Daphne (5)
“Just what kind of person was your mother that she would get involved with a handsome middle-aged man romance simulation……”
I had no idea how that person had ended up touching that game and getting possessed either, so there was nothing I could say about it.
It is strange, though.
As far as I remembered, that person hadn’t seemed interested in anything of the sort.
Still, Shut-in Yeobo no longer appeared to suspect me. No matter how much of a liar I was every time I opened my mouth, she seemed to believe I wouldn’t drag my own mother into something like this.
“Huh? Wait a second. You’re currently clearing the illegitimate child route, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then… that grave… is……”
Shut-in Yeobo’s face sank into shock and horror as she realized whose grave I had dug up to get here. Then, as if something had clicked, she looked straight at me.
“So that’s why you asked last time whether I knew Luna Moon’s face! Because the portrait was really your mother’s face. No wonder she looked like you… wait?”
Shut-in Yeobo suddenly tilted her head.
“But that’s weird. We got possessed into our game avatars, not our real bodies. So how can you and Luna Moon look alike?”
“There’s nothing weird about it. I just used the avatar that scanned my own face for the illegitimate child route.”
Safe Zone avatars were a system where you basically scanned your own face first and then piled whatever customizations you wanted on top of it. Plenty of gamers found customization a hassle, so a surprising number of players simply used their real faces as-is.
Of course, I hadn’t done it out of laziness. I needed an East Asian avatar for the illegitimate child route, so I left it as it was. When I cleared other zones that weren’t the illegitimate child route, I used a white-haired avatar with dark circles—exactly like the Unicorn Area player I was now—and since that was my most representative look, the other players remembered me by that face.
Come to think of it, Korean players in particular had been heavy on the modifications.
Shut-in Yeobo, who had almost certainly overhauled her own face beyond recognition, was staring at me with wide eyes.
“What? Then… that face right now is your real face?”
“Yeah.”
“No way. With your personality, having a face like that… what a waste of a face.”
“……”
Does this guy even look in the mirror? Even if my face is a waste, your avatar is a million times more of a waste.
While I was thinking that, Shut-in Yeobo said something unexpectedly useful.
“Then the impersonator in the Unicorn Area must have gotten possessed into a copy of your avatar and decided to act as you while they were at it.”
“Mm.”
That guy wasn’t an impersonator—he really was “me.” Still, the fact that he was also “me” yet possessed into a different avatar was something worth thinking about.
Why did both of us, who were “me,” have different avatars?
When I asked if he was a parallel-world version of me, he dodged the answer.
In that case, the closest answer would be “a parallel-world me who picked the unicorn at the convenience store.”
But judging by the bizarrely high volume of information and the sheer number of titles he had… and by the way he told me I had unlocked additional system access faster than him…
That guy was definitely not someone who had been possessed at the same time as us.
It also didn’t seem like he had been possessed in the past the way the otome-game players had.
The conclusion I reached was one.
This possession isn’t a first playthrough.
At the very least, the Dopamine Addict of the Unicorn Area had played this possession “more than once.”
All those titles, all that information—if they came from a previous round, it made sense.
Why he alone was in adult form, and why two Dopamine Addicts—him and me—existed at the same time, I still didn’t know.
Well, thinking about it right now wasn’t going to give me answers.
In a way, this is even better.
If the other party was “me,” he would entertain me far more than any other player.
I wanted to enjoy this world for a long, long time. For that reason alone, it was best to properly understand why we had been possessed.
If there was a purpose behind possessing us, then once we achieved that goal there was a chance they would send us back to the real world.
What I wanted was an infinite dopamine supply event, not a return to reality. So I needed to grasp this “possession” and bring it under my control.
And the thing that existed for that purpose seemed to be the “Logout” system.
“Anyway, partly to check on my mother and your sister… I’m going to try logging out.”
Shut-in Yeobo’s eyes went round with shock.
“What do you mean you’re going to try logging out? Are you saying you’re going to die?”
Come to think of it, I had explained the system unlock rights and points as a way of showing off how much I’d done for them, but I had never mentioned that my system had received additional unlocks and gained “Logout.”
“The system has a ‘Logout’ function.”
“What?! My system doesn’t have anything like that!”
“Mine does. I did something called an additional unlock.”
“So that’s how you were able to unlock systems for people too. Holy shit… we all got possessed the same way, so why are only you special? Guess an all-zone clearer’s physical stats don’t just disappear.”
Come to think of it, the Dopamine Addict said I was faster than him too……
No matter how I looked at it, that had to be because I started in the Cola Area. If I had started in the Unicorn Area or anywhere else, I never would have learned Luna Moon’s true identity or that Daphne was a player. Without Luna’s Ring I never would have inherited the Eye Giant’s ability, and without that I never could have persuaded Shin Eun-jo.
Was starting in the Cola Area really a coincidence?
Choosing cola had been my own will, true. Yet an inexplicable unease remained.
For now, I needed to finish talking about Logout.
“Anyway… the fact that ‘Logout’ exists as a system function means ‘Login’ should be possible too. It’s clearly different from dying and returning to reality. It has to be different.”
“It has to be?”
“Once I clear up the questions about my mother, I plan to come back.”
I had expected her to look at me strangely for saying I intended to return to this world, but Shut-in Yeobo’s face was unexpectedly calm.
“That… goes for me too.”
“You too?”
“Like I said, I want to live a long time.”
Ah… come to think of it, this girl had said that if she were still in her real body she wouldn’t have lived much longer.
“I just want to confirm my sister is safe, then come back to this world. If coming back is possible, I’m in favor of trying Logout. How does Logout even work? Can I do it too?”
“Mm.”
The system only stated that every player had to open their status windows before the Logout function would activate. Whether only players who had performed additional unlocks could use Logout, or whether it opened for everyone once every player unlocked their system, I had no way of knowing.
The fastest route was to first meet the minimum condition for Logout—“every player unlocking their system”—and then check how Logout actually worked.
“There’s a condition for unlocking the Logout system.”
“A condition?”
“Every single player has to unlock their system.”
“What? We don’t even know how many people are possessed… is making every last one of them unlock it even possible? You said unlocking a system costs a ton of points or whatever.”
“Which is why.”
I held up two fingers in front of Shut-in Yeobo.
“There are two ways to unlock Logout.”
“Two?”
“One of them……”
I folded one finger as I spoke.
“is to make use of the system-unlocked players from other zones. Alone I won’t have enough points.”
Shut-in Yeobo crossed her arms, looking thoughtful.
“Shin Eun-jo might help, but I don’t know about players from other zones. Would they really want to spend that many points just to log out? We have reasons to go back to reality, but… I can’t see the hardcore Safe Zone game addicts wanting to return. Taejeong seems to like life here a lot more too.”
Taejeong had definitely said from the first meeting that he was glad he could clear this world together with me. As I’d thought before, if they only possessed people like that, there wouldn’t be many players willing to cooperate with me for Logout.
Tibalrom over in the Knife Zone, or that dentist who didn’t even know what this game was, would probably cooperate if it meant getting back to reality.
“I do know a few players who might be cooperative, even if it’s not many.”
“And the points to buy system unlock rights only appear after you can do additional unlocks, right?”
That was true. More of a problem than the points themselves was this “additional unlock.” I had no idea how to make someone else perform one. I didn’t even know whether I could help another player with an additional unlock.
Fortunately, I had already prepared a backup plan.
“If the points aren’t enough, we just use the other method.”
“There’s another method? What is it?”
I folded the remaining finger as I spoke.
“Kill everyone except the system-unlocked players.”
“……Huh?”
“If only system-unlocked players are left, Logout should open. Because every remaining player has a system.”
“Why are your ideas always so goddamn vicious?”
“I’m just being efficient.”
“Yeah, well… that might actually be faster than unlocking everyone. As long as I’m safe, right?”
This girl was starting to think like a sociopath too.
“So how are you going to contact the players from other zones?”
“The day you all graduate from the military academy, we leave for the other zones.”
Shut-in Yeobo’s eyes went perfectly round.
“You’re going… to other zones?”
“There’s no other way.”
“B-but graduation is still six years away?!”
“We’ll leave once we’ve grown a bit more. Heading into other zones is going to be on a completely different level from living in the Cola Area so far. And if we empty this zone right now, there’s no telling how Shin Eun-jo might turn on us.”
“Ah……”
Even without Shin Eun-jo, there was no telling what could happen while we were gone. Daphne had just died today, Radu had tried to poison me not long ago, Meursault was unstable, and Anton had probably already attempted suicide. With NPCs capable of causing that much trouble, we needed to stay in the zone for a while.
Besides, our zone’s difficulty was only Low. The NPCs in other zones might be too much for us to handle alone. So we needed to move only after our bodies had grown at least somewhat.
Seventeen years old.
That would be the day we left the zone.
And……
It’s time I opened it.
When I opened the system, the message was still blinking.
A message from the Game Developer exists (1).
Would you like to check it?
I was ready to open that message now. Knowing that either my mother or my father was involved in the game’s development, I was confident I wouldn’t be shocked no matter what kind of message had been left.
After sending Shut-in Yeobo back to her room, I opened the message—and despite my resolve, I couldn’t help but be shaken.
The moment I opened it, what unfolded before my eyes was a single video. At the top of that video, the following title was written:
Dopamine Addict — 1st Round Play Highlight Video
…No.
What the hell is this.