Dark Moon
The city had been restless since morning.
Citizens rushed about as if every one of them had urgent business to attend to, while horses and carriages thundered down the roads. Heavily armed police officers patrolled the streets, radiating an oppressive presence.
It was lively, yes — but nothing like the ordered bustle of ordinary Neo London.
Of course, I knew exactly why. This happened every hundred days. Anyone who lived in this world would know.
And for those without a firm grasp of the calendar, a famous male celebrity's recorded voice boomed from speakers all across the city.
A chill, huh.
He wasn't wrong about that. Neo London's mornings were always blanketed in fog, which probably made it feel even more so.
I pulled my coat tighter around myself for no particular reason and kept walking. My destination wasn't home, a shop, or a factory. I was leaving the city entirely.
The citizens kept hurrying along whether he ranted about the Dark Moon or not. I was probably the only one actually paying attention. Not because I was some devoted fan of his — I was just bored. His rambling naturally drew my ear.
Sex.
The celebrity's words were utterly unfiltered. And yet no one called him out for it. In this city — no, in this entire world — crude, blunt, filthy jokes were practically part of everyday conversation.
He's talking about that anecdote — the woman who had sex with her husband on a Dark Moon night, got pregnant, and gave birth to a monster.
The Dark Moon's influence had triggered a genetic mutation.
Born from a human womb, sired by human seed — and yet not human at all. Monsters. Anyone with even a basic grasp of the internet could dig up the details without much trouble.
If you're lucky, though, you might end up with a child who inherits special traits — or even an ability user.
That was why plenty of people deliberately tried to conceive during the Dark Moon, chasing a total life turnaround. More than a few scientists paid good money to run experiments of their own.
It reminded me of when I'd played the game. At first, watching the NPCs freak out over the Dark Moon, I'd thought they were being ridiculously dramatic. But after arriving in this world, I understood they had no choice. To ordinary people, the Dark Moon was a natural disaster beyond their ability to handle. Surviving a disaster meant preparing thoroughly.
What was the last Dark Moon like again?
A hundred days ago, I'd experienced my first Dark Moon in Neo London. Nothing happened. I woke up to find the black moon sinking from the sky and the ordinary sun rising in its place.
Back then I was still struggling just to adapt to Neo London, so I stayed home and kept my head down.
Unlike the ordinary folk who feared the Dark Moon outright, those with the power to protect themselves saw it as a night of opportunity.
There's a lot you can only get on a Dark Moon night.
That was exactly why I was leaving Neo London today.
What I need most right now is to restore my mana roads. With them in this wrecked state, even expanding them is nearly impossible.
I'd kept up my magic training steadily since arriving in Neo London. But not a single new mana road had formed.
The sixteen destroyed mana roads were holding back my growth.
To go find that healer, I'm going to need those things.
Tonight, I planned to get exactly what I needed.
I boarded a train heading out of the city. The interior was sparse, though a few passengers were still around. Most of them reeked of blood. I was certain they were mercenaries. Of course, I didn't go over and strike up a conversation just because we shared the same profession. Odds were ten to one that all I'd get back was a string of curses.
I sat quietly in my seat and watched the scenery blur past the windows.
Neo London's Outer Districts.
This region, lying even farther out than District Z, was larger than every district of Neo London combined.
The term "Outer Districts" referred to all the territory owned by Neo London excluding the city itself. Unlike the glittering metropolis, the Outer Districts were pure wilderness.
The Council completely gave up on managing the Outer Districts.
Too dangerous, too vast, and with almost nothing worth extracting — no investment value. For those reasons, Neo London had washed its hands of the place. They did the occasional cleanup, but only rarely.
A familiar stomping ground for any Dark Moon player.
Leveling, hidden exploration, hidden quests — for players of the original game, this place had been a playground.
I can't get everything hidden out here.
Plenty of things were still beyond my current ability. And I didn't have the items I'd need to meet certain conditions in advance. What I could do here right now was limited.
Hmm…
I looked out over the Outer Districts and found myself in a bind.
The overall layout matched what I knew from the game, but the finer details were wildly different.
The original was a PC game, so it couldn't be helped… There's no way you could fully render an environment this vast on a computer…
Looks like I was in for a rough day.
I surveyed my surroundings as I walked. This was a village that had formed around the train station.
A short walk from the station and you should see a tavern… Yeah. That much matches the game.
I followed my memory through the village streets.
It was still morning, so the tavern's doors were shut. I spotted an old man sprawled in the alley beside it and approached him.
NPC Nakario.
This world wasn't a game, so calling him an NPC felt a bit off — but still.
Nakario, who'd had his eyes closed, cracked one open as I drew near and spoke with the air of a man who found the entire world exhausting.
"Spare a coin…"
I pulled out a coin I'd exchanged in advance. Unlike Neo London, where you could pay with a simple tap of your watch, cash was the primary currency out here in the Outer Districts.
Ting!
I flicked a 10-credit coin at him with my finger. It arced through the air and landed in front of him.
"Much obliged. Fortune smile on ye."
Ting!
"Ooh… generous soul, ain't ye."
Ting!
"Thirty credits? Well, thank ye kindly."
Ting!
Ting!
Ting!
"…Ye want something from me, don't ye? Lookin' at ye, I'd say ye're a mercenary come from Neo London for a score."
Ting!
I ignored him and kept flicking coins.
Twenty times in total. Two thousand credits in charity.
In the game, donating twenty times in a row made Nakario thank you and hand over a bracelet. Nothing spectacular — break it down and you'd turn a modest profit, that was about it.
But Nakario's reaction was nothing like the game's.
"You son of a bitch! You think I'm some goddamn beggar you can look down on?! You piece of shit. You think you won't end up like me someday? Goddamn mercenary trash. Go die in a ditch!"
He spat curses and scrambled off deeper into the alley. I froze, startled by a reaction so different from the game.
Even doing everything exactly the same way, the response that came back was completely different.
I knew that already, but confirming it firsthand… this is going to be a pain. In the game, just talking to someone was enough to pick up a quest… Reality doesn't work that way.
I was about to walk on past the alley when I noticed a crude bracelet lying on the ground. Same design as the one Nakario handed over in the game. I picked it up and pocketed it. Take it back to the city, break it down, and I could clear twenty thousand credits easy.
I wandered the village, checking things over as I went.
At the fountain in the village center, I started tossing coins. One, two, three. Coin after coin disappeared into the water.
"You actually believe that nonsense about tossing coins in the fountain bringing good luck? The villagers made that up to fleece outsiders out of their money."
On the fourth coin, I rolled my eyes sideways.
A tall woman stood there. She wore a black cap pulled low. Beneath it, amber eyes gleamed like machinery. Her gaze was sharp, and her black hair was cut short enough to show the clean line of her neck.
She wore a long gray coat. Through the open front, black skinny pants and a crop top that left her midriff bare were visible. The exposed abdomen wasn't just free of fat — it was carved with clear, defined muscle. Above that, a generous pair of hills made their presence known.
A bandolier was strapped around her waist. A gun holster rode her thigh, and the edge of a knife peeked from inside her coat.
I stared at her in shock. For a moment my mind went completely blank — that level of shock. Not just because she was beautiful. She was…
"You look like you've seen a ghost. I like to think I'm pretty easy on the eyes… That reaction's kind of hurtful, you know."
She was one of the characters I'd created while playing the game. Built using a user-made mod for concept play. Appearance, stats, skills — even the intimate details of her body — all designed and crafted by me.
"…Are you Jjapaguri?"
"What the hell kind of nonsense is that? Are you some kind of lunatic?"
Jjapaguri.
That had been the character's name.
I'd been obsessed with the dish at the time and named her that without thinking. I'd thought it was kind of cute, so I just played with it. You could change a name whenever you wanted, after all.
Her eyes raked me up and down. I caught the movement of her pupils. Mechanical eyes.
"Hmm."
"You just scanned me with those machine eyes, didn't you?"
"Oh, you noticed? Not bad. Sorry — it's kind of a habit. Like looking something up on the internet, you know? Nothing harmful about it, so cut me some slack."
"Fine. In exchange, I'd like to know who you are."
"Bel Terrier. Just a two-bit mercenary."