Cult
A girl in a white dress that looked almost like mourning clothes, her ebony-black hair cascading long down her back.
The Love Area player known as Shin gazed toward the north, lost in thought.
Dopamine Addict… hasn't shown up at all since then.
Ever since the revelation that another Dopamine Addict existed, the public chat had frozen solid. She had proposed a meeting out of fear that leaving things as they were would sever her connection with the other players entirely—but the Beer Area player Ssapasuble's fierce opposition had sunk the idea.
Even Shin was more than a little rattled by the fact that there were two Dopamine Addicts. She had no idea who would impersonate him, or why, and she had no sense of what the real one was thinking by staying silent. Worse still was the ominous feeling that the two of them had already met—a premonition that left her extremely on edge.
I could leave the others alone, but leaving Dopamine Addict like this is too dangerous.
Shin had no desire to make an enemy of the All-Zone Conqueror if she could help it. The problem was that Dopamine Addict himself showed no interest in cooperating with the other players. The proof was that even after a second Dopamine Addict appeared, he had offered the rest of them not a single word of explanation.
That was why she had sent one of the Love Area players to the Cola Area, fully aware that Dopamine Addict would see through it. Without knowing what he was up to, she simply could not focus on anything else.
She had already confirmed long ago that this world truly had no barriers. Originally, the barriers sealing off each area would have allowed players to safely raise their characters until the Second Apocalypse even with resource disparities between zones. That was no longer the case. Which meant that if Dopamine Addict marched in with an army, no player except those of the Unicorn Area could currently withstand him.
"What are you thinking so hard about?"
The voice that shattered her reverie made Shin turn. A young boy with deep brown hair and green eyes lay sprawled on the ground, both wrists bound behind his back, a talisman of yellow paper half-stuck to his forehead. He must have thrashed trying to peel it off—only half of it still clung. He blew at it with his mouth to clear his vision and added,
"You can scheme all you want, but Dopamine Addict is still way above your head. How long do you think you can keep fooling the other players, calling yourself a Manshin or whatever?"
Shin answered by furrowing her brow slightly. Home Protector watched her with open disapproval, then asked,
"By the way, are you actually a girl? You're not catfishing, right?"
"A question not worth answering."
Shin brushed his words aside and stepped closer.
"How much do you know about Dopamine Addict?"
"How much? Why do you care?"
"Looking at how you're still talking back while I've got you captive, you seem to believe with absolute certainty that he'll come rescue you."
"I know him better than you do, yeah."
A smirk nearly formed on Shin's lips at the cocky reply—then Home Protector's expression grew a little more serious.
"That's why I don't think he'll come."
"…You don't think he'll come to save you?"
"I'm talking back because I can tell you don't actually plan on hurting me anyway."
"And why would you think that?"
"If I die, ownership of the meteor item passes to you, and then my system shuts down and I get kicked from the chat. Everyone else would figure out someone stole my meteor item, and Ssapasuble would lose his mind and sink the whole submarine. That's why you haven't just killed me—you're keeping me like this instead."
"You're not as stupid as I thought."
"You're the stupid one."
"Bold words for someone I've captured, after I even took your pistol."
Shin pulled the seized meteor pistol from her robes and playfully aimed the muzzle at Home Protector. After taking the meteor pistol, she had learned two new things.
First: if one system-unlocked player took a meteor item from another, neither the owner nor the thief could place it in their inventory.
Second: the stolen player's chat system became bound to the thief.
In other words, without killing the player, item ownership remained and the system stayed intact—but chat could only be sent to the player who had taken it. That was why she had kept Home Protector alive this long.
Originally she had planned to kill him at once, seize ownership, and play dumb. But Ssapasuble had forbidden player contact until the Second Apocalypse, and once Home Protector's chat was locked he could no longer report his captivity—so she let him live. Thanks to the second Dopamine Addict incident, player chat had gone quiet anyway, and Dopamine Addict himself had vanished from the chat window long ago, so Home Protector's silence did not seem to strike anyone as particularly strange.
"All you ever did was scheme about surviving by clinging to Dopamine Addict, so of course you got caught this easily."
Shin toyed with the trigger for a moment, looking down at Home Protector, then withdrew the gun and slipped it back into her robes. Putting it in her inventory would have been convenient, but ownership still belonged to Home Protector, so she had no choice but to carry it herself.
In truth, if Home Protector had simply kept the pistol in his inventory, she never could have taken it so easily…
Idiot. He could have stored it in his inventory, but he had to wear it on his body for the cool factor and get it stolen.
Shin herself had worn her meteor earring early on, but it was in her inventory now. She was still adjusting her clothes, thinking how pathetic he was, when Home Protector grinned slyly.
"You also think Dopamine Addict won't come all the way out here to save me, huh?"
Of course, Shin did not believe for a second that Dopamine Addict would do something so inefficient. When she only stared without answering, Home Protector added,
"He won't come to save me—but he will come to screw you over. That's the kind of guy he is."
Shin did not contradict him. Regardless of Home Protector, she already knew full well that Dopamine Addict would come for her eventually. That bastard would absolutely try to conquer every zone in this world too.
"In that case… all I can do is hope the screwing over is a sweet one."
That Dopamine Addict had not pulled as far ahead as she feared. That he was not as insane as she dreaded.
Holding that hope, Shin once again turned her empty gaze toward the north.
"Exactly as you said. I, too, am a messenger of the god who received the revelation."
"Ooooh!!"
I spun the lie without so much as a flicker in my expression, and Omoknuni gazed up at me with pure admiration. I propped one leg up on the chair, settling into an even more arrogant posture than before, and continued.
"Yes. Omoknuni, Love Area player. Tell me now why you've come seeking this messenger of god."
"You even know my name right away!!"
Omoknuni brightened with a flash of excitement, then looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression.
"You know who I am… but you don't know why I've come all the way here?"
Should I have pretended to know that far too? I wasn't some fortune-teller.
Come to think of it, this guy said 'Manshin'…
Could the Love Area player 'Shin' actually be a real shaman? That would explain using the term 'Manshin' instead of 'cult leader.' A shaman who played a hardcore game like Safe Zone… no matter how you looked at it, it reeked of fraud, but that wasn't what mattered right now.
"Are you…"
I was about to ask if he was doubting me—when the Luna's Ring on my finger suddenly blazed with light.
"Hhk!"
Omoknuni sucked in a startled breath and fell back on his seat.
What the hell is this!
I was just as shocked inside. I had no idea why the thing, which had been perfectly quiet the whole time, was suddenly acting up—but I forced myself to stay composed and raised the glowing ring toward Omoknuni.
"…Are you doubting me?"
The moonstone was sparkling with a light anyone would call auspicious, so Omoknuni shook his head hard from side to side, a faint fear in his eyes.
"N-no, of course not. There must be a reason you asked why I came here."
The moment his answer finished, the light streaming from the ring faded.
This ring's NPC… did it just help me?
I had known the ring possessed a will of its own, but this was the first time it had given me direct assistance like this.
So besides heating up and cooling down, it can glow too.
Come to think of it, it had floated up glowing the first time we met—so maybe it could levitate as well as emit light. What I was supposed to use that for, I had no idea.
Before I could say anything, Omoknuni was already prostrate on the ground in front of me.
"W-well, first of all—it was the Manshin who sent me here."
"I know that. Why did she send you?"
"To find out about Dopamine Addict… about you…"
"Me?"
Sending an actual player just to dig up information on me was unexpected. Anyone who had seen my clear guide could easily guess I would be running the bastard route right about now. And she still sent someone to investigate me?
I must have made her nervous by staying out of the chat for so long.
"Um…"
Omoknuni, watching my face carefully, asked with caution.
"I heard that Dopamine Addict received the All-Zone Conqueror privilege from the god…"
"And?"
"Is it… is it true that even so, you refused to cooperate with us?"
At that, I let a quiet smile curl the corner of my mouth.
Good instincts.
Shin had never so much as private-messaged me, yet she was already certain I held the All-Zone Conqueror privilege. On top of that, she had already told her own people that I had no intention of cooperating. At the very least, she had already read what I was thinking. That was why she had gone so far as to send a player to watch my movements.
With no barriers left, if I led an army in, it would be ecological collapse. Of course I had no plans for that kind of nuclear play with newbies still around. What I wanted was to swallow the other zones after the Second Apocalypse, once they had finished their growth—not to steamroll players who were still scrambling just to survive.
Shin… this one might be worth looking forward to.
Useful players had to be collected. Originally I would have been enough on my own, but the appearance of the Unicorn Area player had changed the board. As long as that bastard existed, killing other players to seize their meteor items was not the optimal play. He would simply wait for me to gather every last item and then kill me for them. I needed the other players to keep their meteor items and cooperate with me of their own will.
Well then… shall I try it like this?
I wore an unreadable smile and spoke.
"The All-Zone Conqueror privilege… yes, I received it."
"I knew you had! But then… why won't you join us?"
"I never said I wouldn't cooperate. If anything, I want to ask you something. Why aren't you cooperating with me?"
"Pardon? What do you mean by that…"
"Only I can stop the Second Apocalypse."
"…?"
Omoknuni looked up at me as if I had just said something completely random. I continued with a perfectly calm face.
"The objects that hold the god's revelation. Gather them all, and you gain the power to stop the Second Apocalypse. That is the All-Zone Conqueror privilege I received."
"The power to stop the Second Apocalypse…?"
"So go tell the 'Manshin.'"
I crooked one corner of my mouth into a crooked grin.
"Ask her if she will follow the will of god."