Chapter 20

Chapter 20
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
A friend request has arrived from T-balnom.
Would you like to accept?
A friend request from T-balnom.
To be honest, it felt rather absurd.
After flatly turning down my previous friend request, he was now reaching out himself?
What sort of sudden change of heart compelled him to initiate contact?
Well… the reason was quite apparent. He was standing on the absolute brink of death.
He had managed to hold out longer than I anticipated, but it was inevitable that T-balnom would eventually break down and seek assistance. After all, the survival strategy he was attempting to execute was none other than my own authored guide. Given that one of the vital milestones outlined in that manual involved cannibalism, his chances of successfully clearing the scenario independently were always exceptionally low.
It was my own guide, of course—yet it had originally been drafted under the theoretical assumptions of a standard video game. Even I would never actually resort to consuming human beings in reality.
…Why on earth are my ears burning?
Regardless, I accepted T-balnom’s incoming friend request and dispatched a direct message to him.
DOPAMINE ADDICT
So. You’ve finally decided you want to speak with me?
I fully expected him to unleash a torrent of insults even as he lay dying, but T-balnom surprised me by returning a remarkably composed response.
I don’t think I’ll be able to come will wou
DOPAMINE ADDICT
What are you talking about.
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Did you fail to follow the guide?
T-BALNOM
I couldn’t locate any nourishment.
T-BALNOM
I refused to consume people. Even if this whole ordeal is supposed to be nothing more than a game.
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Stumbled right over the cannibalism requirement, exactly as I figured.
That explained why he had been spamming me with friend requests so desperately. Had he not insolently rejected mine from the very beginning, his existence wouldn’t have been hanging by such a fragile thread.
Because—
ITEM TRADE
Request an item trade with T-balnom?
Please place the item you wish to trade into the trade window.
Participants who maintained a mutual friend status were capable of safely exchanging items directly through their personal inventories. That exact mechanic was the primary reason I had been attempting to prompt T-balnom to establish a connection in the first place.
The fact that he would eventually deplete his food supplies was a foregone conclusion that even the most reclusive hermit could have predicted.
I slid a tin containing a batch of leftover cookies straight into the translucent trade interface hovering right before my eyes.
TRADE ITEM
Cookies (15)
I paused to let him accept the offer—only for a text message to flash across my screen before any trade confirmation could register.
T-BALNOM
Player-to-player commerce… was actually an option?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
It only works between mutual friends. Just hurry up and accept it.
T-BALNOM
I explicitly stated I was going to murder you. Why on earth are you offering me assistance?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Didn’t you transmit that friend request precisely because you were desperate for help? Just accept the trade.
T-BALNOM
No! I simply assumed this was the end of the line for me, so…
DOPAMINE ADDICT
If you’re going to decline, I’m walking away.
T-BALNOM
…If you intend to help me anyway, couldn’t you display a little bit of basic decency about it?
This guy certainly has high expectations for someone currently facing imminent demise.
T-balnom remained silent for a brief moment before firing off another follow-up message.
T-BALNOM
I still intend to take your life if I manage to crawl out of this mess. Does that mean you’re still going to assist me?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Obviously.
I desperately needed the rare meteorite artifact currently sitting in his possession. If he perished here, I would be forced to trek all the way across the hazardous Knife Zone just to retrieve it from his corpse.
T-BALNOM
Why……?
T-BALNOM
Why would you ever help someone like me……
If he started growing sentimentally attached to me here, it would turn into a major inconvenience.
My sole intention was to place him slightly in my debt—not to dissolve his homicidal ambitions entirely. Even my conscience would prick me a bit later when I eventually seized his item if he genuinely started developing fond feelings toward me.
Time to provoke him just a trifle.
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Because a fellow who is already staring death in the face doesn’t exactly strike me as much of a credible threat?
T-BALNOM
You unmitigated son of a bitch.
T-BALNOM
I am crawling out of this hellhole, and the absolute first thing I’m doing is killing you.
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Just accept the trade already.
TRADE ACCEPTED
T-balnom has officially accepted the item exchange.
What an exhausting, high-maintenance nuisance.
Wasting this much valuable time just to push a button on a single trade window…
DOPAMINE ADDICT
If you find yourself requiring anything else down the line, feel free to voice it.
T-BALNOM
One final inquiry.
I fully anticipated that he would instantly cut off communication the second the items landed in his inventory, but to my genuine surprise, T-balnom had a parting question to pitch.
T-BALNOM
How would you handle a dilemma like this?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
What specific kind of dilemma?
T-BALNOM
Would you have resorted to consuming human flesh just to stay alive?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Even under those extreme circumstances, I would never practice cannibalism.
T-BALNOM
So you would rather perish with your fundamental human dignity completely intact?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Heavens, no?
T-BALNOM
No? So you actually would have eaten them after all?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
My particular setup doesn’t require me to eat physical food, so I would simply stash my body away in some obscure hiding spot, tough it out through a decade of isolation, and casually emerge once the Second Apocalypse officially kicks off.
T-BALNOM
What in the world?
T-BALNOM
Didn’t the official guide you published explicitly instruct players to slaughter every single resident before the Second Apocalypse descends?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Don’t tell me you actually went traipsing around trying to assassinate everyone and ended up getting yourself severely maimed?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
And you stood there claiming you were going to murder me, while simultaneously running my entire survival guide step-by-step?
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Don’t tell me you secretly turned out to be a fan of mine as well? Haha.
DOPAMINE ADDICT
…Why aren’t you replying to me now.
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Hey.
DOPAMINE ADDICT
Hey.
The stubborn bastard had ghosted me right back.
Even so, he didn’t strike me as the sort of individual to roll over and die out of sheer petty pride, so I figured I could at least be thankful for that much.
He would inevitably reach out to me again the next time he managed to wander right up to the edge of the grave. I decided it was best to leave T-balnom alone for the time being…
Come to think of it, I hadn’t bothered to accept anyone else’s friend requests either.
The only one I had approved was Home Protector’s. All the remaining invitations were still languishing in my queue, untouched. I had briefly considered tossing a lifeline to the Dentist—seeing as he was an utterly helpless newcomer—but if he lacked the basic competence to clear the Candy Zone, the absolute lowest difficulty tier available, entirely on his own, I held very little enthusiasm for investing my energy into nursing him along.
As for the rest of the surviving players… I suppose I could afford to sit back and observe their struggles a little longer.
Ever since that recent exchange, the public broadcast channel had grown eerily, terrifyingly silent. Every single person was undoubtedly retreating into private, one-on-one transmissions now. Information instantly surrendered all its practical value the very second it was broadcasted openly to the masses.
I could have easily accepted their friend requests and maintained an amicable facade… but I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with them. I possessed zero inclination to pretend to be comrade-in-arms or attempt a peaceful coexistence with those individuals.
If this twisted reality is a game as well, then my sole objective is to conquer it—utterly and overwhelmingly.
They had better wise up and realize that this was precisely the ruthless style of play I intended to enforce. Only then would I ever deign to treat them as participants operating on my level.
Love Area. Safe Zone.
A player who went by the alias Shin fixed a steady, concentrated gaze upon her status window, which stubbornly continued to withhold any notification of acceptance.
Dopamine Addict showed not the slightest indication of approving her friend request. She had initially approached him with a veneer of warmth, styling herself as an enthusiastic admirer—yet she was enough of a devotee to understand his psychological profile far too well. Consequently, she possessed a remarkably accurate intuition regarding what manner of thoughts were churning through his head at that exact moment.
Dopamine Addict is fundamentally a hedonist at heart. Giving the cold shoulder to friend requests like this… demonstrates he has zero intention of resolving this crisis through peaceful means.
The single silver lining in her current predicament was that she hadn’t spawned within his primary stronghold of Unicorn, but had landed inside the Cola Area instead. If Dopamine Addict’s designated zone had been Unicorn, no living player would have possessed the leverage to turn the tables on him.
That realization explained why Shin had felt such an overwhelming wave of profound relief the moment she recognized she had been reincarnated into the Love Area. It served as the absolute ideal habitat for cultivating her specific set of talents.
The core requirement to successfully clear the Love Area was love itself.
Depending on how one chose to interpret and manipulate the strategy, that concept could span romantic passion between a man and a woman, deep familial bonds, the fervent fanaticism of an idol’s dedicated fanbase, or the pious reverence directed toward a deity.
Among all the Love Area walkthroughs published by Dopamine Addict, the particular path Shin had chosen to reference was the cult-building strategy. The other players who happened to spawn within the Love Area alongside her were likewise familiar with that specific guide, prompting every single one of them to avoid following its directives with blind, literal obedience.
The instant she watched her status window snap open following the fortuitous acquisition of a meteorite artifact by sheer luck, absolute certainty had washed over her: with just a modest application of her former real-world profession, she could easily bend the surrounding players to her absolute will and command their actions.
Shin flashed a sweet, beatific smile toward the fellow player who had just spoken up.
Her past career in the real world had been that of a fraudulent shaman. Not a genuine spiritual medium—not even someone who had undergone a legitimate ritual of divine possession. A complete charlatan. Yet pulling off a successful con of that magnitude required far more than mere luck; it demanded cunning.
Shin had possessed a razor-sharp intellect since her early childhood days. Dissecting human psychology, preying upon underlying anxieties, and feeding people precisely the soothing rhetoric they desperately yearned to hear came to her as naturally as rolling her tongue around inside her mouth.
Through sheer favorable fortune, she had managed to become the very first person within the Love Area to secure a meteorite item and activate a functional status window. She had carefully concealed that crucial milestone from the others, subsequently leveraging the glowing interface to echo their private circumstances back to them and materialize items straight out of her inventory, successfully duping them into believing she was actively channeling direct revelations from the god governing this strange world.
Those gullible players held an unshakeable, ironclad conviction that she was the genuine Great Shaman appointed by this realm—and yet they remained perpetually gripped by anxiety due to the looming, ominous presence of Dopamine Addict. Consequently, after publicly declaring that she would petition the divine for a guiding revelation regarding him, she had submitted that fateful friend request.
One of the players piped up once more, visibly restless and on edge.
“Did the divine vision indicate whether Dopamine Addict will extend his help to us?”
Their collective terror stemmed from the inescapable fact that Dopamine Addict had manifested in this world right alongside them. The haunting realization that they stood zero chance of defeating a legendary all-zone clearer within a brutal survival environment drove them to desperately crave some concrete guarantee that he wouldn’t target the newly arrived players.
However, Dopamine Addict had completely snubbed Shin’s friend request. And as far as her calculated agenda was concerned, that icy silence was fundamentally not a positive omen.
Dopamine Addict had never operated as an altruist to begin with. That unrepentant hedonist would undoubtedly carve out a life however he pleased within this realm as well.
They wouldn’t even cross paths with him for another ten agonizing years. She could easily have spun a comforting falsehood, assuring them that Dopamine Addict had graciously agreed to cooperate, purely to pacify their racing nerves—yet Shin deliberately chose not to do so.
“Dopamine Addict will refuse to aid us. The divine entity dispatched a revelation, and he insolently turned his back on it.”
Given that the vast majority of players already acknowledged his terrifying competence, allowing them to cling to false hopes regarding his assistance would only blow up in their faces later. They needed to internalize the harsh reality that nobody was coming to save them, driving them to fight for their survival with an even more desperate intensity.
Another player, who harbored no pretense of goodwill toward Dopamine Addict whatsoever, snapped with open irritation.
“That damned Dopamine Addict. He’s ultimately just another participant navigating this game like the rest of us now. Why on earth should we waste our energy worrying about him?”
“Are you completely dim-witted? The Great Shaman already enlightened us. Dopamine Addict managed to possess this world equipped with exclusive special privileges granted to an all-zone clearer!”
The bold assertion that Dopamine Addict had secured privileged status as an all-zone clearer was, of course, a fabrication born entirely out of Shin’s own speculation.
Yet she remained privately convinced that he undoubtedly possessed absolute clearance advantages.
While she couldn’t pinpoint the exact nature of those perks, the simple fact that he had been capable of unlocking a status window far ahead of anyone else was likely a direct result of them. Hoping to glean any scrap of useful intelligence, she had even gone so far as to befriend the player who appeared closest to him—Home Protector—and attempt an exploratory conversation.
That pathetic individual was nothing more than a spineless wretch whose entire master plan relied on clinging desperately to Dopamine Addict the exact second the Second Apocalypse struck.
What a complete fool. What tangible value could Dopamine Addict possibly extract from adopting trash like that?
Dopamine Addict was guaranteed not to leave the remaining players alone to rot in peace. Those individuals who currently safeguarded meteorite items were positioned at an especially acute level of risk. Now that he was fully aware those rare artifacts harbored profound secrets, he would inevitably endeavor to round up every last one of them. He fit the exact psychological mold of a person who would torment fellow players for no deeper motive than idle curiosity regarding the chaotic chain reaction of gathering them all together.
“Dopamine Addict will not lift a finger to rescue you. Therefore, you too must harden your resolve and make ready. Is that understood?”
Shin stood tall before the gathered assembly of players, her decorative meteorite earrings chiming softly with every movement, and issued her final decree:
“Go forth among the ordinary inhabitants of this zone and circulate the prophecy that a full decade from now, the designated messenger of the divine will descend to deliver absolute punishment upon all unbelievers.”
This coordinated rumor campaign was pulled straight from Dopamine Addict’s infamous cult strategy playbook—meaning its operational effectiveness had already been thoroughly validated. The players who felt disheartened by the news that he wouldn’t bail them out, alongside those who already held a deep resentment toward him, raised zero objections to letting her take the absolute helm of this cult-driven approach.
Shin curved her lips into a deeply satisfied smile and pressed onward.
“I couldn’t care less if the populace points fingers at us over the next ten years, branding us as nothing more than unhinged cult shamans. Because for every single hour of public humiliation we are forced to endure—when the Second Apocalypse finally arrives and howling monsters flood across the zone’s perimeter walls—every last one of those skeptics will be groveling and crawling directly at our feet.”