A chill ran down my spine, as though someone had poured ice-cold water over my head.
I was considerably taken aback by the unexpected situation — but my mind was turning faster than it ever had before.
Among the various questions surfacing in my head, what I needed to confirm first was already decided.
I looked at the Minotaur Lord with cold, level eyes.
“The one who left this note here — are they still alive?”
Boss-class monsters could hear and understand human language, but they couldn’t read written text. So whoever had left this message wasn’t a monster.
That meant it had to be a human, naturally — but……
I could see the Minotaur Lord nod.
That one small action alone allowed me to be certain of a few important things.
First.
It’s not a Player.
A complete disaster zone where a great many Players had clearly died.
The Minotaur Lord’s behavior — walking right up to where the item was, with an ease that suggested familiarity.
Just from that alone, it was obvious that the Minotaur Lord had also carried out no small amount of killing in this area. And yet the one who left the mystery box and the note was still alive? And the Minotaur Lord itself answered as though it knew perfectly well whether they were alive or dead?
That meant the Minotaur Lord had met the person who left the items and note in person — and had let them go even with them right in front of it.
Second.
They knew I’d come all the way here and read the note. This was deliberate.
I wasn’t sure exactly what the phrase “act like an NPC” meant — but one thing was clear: whoever left that message possessed both the judgment and the authority to do so.
And also — someone who could make a direct request, or issue a command, to the Minotaur Lord.
Either an NPC like me who receives a friendly rating from monsters, or……
Perhaps a manager of this world.
I wasn’t certain whether such an existence was real.
But even just looking at the system that appeared out of nowhere two years ago, it was clear that some kind of divine existence was managing this world through it.
The fact that events capable of significantly affecting the people of this land — like the main quest updates or the simultaneous closure of all the Special Supply Stations — had only begun happening now made me wonder. Perhaps there was something like a GM (Game Master), gauging Players’ rates of growth and releasing content in a measured, adjusted manner.
……That was my thinking, but when I considered it coldly, the probability of it being an NPC was higher. Would someone as significant as a manager really need to go out of their way to handwrite a message like this — and in handwriting so difficult to read, at that — when the system window was right there?
Better to assume there’s another NPC out there like me.
Not every NPC received a friendly rating from monsters.
Immediately after leaving the Special Supply Station, I had used the Trait: Myriad View to survey Zone 2 from corner to corner in order to avoid Players. At that time, I also took note of the few NPCs that existed in Zone 2.
Up until then, I had never had any reason to pay close attention to other NPCs who never needed to leave their safe zones — so I hadn’t noticed. But as it turned out, there was surprisingly no one among them who bore the same Chaos Friendly title as me.
I had assumed it was something every NPC held as a matter of course, but perhaps it was a title given only to the managers of the Special Supply Stations.
Because of that, all the other NPCs frequently found themselves on the receiving end of murderous glares from monsters outside the safe zones.
In that case, the person who had left this message was someone who held a title like Chaos Friendly — something that shielded them from monster hostility. At the same time, it also meant they were an NPC with enough freedom of movement to come to this place and leave a message.
The NPCs I had confirmed with the Trait: Myriad View were still bound to their respective zones.
That meant there was a strong possibility this person was an NPC who had newly appeared in this zone. Come from another zone, for instance.
The moment that thought clicked into place, a sense of urgency overtook me.
Because I had found another NPC as out-of-place as me.
I wanted to know exactly what the message they had left meant — and I wanted to get my hands on a way to move freely between zones the way they apparently could.
I held out the item and the note to the Minotaur Lord and made my request.
“Take me to the person who left this. Right now.”
I expected the obedient Minotaur Lord to nod without hesitation and move with me immediately. It had been idling here with me all this time despite the repeated sounds of collisions and screams from Players and monsters clashing nearby — surely it would grant me a request like this without a second thought.
But the Minotaur Lord did not nod.
Nor did it shake its head.
It simply stared at me and let out a low rumbling sound.
Is it deliberating?
Had that NPC left some kind of order telling it not to bring anyone along?
“Can’t do it?”
Khrng—
The Minotaur Lord exhaled a low breath through its nose and scratched its head. It still showed no sign of being willing to take me anywhere.
Then.
A ‘beep—’ notification sound rang out.
It came from the Communication Ear Cuffs I had tucked into my subspace bag. It was the signal indicating that a connection had been established with the paired Ear Cuffs — ordinarily, when worn, the notification would be delivered discreetly only to the eardrum without leaking to the outside.
There was still only one wavelength registered to my Ear Cuffs.
In other words, the only person who could connect a call to me right now was Euijin.
It seemed he had successfully received that quest.
If so, he would be arriving here before long.
I was briefly deliberating whether to take the call, when the Minotaur Lord took one step back. Then, as though its role here was finished, it turned away from me and made to exit the alley.
“Wait!”
I grabbed the Minotaur Lord’s tail in a hurry. Relative to its enormous frame, the tail looked comparatively thin — but it was still thick enough that my hand couldn’t fully wrap around it.
The Minotaur Lord, its tail caught, looked back at me. Unable to bring itself to push me away, it simply swayed the tail I was gripping back and forth.
I bit down on my lip as I looked at the Minotaur Lord, now standing still.
<Minotaur Lord Lv.60>
The Minotaur Lord’s level was 60.
The same level as Euijin, who had completed his Awakening Quest.
Even at the same level, it was a boss monster designed with raids in mind. Its actual stats far exceeded what the displayed level suggested.
Even if multiple Eclipse members with average levels in the forties and fifties piled on, one swing of that enormous axe could scatter them to pieces in an instant — just like what had happened at the Special Supply Station.
But if Euijin had safely received that quest, and if the Eclipse members joined after clearing the monsters to some degree… taking down the Minotaur Lord wouldn’t be all that difficult.
This is just… because this thing is the only one who knows anything about whoever left that message.
Steadying myself with that thought, I gripped the Minotaur’s tail tight.
For Players — no, for all humans — monsters were something like alien invaders. They were creatures that had shattered a world people were living in peacefully, that saw humans as nothing more than food or playthings, that reveled in slaughter.
Even if they were being commanded and controlled by the system or by whoever was pulling the strings from above, that fact didn’t change.
And so, even when monsters showed goodwill toward me or tried to help me with one thing or another, I had never let myself grow attached to them.
Because I knew that over two years — both inside and outside the Special Supply Station — countless scenes of slaughter had played out because of monsters.
I’d witnessed plenty of Players hunting monsters in turn as well, but the fact remained: without a cause, there is no effect.
So I had resolved that if I ever had to choose between the two, I would stand beside the Players without question. Even if Players posed far greater danger to me personally and monsters were, paradoxically, safer — I could not stand on the side of those who had devastated the world I used to live in.
I don’t resent them. I don’t feel anger.
Resentment and anger were emotions that had ceased to exist in me from the day I was granted the Trait: Mental Stability.
I had simply spent two years analyzing the situation with a cool head and arriving at my own conclusions.
Even if that meant my brain structure had been quietly reshaped by the Trait: Mental Stability without my consent — I still believe, even now, that it was right.
But unlike other monsters, I was face-to-face with a high-intelligence creature that could understand my words clearly and articulate a firm will of its own. That made it impossible to treat it with pure coldness.
And so — under the pretense of wanting to find a clue about whoever had left the message — I held the Minotaur Lord in place, refusing to let it go anywhere. Not that it mattered much. If it put any real force into swinging its tail, something like me would go flying far away.
It just couldn’t die yet.
“If you go back now, you’ll die.”
I pulled on the Minotaur Lord’s tail with serious eyes. It didn’t budge in the slightest — but I pulled anyway.
“Don’t fight. Don’t go anywhere — just help me instead. Let’s work together and find the one who left this message.”
In that instant, a red system window appeared before my eyes.
