Being a perfectly ordinary human with no combat ability — not even a defined level — I was being thrown out into ruins crawling with monsters with nothing but the clothes on my back. Being an NPC and having the Chaos Friendly title meant monsters wouldn’t attack me, but food, shelter, and clothing were an entirely separate problem.
Unlike the frustration welling up inside me, my mind grew endlessly calm. As always, the effect of Trait: Mental Stability was remarkably potent.
Three items, huh…
I stood frozen, barely moving for almost ten minutes as I thought it over — then a sudden idea hit me, and I dug through my pocket. Sure enough, the familiar key was there.
I inserted the key into thin air, turned it, and opened the door. The spots that had been left empty from pulling out stock to restock the shelves the day before were now neatly filled with the same products again.
I looked at the key in my hand, eyes gleaming.
< Zone 2 Special Supply Station Storage Key >
— A key that opens the subspace storage, which resets automatically at midnight.
— Only the head administrator of the Zone 2 Special Supply Station and the key’s owner may enter and exit.
The fact that a status window appeared meant this key was also classified as an ‘item.’
A faint smile crept onto my lips.
Maybe it’ll be more liveable than I thought.
***
Rumble, rumble, rumble —
At the sudden earthquake, every Player staying in a certain villa tensed up.
The villa had a barrier layered over it that reinforced its durability and hardness enough to withstand even the charges of most monsters. So the chances of it collapsing from an earthquake of this level were essentially zero — but the Players were uneasy for a different reason.
“An earthquake out of nowhere — what in the world is going on?”
“Not again… what’s about to happen this time…”
Most Players had developed a kind of PTSD when it came to earthquakes.
Whenever something big was about to happen — the start of the hellish Cleansing, the approach of a monster wave where monsters flooded in like a tidal wave, the appearance of a massive boss monster, or the outbreak of a large-scale quest — an earthquake like this would always precede it without fail.
It was only natural for any Player to feel uneasy.
And yet, gathered anxiously in the living room and carefully watching out the windows, they could see no notable change outside. If anything, the fact that something so big was apparently coming and yet nothing had appeared yet only made the tension worse.
Just then, a woman stepped out of her room with a long, drawn-out yawn.
“Haaam — don’t make such a fuss over one little earthquake. If monsters show up, you beat them down. If it’s a quest, you blast through it.”
She was dressed in a comfortable short-sleeved shirt and sweatpants, but hanging from both sides of her waist were two daggers that looked entirely out of place with the outfit.
One of the people gathered in the living room muttered under their breath.
“Well, that’s easy for you to say, Yunji, since you’ve got ridiculous strength…”
“Hm? What was that?”
“Ahem… nothing, never mind.”
Heo Yunji watched him scratch his cheek and let out another wide yawn before glancing toward the front door.
“Coming sooner than I expected.”
Not long after Yunji murmured that with a smirk, the front door opened. Despite the door clearly having several complex security measures on it, the man who just stepped in showed no sign of being hindered by any of them.
At the entrance of a strikingly handsome man who appeared to be in his early-to-mid twenties, the faces of everyone in the living room lit up at once.
“Welcome back, Euijin.”
“Where’d you go so early in the morning?”
“Breakfast? You haven’t eaten yet, right?”
They called out to him with smiling faces, yet strangely, not one of them moved from where they stood. They were also subtly watching his mood, as though there were an invisible wall they couldn’t cross.
Jeong Euijin, his face expressionless, didn’t bother responding to each person greeting him. He simply gave a slight nod of his head. Not a single person in that space took issue with it or found it off-putting.
“Didn’t you say you’d lay low until the Grand Explosion debuff wore off?”
“That’s why I kept the hunting moderate and just went out for a quest.”
Everyone there knew that Jeong Euijin’s definition of ‘moderate’ was anything but ordinary.
So rather than pointing that out, they all turned their attention to the quest instead.
“A quest? Haven’t you done just about everything already? Isn’t there nothing left to do?”
“Awakening Quest.”
“Ah —”
Heo Yunji nodded, then grinned.
“Did you clear it?”
Yunji had expected Euijin to shake his head with a frustrated look.
But contrary to her expectation, Jeong Euijin gave a light nod.
“Yeah. Just need to collect the reward now.”
“…Seriously? You’re a monster, you know that.”
Yunji’s face scrunched up with displeasure.
The reason Heo Yunji called Jeong Euijin a ‘monster’ wasn’t solely because he had come back having cleared the Awakening Quest on his very first attempt.
Like all ‘threshold levels,’ the ‘Third Awakening’ quest given to Jeong Euijin at level 59 was absurdly cryptic. Even Heo Yunji, who had listened to the contents in order to help interpret it, hadn’t been able to grasp a single thread of a clue. And if even Jeong Euijin — who had breezed through his previous Awakening Quests — had been wracking his brain over it, there was nothing more to say.
Yet Euijin, who had gone out alone the night before, had come back with a bright face, then left the hideout again before dawn. He hadn’t gone into the details, but it seemed he’d caught hold of some crucial clue the previous night.
But interpreting the quest’s contents didn’t mean the mandatory combat sections within it would be easy as well.
Since the clear conditions differed for each combat section, there was no choice but to face them head-on, fight through them countless times, and figure out the conditions through trial and error. Players who missed the timing during this process would lose their Awakening Quest along with a level drop. And this was something that happened to nearly every Player — it was considered perfectly normal.
Even so, to come back having cleared it in one go — Jeong Euijin was undeniably a monster.
At Yunji’s declaration, Jeong Euijin lowered his eyes and opened his mouth.
“No, on my own I probably wouldn’t have…”
Euijin’s words were cut short before he could finish, because of a notification window that suddenly appeared before him.
< The 1st Sequence for entering the Main Quest will now begin. >
< The Minotaur Lord descends upon Zone 2. >
Just as expected — no earthquake was ever meaningless.
“Entering the Main Quest…?”
“What does that mean?”
“Wait, the ‘1st’ means there’s a 2nd and 3rd too, right?”
“A Lord… the Minotaurs themselves are already a handful, and now… ugh.”
The Players who had checked the notification window each swallowed their unease and tensed.
There had been plenty of quests until now, but this was the first time the system had specifically called something a ‘Main Quest.’
On top of that, whenever the system used the word ‘descend’ to describe a particular monster’s appearance, it invariably meant a boss of breathtaking power was about to arrive. Having control over surrounding monsters to swell its forces was also one of its defining traits.
They needed to devise a strategy as quickly as possible before the swelled monster horde came flooding in.
This was the simultaneous conclusion that both Jeong Euijin — who was about to become Zone 2’s first high-tier Player — and Heo Yunji, a powerhouse who had already reached level 55, had reached.
Just as Heo Yunji opened her mouth to speak to Jeong Euijin with serious eyes, one more notification window appeared before them.
< All Special Supply Stations have been destroyed by the Raid Boss monsters that have descended upon each zone. >
Jeong Euijin, who was not easily rattled by anything, went wide-eyed. An enormous pressure radiated from him like a storm.
“Jeong Euijin…?”
As a suffocating wave of pressure suddenly hit, Heo Yunji swallowed dryly.
The Players gathered in the living room went pale one by one — less from the sudden news of the Special Supply Station’s destruction, and more from the murderous intent radiating off Jeong Euijin.
“Why the Supply Station…”
Jeong Euijin muttered with a stony face. The only one close enough to catch those words was Heo Yunji standing right beside him. Before she could even get a word in, Jeong Euijin bolted out of the building in an instant.
Only then did the crushing pressure that had been bearing down on everyone in the villa lift — but not a single person dared to open their mouth. The chilling aura from Jeong Euijin, which they hadn’t felt in a long time, left them unable to hide the trembling in their bodies.
“Haah…”
Heo Yunji let out a deliberate audible sigh, then scratched her head irritably. Two men who had just arrived at her door looked at her with questioning eyes.
“What just happened? Why is Euijin like that?”
Each room of this villa, occupied by ‘Eclipse’ — the group Jeong Euijin and Heo Yunji belonged to — had two combat-class Players assigned per unit for safety, and these two were their neighbors from the room right next door. They had likely sensed Jeong Euijin’s bloodthirsty aura and come running immediately.
Under the gazes of the two men, Yunji went into her room and came back out wearing a leather jacket that looked a bit worn.
“Jeong Euijin, that crazy bastard, looks like he’s about to go on a rampage again.”
“Why?”
“Dunno, me neither.”
She replied to the man’s question with indifference, but Yunji actually had a pretty good idea of the reason. Jeong Euijin’s hobbies were exactly three things: clearing quests, hunting monsters, and his solo shopping trips to the Special Supply Station.
In this harsh world, having one of his few hobbies forcibly stripped away was more than enough reason to lose his temper.
Heo Yunji nodded to herself, then turned to the two men with a serious expression.
“Tell all the combat-class Players left in the villa to gather immediately. We’re heading straight to the Special Supply Station — everyone except the security team staying to guard the villa.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of taking on the Minotaur Lord with zero information, are you?”
“Even I’m not reckless enough to do something that stupid.”
She shot back as if it were obvious, but then added a slightly resigned breath.
“…Or so I’d like to say, but I can’t make any promises.”
Her brows pinched together as she absentmindedly stroked the daggers at both hips out of habit.
“Depending on the situation, let’s figure out whether to back Euijin up — or grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him back.”
