Blue Kitty's Letter
I stared at the letter in disbelief. “Huh…?”
The office-worker zombies, drawn by my dumbfounded expression, crowded around and read it for themselves. Then they started snickering among themselves.
“Kek. It’s a love letter!”
“Even in a place like this? Some of us are crawling around missing limbs!”
“Tsk. No one’s thinking about work!”
Their reactions snapped me back to reality. Correcting them could wait. These idiots still thought they were back at Barosoft.
“The ones who just opened their mouths—random box priority.”
At my sharp command, Ju Giju, the first to speak, protested in outrage. He grabbed my leg and the hem of my pants.
“Eek? I only said it was a love letter!”
“I just don’t like you.”
“N-no, wait. I’ll give you good information, so let’s pretend this never happened. I’m innocent!”
“What information?”
When I showed a hint of interest, his tone shifted. Back to his usual smug self.
“Heh, I’m actually a veteran of user invasions! And in Stage 5, when another user enters, their entire island comes with them. Bet you didn’t know that.”
‘No, you’re all veterans…’ I didn’t understand why he was acting so proud, but the information was new. If entire islands transferred over, then the woman who contacted us through the bottle was at least Stage 5 or higher.
“Fine. You’re exempt this time.”
Ju Giju clenched his remaining fist and cheered. I couldn’t understand why he was so happy when the total number of boxes we had to open hadn’t changed.
“Enough idle talk. If they’re enemies, we’ll just turn them into zombies. No need to overthink it.”
The office workers all nodded in agreement—actually, they looked excited. They were hoping the invading user would share the burden of opening random boxes, just like them.
“Hehe, is a female zombie coming?”
“We already have a female zombie, don’t we? I’m a woman too.”
“You’re missing everything below the neck.”
“The director doesn’t have one either, you know? This is ridiculous.”
I decided to stop worrying. Whatever happened, I’d find out when we met.
Her real name was Park Seona. She had been an idol. But the world of performing arts was a ruthless winner-takes-all arena where only the top 0.1% survived. Her blood, sweat, and burning youth vanished like droplets of sweat without ever blooming into a flower.
That day was her retirement day. Like most failed idols, she rented a small concert hall for a final performance and fan meeting. She sold her last pieces of merchandise and gave away the final dinner tickets through a raffle. She was happy.
Then, when the event ended and night fell, Park Seona sat in a corner of the venue, staring blankly at the stage.
“Haha. It’s over…”
What was she supposed to do now? She had spent her entire life singing and dancing. She couldn’t imagine herself doing anything else. She tilted her head back to keep the tears from falling.
“Who am I?”
And then the world flipped upside down.
When she came to, she was sitting in a small room. Park Seona spoke in a trembling voice.
“Um… there’s no one who’d pay ransom for me…”
A washed-up idol with no value. It was a cruel yet coldly accurate assessment of herself. But the eerie, genderless voice dispassionately determined her new worth.
You are a Leopard Summoner.
Leopards. Those powerful, ferocious creatures led Park Seona to endless victories. The frail dwarves stood no chance against the beasts. Even upon reaching Stage 4, her winning streak never stopped. The dangerous animals of the maze? That phrase now referred to her leopards.
The thrill of standing at the peak—she had never felt anything like it. Seona became intoxicated by that beauty. But when she entered Stage 5, Park Seona once again faced an insurmountable wall.
For a long time, she drifted across an empty sea. Just like back then, when she sang to an empty theater with no audience, Seona would hum whenever things got hard. When she caught fish, she danced. When it rained, she lit a warm stove and wept, lost in memories.
She regretted choosing Stage 5. Getting drunk on victory and raising the difficulty by a full eighteen levels had clearly been a mistake. But there was no going back. There were no clues for the two open events, and even the rounds were becoming too much to handle.
‘This is as far as my luck goes…’
Thus, she became a ghost of Stage 5. Catching fish, salvaging floating debris, singing and dancing—she became the sole pirate of this vast ocean, wandering the world.
Then one day, a sponsorship request from a major corporation arrived. ‘Song of the Grass Blade,’ Park Seona’s sponsor, was technically a sole proprietorship. She didn’t know how they had landed a deal with a conglomerate, but Seona saw this as her last chance.
Her job was to seduce one promising user and secure corporate sponsorship for them.
‘Must be nice… What kind of life does a rising star live when corporations are fighting over them with surprise events like this…’
After hearing about the Zombie Summoner’s exploits, Park Seona fell completely head over heels. Tournament champion of Stage 3. Problem solver of the dwarf city. Conqueror of Stage 4’s highest difficulty. In this new world, that man was the true idol everyone envied.
‘I want to know this person.’
Park Seona searched the captain’s quarters and pulled out the [Elixir of Illusion] she had been saving for a long time. She oiled her dry, tangled hair until it shone, then dyed it blue. She tended to her skin, roughened by sea winds, and recalled a lifetime of makeup techniques.
Ah, how long had it been since she dressed up like this?
The fierce female captain of the Leopard Pirates returned to being a kitten that day.
Her real name was Park Seona. Her stage name was Blue Kitty.
She had once been an idol.
Twelve hours along the golden path beneath the sea. We finally arrived at what we believed was the vicinity of El Dorado. I praised the zombies for their hard work.
“Team 1, good job. Rest now.”
With the number of rafts increasing, the zombies’ rowing had reached its limit. That was why I had split the octopuses into two teams to take turns pulling the floating debris. We had been operating an octopus sled across the sea.
We were supposed to get yachts, fishing boats, and all sorts of floating objects, so why were we only getting rafts? It was entirely because of Kitty.
The type of debris that washed up changed depending on the round’s progress. And because I had been waiting for news from Kitty, whose communications had been cut off, I hadn’t progressed the rounds. Since I hadn’t even done 5-1, it was an infinite supply of rafts.
But that wasn’t necessarily a loss. The total number of random boxes that washed up each day was fixed anyway. It didn’t affect our supplies.
If this was the only inconvenience, it was more than worth enduring when I thought about everything Kitty had done for me.
‘Besides, it seems like she disappeared because of me…’
I wasn’t an idiot. Director Park had used some method to borrow the power of ‘Yeon’ to summon a sponsor into Stage 4. And Kitty had been furious. She had probably gone to turn ‘Yeon’ upside down.
I wasn’t so heartless that I couldn’t wait for the sponsor who had vanished to solve my problems. And there was no real rush anyway. Including El Dorado, this sea still had plenty of other sources of income we could tap into.
Just like the special artifacts in Stage 4, this ocean was filled with rewards unrelated to the ‘enemies.’
Let’s wait patiently.
“In that sense, should we go take a look at the golden city?”
I attached the [Diving Sticker] to my arm. It was an item that let you breathe underwater for thirty minutes, obtained from a random box.
Click—
“Watch the house.”
“Aratta.”
“If any guests show up, make them wait. If they seem hostile, you can just capture them.”
“Madda. Baengnae will eat them.”
“No, don’t eat them. We need to turn them into zombies and hear what they have to say. Aren’t you curious?”
“Umm…”
Ever since reading the letter, Baengnae had shown strong hostility toward the invaders. Maybe the perfume sprayed on the letter hadn’t suited her tastes.
“Anyway, I’m off.”
“Aratta.”
Splash—
I threw myself into the sea. The cold liquid wrapped around my entire body, making my skin flinch.
‘Kuh, refreshing.’
Without hesitation, I signaled the octopuses and dove underwater.
The [Diving Sticker] wasn’t infinite. As soon as I entered the water, Octopus Team 2 approached and formed a protective escort around me.
‘Hmm… It really is uncomfortable.’
Breathing was normal. But the amount of oxygen supplied felt noticeably less than on the surface. It wouldn’t matter for normal movement, but it could affect intense combat.
That worry quickly disappeared. The octopus zombies moved remarkably fast and freely underwater. Honestly, for creatures worth over 900 gold, they had seemed underwhelming, but that was because they weren’t meant for land in the first place.
‘Needless worry.’
El Dorado naturally had its own native creatures. Users called them fishmen. There was a reason they were called fishmen instead of mermaids or fish people. They looked like fish with human arms haphazardly attached.
Rather than sea creatures, they resembled something a child had played with by sticking arms onto fish. And their appearance was quite grotesque—because they had so many arms. Even the ones with the fewest had six arms where fins should have been. Some of them, apparently possessing a bit of intelligence, held blades in their hands. They swam with their tails and attacked with weapons. Encountering them underwater was like facing a nightmare.
‘Oh… there they are.’
As I descended deeper, fishmen began to appear. Come to think of it, the only thing human-like about them was their arms, so I wasn’t sure why the word “human” was attached. That was probably the first discoverer’s fault.
Regardless of their appearance, the important thing was that these were the residents of El Dorado. They only inhabited the area near the golden city. And just as I had hoped, an arch-shaped structure came into view below.
The color wasn’t gold. Since we were in the deep sea where little light reached, no golden reflection appeared. But it was clearly an artificial structure.
‘There it is! This is definitely the place.’
I counted the Fruits of Good and Evil I had stored away and smiled happily. The ones I had saved even during my bloody battle with Director Park. Honestly, I had slightly regretted not eating them when the ‘Lord of a Hundred Ghosts’ suddenly appeared. But in the end, it had been the right choice.
Because now I had reached a situation where I could receive this blessing. This too was thanks to Kitty.
‘Let’s go.’
The time had come to reap the fruits I had harvested while circling Stage 4. The end of my long wait had arrived.