Chapter 85
A Talk Between Players (1)
Well, I understood Meursault’s feelings.
There was no way he could hand over his not-yet-born daughter to a future dictator ten years older than her.
It didn’t matter to me anyway. Like my mother, I had no intention of making the foolish choice of forming a marital bond with anyone in this world.
More importantly, I needed to sort things out with the players staying in my district.
Leaving the Commander and Meursault behind, I returned to my room and asked Taejeong to gather Stay-at-home Wifey and Shin Eunjo.
Stay-at-home Wifey entered dressed in a military uniform, swaggering in a way that didn’t suit his youthful appearance.
“Hey, congratulations on the divorce.”
Anyone overhearing him would think I was the one who had gotten divorced.
“Meursault will do anything you ask now.”
“Apparently not.”
“What do you mean?”
“More importantly, Loner, this is your first time meeting her, right? This is ‘God’ from the Love District. You can call her Shin Eunjo.”
Unlike Taejeong, Shin Eunjo and Stay-at-home Wifey were meeting for the first time, so one might have expected them to exchange greetings.
Yet, for some reason, they both looked away from each other as if they had no desire to speak.
“By the way, Shin Eunjo… aren’t you going back?”
“There’s something I want to ask before I leave.”
“A favor?”
She had helped me with the Daphne matter before, so I nodded, thinking I could grant a simple request.
“Let’s hear it first.”
“Let me take the entrance exam.”
“You want to take the entrance exam?”
She hadn’t seemed interested in leaving even after Daphne’s divorce was decided. Had she stayed behind to take the entrance exam?
I had no idea why she wanted to attend school in our district, but…
“Isn’t that a strange request to make before going home? The military academy is a six-year program.”
“Right. I’ll stay for six years and then go back.”
“Stop talking nonsense and attend school in your own district.”
“Just think of me as an exchange student.”
As if that would work.
“You’re not planning to settle here permanently, are you…?”
“That wouldn’t be so bad. My objective is to survive, not to become the dictator of my district.”
As someone whose goal was to become the dictator of my own district, I found that difficult to understand.
‘Still, judging by the way she said it, she probably isn’t genuinely planning to settle here.’
Her ulterior motive was suspicious, but I decided to at least allow her to take the entrance exam.
Just as Shin Eunjo had stayed in this district to observe me, I also needed to assess her abilities.
However, leaving Shin Eunjo—someone who even possessed the title ‘Cult Leader’—in my district was far too dangerous.
I should put some safeguards in place.
“In return, stay with Luna while you’re here.”
[Whaaat?! I don’t want to! I want to go home now!!]
Luna already had plenty of complaints because I had made him stay with Shin Eunjo while I was busy arranging Daphne’s divorce.
Still, there was no one more suitable than Luna.
No matter whom else I assigned to monitor her, there would be complaints afterward.
“Please, hyung.”
[Urgh…! You only call me hyung when it benefits you…! This is exactly why I refused to come out of the jewel!]
Ah, so that was why he hadn’t shown himself until I was on the verge of death?
There was some resistance, but Luna soon gave up and accepted his fate.
“You really are terrifying. You’re planning to use a divine messenger as a CCTV camera.”
Shin Eunjo seemed to have interpreted it differently.
“And… since having a player with another district’s system unlocked stay here will probably make you two uneasy, I’m going to give you a safeguard.”
“A safeguard? Are you giving us personal alarms or something?”
“Something like that.”
I looked at Stay-at-home Wifey, who didn’t appear particularly expectant, and Taejeong, whose face was filled with curiosity.
“I’m going to unlock both of your systems.”
“…What?”
“Pardon?”
Unlike the two bewildered boys, Shin Eunjo immediately seemed to understand what I meant and thrust her face toward me.
“You can unlock systems?”
“You can’t?”
“Of course I can’t!”
She didn’t seem to be lying… Had Shin Eunjo still not unlocked the additional system?
‘Shin Eunjo even knows about the CEO of Cthulhu Games, so why hasn’t her additional system been unlocked?’
I didn’t know exactly what the secret of the apocalypse was, but my system had unlocked after I heard about Cthulhu Games, so it couldn’t be unrelated to its CEO.
Judging by the way Shin Eunjo hadn’t denied that the Love District had undergone a group transmigration, it seemed she had expected to be transmigrated from the beginning after meeting the CEO of Cthulhu Games.
So why could I unlock it while she couldn’t?
The only major difference between the information Shin Eunjo and I possessed was the existence of my mother…
‘Well… she might have already unlocked it and simply be hiding it from me.’
The problem was that even I didn’t know the precise condition required for the additional unlock, so I couldn’t bait Shin Eunjo into revealing anything.
Still, she didn’t seem to be hiding it.
Shin Eunjo immediately collapsed onto the bed, clutching her forehead with a devastated expression.
“Did God grant you that authority too? We were clearly transmigrated at the same time, so why is the gap between us already this enormous…?”
Shin Eunjo seemed to despair upon realizing that the gap between us was even greater than she had imagined.
“Wait, what does that mean?”
Taking advantage of Shin Eunjo’s despair, Stay-at-home Wifey asked me a question.
“Dopamine Addict, are you saying you can open our systems for us?”
“Yeah. I’ve been able to do it for a while now.”
“That’s insane!”
“Such a thing is possible?”
“Hurry up and open mine! I want to shout ‘Status Window’ too!”
‘Status Window’ wasn’t an activation phrase, though.
There was no reason to hesitate any longer, so I used the System Unlock Rights on Stay-at-home Wifey and Taejeong.
[Using a System Unlock Right on player TaejeongtaeseBeyoncé.]
[Using a System Unlock Right on player Stay-at-home Wifey.]
I had received only fifty points as a reward, but I dismantled some of my titles to make up for the missing points.
‘I thoroughly scrapped titles that were basically ticking time bombs anyway, like Magic Bullet Shooter.’
Second through ninth place all received the same reward, so I had mercilessly dismantled them under the assumption that it wouldn’t matter even if my ranking dropped to ninth.
Yet even after my number of titles fell from three digits to two, my ranking didn’t change.
I had ninety-nine titles remaining.
That meant everyone ranked third or below still had fewer than one hundred titles.
‘Then how many titles does that bastard from the Unicorn District, the first-place player, have?’
Well, there was currently no way to learn anything about him, so I put that aside.
“Status Window!”
Shin Eunjo, still sprawled face-down on the bed, looked pitifully at Stay-at-home Wifey, who had immediately started shouting for his status window.
“Right… the gap is only huge between me and Dopamine Addict. The others are nothing special.”
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Try Character Inspection first.”
“Character Inspection?”
The instant Stay-at-home Wifey looked at Shin and repeated the words, a system window appeared before his eyes.
[Name: God
Title: Cult Leader
Affiliated District: Love
*The Master’s permission is required to send a friend request.]
‘…Hm?’
Why could I see Stay-at-home Wifey’s system window too?
And what did it mean that the Master’s permission was required for a friend request?
“What? Your nickname is God? Then Shin Eunjo is your real name?”
“Are you inspecting my character right now? I didn’t mean for you to open mine.”
‘Judging by that response…’
Could Shin Eunjo not see Stay-at-home Wifey’s system window?
At that moment, another system window appeared beside it.
[Name: Dopamine Addict
Title: Friend of Lunamoon
Affiliated District: Cola
Relationship: Master]
Since it had appeared above Taejeong’s head, he had probably used Character Inspection on me.
However, one word in particular was impossible to ignore.
‘…The relationship says Master?’
They weren’t my servants, so why was our relationship listed as Master?
‘Wait, could it be…?’
Feeling an inexplicable sense of unease, I opened both Stay-at-home Wifey’s and Taejeong’s Character Inspection windows.
[Name: Stay-at-home Wifey
Title: B-Rank Soldier
Affiliated District: Cola
*This system belongs to player Dopamine Addict.]
[Name: TaejeongtaeseBeyoncé
Title: A-Rank Butler
Affiliated District: Cola
*This system belongs to player Dopamine Addict.]
‘Damn…’
Apparently, if I unlocked someone’s system using the System Unlock Right from the shop, their system became bound to the person who unlocked it.
Judging by the notice at the bottom of Shin Eunjo’s Character Inspection window saying that friend requests were restricted, it seemed they were unable to interact through the system with anyone except me, their registered Master.
‘I wasn’t trying to bind them to me…’
The shop items contained no more than a single line of explanation, so I had only learned this after unlocking their systems.
‘Well, nothing I can do about it now.’
“Send me a chat message.”
“A chat message?”
Even after being told to send me a message, Stay-at-home Wifey fiddled around with various menus before finally sending one line.
[Stay-at-home Wifey: Dopamine Addict is an idiot.]
[Dopamine Addict: Are you an elementary schooler?]
After receiving my reply, Stay-at-home Wifey flared up and shouted.
“Who are you calling an elementary schooler?! I told you, I’m twenty!”
‘The fact that he’s twenty is harder to believe than Shin Eunjo failing to unlock her additional system.’
In any case, this confirmed it.
Once a system was bound to me, the player could send me chat messages without forming a separate friendship.
And judging by the previous notice, they were clearly restricted from exchanging chats with anyone else unless they had their Master’s permission.
Not only could I see their system windows, I could inspect their detailed information as well.
Naturally, the first thing I checked was the number of titles possessed by Stay-at-home Wifey, who had been ranked ninth.
‘What? Seven?’
Considering that it hadn’t even been a year since the game began, one could say seven wasn’t an insignificant number.
But if someone with seven titles was ranked ninth… perhaps the other players were barely managing to reach double digits.
Taejeong possessed three titles.
Then did the Dentist, who had been ranked tenth, possess somewhere between four and seven titles?
‘Not bad for a newbie.’
At that moment, another Character Inspection window for me appeared before my eyes.
It seemed Stay-at-home Wifey had closed Shin Eunjo’s window and inspected me instead.
“Oh. You really are Dopamine Addict.”
“Who else would I be?”
“I suspected that the guy using your character customization might be the real Dopamine Addict, but I don’t need to doubt you anymore.”
He had still been suspicious of that?
“By the way, why does your relationship field say ‘Master’?”
“It’s nothing important. It’s because I unlocked your system. Taejeong’s should say Master too.”
“Taejeong, does it?”
“Pardon? Ah, yes, it does say Master… No, I mean, it is written there.”
“So does that mean Dopamine Addict has to approve it before someone can send you a friend request? It’s like borrowing someone else’s Wi-Fi.”
Unlike Stay-at-home Wifey, who thought nothing of the message stating that the Master’s permission was required for friend requests, Taejeong appeared to have realized what the title ‘Master’ truly meant.
However, he quickly closed his mouth.
He probably knew that Stay-at-home Wifey would go berserk if he realized I had become the owner of his system.
“Wait.”
Shin Eunjo, who had been quietly listening, suddenly interrupted.
“Something was said a moment ago that I absolutely can’t ignore…”
With confusion in her eyes, Shin Eunjo asked me,
“What do you mean by ‘the guy using your character customization’? Did you people meet another Dopamine Addict?”
Hmm.
From the moment Stay-at-home Wifey carelessly opened his mouth, I had thought Shin Eunjo might catch on immediately.
As expected.
I thought for a moment.
Honestly, I didn’t want to tell the other players too much about the player from the Unicorn District.
After all, I barely knew anything about him myself.
‘But Shin Eunjo…’
She might be the only one among us who had personally met the CEO of Cthulhu Games.
Judging by what she had said about an email address, she seemed to have even received his contact information.
If we ever succeeded in ‘logging out,’ Shin Eunjo might be our only means of contacting that CEO.
‘She seems more perceptive than the others too…’
So I did want to share information with her whenever possible and hear her opinion.
The problem was that she was an aggressive player: the cult leader of the Love District who had even extorted Home Protector’s meteorite item.
‘…Maybe I should try this.’
I didn’t know whether Shin Eunjo would accept the proposal.
Still, judging by everything she had said and done so far, she didn’t want to become my enemy.
In fact, considering that she refused to leave this district, it almost seemed as though she wanted to remain under my influence.
If so, there was only one way I could tell her everything while ensuring she could never betray me afterward.
“Do you want to hear about the other Dopamine Addict?”
“What? Of course I—”
Shin Eunjo, who had been about to answer immediately, narrowed her eyes slightly.
“But you’re not planning to tell me, are you? You never even explained why Daphne was a player.”
She hadn’t asked why Daphne was a player, so I thought she simply wasn’t curious.
Had she only been waiting for me to explain it first?
“If you fulfill one of my demands, I might tell you everything.”
“Every…thing?”
“What do you mean everything? Hey!”
Stay-at-home Wifey interrupted from beside us as though this was unacceptable, but I raised one hand and gestured for him to remain quiet.
“Yeah. Everything, starting with why Daphne is a player and ending with our encounter with the fake Dopamine Addict. At the very least, you’ll learn everything these two know.”
Shin Eunjo stared at me suspiciously for a moment before asking in a quiet voice,
“What… do I have to do?”
“Give up your rights to the meteorite item.”
Shin Eunjo’s eyes widened as she stared at me.
“Are you saying I have to give up my system before you’ll tell me everything?”
“I’ll unlock your system again.”
“…What?”
A system that I personally unlocked would become bound to me, allowing its user to chat only with me.
In other words, I wouldn’t need to worry about the information leaking through the system.
Furthermore, if I bound Shin Eunjo’s system to me and then helped her achieve the additional unlock, I would be able to observe her system window and learn the conditions under which the additional system opened.
“Give up the meteorite item and entrust your system to me. If you do that, I can tell you everything. Once you’re bound to me, I’ll have no reason to treat you as an enemy either.”
Shin Eunjo silently stared at me with an unreadable expression.
“What will you do?”
When I asked that question, Shin Eunjo continued staring at me.
Then she pulled a pistol from inside her clothes and aimed it at me.