Chapter 19

Chapter 19
Following his departure from the Organization, T-balnom dived into a video game titled Apocalypse: Safe Zone after a recommendation from a junior colleague. Even his player handle, T-balnom, had been suggested by this same junior, as he had no clue what the phrase actually signified. His colleague had pitched the title as an experience so punishingly difficult that he would never grow tired of it.

Yet, initially, it felt entirely ordinary. He began his playthrough within the low-tier Candy Zone, quickly getting bored during the prolonged progression phase. Being restricted to the form of a ten-year-old child was irritating enough, and no matter what dialogue choices he selected, every non-player character coddled him and treated him like royalty. However, the moment the Second Apocalypse triggered and an unexpected raid from an opposing zone completely wiped out his territory into a dead end, T-balnom finally felt a spark of genuine excitement.

Choosing a low-level starting area inevitably sets a player up for disaster once the survival phase arrives. He appreciated the core lesson that living like a fragile blossom in a prosperous region would get you killed the instant survival commenced. Consequently, he gradually ventured into increasingly difficult zones. By the time he had progressed through Candy, Cola, Tobacco, Beer, Chicken, and Cocaine, he reached a firm conclusion: he needed a guide, because beating the game without one was impossible.

Safe Zones lacked official multiplayer features, but the survival stage mimicked player-versus-player combat because each zone’s artificial intelligence learned from previous participants’ winning strategies and incorporated those datasets into the survival scenarios. That dynamic introduced the true complication. The artificial intelligence scaled according to a player’s cleared tier. Throughout the earlier regions, he encountered a mixed assortment of player-derived intelligence profiles, but around the Cocaine Area, a specific player’s profile began overshadowing all others.

The artificial intelligence pairings listed Candy Zone with AI Home Protector, Cola Area with AI Dopamine Addict, Tobacco Zone with AI Home Protector, Beer Area with AI Ssapasuble, Chicken Area with AI Taejeong Taese Beyonce, Cocaine Area with Me, Knife Zone with AI Operator, Love Area with AI Dopamine Addict, and Unicorn Area with AI Dopamine Addict.

Uttering an exasperated exclamation, T-balnom realized he had been completely demolished by AI Dopamine Addict. Having no alternative, he logged into the official Safe Zone community forum, where he discovered that the other recurring handles—Home Protector, Ssapasuble, and Taejeong Taese Beyonce—were simply derivative guide creators following Dopamine Addict’s established paths.

Were Dopamine Addict’s guides truly that exceptional? Several community posts insisted that international players were even translating and mirroring them. Yet Safe Zone was an open-ended game, and blindly mimicking another user’s route should have stripped away the joy of discovery. Driven by that skepticism, T-balnom opened the Cola Area walkthrough written by Dopamine Addict and recoiled in sheer disbelief. What on earth was this? There was a burial site located in the slums, and the guide instructed players to dig it up? Furthermore, it advised maximizing an NPC’s affection rating only to poison them afterward—was this person mentally stable?

Before he fully processed his shock, he found himself hunting down the rest of Dopamine Addict’s publications. Along the way, he discovered that many users claimed these strategies could only be executed by Dopamine Addict himself. The high view counts did not stem from the quality of the instructions; rather, they thrived on unethical, immoral, and pure shock value.

He decided his upcoming strategy would rely entirely on countering Dopamine Addict’s methods. Every successful completion of the Love and Unicorn zones thus far had relied on players copying those exact routes. By inverting those same strategies, T-balnom barely managed to conquer the Cocaine Area. While a Dopamine Addict walkthrough existed for the Cocaine Area as well, he would rather perish than follow that scoundrel’s path.

Right at that moment, a brand-new post dropped from Dopamine Addict detailing a hidden Safe Zone starting guide for the Knife environment. The second he laid eyes on the title, T-balnom leaped straight out of his chair. Knife was actually a hidden sector? It had not been an unselectable region after all? Could anyone genuinely survive an environment populated entirely by homicidal maniacs while starting as a ten-year-old child?

A storm of thoughts raced through his mind, but he quickly typed out a comment asking how to unlock the hidden sector. Dopamine Addict replied that it simply required clearing the initial ending across all eight other zones. He thought then, as he had before, that this individual was genuinely the most aggravating person alive. Observing a reply underneath from Bedroomhoney calling him out as an impossible son of a bitch brought a momentary sense of satisfaction, though Dopamine Addict merely responded with an insufferable tone, noting he had already published starting guides for all other regions. When Bedroomhoney retorted that those guides were never meant to be followed literally, Dopamine Addict casually threatened to block him. T-balnom silently agreed with Bedroomhoney, but fearing a block that would cut off his access to the Knife instructions, he kept his mouth shut.

He needed to unlock the hidden area before anyone else. Presently, the sole player verified to have cleared Knife was Dopamine Addict, and if T-balnom became the second, his own artificial intelligence profile would match into Dopamine Addict’s Knife Zone run. Driven entirely by the singular ambition of appearing on that list, T-balnom skipped meals and pulled consecutive all-nighters to clear the Love and Unicorn zones. Throwing away his pride, he followed the published instructions to the letter, knowing it was the most efficient route.

Following numerous trial-and-error runs, he finally unlocked the hidden sector. Logging into the community to announce his milestone, he encountered an unexpected piece of news: the heavy users had vanished. Ever since Dopamine Addict had shared the address of a Safe Zone collaboration convenience store, those elite players had disappeared without a trace. Dismissing it initially as an absurd rumor, T-balnom checked the activity logs and found absolute silence, prompting him to visit the location personally.

Not every heavy user had vanished, but every single one who posted about visiting that specific convenience store had gone dark. Their final known destination was that shop, indicating something significant was hidden there. Dopamine Addict possessed an odd obsession with broadcasting his routes, perhaps to lure people in for attention. Although Dopamine Addict might simply be an attention seeker, T-balnom’s cautious background made him suspicious, leading him straight to the address. Upon arrival, someone else was already waiting outside.

Noticing a familiar face, T-balnom asked if he was a former national athlete. The stranger cheerfully confirmed he had retired long ago and introduced himself as Taejeong Taese Beyonce, noting he was also there because of Safe Zone before asking for T-balnom’s handle. Finding a recognized community devotee hanging around a promotional store raised T-balnom’s guard immediately. Pretending to inspect the merchandise, he stepped back and identified himself as T-balnom.

As Taejeong Taese Beyonce became distracted examining bottled cola, T-balnom snatched a knife from the display shelf just in case a confrontation arose. When the other man noticed and asked if he was purchasing a weapon, T-balnom casually replied that it was the symbol of the hidden zone and that he intended to start clearing it now that the guide had dropped. Excitedly mentioning Big Bro Dopamine Addict, Taejeong Taese Beyonce prepared to deliver a lengthy monologue, prompting T-balnom to hurry toward the cash register to escape.

At the counter, he found himself locked in a bizarre argument with the clerk, who frantically urged him to reconsider purchasing the knife. The clerk’s desperate attempts to stop him only fueled his suspicions, solidifying his decision to buy it. Telling the clerk to ring it up, he was told that since he was the first customer to choose the knife, it was free. The item lacked a price tag and packaging entirely, which felt deeply wrong, but having secured the weapon, he planned to monitor the store from outside. As he walked away, he heard the clerk mutter the word idiot under his breath with a blank expression.

Stepping out of the convenience store, T-balnom was instantly pulled directly into Apocalypse: Safe Zone, specifically into the Knife Zone, inhabiting the fragile body of a ten-year-old child.

Utter chaos erupted in his mind as the sudden shock forced a continuous stream of frantic curses from his lips, which immediately drew a pack of psychopathic killers. They captured and tortured him until consciousness faded. Fortunately, because they were sadistic pleasure killers with no desire to end a fresh victim too quickly, he survived the first twenty-four hours. Right before his sanity broke completely, he managed to recall Dopamine Addict’s Knife walkthrough.

First, he feigned mental instability to lower their guard and escaped. Next, he set out to acquire the Meteorite Knife from the zone’s de facto boss, a cannibalistic lunatic who favored the flesh of children. Utilizing that gruesome preference alongside the battered state of his own body, T-balnom disguised himself as a corpse, crept close, drove a fork directly into the tyrant’s neck mid-meal, and seized the weapon. He stabbed everyone in the vicinity, fled blindly into a narrow crevice where pursuers could not follow, and finally let his tears flow from the sheer terror, injustice, and exhaustion of his ordeal.

Death seemed preferable to enduring this place in such a weak body, as dying might send him back to his original reality. Just as he was about to commit suicide to escape, the system window flashed open with a notification stating that Dopamine Addict had entered the public chat room.

Seeing that prompt ignited a sudden surge of vengeance and a stubborn will to survive. He resolved to stay alive and eliminate that scoundrel. Whether Dopamine Addict was genuinely behind his predicament was impossible to verify, but to a mind pushed to the brink, it no longer mattered; he simply needed a reason to keep breathing.

Yet that resolve was faltering. Possessing a weapon capable of instantaneous killing meant little when overwhelmed by numbers. Severely wounded, T-balnom had dragged himself back to his hideout, fully aware he was bleeding to death. The official guide suggested healing injuries by consuming food, but this was a cannibalistic sector devoid of clean provisions, and trekking back toward the zone border meant facing hordes of murderers.

Driven by desperation, he had consumed the side ingredients the cannibal boss had prepared, barely closing his initial wounds while leaving his body in ruins. Wondering what Dopamine Addict would do in this predicament, he remembered the instructions to survive by eating others; murder he could manage, but cannibalism crossed a line. If Dopamine Addict had fallen into this zone, would he have casually consumed human flesh and walked away?

Ironically, despite having ignored countless past friend requests from that user out of pure animosity, he suddenly felt an urge to speak with him as death approached. Acting on impulse, he sent a fresh request and instantly regretted it, assuming his past rejections meant rejection was certain.

To his surprise, a system notification flashed indicating that Dopamine Addict had accepted the request and entered a private chat room. Asking why T-balnom suddenly felt like talking, the ensuing exchange revealed T-balnom’s failure to find food and his refusal to resort to cannibalism, even within a video game. Receiving no immediate response, T-balnom assumed the other player viewed him with utter contempt, believing survival outweighed moral scruples and that consuming an NPC hardly constituted true cannibalism.

Convinced that Dopamine Addict was the worst kind of human being despite his unmatched skill, T-balnom prepared to accept his end with his dignity intact, when an item trade request suddenly popped up on his screen offering fifteen cookies from Dopamine Addict. From the absolute worst kind of human being, an unexpected lifeline had arrived.