Wandering NPC
Two years had passed, yet the ruins scattered across Zone 2 remained unchanged. With every step I took, all that met my eyes were collapsed buildings and shattered debris.
It felt like being dropped right into the middle of an apocalypse game.
The problem is that it’s not a game — it’s real.
I walked along, looking around with an indifferent expression, and popped the last of the jerky in my hand into my mouth. It was decently salty and savory, but still not really something you could call a proper meal.
I stared quietly down at the jerky wrapper in my hand.
Just as I expected.
Five hours had already passed since the notification window announcing the destruction of the Special Supply Station had appeared.
Thinking back to how every product inside certain supply stations had been wiped out all at once when they were destroyed in past quests, the jerky I had just finished eating should have disappeared too.
And yet the fact that I could still carry it around and eat it meant…
The storage I brought out — and everything inside it — is all mine now.
As I casually tossed the jerky wrapper to the side of the road, my wrist bore a metal bracelet, and from it hung a small key.
< Zone 2 Special Supply Station Storage Key (Bound) >
The storage key was what I had chosen as one of the three items I was allowed to take with me.
The moment I selected it, the word ‘Bound’ had attached itself to it just like the items Players carried — and even now, with the Special Supply Station destroyed, it was still functioning perfectly.
The supply station building itself may have collapsed, but the storage existed in a separate subspace. This key was essentially an access pass to that storage.
An infinite storage that replenished itself with all manner of stock at midnight.
As long as I had this, I wouldn’t starve to death. Not only food, but consumable items like potions and first aid kits would refill on their own — and since it could be opened anywhere, this storage key was an absolute essential I had no choice but to take.
The second item I took was an Intermediate Subspace Bag.
There was a clear reason I had picked this bag, which was neither particularly expensive nor rare.
If the storage key counts as one item, then the subspace bag should be counted the same way.
What mattered was how the system calculated things.
The restriction on what I could take wasn’t based on the actual number of physical objects — it was based on the number of entries the system recognized as possessions. Just as the storage key was treated as a single key, the subspace bag wouldn’t have the contents of the separate dimension linked to it counted one by one either.
On top of that, I had been the NPC of the Special Supply Station.
If a Player had tried to take items without a transaction or shove things into their own bag however they pleased, they would have been penalized — but I had ‘administrator privileges’ that allowed me to freely handle items being sold within the store.
I had eaten food inside the store before, and had even drunk expensive potions like they were alcohol, so I already knew that these privileges weren’t limited to simple sales transactions.
So putting things into the subspace bag wasn’t ‘unauthorized removal’ — it was simply processed as storing inventory using a specific item.
I had exploited that loophole to shove a whole pile of items into the subspace on the other side of the bag.
I opened the leather bag hanging from my shoulder and reached my hand inside. As my hand entered the roughly three-square-meter subspace within the small bag, I thought of a particular item — and it slid neatly into my grasp as if it knew I was looking for it.
I looked at the red crystal engraved with golden runes and smiled.
There was no way I could leave something this expensive behind.
Five types of Runestones — so expensive that they hadn’t shown the slightest sign of selling.
These Runestones, which granted Players entirely new unique skills, would surely prove useful at some point. The same went for the last two pairs of Communication Ear Cuffs I had brought along as a bonus.
These items were ones that, even if sold, would not be restocked in the storage — so I’d had no choice but to stuff them all into the subspace bag and bring them out as a single item.
I carefully placed the Runestone back into the bag, then exhaled in short, ragged breaths.
Honestly, this pathetic stamina.
After two years of barely any proper exercise and just lounging around inside a convenience store, I had become the owner of a body so out of shape that even a little absentminded walking left me winded.
Though the air here is probably the biggest culprit.
I squinted at the haze hanging invisibly in the air.
The streets filled with ruins were unmistakably different from the convenience store, which had always been filled with fresh, clean air. It felt suffocating, like walking around with a thin, dusty mask over my face. Tiring out so quickly was probably just as much a result of this murky air as it was my terrible stamina.
I envied the Players.
Even a modest increase in their stats would make this suffocating feeling completely disappear for them.
With tired steps, I looked for somewhere to rest. The massive Great Trees that had blocked out the sky since two years ago meant the sun was barely visible anymore — but that didn’t mean there was no sunlight at all. If possible, I wanted to lean against some shade and rest.
I approached one of the walls that was still relatively intact. Near the wall, my reflection caught in a large, cracked glass window.
My slender face was pale white, as though it hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time. The thin white shirt with one button undone and black cotton pants looked casual enough to be heading to a nearby café, and with the leather bag slung over one shoulder, I looked exactly like someone heading off to study at a coffee shop. It was a peaceful look entirely out of place in this ruin-filled world.
In my own opinion, my current state wasn’t exactly a pretty sight — regardless of what I was wearing. It wasn’t bad enough to be unpleasant to look at, but I had clearly gotten thinner compared to two years ago.
Even if two years without exercise was forgivable, I found myself regretting a little too late that I hadn’t at least eaten better.
As I stared quietly at my reflection in the glass, I suddenly noticed something hanging from my back like a backpack. Reflected there was a large egg, bundled carefully inside a makeshift carrier fashioned from a tied-up convenience store employee uniform.
“Hmm… yeah, the carrier is a bit much, isn’t it.”
The third item I had chosen — Altiora’s Egg.
Honestly, I hadn’t taken it because I needed it so much as because I couldn’t stop thinking about leaving it behind. It wasn’t like there was anything else more important to take, either.
The Runestones and Communication Ear Cuffs, neither of which would be restocked, had all been stuffed into the subspace bag and handled as a single item. Everything else in the Special Supply Station would fill up in the storage on its own come midnight, so there was no need to take any of it.
As a result, I had ended up choosing the Pet Egg as my last item, almost unintentionally. The storage was set so that no one but me could enter it, and the subspace items Players used didn’t accept living creatures — so there was no choice but to carry it out in person.
If I didn’t have the Lightweight Potion, I might have actually left it behind.
The only reason I — with my rock-bottom stamina — could manage to carry this heavy egg bundled up on my back was entirely thanks to the Lightweight Potion. I hadn’t expected that potion, which reduced an item’s weight to a tenth of its original for six hours, to be this useful.
I gave the Pet Egg — which now weighed no more than a kilo of meat — a gentle pat. Ever since leaving the Special Supply Station, I had occasionally felt a faint vibration when I touched it like this. Almost as if it was trying to let me know it was alive.
Well… if I brought it out with me, I suppose I’m responsible for it now.
Even if it was classified as an item, there was still a living creature inside. It might be some hideous monster or a beast I couldn’t communicate with — but I had no intention of abandoning it now.
I carefully unwrapped the Pet Egg and set it down gently, then leaned my back against the shaded wall. After five hours of aimless walking, my legs already felt swollen.
I massaged my legs with my hands and opened my status window. Past the growth stats that were filled with nothing but question marks, I checked the trait list below.
< Unique Traits >
— Trait: Mental Stability
— Vision Authority
— Trait: Myriad View
Originally, I had been given five traits.
Trait: Mental Stability — which defended against traumatic shocks and kept the mind in a rational state.
Vision Authority — which allowed me to clearly see any status window.
Trait: Myriad View — which, limited to Zone 2, let me look down on anywhere within the zone as though a CCTV camera had been installed in the sky.
Perception Interference — which made it difficult for others to clearly perceive my appearance and made it hard to even recall me after turning away.
Safe Confinement — which made it absolutely impossible for me to leave the designated safe zone.
Of those, Perception Interference and Safe Confinement had disappeared.
It seemed they had been removed at the point when the system notification telling me to leave the Special Supply Station appeared.
Now that Perception Interference is gone, Players will be able to see me properly.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether to be glad about that or not.
As an NPC, my own growth stats were invisible to me. Based on my experience of getting knocked around by Players here and there over the past two years, I could only roughly estimate that my body was weaker than a level 1 Player.
Let’s be generous and assume I’m level 1.
Without even an experience parameter, it was impossible for me to level up the way this world’s system intended. That meant I was stuck living at level 1 forever — and that was, to put it simply, a serious problem.
Monsters aren’t the issue. Players are.
I raised my eyes and looked back at the road I had come from.
I spotted a Gnoll — a bipedal, dog-headed monster — ambling along with a crude club made from a broken branch.
It seemed to have noticed me too, because it stopped briefly and met my gaze.
Those normally murky eyes showed none of the murderous intent they carried when facing other Players. Instead, it had its tongue lolling out, lips stretched wide in a pant, and its fluffy tail wagging with considerable enthusiasm. It looked like it would come bounding over and slap its front paws onto me the moment I held out my hand.
And it wasn’t just the Gnoll.
Over five hours of walking, not a single monster had laid so much as a finger on me. Every variety of monster rumored to be ferocious had behaved toward me like nothing more than a docile neighborhood dog.
Even the Minotaur Lord that had come to destroy the Special Supply Station had waved me away with a sweep of its hand, as if warning me of danger, and urged me to step back. The sight of it shuffling its feet anxiously — worried a stray chunk of rubble might fly my way — before I was far enough back had been genuinely amusing.
Based on all of this, regardless of whether a safe zone was present, the monsters of this world would do no harm to me.
That was a testament to just how powerful my Chaos Friendly title was.
But Players had no way of knowing what titles I held — and even if they did, they wouldn’t care in the slightest.
They’d just see me as a low-level Player ripe for the picking.
To Players, level was both the measure of a person’s chance at survival and their rank in this world.
Having observed the survivor camps scattered throughout Zone 2 through Trait: Myriad View, I had seen — whether I wanted to or not — exactly how low-level Players were exploited and abused by others.
And on top of that, I was openly carrying a valuable Pet Egg on my back for all to see.
If Players looking to steal it started gathering, that would put me in a considerable bind. Since the system prevented Players from forcibly taking an NPC’s belongings, there was a real risk of having my identity exposed.
Without the supply station’s protection system and with a body weaker than a level 1 Player, my best strategy was to avoid contact with Players as much as possible.
There were far too many unstable people among the Players who had survived this long.
Even if it takes longer, the best move is to stick to paths where I won’t run into Players — just like I’ve been doing.
I pulled out an energy drink from the subspace bag and gulped it down. Since I had stored it in the refrigerator inside the storage before leaving, it was still ice-cold.
I drained the last of the drink and tossed the empty bottle aside carelessly. At the sound, another Gnoll poked its ferocious-looking head out from behind the wall across from me.
Rragh — …Hrrn?
The fierce roar instantly turned into a soft, adorable sound the moment it spotted me. Its expression shifted completely — bright and panting cheerfully.
I ignored the Gnoll’s gaze and gathered up the Pet Egg bundled in its carrier again. The Gnoll’s ears seemed to droop slightly at the sound it let out, but my eyes were already fixed on the far end of the road ahead.
It’s not much further.
I stared hard at the faint red boundary line at the end of the road.
The boundary line that divided each zone had drawn close enough to be visible to the naked eye.
I need to cross over into Zone 1.
To find my younger sibling.
But…
“What is this?”
The red boundary line — which any Player could cross without a second thought, even the monsters chasing after them — refused to let only me through.
Only the location had changed.
I was still trapped in Zone 2.
…System, you absolute piece of shit.
