a step back from TaejeongTaeseBeyonce before answering.

“I’m T-balnom.”

“I think I’ve seen you around the community. Whoa, they’ve got bottled cola here?”

While TaejeongTaeseBeyonce was distracted picking things out, T-balnom grabbed a knife off the display.

“Huh? You’re buying a knife?”

He’d picked it up just in case something went wrong. Keeping his voice as casual as he could manage, he answered the voice from behind him.

“It’s the symbol of the hidden zone. Looks cool, doesn’t it? The Knife guide just dropped, so I figured I’d start clearing it.”

“You’re reading Big Bro Dopamine Addict’s guide!”

Sensing that TaejeongTaeseBeyonce was about to dump a whole monologue about Dopamine Addict on him, T-balnom quickly moved toward the register to escape. At the counter, though, he unexpectedly got into an argument with the clerk.

“Are you serious? You’re really picking the knife? Think it over again. Think real carefully.”

What’s this clerk’s problem?

The clerk looked strangely familiar, the same way TaejeongTaeseBeyonce had—and he was desperately trying to stop T-balnom from buying the knife. That only made T-balnom more suspicious, which made him decide he absolutely had to buy it.

“Just ring me up.”

“…You’re the first customer to pick the knife, so it’s free. Congratulations.”

He’s not charging me? Wait—this knife didn’t even have a price tag. It wasn’t packaged either…?

Everything about it felt deeply wrong, but he’d gotten the knife. For now he planned to walk out like any ordinary customer and watch the store from outside. Then he caught the clerk muttering under his breath with dead fish eyes.

“Idiot…….”

What ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a rude little shit.

Clicking his tongue inwardly, T-balnom stepped outside the convenience store—and in that same instant, he was possessed into Apocalypse: Safe Zone.

Specifically, into Knife Zone.

In the body of a ten-year-old child.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He didn’t even know how he managed to run. The second he woke up in a ten-year-old’s body, the shock ripped a string of curses out of him—which brought a pack of psychopathic killers swarming in. They caught him and tortured him until he blacked out.

Luckily or unluckily, they were pleasure killers at heart, and they had no interest in ending a kid they’d just found that easily. Thanks to that, T-balnom survived a full day without dying. Right before his mind completely shattered, he managed to claw Dopamine Addict’s Knife guide up out of his memory.

First he played crazy, put them off their guard, and escaped. Next he moved to get his hands on the Meteorite Knife. The man who held it was the zone’s de facto boss—a lunatic who preferred the meat of children. Using that habit, and the wrecked state of his own tortured body, T-balnom disguised himself as a corpse, slipped in close, jammed a fork into the cannibal freak’s neck while he was about to eat, and seized the Meteorite Knife.

He stabbed everyone present to death, fled in a blind panic, and stuffed himself into a crevice too narrow for any of them to follow. Then, from the terror of this incomprehensible possession, from the injustice of it, from sheer physical and mental exhaustion, the tears ran freely down his face.

Just kill yourself.

There was no surviving a place like this in a body like this. If he died, he might go back to his original world. The moment he was about to choose escape through suicide—

—the system opened.

Dopamine… Addict?

The moment he saw that system message, something started growing inside T-balnom. It was a hunger for revenge—and a will to survive.

He would live. And he would kill that bastard.

Whether Dopamine Addict was actually behind any of this was impossible to know. To a T-balnom who was no longer fully sane, it didn’t matter. What he needed right now was a reason to stay alive.

“…But even that’s over now.”

Having a weapon that could kill anyone with a single stab didn’t mean anything when you got dogpiled. Mortally wounded, T-balnom had barely managed to crawl back ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into his hideout—but he knew full well he was about to bleed out.

Dopamine Addict’s guide claimed you could heal wounds by eating food. Fuck that! This was a cannibal zone by default. There was no such thing as clean food. Even if he wanted to hunt monsters, the stretch of ground between here and the zone border was a truckload of murderous maniacs.

So T-balnom had eaten the side ingredients the cannibal freak had prepped for his meal and just barely closed the wounds from the first day. His body was still a wreck.

Dopamine Addict… what would that bastard do in a situation like this?

The guide said to survive by eating people. Murder he could do. Cannibalism was another matter.

If Dopamine Addict had dropped into Knife Zone, would he have just casually eaten people and walked away?

Come to think of it, that guy had spammed him with friend requests for a long time. T-balnom had rejected every one of them out of pure hatred. But now that he was about to die, he strangely wanted to talk to Dopamine Addict.

On impulse, he sent a friend request—and immediately regretted it.

I rejected him so many times. No way he accepts me now…

He was about to die, and he’d just done something pathetic. Then—

Watching the messages stack up one after another, T-balnom felt a strange, unexpected relief. So he kept the conversation going with a little more goodwill than before.

No reply came back. T-balnom was sure the other man was looking at him with pure contempt—thinking survival came first, and that eating an NPC hardly counted as cannibalism.

Dopamine Addict… you may have been the greatest player alive, but you are the absolute worst kind of human being.

In the moment T-balnom decided it was a mercy that he could die with his human dignity intact—

From the absolute worst kind of human being, a hand of salvation arrived.