The Mockery Begins
“Haydam-nim! Why on earth did you set those conditions?!”
I had been planning to stay at the academy for a while and had just been assigned a private room, ready to unpack, when—sure enough—the cadets I had defeated came charging in the moment morning assembly ended.
Behind their desperate faces, Platon bowed his head in a silent salute, only to be swallowed up by the others a second later.
“Haydam-nim, if even one of us dies, we lose?!”
“You wiped out every last one of us by yourself, and now you’re putting that condition on the table—what are we supposed to do…?!”
“We never even agreed to this in the first place!”
“If we lose again this time, we’ll actually have to drop out.”
“You have no idea how much finger-pointing we’ve been getting because we lost to you, Haydam-nim.”
“….”
I stared at them with open pity.
“I was wondering why Lucas was so aggressive earlier. Now I see there was a reason.”
“Pardon?”
“Even after hearing the conversation I had with Cadet Lucas just now, none of you felt anything, did you?”
I set down the luggage box I was holding, let out a sigh, and continued.
“If the other cadets are criticizing you, that is all the more reason you should accept this training.”
“What do you mean by that…?”
“If a cadet is already thinking about defeat before the fight has even begun—doesn’t that make the criticism well-deserved?”
“Th-that’s….”
They had rushed over in a panic, but the shame of what they were doing finally seemed to hit them. Their faces flushed red and their voices dwindled.
They’re a bunch of idiots, sure… but in the game these NPCs had high stats.
The reason I had deliberately run the training simulation against this particular group was because they were the ones who went on to make names for themselves after graduating from the academy.
Right now they were just acting pathetic from the shock of losing to a ten-year-old…
They needed to graduate safely and become my people. Finding officers of their caliber wasn’t easy.
So it was time to dangle a carrot and soothe them.
I arranged my face into a gentle expression.
“Do any of you know why I specifically chose you for the training simulation?”
The cadets looked at me as if they couldn’t guess the intent behind the question.
The answer came from Platon, standing at the very back.
“Because we were the most outstanding cadets.”
I nodded at his well-timed assist and continued.
“I still believe you are the finest cadets in this academy. And I want the others to know it too.”
“So you’re saying you’ll form a team with us for the training simulation to prove that?”
One cadet spoke up carefully.
“But… we lost to you so thoroughly… and with conditions that unreasonable, thinking we can win is…”
“The enemy knows those conditions are unreasonable too. You yourselves thought one person facing all of you was impossible, didn’t you?”
Memories of how thoroughly they had underestimated Haydam the first time they faced him in the simulation made their faces flush again.
“What do you think was the real reason I was able to beat you?”
“Uh…”
No one rushed to answer. Eventually someone mumbled,
“We fell for your acting…”
Not the answer I wanted. I asked again.
“Why did you fall for it?”
“Because we thought the performance was real, of course.”
“And you believed it was real because you underestimated me.”
“Underestimating you was truly—ah!”
After the successive questions, the cadets’ faces lit with sudden realization as they stared at me.
“You fell for it so easily because you thought no matter what I did, you could still take me down. The enemy will unconsciously think the same thing: ‘We only need to kill one person and we win.’ We’re going to use that against them.”
“Use it against them?”
“First of all, we’re throwing fair play out the window.”
“How can you say something like that so boldly…?”
“Fortunately, you were so mortified about losing to me that you didn’t tell the others how it happened, right?”
“No, it wasn’t because we were embarrassed—Director Meursault ordered us to keep quiet—”
“Good.”
“Pardon?”
“Let’s pay them back exactly the way I paid you back.”
“…Why would we pay those guys back for what you did to us, Haydam-nim?”
They still hadn’t grasped what I meant by being underhanded. But that was fine.
Underhandedness was something every human already carried somewhere in their heart.
“All you need to think about is winning. By any means necessary.”
Since the cadets had already come all this way, they offered to help me unpack, and moving the luggage was finished in no time.
The problem was… every other cadet had left, yet Platon was still standing there.
“Aren’t you leaving, Platon?”
“….”
What was this? Did he have something to say?
Judging by how he had waited until everyone else was gone, it was probably important.
After a long silence, Platon finally opened his mouth.
“I actually heard it from my father.”
“Heard what?”
“That you went outside the zone and were injured…”
So he knows I got hurt.
The commander had clearly issued a gag order on the matter. Anton’s informants must have been more numerous than the commander expected.
Then again, after the commotion of my hospitalization, anyone could have guessed that someone from the excursion party had been wounded. And since I hadn’t shown my face for several days afterward, identifying me would have been easy enough.
I didn’t care that Anton knew about my injury. It was something I could heal whenever I wanted.
I had deliberately left the wound only partially healed so Meursault wouldn’t find the recovery suspiciously fast… but if the injury ever became a real problem, I could simply fix it with my ability.
What I was curious about was something else.
“Do you also know how I got injured?”
I asked to see whether he knew about that guy’s existence as well. Platon immediately shook his head.
“No, nothing that detailed… I believe Father simply guessed after seeing that you had been hospitalized.”
Just as I thought—he’d pieced it together from the hospital records. So they didn’t know I had been attacked by a resident of another zone.
What the hell was that guy, anyway…?
I had thought about him the entire time I was bedridden, but I still had no answer.
An appearance completely identical to my Unicorn starting character. Yet unlike other players, he had been an adult. Calling him an impostor felt wrong when his character inspection window clearly displayed the six characters “Dopamine Addict,” and on top of that he even carried a title I had never seen before—also “Dopamine Addict.”
Moreover, Unicorn was originally my main base. Didn’t that make him even more “real” than the real thing?
Can you even call that an impersonation?
In the case of Safety No. 8, who had previously tried to impersonate me, he had introduced himself first as Dopamine Addict. This guy, however, had proven he was Dopamine Addict.
But if he isn’t an impostor, then what is he?
Just as Daphne and Luna Moon had been both players and NPCs… had I, the one who cleared every zone, also been fixed as an NPC of this world? Or was he some remnant of a player AI?
At the moment, nothing was certain.
The one silver lining was that if the system wasn’t lying, that guy was favorably disposed toward me.
At the very least, he doesn’t think I’m the one impersonating Dopamine Addict…
I had no idea.
Honestly I wanted to message Tibalrom and hear every word of the conversation they had exchanged from beginning to end, but I still couldn’t tell even Tibalrom that I had made contact with the guy.
It had only been a few days since the discovery that there were two Dopamine Addicts in the public chat. If I suddenly announced that I had met him, who would simply believe me? They were far more likely to think I had staged the whole thing myself. Everyone already seemed to regard me as an attention-seeker…
And as for Platon…
Anton had apparently told his own son, and the boy had come straight to me with the information. He must have also been told about the commander’s gag order.
Was my offer to make him my adjutant really that attractive?
“Haydam-nim?”
When I stayed silent for a moment, Platon called to me carefully, his face full of concern.
“Are you all right? I understand you were only just discharged… perhaps it would be better to postpone the training simulation a little…”
“….”
Even after learning I had healing abilities, the commander never fretted over me like this. Since things had turned out this way, I might as well leave Platon with an even better impression.
“You’re worried about me. Thank you.”
I paused for effect.
“I kept this from everyone else… but I’ll be honest with you alone, Platon. The injury still hasn’t fully healed.”
“It still hasn’t healed?!”
I had deliberately kept it that way, of course. I narrowed my brows slightly and offered a helpless little smile.
“Actually… while I was hospitalized, I heard about all of you.”
“About us?”
“That the other cadets were mocking you for losing to me. So I spoke to Father and came back.”
“You returned… because of us?”
“If I can restore your honor, my injury is nothing.”
Platon looked genuinely shaken.
“Why… go that far…?”
“I’m trusting you to keep this secret from the others. They wouldn’t want to feel indebted to me, after all.”
“Haydam-nim…”
Yes. Now it was time for the words I wanted to hear to come out of his mouth, Platon.
“I too will give my all in this training. For you, Haydam-nim, I will do anything.”
I answered as if I had been waiting for exactly that.
“Ah. I forgot to mention. Platon, you’re excluded from this training.”
“Pardon? I’m excluded?”
“It’s eight versus eight. We have to even the numbers somehow, don’t we?”
“B-but I…”
He couldn’t quite bring himself to say out loud that he was better than the other seven cadets. His voice trailed off.
“However, I do have a different task for you, Platon.”
“Ah! So there is another mission. Please tell me. What should I do?”
I smiled brightly.
“Are you any good at spreading rumors?”
The day of the training simulation.
From a short distance away, Lucas of Team B spotted Haydam’s Team A waiting and clicked his tongue.
“Those seven—I thought they’d run for it, but look at them, showing up on the training ground.”
Another Team B cadet shook his head at Lucas’s words.
“What good does showing up do? Earlier they wouldn’t even look in Haydam-nim’s direction.”
“What? The exercise is about to start and they’re still sulking over losing to him?”
“All they did was complain that they never wanted this in the first place.”
A slightly younger cadet who had been listening asked carefully,
“But why isn’t Senior Platon on that team? Isn’t Senior Platon the best of them by far?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Platon gave up on that team. Said they were hopeless.”
The cadet who had asked looked shocked. Platon was famous for always making sure no one was left behind, no matter the training.
“Senior Platon gave up on them…?”
“I’ve never heard Platon trash-talk anyone like that before either.”
“They’re seriously pathetic.”
“What on earth was Haydam-nim thinking, setting conditions like that…?”
As the murmuring Team B cadets began to pity Haydam, Lucas stamped his foot to draw their attention and spoke.
“Listen carefully. I’d like to say we should go easy for Haydam-nim’s sake… but you all know those guys lost because they underestimated him. So we don’t let our guard down. We go all out. Understood?”
“Yes, Senior Lucas!”
Having steeled their resolve, the first thing Team B’s recon unit discovered was a sight so shocking it made their earlier vow not to drop their guard feel almost absurd.
There, tightly bound in rope, was Haydam.