Don't Fight
She wasn't supposed to be fighting.
A woman was locked in combat with ten horn rabbits.
A low-level hunter. Her nickname was Otoke.
Her viewers affectionately called her Otto.
Right now she was barely holding them off, clinging to a single shield as the horn rabbits hammered her defenses.
The reason she'd ended up in danger was a mission she'd accepted on today's stream. She'd thought it would be an easy freeload—just pick some herbs and call it a day. Instead, some bastard had herded ten horn rabbits straight into the herb colony.
Now she was surrounded, scrambling just to block their attacks.
"Guys, what do I do?!"
In the middle of all that, a horn rabbit reared up, horn gleaming, and leapt.
— THUD!
"I'm actually going to die! If I die I'm coming back as a ghost and haunting all of you!"
The viewers weren't hunters. They were ordinary people—outsiders who assumed anything that looked dangerous was just for show.
They kept cracking jokes, completely clueless, while Otto was genuinely one step from death.
Her grip on the shield trembled from the endless barrage of horn rabbit strikes. Any second now, she was sure one of those razor-sharp horns would punch straight through her chest.
Then, at the edge of her vision, a tiny figure came toddling into view.
"Haa… Should I… try that?"
Grasping at straws, Otto screamed.
"Please save me————!!!!!!"
Whether the shout carried or not, the NPC walking in the distance whipped their head around. After taking in the situation, they started swinging their arms in big circles, like they were warming up.
Otto's panic spiked.
"Hurry and help me!!! Please!!!"
In that instant, fireballs bloomed in both of the NPC's hands—and then the barrage began.
— BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
"Kyaaaaah——!!!"
Scarlet fireballs screamed through the air in every direction. For a split second she was sure the NPC was about to incinerate friend and foe alike.
Fortunately, only the area packed with horn rabbits got reduced to ash.
True to being an NPC, there was no homing function the way real mages had—but the sheer volume more than made up for it. Fireballs poured out like a machine gun, and their power defied imagination.
Before she knew it, every last horn rabbit that had been tormenting her had vanished without a trace.
The chat went dead silent under that overwhelming firepower.
Then one viewer floated a theory.
"How can you tell?"
"Ah!!!"
Now that they mentioned it, it was true. Corpses were supposed to stay behind so you could harvest materials or pry out magic stones. These horn rabbits hadn't left so much as a pinch of ash.
Apparently the chocolate cream horns and banana milk she'd offered before setting out had saved her life.
So… I actually survived?
While she was still talking with her viewers, the NPC walked over.
"You okay?"
"Thank you! You saved my life! Thank you so much!!"
The tension drained out of Otto all at once, and she sank to the ground. While she was still catching her breath, the NPC's attention snagged on the herbs poking out of her bag.
"What do you use those for?"
"Oh! You don't know? They're potion ingredients. People buy them, too."
Right then, a viewer fired off a donation.
"Huh? But the mission…"
"Ah!!!"
Otto sorted the situation in her head. If she built up affinity with this NPC, something good might come of it someday, right?
She frantically dug the herbs out of her bag and held them out. Luckily the NPC seemed pleased, accepting them with a bright expression before turning and walking away.
A short while later, in the 1st Floor Boss Room.
"Kieeeeek!"
The first-floor boss was the Giant Horn Rabbit—and right now it was screaming as it went up in flames. The thing was the size of a bear, but after a little while it vanished without a trace.
That was weird.
A monster that huge disappearing in an instant, like a scrap of paper catching fire—did that make any sense?
"This skill is weird."
"When you kill a monster, it's supposed to drop loot. Everything just disappeared."
"Huh? What is?"
"Hey, don't fight."
"So it just… completely erases them?"
"What does that have to do with it?"
"Look, I need to pick up loot and make money. At this rate I'm going to stay broke forever."
"Then… should I try selling this instead?"
I pulled out the herbs I'd received as a gift earlier.
Ok Hanbinghu reacted at the speed of light.
"Huh?"
"The woman I saved earlier gave them to me as a gift?"
"It was that valuable?"
"Huh? These? These are total low-level trash drops."
I wasn't thrilled about this.
I needed actual money right now, and these people paid in spirit stones or whatever those were. What was I supposed to do with those?
That was when Hyeolha Nojo, who'd been quiet until now, cut in.
Nobody answered.
Had he hit the mark?
The whole chat really did have that hungry, covetous vibe.
Even so, Ok Hanbinghu kept working overtime to persuade everyone else.
"What's a furnace?"
If I left this alone, the chat was going to explode. I needed to put out the fire, fast.
"Don't fight, everyone. I'll just give you one each."
Conveniently, the hunter called Otto had given me six herbs earlier. Items I'd scored by deliberately playing the NPC. Originally I'd planned to sell them outside.
That was going to be my chance to buy some beef.
No, no! Don't go down that road!
I'd received six, so handing out one each would work out perfectly, right? These people had helped me become a hunter in the first place—I ought to repay them somehow.
"I'll give one to each of you here, so stop fighting."
"No. That one's for Ocheong Yowang, who donated first."
"Then how do I send these to you?"
Following Cheongi Gakju's instructions, I moved to something that looked like a secondhand marketplace. The label read Heavenly Net.
This is exactly like an online game's mail system.
I sent one herb each to the six of them.
For the message…
Enjoy.
I hit send, and the herbs vanished.
Nebula—one of the top-tier hunter guilds in the country.
Its guild leader was Yoo Se-ah, an S-class mage hunter. A handful of male members existed, but thanks to the guild leader's gender, the roster was overwhelmingly female.
In the guild lounge, two members were squealing over a tablet screen.
"Kyaa— look at this little kid toddling around casting magic. Isn't that adorable?"
"It's scary, though? Look at how many fireballs are flying. Pure firepower-wise, that might be stronger than us."
"Yeah, well—hit them by mistake and you'd get counterattacked."
"Right. Some newbie who doesn't know any better takes a swing, and there won't even be bones left to bury."
Just then, guild leader Yoo Se-ah, who had been walking past with a stack of documents, stopped mid-stride.
"What are you all watching so intently?"
"Ah, Guild Leader! It's a video that popped up on the algorithm. They're saying a Tower first-floor NPC appeared out in the field."
"An NPC?"
Yoo Se-ah tilted her head. For someone already clearing the high floors, the first-floor field was completely off her radar.
An NPC on the first floor…
NPCs did occasionally pop up out of nowhere inside the Tower. But usually they got swept up and killed by monsters, or only mattered for progressing specific events.
"The community's split—person or not. 'It's a roleplay hunter!' 'It's a real NPC!' What do you think, Guild Leader?"
The guild members thrust the tablet at her.
On the screen, a tiny child was spraying fireballs from hands like little sprouts.
— BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Yoo Se-ah watched the little figure on the screen cast magic with careful attention. Then she delivered her verdict as if it were nothing special.
"It's an NPC."
"Huh? For real? Not a person?"
"They're spamming magic that brutally with zero recoil."
Yoo Se-ah pointed a pale finger at the child's posture on the screen.
"If it were a person, casting would inevitably produce stiffness."
"Ah!"
"And continuous fire like that would shove the body backward from the impact. Only an NPC could pull off no-delay spam like that."
"You're right!"
"As expected of an S-class's analysis! There's literally zero knockback after firing."
The two guild members nodded in admiration at Yoo Se-ah's breakdown.
"Still, an asymmetric threat like that showing up on the first-floor plains is fairly unusual. They don't normally appear in the low-level zones."
As Yoo Se-ah murmured with a flicker of interest, the guild member holding the tablet added one more thing.
"But this NPC—apparently it's already gone from the first floor."
"Gone?"
"Yes. Starting a few days ago it stopped showing up in the safety zone, and people are saying it vanished from the field entirely."
Yoo Se-ah's brow furrowed.
"A fixed-type NPC disappearing on its own? That's an unusual pattern."
On the screen, the tiny silhouette kept spamming fireballs.
Cute, for an NPC.
Just a little, Yoo Se-ah found herself interested.