Chapter 20

Overwhelming Victory

[T-Bastard has sent you a friend request.]

[Would you like to accept?]

A friend request from T-Bastard.

Honestly, I was a little dumbfounded.

After instantly rejecting all of mine?

What change of heart had made him send me a friend request?

Well… it’s obvious. He must be on the verge of death.

He had held out longer than I expected, but it was only natural that T-Bastard would eventually contact me.

After all, the route he was attempting was none other than my own walkthrough.

And since one of its key steps involved cannibalism, there was a high chance T-Bastard would fail.

I had written the walkthrough myself, but it had been designed under the assumption that everything was happening inside a game.

Even I could not commit actual cannibalism.

…Why are my ears itching?

In any case, I accepted T-Bastard’s friend request and sent him a message.

[Dopamine Addict: Finally feel like talking to me?]

I had expected T-Bastard to curse me even on the verge of death, but he unexpectedly sent a calm reply.

[T-Bastard: I don’t think I’ll be able to come kill you.]

[Dopamine Addict: What are you talking about?]

[Dopamine Addict: Did you fail your route?]

[T-Bastard: I couldn’t find food.]

[T-Bastard: I didn’t want to resort to cannibalism. Even if this is a game world.]

[Dopamine Addict: ……]

As expected, cannibalism was where he had gotten stuck.

That was precisely why I had kept sending him friend requests.

If he had not rejected them all, his life would never have reached such a precarious state.

Because—

[Would you like to request an item trade with T-Bastard?]

[Please place the items you wish to trade in the trade window.]

Players who had mutually added each other as friends could trade items through their inventories.

That was also why I had been trying so persistently to befriend T-Bastard.

Even someone like Stay-at-Home Wifey could tell that T-Bastard would run short on food. It had been painfully obvious.

I placed the tin of leftover cookies from earlier into the trade window that appeared before me.

[Trade item: Cookies ×15]

As I waited for T-Bastard to accept, a message from him arrived before the confirmation did.

[T-Bastard: Trading between players… was possible?]

[Dopamine Addict: Only between mutual friends. Just accept it.]

[T-Bastard: I said I was going to kill you. Why are you helping me?]

[Dopamine Addict: Didn’t you send me a friend request because you wanted help? Just accept it.]

[T-Bastard: No! I only did it because I thought it would be the last time….]

[Dopamine Addict: If you’re not accepting, I’m leaving.]

[T-Bastard: …If you’re going to help me anyway, can’t you be a little kinder?]

What a demanding bastard.

T-Bastard remained silent for a moment before sending another message.

[T-Bastard: I still intend to kill you once I escape from here. Will you help me anyway?]

[Dopamine Addict: Of course.]

I needed the meteorite item he possessed. If he died here, I would have to travel all the way to Knife District to retrieve it.

[T-Bastard: Why…?]

[T-Bastard: Why would you help someone like me….]

It would be troublesome if he started feeling grateful toward me.

I only intended to make T-Bastard owe me a small favor. I did not want him to abandon his desire to kill me.

Even I would feel guilty about stealing his item later if he began viewing me favorably.

It seemed I needed to provoke him a little.

[Dopamine Addict: Because someone who’s already about to die doesn’t seem like much of a threat to me?]

[T-Bastard: You son of a bitch.]

[T-Bastard: I’ll survive this place and kill you myself.]

[Dopamine Addict: Just accept it.]

[T-Bastard has accepted the item trade.]

He really is high-maintenance.

It had taken him this long just to accept a single item.

[Dopamine Addict: Tell me if you need more later.]

[T-Bastard: Let me ask you one thing.]

I had expected him to disappear again immediately after receiving the items, but T-Bastard unexpectedly asked me a question.

[T-Bastard: What would you do in this situation?]

[Dopamine Addict: What kind of situation?]

[T-Bastard: You’re mortally wounded and isolated, with nothing available to eat except human flesh.]

Was he curious what I would have done in the same situation?

[T-Bastard: Would you resort to cannibalism to survive?]

[Dopamine Addict: Even then, I wouldn’t eat people.]

[T-Bastard: You mean you would die while preserving your dignity as a human being?]

[Dopamine Addict: No.]

[T-Bastard: No? Are you saying you would commit cannibalism?]

[Dopamine Addict: My body doesn’t need food, so I’d hide somewhere and wait ten years. Once the Second Apocalypse began, I’d leave.]

[T-Bastard: What?]

[T-Bastard: Didn’t the walkthrough you uploaded say to kill all the residents before the Second Apocalypse arrived?]

[Dopamine Addict: That was because it was a game, and I wanted the title for killing them all. How am I supposed to kill everyone in the body of a ten-year-old? That’s impossible.]

[T-Bastard: ……]

[Dopamine Addict: Don’t tell me you actually went around trying to kill everyone and got injured.]

[Dopamine Addict: Also, you said you wanted to kill me, but it looks like you were still using my walkthrough.]

[Dopamine Addict: Are you secretly one of my fans too? Haha.]

[Dopamine Addict: …Why aren’t you answering?]

[Dopamine Addict: Hey.]

[Dopamine Addict: Hey.]

This bastard disappeared again.

Still, I supposed it was a relief that he did not seem likely to let his pride kill him.

He would probably contact me again when he was close to dying, so I decided to leave T-Bastard alone for now….

Come to think of it, I haven’t accepted the others’ friend requests either.

I had only accepted Home Protector’s request. The others were still pending.

I had considered accepting Dentist’s request because he was a newbie and might need help.

However, if he was such a hopeless beginner that he could not even clear Candy District—the easiest area—on his own, I probably would not find much satisfaction in helping him grow.

If he truly came looking for me during the Second Apocalypse, I would be willing to carry him as much as he wanted.

As for the other players… I’ll observe them a little longer.

The public chatroom had been eerily quiet since our previous conversation.

They were probably all using the private messaging function now.

After all, information lost its value when it was shared with everyone.

I could accept the other players’ friend requests and maintain friendly relationships with them, but there was no information I particularly wanted from them.

Nor did I intend to live peacefully while calling them comrades or companions.

Because if this is also a game…

I want to win overwhelmingly.

By now, you should have realized that this is how I’m going to act. Only then will I be able to treat you as a fellow player.

Love Safe Zone.

The player with the username “Shin” silently stared at the status window, where no acceptance notification had appeared.

Dopamine Addict still had not accepted her friend request.

Shin had approached him in a friendly manner by claiming to be his fan. But because she truly was a fan, she also knew him exceptionally well.

For some reason, she felt as though she could tell exactly what Dopamine Addict was thinking right now.

Dopamine Addict is fundamentally a hedonist. Judging by how he’s ignoring my friend request… he has absolutely no intention of clearing this peacefully.

The only fortunate thing was that Dopamine Addict had ended up in Cola District rather than his home turf, Unicorn District.

Had Dopamine Addict been placed in Unicorn District, no other player would have had any chance of overturning the board.

That was why Shin had felt greatly relieved when she learned she had been transported into Love District.

It was the perfect environment for her to display her abilities.

What was required to clear Love District was “love.”

Depending on the chosen route, it could be romantic love between a man and a woman, familial love, the devotion of fans toward an idol, or even reverence directed toward a god.

Among Dopamine Addict’s Love District walkthroughs, the one Shin had used as reference was the “cult” route.

The other players who had also been transported into Love District knew about Dopamine Addict’s cult strategy, so Shin did not follow his walkthrough exactly.

The moment she happened to obtain a meteorite item and saw the status window it unlocked, she became confident.

With just a slight adaptation of her original profession, it would not be difficult to turn the other players into her hands and feet.

“Great Shaman, what did the god say?”

Shin smiled gently at the other player who asked her that question.

Shin’s original profession had been that of a shaman.

She was neither a great shaman nor someone who had truly received a divine calling. She had merely been a fraudulent fortune-teller.

Still, not just anyone could succeed at deception.

Shin had been perceptive ever since she was young.

Reading people’s psychology and anxieties, then telling them exactly what they needed to hear, was as easy as moving her tongue inside her mouth.

By sheer luck, she had managed to obtain the first meteorite item in Love District and unlock the status window.

She then concealed the existence of the status window from the other players.

By secretly reading their situations through it and producing items from her inventory, she successfully deceived them into believing she was receiving revelations from the god of this world.

The other players firmly believed Shin was a true great shaman of this world.

Even so, the existence of Dopamine Addict kept them in a constant state of anxiety.

That was why Shin had declared that she would receive a divine revelation concerning Dopamine Addict and sent him a friend request.

One of the players anxiously asked again.

“Did he say Dopamine Addict would help us?”

Their fear stemmed from the fact that Dopamine Addict had been transported here alongside them.

Since they believed they could never defeat a player who had cleared every district once the survival phase began, they wanted reassurance that he would not harm the other transported players.

But Dopamine Addict had ignored Shin’s friend request.

In Shin’s opinion, that was anything but a good sign.

Dopamine Addict was never an altruistic person to begin with. That hedonist will live however he pleases here too.

They would not meet Dopamine Addict for another ten years.

Shin could easily have lied and told the others that he had agreed to help them, thereby putting their minds at ease.

But she did not.

“Dopamine Addict will not help us. The god delivered a revelation to him, but he ignored it.”

With most of the players already acknowledging Dopamine Addict’s capabilities, encouraging them to expect his help would be unwise.

They needed to believe that he would not help them.

Only then would they struggle more desperately to survive.

One of the players who did not think highly of Dopamine Addict spoke irritably.

“That damned Dopamine Addict. He’s just another player like us now, so why are we paying so much attention to him?”

“Are you an idiot? The Great Shaman already told us. Dopamine Addict was transported here with a privilege because he cleared every district!”

Of course, Shin’s claim that Dopamine Addict possessed a privilege as an all-district clearer was merely speculation.

But Dopamine Addict definitely has some kind of completion bonus.

She did not know what form that benefit took, but it was probably also why he had been the first to unlock the status window.

Wondering whether she could learn anything, Shin had befriended Home Protector, the player who appeared closest to Dopamine Addict, and spoken with him.

But that man was pathetic.

All he could think about was clinging to Dopamine Addict once the Second Apocalypse began.

What an idiot. Why would Dopamine Addict ever bother taking in someone like him?

Dopamine Addict undoubtedly had no intention of leaving the other players alone.

The ones holding meteorite items were in particular danger.

Now that he knew those items concealed some kind of secret, he would certainly try to collect all of them.

He was the sort of person who could harm other players for no deeper reason than simple curiosity about what would happen once every meteorite item was assembled.

“Dopamine Addict will not save you. So all of you need to prepare as well, don’t you?”

Shin jingled the meteorite earring and stood before the other players as she made her declaration.

“Go spread a rumor among the district’s residents. Tell them that in ten years, a messenger of God will descend and punish the unbelievers.”

This rumor-spreading tactic had been borrowed from Dopamine Addict’s cult walkthrough.

That meant its effectiveness had already been proven.

The players disappointed that Dopamine Addict would not help them, as well as those who already disliked him, showed no dissatisfaction with Shin taking the lead in carrying out the cult strategy.

Shin continued with a satisfied smile.

“It doesn’t matter if they point fingers at us and call us insane cultist shamans for the next ten years. Once the Second Apocalypse arrives and monsters begin pouring over the district walls, everyone will crawl at our feet in proportion to the humiliation we endured.”