Daphne (1)
I still have no idea what state of mind I was in when I finished the entrance exam.
I do remember the examinees—and even the cadets serving as proctors—standing there with their mouths hanging open, completely speechless, the moment I appeared overhead on a hoverboard.
I handed out passing grades to the ones who still moved to catch me even while I was riding the thing, and to the ones who calmly formed teams and charged the second I stepped off it.
There was also one guy—whether he was bold or just plain stupid—who jumped onto the abandoned hoverboard and came flying at me only to go tumbling across the snowfield.
The idea itself wasn’t bad, so I passed him too and decided to put him through player training.
Taejeong, Shut-in Honey, and Shin Eun-jo all cleared it without much trouble as well.
Only after they had passed did I explain the plan for mass-producing players.
Once he’d heard the whole thing, Shut-in Honey said with open admiration:
“You really don’t think about anything except scamming people, do you?”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“But is it okay to say this while a player from another zone is listening?”
“I didn’t particularly want to hear it either.”
Shin Eun-jo, who had been gently stroking Luna Moon inside her coat, shot Shut-in Honey a look before turning to me. Her face said she felt distinctly uneasy about having overheard the plan.
“It’s true I asked to take the entrance exam… but I will be heading back to my zone soon. If you’re thinking of not letting me leave…”
“That won’t happen. I don’t want you hanging around here for long either.”
She would have to stay for a while longer, of course. I still needed to dig more information out of her about the Cthulhu Games representative.
But I have to ask carefully.
From what Ttopamine Addict had told me, the conditions for further system unlocks seemed tied to the fact that Father had possessed us…
The fact that Shin Eun-jo’s system still hadn’t unlocked further even after she met the Cthulhu Games representative might be connected to the fact that, until recently, she hadn’t even been able to remember the company name Cthulhu Games.
If I asked the wrong question about Father and accidentally forced an additional unlock on her system, both of us would be in serious trouble. Better to approach it carefully.
That was when Taejeong raised his hand and asked:
“I understand the idea of giving player education to NPCs. But to teach player education… the instructor would also need to be a player, wouldn’t they? Who’s going to teach them?”
“Player education will be handled by Shut-in Honey.”
The reactions to my offhand remark split immediately.
First, Shut-in Honey:
“Oh yeah! Promoting from student to teacher!”
Yeah. His head was still a flower garden, same as always. This was the same guy who had received a note from Ttopamine Addict and never even mentioned it to me… it was entirely possible he had completely forgotten he ever got the note in the first place.
I’ll ask about Ttopamine Addict’s note later.
If he found out I had already met the guy in the meantime, he would start interrogating me about what we talked about.
Anyway.
Unlike Shut-in Honey’s excitement, Taejeong and Shin Eun-jo…
“For real…?”
“Are you out of your mind? Who are you entrusting what to?”
That was probably the reaction of players who still had functioning brains.
Shut-in Honey seemed quite offended by their response and shouted:
“What! Why! Dopamine Addict is entrusting it to me! Your attitude toward the teacher is disrespectful! I’m deducting points from all of you!”
“…You’re seriously going to leave education to someone like that?”
Shin Eun-jo looked at Shut-in Honey with pure disgust.
But that exact side of him was what I wanted.
“Seeing him like that only makes me more certain.”
“What?! …Are you crazy?”
“Hyung… are you feeling all right?”
I shook my head at both of them and said:
“If we’re going to raise fake players anyway, it’s better to mass-produce guys like Shut-in Honey.”
“…Ha?”
As I had said before, the intelligence of Cola Zone NPCs was not particularly high. Mass-producing high-intelligence players was therefore extremely difficult.
But if the player model was Shut-in Honey?
We could churn them out as many as we wanted.
“It’d be nice if they even talked like him. Then we could land mental attacks just through conversation.”
“Wasn’t the personality of this zone’s NPCs their only real advantage……?”
At Taejeong’s words I asked back in genuine incomprehension.
“Why is having a good personality an advantage?”
“That’s a real psychopath statement.”
Shin Eun-jo dismissed my question as pure psycho talk and continued:
“Yeah… now I get why it was fine for me to hear it. I could never do something like raising the zone’s little kids into Shut-in Honeys just so we can wreck players from other zones. You’re willing to do literally anything to win. You’re really… a terrifying person.”
“I’m scared of you too, hyung……”
These two had completely forgotten that Shut-in Honey was standing right next to them listening to every word.
“I don’t really get what you’re talking about, but anyway, Dopamine Addict—you want more players like me in this zone, right?”
Hmm. Luckily he had only heard what he wanted to hear.
“Yeah. That’s right.”
Even the part he failed to understand lined up perfectly with what I needed. I wanted the NPCs to look like players; I did not want them getting smart enough to start eyeing my position.
…Was that a bit of a dictator thought?
Shut-in Honey raised both fists with pure enthusiasm.
“I’ll work hard, Dopamine Addict!”
“Yeah. Fighting.”
And at the time, I had no idea what kind of results this decision would bring later.
Among the original pro-Daphne faction executives, the only one who could still be called alive and active was Lieutenant General Radu.
Today he had made a very large decision.
Today, I will poison Haydam.
There were several reasons that decision had taken shape.
First of all, today’s poisoning attempt was not the first. Ever since Haydam appeared at the executives’ meeting, claimed to know them thoroughly, and casually asked after Radu’s own child, Radu had been pressuring his mistress—who happened to be a servant at the Commander’s residence—to put poison in Haydam’s food every morning.
Even though he was a father carrying on an affair with a servant of the Commander’s house, he still valued his child. He could not simply leave alone the boy who had brought up that child right after Lieutenant General Batom died.
Yet the news that Haydam had been poisoned never arrived. His lover insisted she really had been putting poison in every single morning and looked deeply wronged, but Radu did not believe her. Surely the soft-hearted woman simply could not bring herself to poison a still-young child’s food.
The one fortunate thing was that, for someone who had mentioned Radu’s child in that situation, Haydam seemed to take no further interest in him or his family whatsoever. So Radu had decided to give up on the poisoning and simply live his two-household life in peace—until Haydam forced Anton into retirement. (Anton had retired of his own will, of course, but he had gathered the executives and announced he was stepping down because he could not overcome a young man’s spirit, so Radu blamed Haydam.) Next, Haydam framed Lieutenant General Max as the culprit in the soldier-murder case.
Anton the former general is one thing, but Max really isn’t that kind of person……!
Radu believed Max had been framed, and that belief was not actually wrong. The thought that he could not leave Haydam alone any longer returned in full force.
I have to do something somehow.
While he was thinking that, the news reached him.
“Lady Daphne… divorce?”
The bolt-from-the-blue announcement that the Commander and Lady Daphne were divorcing. Radu had known their relationship was never passionate, and he had known that with Haydam’s appearance the succession would pass to the boy. Even if the Commander had no personal interest in Lady Daphne, he had never neglected her for more than ten years. The idea that he would divorce her the moment Haydam appeared had never once crossed Radu’s mind.
The next piece of news that followed made him faint on the spot for a moment.
Daphne’s remarriage partner was Meursault Pendleton—the bastard who had shot Lieutenant General Batom dead.
Even after he came to, Radu could not believe reality; both hands trembled violently.
“Lady Daphne, who should be the most… noble person in the entire zone……!!”
Every executive in the pro-Daphne faction had received enormous favors from the previous Commander. Unlike the current one, the previous Commander had been a merciful dictator. The phrase “merciful dictator” might sound strange, but that was simply how it had been.
Because of that, the pro-Daphne executives had cherished Daphne—the previous Commander’s daughter—like their own child. Daphne herself possessed a strangely captivating charisma, so they had sincerely served her as both the daughter of their hearts and their lord in the previous Commander’s place.
And now she had been demoted from the Commander’s wife to the wife of a mere major general? The Commander had actually permitted Lady Daphne to remarry Meursault?
Impossible.
If something that had never happened before suddenly did, it meant something newly appeared had changed the situation.
Namely Haydam—the Commander’s illegitimate child who had appeared one day out of nowhere.
That child finally……!!
That Meursault Pendleton had once harbored feelings for Lady Daphne was something no executive did not know. But after Lady Daphne married Commander Hayden and Meursault became Hayden’s adjutant, everyone had assumed those feelings had been set aside.
The only reason he could now openly propose to her had to be because Haydam had egged him on from the side.
Even though I warned Lady Daphne so many times……!
Haydam was an illegitimate child. But every executive also knew that Luna Moon and Commander Hayden had been lovers long before the Commander married Lady Daphne. From Haydam’s point of view, the one who stole his father was none other than Daphne.
This was a vicious child who did not so much as blink when someone died right in front of him. Of course he would want revenge for his mother as well.
That look in his eyes when he looked at the portrait Anton the former general gifted was unsettling from the very beginning……
Haydam had finally taken his revenge on Daphne—by dragging her down to the position of Meursault’s wife.
“At this rate… I cannot live with the guilt I would feel toward the previous Commander.”
And so Radu decided he would poison Haydam himself.
He prepared chocolate thoroughly laced with poison and waited to “coincidentally” run into Haydam. The boy was extremely cunning; if Radu deliberately sought him out, he would certainly suspect any chocolate offered to him.
Then information arrived that Haydam would be visiting the military academy to prepare for the entrance ceremony. Pretending he was only going to check on his sponsored child, Radu headed to the academy and met Haydam without difficulty.
“Isn’t this Lord Haydam? You’ve grown a great deal since I last saw you.”
He squeezed out the last of his acting ability and put on the warmest face he could manage, but Haydam greeted him with nothing more than a cold smile.
“Why are you here?”
Seeing the suspicion appear at once, Radu was glad he had chosen the coincidence route.
“I came to look in on my children. The school year has gone up, after all.”
“Ah……”
“Ah— I brought these for the children. Lord Haydam, please have one as well. It’s chocolate.”
There was a reason he had prepared chocolate specifically. In the zone, cookies were relatively easy to obtain, but chocolate—with its complicated processing—was genuinely difficult. Therefore a child like Haydam would not refuse it. And according to the rumors, he had grown up half-starved in the slums and was obsessive about food.
A child like that would never turn down chocolate.
Just as Radu hoped, Haydam’s lips curved slightly upward and he accepted the chocolate without the slightest resistance.
“Eat it quickly before anyone else sees.”
He had also heard that Haydam was fond of the zone’s children. Afraid the boy might refuse to eat it and give it away instead, Radu hurriedly added the instruction to eat it at once.
For some reason Haydam suddenly burst into laughter, then gave a small nod of greeting toward him.
“I’ll gratefully enjoy it.”
The unexpectedly bright and polite manner threw Radu for a moment, but the water had already been spilled. Haydam put the entire chocolate into his mouth in one unhesitating motion.
Radu watched him, every muscle tense.
“But……”
When Haydam opened his mouth again the chocolate had vanished without a trace, so Radu fully expected the next second to bring blood and collapse. Instead Haydam spoke with perfectly clear pronunciation:
“Busy with your affair, are you?”
“…What?”
Radu doubted his own ears.
“Honestly, you’re morally problematic enough that you irritate me every time I see you, but my father is technically an adulterer too and so is Meursault, so I don’t really have any room to talk. Keep living like that.”
Haydam still wore an angelic smile, but the words pouring from his mouth matched that face not at all; the cognitive dissonance was almost physical.
Moreover—
Why… isn’t… he dying?
Haydam walked past him as if nothing had happened.
I personally dumped enough poison into that chocolate to drop even a large-class monster in a single hit.
He had put it in himself and delivered it himself; there was no possibility of a mix-up. Yet Haydam simply walked away, perfectly fine, until he disappeared from sight.
Radu waited for news of Haydam’s death in case the poison simply took time to act. The next day came, and the day after that. No death notice for Haydam ever arrived.
And when death news finally did arrive, it was not the news of Haydam’s death that Radu had been waiting for.
It was the news of Daphne’s death.