Chapter 42

Chapter 42
Shin, you seem to think I don’t know who you are, but I’ve seen you on the community boards before. You never used to talk like that. So why are you putting on this phony flower-child act that doesn’t even suit you? Druggy seemed to already know the player called Shin. The fact that Shin didn’t push back against the claim that this wasn’t his usual way of talking suggested the current vibe was, in fact, an act. The newbie Dentist might not know any better, but anyone who’s been around long enough knows you people aren’t ordinary players. Let me make this crystal clear while I have the chance. Any player who crosses into another Area will be treated as an enemy.

I actually agreed with Druggy that anyone who crossed into my Area was an enemy… but the sheer intensity of his reaction made it clear he was genuinely afraid of the other players. Well, if you’d suddenly been possessed into a game and the other people who got possessed with you turned out to be social misfits, a little paranoia was only natural.

Whoa, why so hostile? After a stretch of silence, Shin finally cast a message. Think about it rationally. What do we even gain by treating each other as enemies? I’ll grant you that Dopamine Addict probably wouldn’t be any help to us, though.

Sharp of him.

I’m against meeting up too. Ssapasuble, who had seemed content to just watch the situation unfold, finally spoke up. I’m still underwater, for one thing. With the influence I’ve got right now, I can’t even surface whenever I want. And if you lot are planning to form some little clique without me, I won’t just sit still. Fair warning.

Whoa, clique? That’s not—

If any of you make contact before the First Apocalypse… I’ll sink the whole submarine. Got it?

Sink the submarine…? I can’t drag the sub up onto land, sure. But punching a hole in it and sending it to the bottom? That I can do. If this submersible sinks to the seafloor and the meteorite on the power unit is lost forever, I honestly don’t care. Go ahead and meet if you want.

If you sink the submersible, don’t you die too?

Isolated to death or drowned to death, same difference either way.

Wait, are you serious? Even Shin, who’d been the one proposing a meetup, seemed rattled by how extreme Ssapasuble was being.

You need the meteorite items from my Area, don’t you? I’m not the only one who thought of that. Maybe if we collect every last meteorite item, we can go home.

Huh.

I-I’ve never thought about that, man?!

If we collect all the meteorite items we can go home? Is that real? Is that something that appears in the game?

The muscle-for-brains guy and the newbie can sit this one out.

I didn’t particularly agree with Ssapasuble’s theory… but the other veterans seemed to see it differently.

I… I’ve always thought there had to be a reason the meteorite items had this kind of power…

It’s not without merit. If contact with a meteorite item is what opened the System, then clearly those items have some kind of power. A brief silence settled over the chat room before Shin finished his thought. Looks like… we don’t have a choice here. So, Ssapasuble, you’re not just refusing to meet with us. You’re against anyone meeting anyone?

That’s right! If any of you trade info or team up before I make it to the surface— I’ll sink the Beer Area’s meteorite along with the entire submarine.

Ssapasuble… I was pretty sure he hadn’t always been this extreme. Being stuck underwater ever since the possession must have done a number on his mental state. The other players seemed to find real credibility in the idea that collecting every meteorite item would let them go home.

Me? I was skeptical. I was planning to collect the meteorite items myself, but only to clear this world. The idea that gathering them all would somehow send us home didn’t sit right with me. Separate from whether I even wanted to go home… I just had this feeling that this world wouldn’t let us go that easily.

And then it happened. He sent a message.

Well, that would be a problem then?

I stared at the screen, doubting my own eyes. The chat had gone up under my nickname, but I hadn’t sent it. The Unicorn Area player! Another message followed immediately.

I’ve already met someone, you know ^^

This bastard? He’d said he had no intention of causing me trouble, but every message he sent looked designed specifically to screw me over. Jumping in myself would only make things messier, so I decided to sit back and watch for a moment. Sure enough, the other players completely lost it at the sudden appearance of Dopamine Addict.

Dopamine Addict?

What do you mean you’ve already met someone?

What the hell are you thinking? Was that last message even from you?

Hold on—we don’t even have proof that the person sending messages right now is the real Dopamine Addict.

The players stirred for a moment, and then the Chicken Area player carefully asked: S-so… are you the Dopamine Addict we know…?

I watched to see how the impostor would answer.

^^

He sent nothing but a single smiling emoticon. Was this bastard seriously trying to pass as me?

Yeah, this guy’s not Dopamine Addict.

He figured it out from that? But the other players seemed to have reached the same conclusion that the messages weren’t from me, and they hurried to shut the conversation down.

M-maybe we should keep the chatter in this room to a minimum. Someone we don’t know is watching our conversation.

lol

Agreed. Meetups are off the table. If anyone has business, take it to private chat.

Hey, where the hell did Dopamine Addict and that Home Protector bastard go? Are they dead?

That was the last of it. The Unicorn Area player stopped sending messages, and the public chat room fell quiet almost immediately. The second a second Dopamine Addict showed up, everyone scattered. His mere existence was clearly a massive source of anxiety for the other players. Sure, he’d told them there was no barrier, and he hadn’t caused any real harm yet… but just knowing he was out there felt ominous somehow. Like he was going to ruin everything someday.

That was when a chat came in from T-balnom.

That impostor who said he’d already met someone—was that you?

How’d you know?

A guy running around impersonating you wouldn’t care about any player except you.

Fair point. But still. What I was asking is how you figured out he was an impostor.

The way he talked was even more annoying than usual.

So that meant my normal way of talking was already pretty annoying?

Did he come looking for you first?

Yeah.

You’re still in one piece, so… nothing much happened?

Well. He shot me once, but he said he had no intention of actually hurting me.

What the hell does that mean.

About that impostor. What exactly did you two talk about?

He knew about the conversation we had, so he assumed you were me.

At my question, T-balnom went quiet for a while as if he’d gone back to check the chat logs from that day—and only reappeared once I’d started getting bored of waiting.

I got a text saying cross-Area communication was possible, so I asked him if he’d found anything out. He answered, “You keep saying you’re going to kill me, and now you’re asking me this?” That’s why I thought it was you. He knew I tell you I’m going to kill you every time… The other players entered the room after that conversation, so they wouldn’t have seen what we talked about.

Before T-balnom and I had become friends, he had sent me death threats through the public chat, yeah. Don’t tell me… he was in that room from the very beginning? Before T-balnom and I even entered the public chat…? It had taken me a full day just to open the System. If he’d landed in the Unicorn Area, the odds that he’d opened the System before me were high. The Unicorn Area’s meteorite… was the floating island that made up the Unicorn Area itself. But how did he know that T-balnom kept threatening to kill me even after that?

T-balnom had declared he was going to kill me in the public chat, sure. But after that he never showed up in public chat again, and I’d even been the one to message him first. A player who didn’t know about our relationship would have looked at that message and assumed things between T-balnom and me weren’t that bad. So an answer like “You keep saying you’re going to kill me, and now you’re asking me this?” wasn’t something you could pull off with a simple guess.

Did he hack the System with Unicorn’s science tech or something? No, if that were the case, he wouldn’t have needed to come check on me in person. If he could already see the conversations I was having, there would have been no reason to confirm anything. He can’t see our conversations. But he knows T-balnom wants me dead. …What the hell is he, really?

Even if he were some remnant of an AI, or a version of myself that had solidified into an NPC… that would still only be “past me.” The only people who should know about those things were the real me and maybe a future version of me. I seriously have no idea what this guy is…

What’s wrong? Figure something out?

No. Not a clue.

You… are you really just going to leave that guy alone?

I’m going to think about it some more first. Speaking of which—there’s no barrier between Areas, right? Want to come over to mine?

No.

Instant rejection?

With this body I can handle the Area residents, but I don’t think I can make it all the way to your Area while dealing with large-class monsters. And I don’t think you’d come all the way out here just to save one person. Like you said, I’m going to stay hidden, build up my strength, and then leave.

On the surface it sounded like a realistic decision to dig in and wait… This guy… he’s wary of me, isn’t he? If he actually wanted to come to my Area, the first thing he would have asked was whether I could come rescue him. He’d probably caught a vague sense that I’d come after him once if he asked, and he wanted to meet me on equal footing after building up his power. Well… I figured meeting him after he got stronger would be more fun anyway, so I might as well leave him be.

Fine. If you need anything, just say so.

Need something? Hmm…

Normally when I asked him something like this he’d go dark and vanish, but today he didn’t disappear right away and kept dithering, so he must have actually needed something.

Actually, there is something I need…

There is? What is it?

I don’t have any soap.

…What?

So… soap?

I said I need soap. A toothbrush and toothpaste too. Why aren’t you saying anything? Are you even listening?

Lmaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Fuck.

You’re so damn clean-freak about this
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Stop laughing.

Lmaoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I swear when I get out of here I’m going to kill you.

This bastard was a real piece of work too.

“Damn. Didn’t expect the Beer Area lover to fold that fast. What is Dopamine Addict thinking, not saying a single word?”

Truthfully, he’d assumed that if he arranged a player meetup, Dopamine Addict would definitely show up. To rob the other players who came of their meteorite items, of course. He’d been planning the meetup for that exact same reason himself. Don’t tell me… he doesn’t need the meteorites? That can’t be right… Shin thought it over for a moment, then shook his head firmly.

“Doesn’t matter. I need them. Every Area’s meteorite.”

For that, he couldn’t afford to provoke the Beer Area player. If the guy really did sink the thing to the seafloor, there would be nothing left to salvage. “So for now… I have to keep the fact that I’ve already met another player a secret… Ah, but this isn’t cooperating or pooling our strength, so it should be fine, right?”

After muttering to himself for a while, Shin turned to look at the “player” tied to the chair. He smiled at him and asked, voice soft and gentle:

“What do you think, Home Protector?”