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"…So what you're saying is, you picked cola at that convenience store too?"
At my question, the blond, red-eyed boy gave a quick, vigorous nod.
Unlike me — a classic East Asian character model with black hair and black eyes — this kid had a Western look. And somehow, impossibly, he was someone I already knew.
"Your nickname is… ShutInHoney? That foul-mouthed guy?"
"Do you really have to tack on 'foul-mouthed'? Who the hell doesn't swear a little on internet communities?"
People who dump abuse on random strangers are called social misfits… Never mind. Whatever.
Me and ShutInHoney.
Putting our heads together and sorting through what we knew, one thing was clear: this place was definitely Apocalypse: Safe Zone.
The two of us had woken up in the Cola Safe Zone.
Two people transmigrating into the game at the same time……
Does that even make sense?
Everything was far too vivid to deny reality.
"But why's your nick ShutInHoney? Were you going for ShutInLuBu and typoed it?"
"It was a witty twist on ShutInLuBu. You just don't get it."
I genuinely had no idea what part of that was witty.
"What about you, then? What's your nick?"
"Me?"
For a second I almost said "Dopamine Addict," then thought better of it and gave him someone else's name instead.
"…T-balnom."
T-balnom was a player who left steady questions under my strategy posts.
The reason I didn't give my real nick was simple: right before I transmigrated, I had blocked ShutInHoney.
I had to avoid an awkward situation somehow.
Like it or not, now that the two of us had been dropped in together, we were going to have to cooperate. No point starting off on the wrong foot……
"T-balnom? Think I've seen that around the community. So you got the convenience store address from Home Protector too?"
From Home Protector?
I'd been wondering how ShutInHoney even knew about that store and ended up transmigrating.
So that bastard Home Protector had gone around spreading the address I gave him?!
This guy saw the address, went to the store, and got transmigrated.
…Wait.
Does that mean there could be more transmigrated players in this game than just us?
What about the real T-balnom I was impersonating?
…No. T-balnom was the kind of player who loathed cliques and socializing; there was no way he'd accepted a scrap of paper with an address from Home Protector. Even if he had, he wasn't dedicated enough to the game to actually hunt down a convenience store over it.
But Home Protector, the one who passed the notes around — that was a different story.
"Home Protector might be somewhere around here too, then."
Whether he'd reached the exact same conclusion or not, I heard ShutInHoney mutter under his breath.
"Should we go look for him?"
I didn't think Home Protector was in the same zone as us, though.
For good reason.
"Home Protector's a chain-smoker. He probably picked tobacco."
"Yeah, that tracks."
ShutInHoney nodded in understanding — then seemed to remember something and let out a small groan.
"That bastard's here too……"
"What bastard?"
"Dopamine Addict. That attention-whore bastard."
"……"
My face went stiff. ShutInHoney took the look for pure hatred of Dopamine Addict and launched into an excited rant.
"He's the one who posted the convenience store address first, right? So he must've transmigrated too."
"…Probably."
"Where was that guy's main zone again? Unicorn, wasn't it? Just thinking about him stuck in the hardest zone right now, drowning in regret — man, that hits the spot."
"……"
Yeah. Not introducing myself as Dopamine Addict had definitely been the right call.
Though… I was pretty sure I'd never actually had any direct trouble with this guy……
ShutInHoney smirked to himself for a moment, then his face turned grim as he asked me,
"So… what do we do now? If we really did transmigrate into the game, do we have to run a strategy or something?"
The difficulty here might be a little lower, but he'd only just fully registered that he, too, was stuck inside the game.
"Preparing for the end is better than doing nothing. Either way, if this really is the world of the Apocalypse game, this place is going to be destroyed soon."
"Why did this have to happen to me… If I ever find Home Protector, he's dead."
How many people had Home Protector handed that address to?
How many of us were transmigrated in here?
For whatever reason, ShutInHoney and I had started in the same place — but there could be other players dropped into Cola as well.
Well… once the Second Apocalypse began, we'd run into the others naturally enough.
…Except by then it's zone-versus-zone survival, isn't it?
The thought that we might have to fight other transmigrators to the death crossed my mind — but that was still a long way off.
And this wasn't a "game" anymore. It was "reality." Maybe the players-killing-players survival mode wouldn't even apply.
In the game, everyone from another zone was an enemy. Between transmigrated players, though, it was a different story.
Surely a bunch of Koreans wouldn't actually try to murder each other……
…I didn't know. I'd think about that later.
ShutInHoney seemed to be turning something over as well, then asked,
"If this is a game transmigration, can we use the game systems?"
He immediately started shouting keywords into empty air — "Status Window," "Inventory," and the like.
Nothing happened.
"Ha, shit… They drag you into a game without even giving you any perks?"
"Speaking of — did you see that?"
"See what?"
"The thing that pops up at the start. The Revelation."
"Ah… yeah, I didn't get that either."
The "Revelation" was a single sentence.
Normally, the moment a player opened their eyes in their starting zone, they should have been shown the following:
The world will soon end. Prepare for the apocalypse.
But when I woke up in this game, I never saw that line.
Judging by ShutInHoney's reaction, neither had he.
"So we seriously have to clear this with nothing? As little kids? Does that make any sense? I lived a decent life, damn it……"
I gave him a long, steady look. He flinched and glanced away.
"Ha, fuck, I should've sworn less……"
Considering even that mutter started with a curse, there was no hope for this guy.
"What are you planning to do from here? T-balnom — have you played the Cola Area before? How far have you cleared?"
"Me… up through Unicorn."
In truth I'd cleared all the way through Knife, but the only person who'd ever cleared the hidden zones was Dopamine Addict.
Even with the deliberately lowered answer, ShutInHoney eyed me with open disbelief.
"Don't even bullshit me. The only people who've cleared Unicorn are Dopamine Addict and a handful of lunatics who worship his guides. Wait… oh, I get it. You've only read Dopamine Addict's guides and you're pretending you know shit."
…Weird.
For someone who supposedly hated me, this guy knew way too much about me.
Not just my guides — he even knew the clear status of my devotees.
Come to think of it, when I posted my final guide, he'd shown up right after Home Protector to leave a comment.
Maybe he didn't hate me at all……
I tossed out a line to feel him out.
"Yeah, I'm a Dopamine Addict follower. I don't post much, but I've memorized every single one of his guides."
"Y-you've memorized all of them?"
Well, yeah. I wrote them.
ShutInHoney's lips twitched like he had something he wanted to say, then he asked in a small voice,
"Then… do you have his Knife guide memorized too?"
"Of course."
"…Yeah? That's a relief."
A relief?
"Didn't you read that one yourself? I thought I saw you leave a comment."
That hit a switch. ShutInHoney flared up, his face flushing red and pale by turns.
"I was reading that guide… and that bastard blocked me, fuck……! I left comments on every single post and hit recommend every time, and that son of a bitch……!!"
Ah……
So he didn't hate me.
In other words, he'd been building a one-sided sense of closeness with me, got blocked, and was sulking about it.
He'd been diligently hitting recommend on my guides?
Maybe he wasn't that bad a guy after all.
"Goddamn it. Memorizing all the guides is great and all, but why the hell did I have to transmigrate with a Dopamine Addict fanboy……"
"If you've got a problem, clear it on your own. More importantly — you asked what I was going to do earlier, right?"
I brushed off his grumbling and kept going.
"From this point on, I'm going to become the 'Bastard Son.'"
The "Bastard Son" strategy.
It was one of the Cola Safe Zone guides I'd already posted on the community.
This Safe Zone, Cola, had a warlord who ruled and protected the place.
The "Bastard Son" strategy meant becoming the illegitimate child — and heir — of that warlord's commander: Hayden Goodman.
Hayden Goodman was, put simply, something like the Grand Duke of the North around here.
The Cola Safe Zone sat on the continental fringe, in a snowy region, so the comparison wasn't even wrong.
The moment I brought up the Bastard Son, ShutInHoney clicked his tongue.
"Yeah, you've definitely only read Dopamine Addict's guides. That's his 'Bastard Son' strategy. Hey, don't. Games and reality are different. Is that even something a human being would do?"
I knew my guides — always chasing the highest stimulation — were niche.
Cola was a low-difficulty zone. You could survive until the apocalypse without pulling the reckless stunt of becoming the Bastard Son.
But high risk, high return wasn't just a saying for nothing.
We might only get one shot at a clear.
In that time, we needed to grab everything we could possibly get.
And for that, Commander Goodman's heir position was essential.
"If you're scared, clear it on your own."
"W-who's scared? I'm saying, is it even doable?"
Doable……
"The Bastard Son strategy means you have to lie to the Commander. If you get caught bullshitting, you could literally lose your head."
"So what you're saying is you're scared."
"No… fine, yeah, I'm scared. This isn't a game anymore. You can actually die."
I couldn't really blame ShutInHoney for being scared.
We'd been yanked into a game without warning.
Into an apocalyptic world where people dying at any moment wouldn't even be strange — as ten-year-old kids.
Of course he was afraid.
But strangely… I wasn't.
Whether it was confidence from having cleared even the hidden zones, or just because the transmigration still hadn't fully sunk in, I couldn't say.
If anything, from the moment I entered the game, I'd been feeling a strange, electric thrill.
I thought there was no more dopamine left to squeeze out of this game.
Maybe being this kind of person was exactly why ShutInHoney hated me so much.
Anyway.
"I'm the one who has to fool the Commander either way… and if I die doing it, I don't care."
"What?"
"Who knows? Maybe dying sends you back to reality."
I said it, but the odds of that were low.
It was just something to soothe ShutInHoney, who was panicking, while for me a life-or-death situation was more of a buff than a threat.
You couldn't leave that kind of anxiety alone.
ShutInHoney was a chess piece in my plan. If he started freelancing out of fear, it'd be a problem.
At the mention that dying might send him home, ShutInHoney's face lit up with interest for a second.
Judging by the look, he was thinking something like maybe I should just die once.
Fortunately, I didn't have to talk him out of it.
He didn't have the guts to actually try — his shoulders slumped almost immediately.
"What if you don't go back and just… actually die……"
"Dying from a failed clear or dying from getting caught in a lie — same difference. Anyway, I'm heading out to run the strategy. Come or don't."
"……Hey!"
ShutInHoney stopped me as I turned to leave without a second look. He hesitated, then asked quietly,
"Between you and me — who's doing the Bastard Son?"
"I already told you. From now on, I'm becoming the Bastard Son."
"Why do you get the good role?!"
Didn't he just say getting caught in a lie could get you killed?
Well. One reason I was stepping up myself was that I seriously doubted this guy had the brains to pull off the Bastard Son act. But there was a more decisive reason too.
Commander Hayden had black hair and black eyes — East Asian features.
ShutInHoney was a blond, red-eyed Western character model.
I was black hair, black eyes.
"If you claim to be the Commander's bastard, you think anyone's buying that?"
Only then did ShutInHoney seem to check his own character model. He jolted and muttered a curse under his breath.
"Goddamn it, why did I get stuck with this model……"
"You're Korean, you little shit — why's your character model like that? Western-idol-obsessed freak."
"My original starting zone was Love, asshole!"
So this guy hadn't started in his home zone either.
The Love Area was steeped in looks-based hierarchy; a pretty-boy model like that made perfect sense there.
"Anyway, I'm taking the Bastard Son role."
"Then what am I supposed to do? The Bastard Son strategy doesn't even need help from anyone else."
Ah.
So that was why he was so sour about the Bastard Son strategy.
It was a solo-clearable guide.
Some of the other strategies required coaxing help out of NPCs, and ShutInHoney had probably been hoping to fill an NPC's role for cooperative play.
But I preferred solo.
At least for now, I had no intention of teaming up with this guy.
That said, this was a world with a prophesied apocalypse — so I did need him eventually.
For the zone to prepare properly, the people here had to believe the end was coming in ten years.
Later, he'd have to help me convince them.
And for that……
He'd need to earn their trust first.
I asked him,
"You done with your military service?"
"What? No? I just turned twenty."
Just turned twenty?
No wonder he seemed like a brat.
"A draft dodger. Perfect."
"What's perfect about that?"
I smiled sweetly at ShutInHoney, who still had no idea what was going on.
"You. Go join the army."