Chapter 34
Why Are You Dopamine Addict?
Shaggy white hair and dead, fishlike black eyes.
A complexion as pale as the white coat he wore.
Anyone who had frequently fought against my AI after the Second Apocalypse would recognize that face immediately.
“Dopamine Addict! You’re Dopamine Addict, right?”
Stay-at-home Wifey’s face lit up as if he were genuinely delighted, and he took a step toward the hoverboard.
But Taejeong and I, who knew beyond any doubt that this man was not Dopamine Addict, instinctively stepped backward.
“Don’t go near him.”
At my warning, Stay-at-home Wifey turned to me with a puzzled expression.
“What? Weren’t you a fan of Dopamine Addict?”
He still believed I was one of Dopamine Addict’s followers.
Without taking my eyes off the man, I said,
“That isn’t Dopamine Addict.”
“I’m not Dopamine Addict?”
The one who responded was not Stay-at-home Wifey, but the man himself.
He laughed aloud, then slowly lowered the hoverboard’s altitude.
“You could immediately find out whether I’m the real Dopamine Addict by using ‘Inspection.’”
Inspection.
Right. If I used Character Inspection, I would immediately learn his true name and information.
But I hesitated.
Now that he had landed, stepped off the hoverboard, and stood on the ground with his own two feet, he looked even more like the character customization I frequently used.
It was not completely unheard of for two people to use the same customization, but it was already suspicious enough that someone with that exact appearance had been possessed into the Unicorn District.
And on top of that—
He has an adult body…
Without exception, every one of us had entered this world in the body of a ten-year-old.
Yet this man already had the appearance of a twenty-year-old youth.
Judging from the fact that he knew about Inspection, he was undoubtedly a Unicorn player who had unlocked the system.
So why was he the only one who had entered this world as an adult?
“Hey, do you recognize me?”
While I hesitated, Stay-at-home Wifey spoke to him.
The man slowly looked him up and down.
“Stay-at-home Wifey?”
“You recognize me?!”
“Hmm… I vaguely remember there being a player with a nickname like that.”
“You little punk. Why are you pretending you don’t know me?”
It seemed obvious that the man had read Stay-at-home Wifey’s nickname through Character Inspection.
But Stay-at-home Wifey smiled happily, apparently pleased that “Dopamine Addict” recognized him.
“He really is Dopamine Addict. So why is everyone pointing guns at him?”
Stay-at-home Wifey’s head seemed to contain an entire flower garden.
Taejeong and I still had our guns trained on the man.
Meursault looked completely lost as to what was happening, but she followed my lead and belatedly raised her weapon toward him as well.
With tension written across her face, Meursault asked me,
“Lord Haydam, is he someone you know?”
“I know him if you say I know him. I don’t if you say I don’t.”
“What kind of irresponsible answer is that…?”
We had our weapons aimed at him, but until we knew why he had approached us, we could not simply open fire first.
And if he truly came from the Unicorn District, our obsolete firearms would not even scratch him.
The man merely smirked despite having three gun barrels pointed at him.
Stay-at-home Wifey stared blankly at us before suddenly asking as though something had only just occurred to him.
“Hey, why do you have an adult character model? All of us started at ten years old.”
You were only wondering about that now?
The man gave Stay-at-home Wifey a glance and said,
“…Isn’t he a little too stupid to be your partner?”
“What did you say?!”
“Aren’t you going to inspect me? Are you afraid?”
Ignoring Stay-at-home Wifey’s outrage, the man looked at me and asked the question.
I shook my head slightly.
“I’m not afraid. I just don’t want to move according to your intentions.”
“I didn’t come here to hurt you. At least, not yet.”
“Yeah, right…”
I was not naive enough to believe him simply because he claimed he had not come to harm me.
But since even I could not understand why I was so hesitant to inspect his information, I slowly opened his Character Inspection.
What appeared before my eyes was—
[Name: Dopamine Addict
Title: Dopamine Addict
Affiliated District: Unicorn
Relationship: Friendly toward you.]
As expected, his district was Unicorn.
This bastard’s name really is ‘Dopamine Addict.’
But something else drew my attention even more than his name.
[Title: Dopamine Addict]
His title is also… Dopamine Addict?
It was a title I had never seen before.
And I had obtained practically every title that could be earned in Safe Zone.
“Well?”
Apparently realizing that I was inspecting his information, the man grinned.
“Do you believe me now?”
“How did you do it?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“How are you ‘Dopamine Addict’?”
“It’s still too early to tell you that.”
Still too early?
The way he said it made it sound as though there would eventually be a proper time to tell me.
He continued speaking.
“Why are you traveling around with Meursault? If I had started in the Cola District, I would naturally have begun by poisoning her.”
If I had?
His choice of pronoun was strange.
What the hell are you?
A lunatic who had become overly immersed in pretending to be Dopamine Addict?
Or perhaps…
“Hey!”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Stay-at-home Wifey barged between us.
“Are the two of you just going to keep talking to each other? I asked how you have an adult body!”
The man and I sighed at the same time.
Then he muttered,
“You’re noisy.”
The moment I saw him reach into his coat, I pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
The following two gunshots came from Taejeong and Meursault, who fired immediately after me.
Stay-at-home Wifey jumped in place and grabbed at my gun.
“Hey! What are you doing? Why are you shooting another player?!”
“If I hadn’t fired, you would have been the one who got shot.”
At my words, Stay-at-home Wifey finally looked at the man in alarm.
Despite having been shot three times, he looked completely unharmed.
As a player from the Unicorn District, he must have had a magnetic shield surrounding his body.
And in his hand was a pistol.
Had I not fired first, he would likely have shot Stay-at-home Wifey with it.
The only reason he had not fired was because getting hit had thrown off his aim.
So he really doesn’t intend to hurt me.
When his aim was disrupted, he hesitated to pull the trigger.
And judging by the way his eyes had flicked toward me first, he had clearly been worried that he might accidentally hit me.
Once Meursault confirmed that the man was unharmed, she asked me again,
“What should we do?”
“Don’t shoot.”
After ordering them to hold their fire, I looked at the man.
He held the pistol in one hand while using the other to poke his fingers through the two bullet holes in his white coat, laughing to himself.
“What the hell are you laughing at?”
“I heard three gunshots, but there are only two holes.”
Taejeong’s face reddened at those words.
His shooting skills had always been terrible, but apparently he was bad enough to miss even at this distance.
“You fired without even giving me a warning?”
“First strike wins.”
At my answer, the man gave me a smile so satisfied that no one would have guessed I had just shot him.
“Right. I would’ve fired too. Good. At this level, there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“What are you muttering to yourself about, lunatic? Who are you?”
“You already saw who I am.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
The man chuckled at my retort.
“I can’t answer anything beyond that. I only came today to check something briefly.”
“Check what?”
“Whether you’re growing well.”
“What?”
“You seem to be growing just fine, so I’ll be going now.”
Going back?
He had tried to shoot Stay-at-home Wifey merely because he found him annoying.
Another player.
He was far too dangerous to let leave alive.
I should kill him here… but with our current strength, we probably couldn’t even injure him, much less kill him.
Come to think of it, he had come all the way here with nothing but a pistol and a hoverboard.
He possessed the overwhelming advantages of the Unicorn District’s overtechnology and an adult body.
Perhaps I should have considered it fortunate that someone with such favorable conditions had not come here intending to fight.
Why is someone like that friendly toward me?
I did not know the reason, but his favor was likely the only reason we were still alive.
I did not like this situation at all.
Wasn’t it as though some veteran player had come to raise a newbie?
“Oh, right.”
Just as the man was stepping back onto his hoverboard, he turned toward us again as though he had forgotten something.
“I still need to give you your present.”
“A present?”
No sooner had I repeated the word than his pistol pointed toward Stay-at-home Wifey.
This crazy bastard.
It seemed he truly intended to kill Stay-at-home Wifey before leaving.
The moment he pulled the trigger, I stepped in front of Stay-at-home Wifey without hesitation.
With a heavy thud, something hot and sharp tore straight through my shoulder.
Stay-at-home Wifey shouted in horror.
“Hey!”
“Brother!”
“Lord Haydam!”
Stay-at-home Wifey caught me as I fell.
The other two kept their guns trained on the man, but they turned toward me in confusion.
And the man—
“…!”
For the first time, surprise appeared on his previously relaxed face.
Then his expression slowly settled again.
“So I’m different from him…”
What the hell was he muttering about?
Pressing one hand against my shoulder to stop the bleeding, I raised my other hand and gave him the middle finger.
The man chuckled.
“You know how to treat a wound that minor, don’t you? Then I’ll look forward to the day you come to my district.”
With those words, his hoverboard rose into the air.
Taejeong lifted his gun, following it with the muzzle.
“I’ll shoot him down.”
“Don’t.”
Grimacing from the agony in my shoulder, I stopped him.
“You can’t bring that thing down with an outdated gun. You’ll just waste ammunition. Let him go. We know where he belongs anyway.”
“Lord Haydam!”
Once the man on the hoverboard began disappearing into the distance, Meursault finally lowered her weapon and rushed over to me.
She took a clean handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it against my shoulder.
“Keep applying pressure to the wound. If the soldiers saw the signal flare, they should already be on their way. I will go and bring them here.”
Unlike Stay-at-home Wifey, who looked as though he wanted to bite someone, Meursault proved that she had not earned her rank of major general for nothing.
Rather than becoming flustered by my injury, she went to do what she could.
Taejeong, seemingly worried that the recent commotion might attract monsters, also left to patrol the surroundings.
Stay-at-home Wifey, on the other hand…
“Isn’t that bastard Dopamine Addict completely insane?!”
How was I supposed to describe the feeling of being cursed at after getting shot for something I had not even done?
“Hey, focus on stopping the bleeding.”
“Why the hell would you take a bullet to protect someone like me…?”
“Why do you think?”
I lightly tapped the combat ration hanging from Stay-at-home Wifey’s waist.
“Heal me.”
Stay-at-home Wifey stared at me with his mouth hanging open.
Then, in a tone that suggested he desperately wanted to grab me by the collar but was barely holding himself back, he asked,
“…Don’t tell me you deliberately got shot because you wanted to test its performance.”
“If you got hurt, we wouldn’t be able to test your healing ability.”
“You crazy bastard… You really are completely insane.”
Even as he cursed me, Stay-at-home Wifey took out the combat ration and began treating me.
Fortunately, the bullet had passed cleanly through my shoulder, so the injury only needed to close.
His claim that he had practiced enough to heal someone else while maintaining physical contact had not been a lie.
Even with Stay-at-home Wifey merely keeping his hand on me, the pain in the gunshot wound gradually began to ease.
I quietly received treatment until it felt as though the wound had healed to a certain degree.
Then I spoke.
“Darling Outsider.”
“…Why are you ominously calling me by my full nickname?”
“Since I just saved your life, there’s something I need to confess.”
“What kind of confession? You’re setting up a death flag.”
Ignoring Stay-at-home Wifey’s retort, I finished what I had been about to say.
“I’m Dopamine Addict.”