Don't Play the Saint
"So?"
Yujin stared at the two of them with a flat, unimpressed look as they fidgeted in place.
"W-well. He just seemed so pitiful. I figured we could at least buy him a meal…"
"You got money?"
The polite speech he'd briefly returned to vanished again.
Which meant Yujin was not pleased with the situation.
"Couldn't you cover it for us, Yujin?"
Lee Sia offered an awkward smile.
"Oh, look at her. A living saint. Absolute saint material."
Of course, it didn't land with him at all.
"Why the hell would I buy food for some retard like that?"
Retard?
Wasn't that a little much?
Lee Sia, who still possessed a thoroughly normal sense of right and wrong, glared at him with open dissatisfaction.
But only for a moment.
The moment she registered the savage light in Yujin's eyes, she quietly lowered her gaze.
Never poke that lunatic.
If she did, it was over. Forget the meal—she'd be dragged straight out to dance a bloody tango with red goblins. That much was certain.
Among her friends, Sia had a quiet reputation for being a little unhinged herself. In front of Yujin, though, she couldn't even show her card. He was a lunatic among lunatics—the top of the heap.
"I'll pay you back later."
Come on. How much could one meal possibly cost?
Sell off even a fraction of the junk loot from their hunts and they could eat at a place like this for days. She didn't know the exact prices, but still.
"Hmm."
Yujin frowned at her words.
But he didn't argue any further. If she was buying it with her own money, there was no real reason to stop her.
He made sure to nail the terms down, though.
"It's coming out of your share. When we settle up later, I'm deducting every last copper. If you try to walk it back, I won't let it slide."
"I-I'm not walking anything back!"
Who did he take her for, a con artist?
Sia shot him a sidelong glare, then sat the man down and ordered food. A soup rich with meat broth, soft bread, and a well-seared steak.
The man hesitated at the sight of it—but hunger won. He dug in with desperate, wolfish haste.
Yujin watched him for a moment, then asked,
"Anyway. Who is this guy, and why did you bring him?"
One look was enough. He wasn't right. Not completely gone, maybe, but nowhere near holding onto his sanity either. Sharing a table with someone like that did nothing for Yujin's mood.
"Ah—so, what happened was…"
Sia laid out the story as she'd heard it, her voice even. Her chest still felt heavy, but she didn't show it. She didn't want to look weak in front of Yujin.
That lunatic would just call me soft and work me even harder!
It was a guess, but a fairly accurate one.
"It just felt wrong to leave him, and if we'd walked away something worse might've happened. I also thought a meal might help him settle a little."
Yujin listened in silence, then nodded and opened his mouth.
"There's dumb, and then there's this. So basically, you got played for a sucker?"
"…What?"
How did you listen to that story and land on that conclusion?
She couldn't begin to understand how that lunatic's brain worked. Then again—that was probably why he was a lunatic.
"Listen carefully. How many people like him do you think there are inside Terra?"
Yujin jerked his chin toward the man still shoveling food into his mouth.
"I-I don't know?"
How would she? The only player she'd seen all day was this one man.
"About thirty percent are in roughly the same state as him. Tomorrow the number'll go up."
"How many is that, exactly?"
Thirty percent.
Without knowing the total player count, she couldn't even begin to picture it.
"Total players are around twenty thousand. Rough math puts it at six thousand."
"S-six thousand?"
That couldn't be right.
That many people had already broken like this?
"Think I'm exaggerating?"
Yujin snorted, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Don't believe me, go take a walk. Half the alleys will have people sitting on the ground, crying."
It had been that way in the first timeline.
The Tower of Light was simply too cruel a place for ordinary people to accept.
How many times in a normal life did someone watch another person die?
Here, the moment you entered the Abyss of the Tutorial Floor, dozens died. The person standing right beside you a second ago. The one you'd just been talking to. The one you'd nodded hello to. In a blink, they became scraps of meat floating in a pool of blood.
How many players who witnessed that could stay sane?
Anyone normal would drown in despair and terror. Yujin had been the same. The overwhelming violence, the gore—it had scared him too. He'd shaken it off quickly. Most people couldn't.
Every alley. Every corner. Players who had given up on living crawled into the dark to hide.
"You planning to feed all of them?"
One person was doable. With a little effort, maybe ten. But a hundred? Two hundred, a thousand, six thousand?
No matter how hard Sia tried, it was impossible.
"Th-that's…"
"So leave it. That isn't help—that's just letting a bunch of retards play you for a sucker."
Sia had nothing to say. Not because she agreed with him. Because she was shaken.
That many people, already lost to despair…
"And it's a waste of time anyway. Even if you don't look after them, they'll all snap out of it eventually."
What was that supposed to mean?
Sia frowned at him. Yujin shrugged and pointed around the room—the innkeeper, the staff, the NPCs moving through the streets outside.
"Why do you think they're here?"
One reason only.
To get the players back to a functional state as fast as possible. Food? The NPCs provided it. Mental care? Also them. That was what the city was for. That was what the NPCs were for.
"So stop sticking your nose in."
Sia clicked her tongue. Hearing it laid out like that, maybe she really hadn't needed to step in.
But if the same situation came around again, she would do the exact same thing. Call her a sucker. Call it pointless. She still believed it was the right thing to do.
"Fine, I get it. Can you drop the lecture already?"
"Lecture?"
Yujin's face twisted on the spot.
If it had been anyone else, he wouldn't have bothered explaining any of this. He'd have just muttered, Ugh, what a dumbass, and walked past.
But she was the Sword Empress. So he'd gone out of his way to explain it properly. And she called it a lecture?
"Yesterday must've been real comfortable for you. If a word like that is coming out of your mouth."
Yujin ground his teeth. Sia flinched hard.
I'm screwed!
The lunatic was one step from blowing up. He'd looked rough enough that she'd gotten a little mouthy—and at this rate, getting thrown into a pack of red goblins was only a matter of time.
"M-more importantly!"
Sia scrambled to change the subject, racking her brain. Nothing came. They barely had any shared ground to talk about; of course nothing useful would surface.
Help arrived from the seat beside her—Park Ji-hoo.
"Hyeong, what happened yesterday? They said you collapsed?"
Nice!
A perfectly timed question. She'd been curious about that herself. How had it not occurred to her sooner?
"Mmm."
The twisted look on Yujin's face gave way to something awkward. He clearly hadn't planned on telling them anything.
"There was a reason. Don't worry about it."
It was all he could manage.
"Then can we still go hunting today?"
Even to Sia's eyes, Yujin did not look well. The dark circles ran down to his cheekbones, and his posture was slumped—like a man who'd wrung every last drop out of his muscles.
"Rest today. No—through tomorrow."
Yujin spat the words out like they tasted bad.
Sia danced an internal victory dance. She wouldn't have to endure that hellish training until the day after tomorrow! Was there better news in the world? And her earlier slip of the tongue had quietly been forgotten, too. Of course she was in a good mood.
"Then what should we do today?"
This time Sia asked. If he allowed it, she wanted to go outside and look around—to see with her own eyes whether there really were that many broken players, just as he'd said.
Yujin had no intention of letting the two of them rest in peace. Can't hunt? Then do something else. Who did they think they were, flopping around and getting lazy?
He held out his hand toward Sia, who was still mid–victory dance.
"Huh?"
Two small stones rested in his palm.
"Rune Fragments. Activate them and you gain a trait."
"A t-trait?"
She knew what that meant—Didascalia had explained it. What traits were. What kind of effects they carried. She'd gotten skills and items, but she'd never even seen a trait. She'd been curious.
Those are Rune Fragments that grant traits?
Why was he holding out something that precious?
Sia looked at him with a half-formed, No way… in her eyes. And her guess was right.
"This one's yours. And this one's yours."
Yujin handed one to Lee Sia and one to Park Ji-hoo.
"They suit you. Learn them now."
"Wha—"
Sia accepted the Rune Fragment with a dazed expression. Most players didn't even have a single skill, let alone a trait. And Yujin had just handed these precious things over like candy he'd picked up on the way out of a restaurant.
"I-is it really okay to take these?"
"Don't want them, fine. I'll give them to that retard over there instead."
Yujin flicked a finger toward the man still eating beside them.
"No! That's not what I meant!"
Buying someone a meal and handing over a trait were not even in the same universe. Even as the Sword Empress, she hadn't planned on being that generous.
"Is that why you were so exhausted yesterday? Because you were getting these?"
Park Ji-hoo asked, the Rune Fragment in his hands, his face full of emotion.
"No? Not even close. You think I'd push myself that far for something this small?"
In an instant, the touched look evaporated.
Of course.
The warmth that had been rising cooled over at once. He'd clearly helped them—so why did gratitude refuse to stick?
That's a talent in its own right.
A talent that was completely useless for getting through life, but still.
"Learn them right now. Don't screw around and lose them."
Yujin spoke as if it were nothing, but Sword Heart [D] and Fighting Spirit [D] were among the highest-tier traits available on the first floor. Players and NPCs alike would kill for them. Learning them the moment they were in hand was the only sane choice.
"Th-thank you."
"Thank you."
The two of them bowed their heads to Yujin, then activated the Rune Fragments on the spot.
A soft rush of light—hwaaaaaa!—burst from the stones, filling the interior of the Starlight Wanderer with a gentle glow.