It was a message I had never seen before.
I had met countless Players during my time at the Special Supply Station, but not once had a message like this ever appeared.
It was bewildering — and yet, at the same time, it felt only natural.
In games, NPCs don’t always stay confined to the role of background residents propping up the world’s setting. Some play important roles, triggering specific events or issuing quests through interaction with Players.
In this world too, NPCs other than shop NPCs were active as catalysts and connecting threads for countless quests. Perhaps the role I was meant to carry out as an NPC — now that the Special Supply Station had closed and I’d been set loose — wasn’t so different from theirs.
But……
It seemed the NPC role assigned to me wasn’t all that coercive.
In other words, the choice of whether to issue a quest was mine to make.
On top of that, there’s no information about what kind of quest to assign. In that case……
I stared at the man for a moment, then mentally thought, generate quest. The text in the system window before my eyes changed.
<Please set the content and reward for the quest to be generated.>
There’s a lot of freedom here.
Whether to issue a quest at all, and even the content and reward — all of it was mine to configure.
Is it like this for other quest NPCs too?
That part seemed like something I’d have to confirm by meeting other NPCs in person.
For now, it’s probably best not to create a quest hastily.
I had been fully intent on avoiding Players for the time being. If I went ahead and issued a quest here, anyone with eyes would see I was an NPC.
I couldn’t just recklessly hand out a quest to some clueless Player who had snuck in here like a thief.
<Quest issuance notification can be deactivated.>
<Activate / Deactivate>
As if reading my thoughts, the quest generation message disappeared and was replaced with a notification regarding the alert settings.
If an activate/deactivate toggle is popping up, it might be that I can issue quests to every Player I encounter.
That seemed entirely plausible.
Since I had no desire to see a quest notification window every single time I ran into a Player, I naturally set it to deactivate.
After the system window disappeared, I sank briefly into thought.
The monsters I had herded outside would have crawled into the surrounding buildings on their own once the sun began to rise. By the nature of Werewolves, while they loved moonlight, the faint sunlight filtering through an overcast sky was something they had little fondness for.
So he had slipped in after sunrise and waited for me to wake up?
Why? For what purpose?
Surely he hasn’t already figured out that I’m an NPC?
It wasn’t an impossible scenario.
The lamp stand and portable self-powered generator I had set up were quite useful items among Players. Those alone were worth a fair bit — and then there was the Pet Egg, bundled up and set down nearby, which would fetch an even higher price.
Any Player would naturally be tempted, so it was possible he had crept in intending to steal them. If he had tried, the system would have displayed a warning window just as it would when someone attempted to rob an NPC’s belongings — in which case it wouldn’t be strange at all if he already knew my true identity.
I was inwardly bracing myself when the man raised both hands to shoulder height and carefully rose to his feet.
“I apologize for startling you. It’s my first time meeting a Monster Tamer, so I got a little carried away.”
“…Excuse me?”
A Monster Tamer? Me?
Why would I be……
That confusion lasted only a moment.
I immediately understood how this man saw me.
He thinks I’m the one controlling the Werewolves.
I had no idea how long he’d been watching me, but if he’d witnessed the Werewolves not attacking me, this kind of reaction was entirely understandable.
After all, there have never been wandering NPCs straying outside their designated zones.
Any Player who had been living nearby or passing through this area regularly would have caught on to the Werewolves’ strange behavior right away.
A stranger sleeping right in the heart of Werewolf territory without a care in the world — it wasn’t unreasonable at all to mistake me for a Monster Tamer.
Well, I suppose outlandish rumors come in handy at times like this.
It was true that there were rumors of a tamer among the Players who could tame monsters.
The finer details, however, were considerably exaggerated.
Things like taming and controlling hundreds of monsters all at once, turning even boss monsters into docile lambs, or having monsters personally go out and fetch food every day.
As someone who had briefly checked the status window of the rumored Monster Tamer when they visited the Special Supply Station, I knew just how overblown it all was.
In reality, the maximum number of monsters that could be tamed at one time was only three. And even then, control was halved with each additional one — so with three, it was essentially like walking around with three unruly children in tow.
On top of that, something Players didn’t seem to know: regardless of level difference, mental domination-type skills including taming had absolutely no effect on any boss-class monster. Unlike me, Players couldn’t even check a monster’s status window, so I supposed it made sense that they swallowed even exaggerated rumors whole.
That’s probably why there are so many people who idolize Monster Tamers.
My thoughts carried me that far — and then, quietly, my eyes lit up.
…Wait, this is actually a pretty useful setup, isn’t it?
Until I found a way to cross the boundary line of Zone 2, I had no choice but to partially revise my plan of unconditionally avoiding all contact with Players within this limited zone. In that situation, the “Monster Tamer” label the man had handed me was quite workable.
If I played the part of a tamer, I could cover for the monsters showing me goodwill, and it would be near impossible for anyone to dismiss me just because my level was low. Even if I myself was weak, as long as the monsters listening to me were strong, that was enough.
My mind started racing all at once.
“Um… Tamer…?”
I had gone silent, lost in thought, and the man, unable to wait any longer, spoke up again. Only then did I stop thinking and ask, indifferently,
“What do you need?”
My tone might have come across as blunt, but the truth was this intruder didn’t strike me as a bad person.
This man hadn’t realized I was an NPC.
Which meant that even while I was dead to the world in sleep, he hadn’t laid a finger on my belongings. The self-powered generator and Pet Egg alone were tremendously valuable items that anyone could have been tempted by.
If he had waited like that for me to wake up, he was at the very least a far better person than the troublesome Players I had dealt with before.
The man flinched at my tone, then opened his mouth with a slightly tense expression.
“I’m sorry for the sudden intrusion — do you happen to have any companions?”
“No, I’m on my own.”
“As I thought…!”
The man seemed oddly pleased. His eyes lit up, and his voice clearly sounded more animated.
“If you’re willing — would you consider moving with us? Ah, we’re a small survivor group of around forty people.”
“Forty people is quite a lot for a small group.”
Around forty, hm.
I thought back to the Myriad View screen I had pored over countless times out of boredom during my time at the Special Supply Station — specifically, what the area around here had looked like. I recalled a group of around forty people living together in one building not too far from here.
“Could it be that you’re staying in the two-story building about 300 meters past this street?”
“Wh— how did you know that……!”
So it was that group after all.
Among the forty or so, there was a survivor group where fewer than ten people were actually capable of combat. As far as I knew, those few fighters were also the ones handling food procurement — and this man was probably one of them.
“I overheard it in passing at some point. But I heard that the number of fighters is quite small relative to the total headcount……”
I let my words trail off, and the man rushed to explain himself.
“Th-that said, every single one of our fighters is someone you could genuinely call elite, and there are quite a few Players with excellent skills as well! Even if combat breaks out, we’re more than capable of protecting you, so please don’t worry about that!”
The way he talks is way too polite.
Sure, a Monster Tamer would be worth wanting — but I’m just one person here, and he’s being awfully deferential.
Let me probe a little.
“The thing is, my level is extremely low. I’ve been hiding on my own for a long time, so I don’t really have any notable skills, and my stats are basically equivalent to level 1. I doubt I’d be much help.”
At my mention of a low level, the man’s face briefly fell with a look of disappointment — but he soon smiled warmly, as if it didn’t matter in the slightest.
“With a taming skill, there wouldn’t have been much need to hunt monsters directly. On our end as well, there are some who simply earn Coins through safe, non-combat quests.”
He cleared his throat with a small cough and wiped the smile from his face, his expression turning serious.
