Chapter 18
Healer Wanted
“Luna Moon might have been a player?”
Stay-at-Home Wifey asked again, clearly unable to understand what I meant.
“Isn’t Luna Moon your mom? That NPC in the grave?”
“Yeah.”
“How could that NPC possibly have been a player?”
“I’m not certain either. But everyone, including the commander, says I resemble Luna Moon. That means she was probably East Asian like us. On top of that, it seems she was also called the ‘Hero of the Subjugation Campaign.’”
“The Hero of the Subjugation Campaign?”
Stay-at-Home Wifey’s expression turned strange, as though he had realized something.
“That’s… a player title.”
“Exactly. There was no NPC in the game other than the player who was ever called the Hero of the Subjugation Campaign.”
“No, but that alone isn’t enough to—”
“More importantly, they say she had the same ability as us.”
“The same ability?”
“Healing.”
“What?!”
When I told them she had possessed a healing ability as well, both of them became serious.
Taejeong was the first to speak.
“If Luna Moon truly had a healing ability, then that is certainly strange…. Who told you that she could heal people?”
“The commander. He didn’t say whether she healed herself by eating like we do, but it’s certain that she possessed a healing ability.”
“The commander has no reason to lie to you about something like that, Hyung-nim, so there’s a high chance it’s true.”
“No, but you know! Everyone’s tried clearing the illegitimate-child route before, haven’t they?”
Hadn’t this bastard originally accused me of being some blind follower of Dopamine Addict’s walkthroughs?
“I cleared the Cola District as the illegitimate child—Luna Moon’s son—several times!”
So he had not merely tried it once or twice.
“Luna Moon had a healing ability? I’ve never heard anything like that! If she possessed an ability like that, it definitely would’ve appeared in the game’s script!”
“That’s exactly why I suggested Luna Moon might have been a player.”
Stay-at-Home Wifey’s argument was reasonable.
If Luna Moon had possessed such an ability, it should have appeared in the script during the route, and there was no way players like us would not know about it.
However, that argument only worked if this world was truly identical to Apocalypse: Safe Zone, the game we knew.
“It seems there are stories in this world that we never knew about. Our knowledge probably isn’t complete.”
“……”
Stay-at-Home Wifey thought for a moment before asking me another question.
“Then… doesn’t that mean all the walkthroughs we know are useless? If this world is different from the game….”
“That’s not it. We already know players have died after failing their routes. The walkthroughs are still valid. There may be differences from the game, but so far none have been large enough to affect the actual strategies.”
“Then couldn’t it just be that Luna Moon had an ability in this world, unlike in the game?”
“Wouldn’t that be even stranger? Everything else is the same as in the game, so why is only the information about Luna Moon different? If Luna Moon really was a player, then this might not be the first time people have been transported into this world.”
“My head hurts. Can’t we just stop the apocalypse and call it a day?”
I wanted to do that too.
But as long as the “Secret of the Apocalypse” was connected to Luna Moon’s ring, we would not be able to prevent the apocalypse without learning more about her.
Still, there was nothing we could do about it right now….
“For now, I’m only telling you to keep it in mind. Our immediate priority is participating in the subjugation campaign event.”
“Right, the first subjugation. We definitely need to participate. You get a title just for surviving.”
“Good. I have a proposal for that.”
“A proposal?”
“This isn’t the place to discuss it. Once the meal is over, Taejeong, bring the loser to my room. I’ll tell the servants in advance.”
“Got it.”
“Understood!”
Since the three of us might attract attention if we remained together for too long, we were about to split up when Stay-at-Home Wifey grabbed me and whispered in a low voice.
“Hey, don’t hold another samgyeopsal party next time.”
Don’t hold another pork-belly party?
Could it be… because there might be other players besides Luna Moon?
Just as we were not the only people transported here during our time period, perhaps other players besides Luna Moon already existed in this world as established NPCs.
If those NPC players were also Korean, then the mere fact that we had arranged a samgyeopsal party could allow them to deduce that we were players.
It was certainly something we needed to be careful about.
Just as I was about to feel proud of Stay-at-Home Wifey for thinking that far ahead, he continued.
“We can’t taste any of it anyway, and I’m so jealous it feels like my guts are twisting. Just serve them some slop or pig feed next time.”
This bastard really did have a terrible personality.
***
After the samgyeopsal party ended, I returned to my room and waited.
Not long afterward, Taejeong arrived with Stay-at-Home Wifey.
But….
“…Why do you look so pleased with yourself?”
Stay-at-Home Wifey looked strangely triumphant, so I asked him what had happened.
He answered with a broad grin.
“I came here with one of my seniors. Soldiers aren’t allowed to leave on their own, so while we were eating meat, he had to wait outside.”
“And?”
“You told me to come back after the meal, right? So I told him I had to stay longer before returning, and he started throwing a fit.”
“Don’t tell me you….”
“I told him the commander’s son had summoned me, so he should stop acting tough. He shut right up! Puhahaha!”
How did he manage to behave exactly as I had predicted, without deviating even slightly?
My condolences to the soldiers who would have to serve alongside him from now on.
“So what did you call us here to do?”
At Stay-at-Home Wifey’s question, I pulled a cookie tin out from beneath my pillow.
“Cookies?”
“You didn’t call us here just for dessert.”
“We’re going to practise eating.”
“Practise eating?”
“Eating practice?”
The reason was simple.
We did not eat for nourishment. We ate to heal.
If we could absorb food faster during an emergency, our chances of survival would naturally increase.
“From what I’ve tested, the speed and amount absorbed change depending on how much you focus on the act of eating.”
Simply holding food near my mouth caused more of its energy to disperse than to be absorbed.
Additionally, when I consciously focused on consuming it, the speed at which my injuries healed became slightly faster.
I opened the cookie tin, took out one cookie for each of them, and handed them over.
Along with forks.
“Why are you giving us forks? Can’t we just eat them with our hands?”
Stay-at-Home Wifey asked me that, but Taejeong, who had already experienced what I used the fork for, wore a resigned expression and stabbed the back of his hand with it.
“Aaagh!”
Stay-at-Home Wifey screamed in shock and leapt into the air.
It looked as though he had jumped a full metre straight up.
“What the hell?! Why are you suddenly hurting yourself? Are you insane?”
“You should stab yourself too, Little Hyung-nim.”
“What? Why should I?!”
“How else are we supposed to know whether the wound is healing properly?”
“……!”
Stay-at-Home Wifey looked back and forth between Taejeong and me with a horrified expression.
“Judging by how casual you are, this isn’t your first time…. You two really are insane… completely out of your minds….”
“You’ll get used to it after doing it a few times.”
Stay-at-Home Wifey refused, insisting it was ridiculous.
Only after I offered to stab him myself did he finally pierce the back of his own hand.
For a while, the room was filled with the crunching sounds of cookies being chewed.
“Oh. You were right. The quality of the healing is different when I focus on eating.”
“Ugh… why did we have to get a special ability like this…?”
“Seriously. It would’ve been better if they had also made us unable to feel pain.”
“That is such a sociopathic thing to say.”
I did not care whether Stay-at-Home Wifey thought I was a sociopath, but it hurt a little when Taejeong nodded in agreement.
“Also… our goal isn’t eating but healing, so it feels extremely inefficient that the food has to touch our mouths before the treatment works.”
“What are you planning now?”
“If we practise and manage to develop the ability until simply holding food in our hands is enough to heal us, our survival chances will rise significantly. Of course, we don’t know whether absorption through another part of the body is actually possible.”
“Hmm… that’s definitely worth trying.”
“Right?”
“Why are you looking at me like that… Ah, fuck. We have to stab ourselves again, don’t we?”
I was going to stab myself as well this time, so I hoped he would not feel too resentful.
“Maybe it’s because you worship Dopamine Addict, but even the way you develop strategies is exactly like that fucking sociopath.”
Taejeong and I both ignored him.
After wounding ourselves with the forks, we each gripped a cookie tightly and waited for the injuries to heal.
“……Huh?”
Unlike Taejeong and me, who could not absorb even the slightest amount unless the cookie touched our mouths, Stay-at-Home Wifey’s wound began to heal—extremely slowly—even though he was merely holding the cookie.
The edge of the cookie in his hand was also gradually shrinking, as though something had been nibbling away at it.
“How… is that working?”
“You’re the one who told me to try it. Why are you asking me?”
Stay-at-Home Wifey frowned and answered irritably before adding in a quieter voice, as though it were nothing important.
“My body was always weak in the real world…. I spent more days lying in bed with an IV drip than I did eating normally. It worked when I imagined that sensation.”
I see.
Because he had received nutrients through means other than his mouth more often than most people, he was accustomed to the concept of consuming nourishment without eating.
Come to think of it… this guy had a weak body in reality.
Was that why he had become a shut-in gaming addict?
Thinking about it that way made me feel a little sorry for him….
“I’ve decided.”
“When you say things like that, I get fucking nervous. What did you decide?”
I grinned at Stay-at-Home Wifey.
“From now on, you’re the healer.”
Both Stay-at-Home Wifey and Taejeong stared at me as though they had no idea what I was talking about.
“What kind of bullshit is that? I can heal myself while holding food. It’s not like I can heal anyone else, so how does that make me a healer?”
“No. You can heal other people too.”
“How?”
“When everyone gets injured, you’ll be the only one who can heal yourself quickly without having to eat.”
“How does that lead to the conclusion that I’m the healer?”
He could not even calculate something this simple. Tsk.
“Once you’re the first one back on your feet, you shove food into everyone else’s mouths. What else would you call that if not healing?”
“…You really aren’t sane. Every single idea you have sounds like something a lunatic would come up with.”
He said that, so I expected I would need to spend another long period persuading him.
Unexpectedly, however, Stay-at-Home Wifey nodded without much resistance.
“Well… fine. I’ll do it.”
“…Really?”
“I can’t kill medium-sized monsters with a gun like you, and I don’t have a big body like him. If there’s something I can do, then I should do it.”
Oh.
Contrary to what I had thought, perhaps he had matured a little.
Feeling somewhat proud of him, I offered another piece of advice.
“You have good control, so you might eventually be able to transfer those blue particles directly to other people.”
“I hope so. No matter what, I don’t want to become some lunatic who suddenly shoves food into the mouth of someone who’s about to die.”
“Haha.”
I decided not to tell him that he definitely would not master that technique before the first subjugation campaign, meaning he was guaranteed to become that lunatic for a while.
After finishing our discussion, I sent the two of them away and returned to my bed.
The moment I lay down, an unbelievable system message appeared before my eyes.
[T-Bastard has sent you a friend request.]
[Would you like to accept?]