I Became an NPC
"Thanks for your purchase~."
Leaving the general store owner's voice behind me, I stepped out of the building.
So a Subspace Pouch really did exist. Of course it did. Without something like this, how were the adventurer NPCs—everyone who wasn't a player—supposed to haul around the materials they'd gathered?
I fastened the pouch I'd just bought to my waist.
Fortunately, perhaps because it was an item NPCs used as well, it didn't seem to throw an error and rewrite its effects the way the item I'd picked up before had.
"Anyway, I ought to grab a room at the inn soon."
The light around me was thinning, little by little.
I kept forgetting in the middle of things, but maybe it really was because this was a game: even inside a dungeon, the line between day and night stood sharp and clear. Or perhaps that was simply a quirk of this grassland theme. Up in the caves of the floor above, there had been no way to tell day from night at all.
Which made me wonder—how many hours had I been awake this time?
Players had a fatigue value on the character itself, but they didn't seem to feel exhaustion directly. I was different. Whether it was the NPC ruling, or the simple fact that unlike everyone else I was truly living inside the game, my body grew more tired the longer time went on.
I could stay up for a few nights, but the limit was painfully obvious. Worse, I couldn't check my fatigue with my own eyes the way players could, so I had to be that much more careful.
When their fatigue bottomed out they just dropped where they stood, and if they died, they came back later. If I collapsed from exhaustion and died, that was game over on the spot.
Once more players showed up, even getting a room at the inn would turn into a fight. Better to find one now.
Saw a decent post. Looks like one party took the Floor 5 Gatekeeper and headed down.
Anyone besides them take the Gatekeeper?
That NPC killed it, and one party killed it too.
So how are other parties still able to attempt it?
"Hehe..."
After logging out, Seo Arin lay on her bed and scrolled the Arcadia Online community board on her phone.
Whatever had her so delighted, she wore a dopey little smile and kept dragging the screen downward, checking each new post as it came in.
"...Hm?"
Then one post caught her eye.
So What the Hell Is That NPC, Anyway?
That NPC. On the board, it was what they called Han Siwoo.
The moment she confirmed the title, Seo Arin tapped the post as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I know I'm reheating a cold theory, but—
What the hell is that NPC??
For an adventurer NPC, nobody's ever seen him in the village.
For a hostile NPC, there are exceptions, so that doesn't seem right either.
For an NPC who lived on the lower floors, that doesn't seem right either—not when you look at the fact that he took the Gatekeeper.
Game company, release the information on this NPC. Right now.
From the very first time she saw him, her eyes had kept being drawn back.
The NPC who had set the board on fire. A man who had put on an overwhelming performance for someone you might have written off as just another upper-floor NPC.
Maybe that was why. Seo Arin, who normally would not have spared much interest for anything beyond enjoying the game itself, had become interested in Han Siwoo.
How to put it. Less a pull from her head than a tug that started in her chest.
And so, at their first meeting, afraid he might simply leave, she had spoken to him at once. She had even prepared to chase after him, just in case he ran. Fortunately Han Siwoo did not run. He went so far as to invite her into his temporary shelter.
How she had felt then, truly...
"That was fun!"
There had been something else as well, a tingling that rang through her heart, but to Seo Arin that was not a particularly important fact.
What mattered most was this: when she faced Han Siwoo, she did not feel that peculiar unpleasantness that rose whenever she dealt with other men.
How good it was to treat someone at ease, without having to guard herself—Seo Arin knew that better than anyone.
"Nnngh... If only he weren't an NPC inside the game, I'd meet him for real and we'd go out and play together~."
Being with him was comfortable, and it was fun. That was why she wanted to stay with Han Siwoo.
It was a simple thought like that.
Only—
"...The look in Hayun's eyes when she stared at Siwoo was a little annoying, though."
She just did not like that people other than herself knew about someone like him.
"Ugh... I never should've introduced him~!!"
Seo Arin pounded the bed, buried her face in the pillow, then peeked her head back up.
"...It's fine. ...Yeah, it's fine! Hayun's my closest friend, right alongside Se-ah! Good things are meant to be shared with your friends!"
Having declared that, she promptly buried her face in the pillow again.
"I have to get to sleep! That's the only way I get to see Siwoo again tomorrow!!"
A refreshing morning.
Sleeping in an inn bed really was far more comfortable than the temporary shelter. Maybe, under the game's systems, resting at an inn simply recovered more fatigue.
Floor 6, though, truly had almost no monsters. Would I have to go down to Floor 7 before I met anything worth calling a proper monster?
Turning that over in my head, I wandered the area. Seo Arin's group probably was not logged in yet, so I meant to use the time to find the way down to Floor 7.
"...But no matter how long I look, I can't see it."
Nothing. The grassland was vast, granted, but I had put in a fair amount of time and still come up empty.
Was there some other condition for clearing Floor 6?
Games did that sometimes. Places you could not progress through unless you performed a specific action, or cleared a specific quest.
If that was the case, the problem was what that action or quest even was. Surely it was not the sort of thing an NPC simply could not progress...
...Yeah. That would be a real screwjob.
In the end, partly to wait for Seo Arin's group and partly to earn some coins, I hunted a wolf pack nearby.
The wolves were genuinely hard to find, too. It was starting to feel as if Floor 6 might really be a floor meant for resting.
Having failed to gain much of anything in the area, I later took the claws I had gotten off a Black Dog to the blacksmith and cashed them in.
While I was at the forge I considered fitting myself with some new gear, but I was hardly swimming in coins. The equipment I was already wearing still had no major problems, so I decided new gear could wait until next time.
...Should I just head back up?
There was nothing in particular worth hunting, and I did not get the sense that anything was progressing, either.
Better to spend the spare time going up and taking down kobolds, or the goblins in the caves.
Right. Until Seo Arin's side showed up, I would hunt on the upper floor.
After a brief bit of thinking, I gathered my gear and walked back out of the village. I had a rough memory of where the entrance back to Floor 5 was, so I did not have to wander much.
I was drawing close to that entrance when—
"Oh? Did you come out to welcome us?!"
A high-strung voice came flying my way.
I could tell who it was from the voice alone.
"How'd you know we'd show up at this hour~. I knew it—Siwoo and I were fated to be bound together as comrades!"
"I didn't know you were coming."
"Aww~! Don't be shy!"
"I really didn't know. I was just thinking I'd head up and do a little hunting in my spare time."
"Yeah, yeah~! For our shy little Siwoo's sake, I'll pretend that's what you meant!"
Not a word I said was getting through.
Past Seo Arin, who was beaming, Yoon Se-ah and Jeong Hayun seemed to have spotted me as well and offered small waves. More precisely, only Yoon Se-ah waved. Jeong Hayun just stared straight at me.
Same as before. Was my face built that strangely? She kept looking.
"So, Siwoo, what were you up to while we were gone? For the record, I logged in the second I woke up!"
"Nothing much. Oh—now that I think about it, I did find a village."
"A village~?!"
The idea of a village inside the dungeon must have surprised Seo Arin, too. Her eyes went perfectly round, and she looked at me with a gaze that was, quite literally, sparkling.
"I wanna see the village too! A tour! Give me a tour, Siwoo!"
"I was planning on it anyway."
Unlike me, if I brought along genuine, bona fide players, maybe some kind of event would trigger.
Meanwhile Yoon Se-ah slipped past the bouncing Seo Arin, came up to me, and spoke with a worried face.
"Um... it isn't some strange sort of village, is it?"
"Not particularly? It was a peaceful village, nothing more."
"...That's a relief. Ah, I'm sorry... A village inside a dungeon just makes me uneasy..."
"Well, I understand that much."
I had not seen so much as the shadow of a village in years, and I had a certain confidence in my own skill, so I had stepped into the place without much worry.
From Yoon Se-ah's point of view, an enormous city already sat right outside the dungeon. A village stranded all by itself in a place crawling with monsters was bound to worry her.
Jeong Hayun, by comparison...
"Hayun, they said it's a new village! I'm so excited~! Right?!"
"Yeah. I'm in a total heart-pounding state."
Held in Seo Arin's arms, she wore that trademark deadpan expression of hers.
"Haa..."
Yoon Se-ah, standing beside me, must have seen the two of them as well. A small sigh drifted over from her side.
Hang in there, Yoon Se-ah.