T-balnom
‘Dopamine Addict’ has entered the public chat room.
‘T-balnom’ has entered the public chat room.
The one who opened the system… is T-balnom?
I’d impersonated T-balnom before, but the truth was we barely knew each other. From my first strategy guide post all the way to the last, our exchanges had never gone beyond stiff, formal Q&A.
Even so, the reason T-balnom had been the first name that popped into my head when I needed to fool RoomShutIn was simple: the guy only ever posted pure questions. Nobody had any idea what kind of personality he actually had.
He’d read every last one of my guides, so it wouldn’t have been surprising if he’d opened the system right after me. According to TaejeongTaese, T-balnom had dropped into the Knife Zone.
If that was true—and if he’d gotten his hands on the meteorite item and unlocked the system—then T-balnom was currently running the zone-wide massacre route. The meteorite item in the Knife Zone was a dagger forged from meteorite iron, an absolute necessity for that particular strategy. Even a ten-year-old’s body could one-shot kill with it.
Wait. If he only just got his hands on it now, that means he survived two full days in the Knife Zone on his own power?
I’d written the guides, sure, but even I hadn’t cleared the Knife Zone on the first try. I’d died to those psychopaths more times than I could count before finally cracking the strategy. That place wasn’t somewhere a ten-year-old body could last two days without a weapon.
T-balnom messaged first.
Ah. Inside the chat system, hiding your identity was impossible. And if T-balnom had opened the system, he could use Character Inspection—the second he looked at me, he’d know I was Dopamine Addict.
How the hell am I supposed to answer this?
Opening and closing the system worked by thought, so maybe messaging did too? That guess turned out correct. The moment I formed the words I wanted to send, letters automatically appeared over the system interface.
I’d barely managed to send the clumsy reply before T-balnom’s answer came right back.
I was about to ask whether he was running the massacre route and whether he’d secured the meteorite item when his next message slammed into the chat window.
Huh.
“…….”
Yeah. He was blaming me after all. This guy… two days after possession and the Knife Zone had already chewed him up pretty badly. I hadn’t been the one who shoved him into a body, so the resentment felt a little unfair—but I couldn’t say I didn’t understand how he felt.
The residents of the Knife Zone were pure murder maniacs. They traveled in packs and got off on killing anything weaker than themselves. The second T-balnom woke up, he would’ve been under death threats. He was probably still hiding somewhere right now, sending these messages. The kid had to be half out of his mind.
Surviving long enough to open the system with no special privileges at all was already impressive. That meant T-balnom was an outstanding player in his own right—and exactly the kind of person I needed. Someone who could survive the Knife Zone and bring me another meteorite item.
I tried to talk him down first.
“…….”
A long time passed with no reply from T-balnom. Was he deliberately ignoring me? Or had he fallen asleep?
Even low-effort bait got zero reaction from T-balnom.
“Hmm…….”
Being unable to talk to the only other person who’d unlocked the system was a real problem. Looks like I’d have to dangle some useful information if I wanted a response.
That finally got a reply.
This bastard had been pretending to sleep while reading every single message I sent.
Every single conversation ends in murder threats, huh?
T-balnom clearly wasn’t in a mental state stable enough for normal conversation. He’d declared he was going to kill me, yet when I thought about his situation I only felt sorry for him. Once you chose the massacre route, all that remained was slaughter. Without the goal of surviving just so he could murder me, he probably wouldn’t be able to endure it at all.
Nothing for it, I guess……
I waited a while after sending that, but T-balnom had apparently gone dark again. No reply came. I eventually drifted off to sleep.
The next morning I had to wake up early.
So sleepy……
I was exhausted, but of course I still wasn’t hungry. A body that didn’t need food yet still struggled to get up in the morning—did that mean it still needed sleep? What kind of principle was this body even built on?
Anyway, the reason I had to get up at the crack of dawn was none other than the Commander’s adjutant: Major General Mursault Pendleton. After receiving a tip from the Commander that the boy had been found, he had come looking for me at an ungodly hour.
With the servants’ help I washed and changed, then headed for the rear courtyard of the Commander’s residence. There was a shooting range back there, and Major General Mursault had summoned me to it.
You might wonder who the hell had the nerve to summon the Commander’s own son, but Mursault had been Hayden Goodman’s closest aide for the past ten years. Right now his standing was higher than mine as the son. If word reached the Commander that I’d refused Mursault’s summons while banking on my new status, nothing good would come of it.
When I reached the range I saw Mursault’s back, his ash-gray hair tied neatly.
“Good morning.”
I greeted him first. Mursault turned around, looked me up and down for a moment, then spoke in a stiff voice.
“I met His Excellency’s son here just yesterday as well.”
Ah. So he’d come to meet Anjeon8yeok yesterday morning too.
“And yet here I am again this morning, once more meeting someone claiming to be His Excellency’s son. I find myself thoroughly bewildered.”
“…….”
Look at this guy.
There wasn’t a shred of goodwill in Mursault’s attitude. The Commander believed me, so it probably wasn’t that this man simply refused to trust me……
Establishing dominance, then?
Well, if a long-serving lord suddenly produced a son out of nowhere, a certain amount of wariness was only natural. Still—toward a ten-year-old kid? In the game I’d been checked by both the adjutant and the Commander’s wife, but experiencing it in person was a far uglier picture. I stared at Mursault for a moment, then casually scanned the surroundings.
Mursault clearly hadn’t wanted our conversation overheard either. The shooting range held only the two of us.
Good.
Whatever I said here wouldn’t reach the Commander’s ears.
I tilted my head and looked up at him sideways.
“So? What about it.”
“……!”
Mursault’s expression cracked slightly.
“What did you just say?”
“I asked what you expect me to do about the fact that you’re bewildered, mister.”
Mursault clearly hadn’t anticipated this response. Extremely flustered and extremely displeased, he pulled out a handkerchief and rubbed his forehead.
“You are quite different from what His Excellency described. His Excellency said he was worried the young master might be far too soft-hearted.”
Instead of answering, I just stood there with a lopsided stance that clearly said, You dragged me out at the crack of dawn just to say that? Exactly the kind of posture superior officers hated most.
Mursault stared at me, speechless. The Commander had probably told him I was a ten-year-old kid with flowers for brains who just wanted to feed meals to other children my age. He’d figured that if he came on a little strong, I’d be scared of him.
More than anything, the real reason this man wasn’t friendly toward me was……
“No matter how much you may be His Excellency’s blood son, you would do well to show proper manners. His Excellency’s legitimate wife is, and remains, Lady Daphne. You are nothing more than a bastard.”
Exactly the same as the game.
The reason he was trying to crush my spirit was because I was a bastard. In front of the Commander he never made an issue of my birth, but deep down he refused to acknowledge me as the legitimate heir and dreamed of rebellion.
In the original bastard route you had to carefully stroke this guy’s ego. That way, when you eventually poisoned him, no one would suspect you. For the same reason I’d maintained good relations with the Commander’s wife. Two poisonings in the Commander’s residence would be hard to explain away, but once either one of them was gone first, my position would become unshakably strong.
This time, though, I wasn’t going to do that. In a world where highly educated NPCs were rare, both Mursault and the Commander’s wife were precious human resources.
Mursault Pendleton looked extremely fastidious, but luckily he was very easy to handle. The man had a fatal attribute—or rather, a weakness. An absolute strategy existed for him. You didn’t even need to treat him with proper manners. All you had to do was agree with one particular thought. A simple man.
I smiled up at Mursault, who was looking at me like I was an insect.
“But mister, you’ve been waiting for a bastard like me, haven’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I heard about you from His Excellency too, you know.”
I hadn’t heard it—I’d seen it while playing the game—but the moment I claimed the Commander had spoken about him, Mursault began to panic badly. There was a reason he was this shaken.
In this game, Mursault Pendleton was responsible for a rather high-stimulation episode. Because this man was……
“Mursault. Do you still intend to marry Daphne Goodman?”
I tossed the words out casually, as if they were nothing.
At the disloyal man who loved Daphne Goodman—his superior’s wife.