Equipment Item
No way I couldn’t even cross water.
I’d been worried ever since sunlight started burning my skin, but it really did seem I’d gained every single weakness a vampire was supposed to have.
I stepped back and asked Aurell, “Aurell.”
“Yes?”
“Could you turn into mist and get across?”
Aurell shook her head, her face turning deathly pale at once.
Not a trace of hesitation. Not even a second thought.
I tried several other methods too—using shadows, taking a running jump, even testing whether I could somehow force myself through—but the gut-deep aversion stamped into my mind simply wouldn’t let me cross.
No helping it.
I sighed and told Aurell, “Wait here. I’m going out for a bit.”
“Eek...! You’re not planning to abandon me, are you?”
“No. I’m going to rip up a wooden board or something, so just stay put.”
I peeled Aurell off me when she tried to cling on and said it flatly.
If I’d meant to abandon her, I would’ve done it long ago. I wouldn’t have handed her a shop-bought weapon either.
The place I headed after climbing out of the sewer was the nearest building.
Vampires couldn’t cross water. Then all I had to do was build a bridge over it.
After rummaging through the wreckage of a collapsed building for a while, I finally found a sheet of metal that looked usable.
It was sturdy enough that even if Aurell and I stood on top of it and hopped around, it wouldn’t buckle.
That would do.
I carried the sheet back to the sewer entrance.
Waddling along while putting in a truly heroic effort.
“Hmm...”
But one problem came up.
The sheet was bigger than I’d expected, so it wouldn’t fit through the round manhole opening.
After thinking it over, I gripped it tight and bent it with brute force.
Kreeeak—!
The metal screamed as it warped out of shape.
Once it was bent enough, it finally shrank to a size that could fit through the manhole.
I called down into the hole, “Aurell!”
“Yes!”
The answer came back at once.
She must have been waiting right beneath the opening.
I shoved the sheet downward and said, “Catch it when it falls!”
“Yes!”
Could I really trust her?
I stared down into the hole for a long moment, my eyes narrowed in doubt.
In the end, I let go of the sheet with a small sigh.
Whoosh—
The heavy thing dropped at once under its own weight.
Right after that, I hurled myself toward the opening too.
“Charlotte-nim!”
Aurell’s voice reached me the moment I landed.
I turned my head slightly and saw her clutching the bent sheet to her chest.
She must have caught it without a single mistake during the fall.
I nodded and told her, “Lay that down on top of the water.”
“Yes!”
Once the sheet was laid across the water, it did its job as a makeshift bridge perfectly well.
Of course, that didn’t mean my aversion to water had vanished completely.
Carefully, one step at a time.
Aurell and I crossed the metal bridge with extreme caution.
Once we crossed, we pulled the sheet back up and laid it down somewhere else to make another bridge.
Moving like that, over and over.
Slowly, but steadily, Aurell and I explored the sewer’s interior.
The inside of the sewer was every bit as miserable as the world outside.
I frowned at the trash drifting on the water and the mold smothering the walls and floor.
Judging by the traces left behind, people had clearly fled into this sewer to escape the dangers above.
We kept wandering through the tunnels for a long while.
At last, Aurell and I found a place that was anything but ordinary.
“This is... the real thing, right?”
At Aurell’s question, I nodded without a word.
The very end of the sewer’s path.
At the dead end stood a highly suspicious door.
Only that spot remained clean, with not a speck of mold on it, and above the door a small sign glowed bright and clean.
[OPEN]
A sign shining all by itself in an area where the power had gone out.
It was deeply unnatural.
No question about it. There had to be a shop NPC beyond this door.
I carefully reached out and opened it.
Ding-a-ling—
The moment the door swung open, a small bell chimed and the bright lights inside flooded my vision.
Then, in an instant, fresh air completely unlike the damp stench of the sewer wrapped around my body.
It felt like I’d stepped into another world.
Aurell and I stood there, dazed, our mouths slightly open as we entered the shop.
The first thing that caught my eye was the wall packed full of melee weapons that looked like swords and blades.
While I was admiring the many weapons, I noticed a Black man sitting on a chair with infuriating calm.
“A customer?”
The Black man spoke without even turning his head.
Wearing flip-flops, gray three-quarter pants, and a sky-blue Hawaiian shirt, he was unmistakably someone I knew.
How could I not know him?
Anyone who had played Blood Carnival would know.
He looked exactly like the shop NPC from the game.
Even the oddly relaxed voice matched.
I frowned and took a step back.
His blank, lifeless eyes were unsettling as hell.
“You... what exactly are you?”
“Hmm...”
The Black man tilted his head at my question.
Then he flicked his eyes toward the many blades hanging behind him and answered, “A weapon merchant?”
Aurell would know that much too.
I shook my head and asked a more direct question.
“You’re human, right?”
“That’s a ridiculous question. Are you saying I look like a vampire or a werewolf?”
He kept missing the point.
I sighed and tried again.
“You know the game Blood Carnival, right?”
“Blood Carnival? No, I don’t.”
He looked exactly like the shop NPC from Blood Carnival, and yet he didn’t know Blood Carnival?
I exchanged a careful glance with Aurell.
“Maybe this person... was made?”
“Made?”
“Yes. Fused entities and items that respawn in the field are things that didn’t originally exist in this world, right? So I wondered if he was created the same way.”
“You’re saying the god who made this world also made this shop NPC?”
“Yes. That’s what I think.”
I folded my arms and glared at the Black man.
He didn’t seem particularly interested in the topic of the conversation we’d just been having.
“There wasn’t anything like this for the last five years, was there?”
“Right...?”
“So why did it only show up now?”
“Maybe the patch went live late?”
“The patch?”
“Yes... since this is a game and all.”
I let out a sigh at Aurell’s words.
The god who made this world was rolling out patches in real time?
I wanted to say it was nonsense, but the world had already become nonsense beyond belief.
Her words did make some sense.
As Aurell watched my expression, she cautiously approached the Black man.
“Could I see what you’re selling?”
“Of course!”
At her words, the Black man took down the weapons hanging on the wall.
What he placed on the table were three weapons in total.
[Matte Katana]
[Military Longsword]
[Military Dagger]
I frowned at the sight.
Those weren’t the only blades hanging on the wall, but the Black man brought out nothing else, as if these were all he had.
“Is that everything?”
“That’s all I can sell right now.”
“What about the ones hanging back there?”
“Those can’t be sold right now.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not time yet.”
“What does that mean?”
After faithfully answering Aurell’s string of questions, the Black man shut his mouth tightly.
As if to say he couldn’t answer anything more.
Unable to get a straight answer, Aurell let out a soft sigh and tried another question.
“How much are these?”
“Five thousand credits each.”
“Credits...”
Aurell turned to me with a troubled look.
But staring at me like that wasn’t going to magically conjure up credits from thin air.
I didn’t have any currency called credits either.
After pouting and thinking hard for a while, Aurell seemed to remember something and her eyes brightened.
“Oh, um, do you also buy items?”
“Of course. If you’ve got something useful, take it out.”
At the Black man’s words, Aurell smiled brightly.
She dug into her pocket and pulled out a small glass bottle.
“I’ll buy it for one hundred credits each.”
So this NPC apparently bought other things too.
I took off the backpack on my back and tossed it in front of the Black man.
“How much for everything in there?”
“Oh...”
The Black man was very quick with numbers.
For recovery items like potions and bandages, he offered one hundred credits apiece. Canned food went for two hundred, and books that could raise the level of a support passive skill fetched five hundred.
I sold everything except the potions.
The total I got was two thousand credits.
Once the trade was done, I frowned and gave the shadow an order.
Kill the man standing in front of me.
But the shadow only twitched for a moment and didn’t obey.
In the end, I put all my strength into my hand and slammed it hard against the table one last time.
Thunk!
A strange sound rang out the instant my tiny fist met the table.
Even after I struck it with all my strength, the table didn’t break.
Just as I’d suspected.
The inside of a Blood Carnival shop was an inviolable no-combat zone.
That same rule still held in this world.
“Hmm-hmm...”
I cleared my throat and hid my fist behind my back.
Aurell was looking at me with a strange expression.
I avoided her gaze and said, “Then... shall we go?”
“You’re done here?”
“There’s nothing else I need to buy... and nothing to sell either, right?”
Aurell looked regretfully at the gear hanging on the wall, but in the end she followed me out.
We had confirmed the existence of a shop NPC with our own eyes.
We’d also learned that items respawning in the field could be exchanged for a currency called credits.
That meant our course was set.
Until we found another shop, we had to farm as many items as possible and turn them into credits.
Aurell and I left the sewer and continued exploring the city.
And after a full day of searching...
Aurell and I had managed to get our hands on 10,000 credits.
---