That day — when the enormous tree burst from the ground and monsters rained from the sky like a downpour.
I had been alone inside this convenience store, which was the only reason I was able to escape harm.
This location has been designated as the Special Supply Station of Zone 2.
Assigned personnel: 1
Employee ‘Lee Jaea’ is granted Supreme Administrator authority over the Zone 2 Special Supply Station.
I was lucky.
My meddling had turned me into a convenience store employee for just a brief moment — and because of that, I’d been able to stay inside a safe zone called a Special Supply Station. Since vicious monsters were absolutely unable to cross the boundary line of a safe zone, there was nowhere safer.
To put it another way, outside the safe zone was a hell where nothing existed but horrific slaughter. If the Mental Stability trait hadn’t been granted to me the moment I was designated an NPC, I would have fainted countless times watching that hell unfold and eventually lost my mind entirely.
The first thing I did after gaining the trait was to guide the people screaming and fleeing into the convenience store. The boundary line acted like a transparent wall for me — blocking me in, so I couldn’t step outside — but other people could cross it freely. By shouting at the top of my lungs toward the outside and waving my arms until they ached, I managed to usher a great number of people inside.
But that lasted only so long.
You have exceeded the maximum stay duration at the Special Supply Station.
One by one, in the order they’d entered, red warning hologram windows appeared before their eyes. That was also when I learned that the Special Supply Station had a “maximum stay duration” of twenty minutes.
The Guardian of Karma appears.
It didn’t take long to figure out what that meant.
The Grim Reaper appeared without a sound and moved with terrifying efficiency. It cut down the people packed into the safe zone one by one — and even those who had fled beyond the boundary at the last moment were tracked down and slain without exception.
In the end, I was the only one left standing amid the heap of bodies piled high around me.
The horrific corpses vanished without a trace the moment the next day came. The flesh, bone fragments, and even the bloodstains — all gone, clean as if they’d never been there.
This had continued not only throughout the twelve cleansings, but for the two years that had followed.
That’s why I don’t bother cleaning.
I took a bite of the convenience store sandwich in my hand and gazed past the counter. A few dirty footprints sat out of place against the white tile floor. I left them there on purpose, knowing they’d disappear cleanly come morning.
— They’re coming! Everyone get ready!
— Give me a fire attribute buff over here! Hurry!
Urgent shouts came from the hologram window I’d pushed out of my field of vision. I dragged my fingertips through the air to pull the screen back in front of me.
Trait: Myriad View (萬相圖)
Grandiose name aside, in practice it was a fairly unremarkable ability that collected hundreds of CCTV feeds into one compact display.
It was limited to Zone 2 — my assigned area — but the ability to observe any spot at will, whenever I chose, was essentially the same as watching a live stream on YouTube.
They call it ‘Myriad View’ and yet it’s limited to Zone 2…. Will it eventually let me see outside Zone 2 as well?
I was mid-thought when I let out a short laugh.
Expandability aside — the real question was whether a day like that would ever come. Two years in, trapped here, playing convenience store manager without a shred of hope or a future to look forward to.
At the center of the viewer window I was looking at, a zone was visible from a top-down view looking straight down from above. I had been keeping an eye on it because some unfamiliar faces had been moving through, but it seemed that while I’d looked away briefly, they had run into a monster over four meters tall.
Oh, they ran into an Ogre.
The Ogre was one of the dangerous monsters that even mid-level Players approaching level 40 struggled to face one-on-one. Its savage, fang-baring face and the heavy bone club it carried were notable features, but what was most troublesome was the tough green skin wrapped tight around its bulging muscles.
The Players in the footage seemed to know this too, as they were hurriedly applying fire attribute buffs to their weapons.
The standard method for effectively stripping the Ogre’s hard, resilient skin was to grant fire attributes to one’s weapon, boosting both attack power and elemental destructive force.
But on this particular Ogre, it wasn’t going to work.
Unfortunately, because of a major explosion that had occurred recently, every monster in Zone 2 was currently in a state of “fire attribute immunity.”
They must not be from Zone 2.
Anyone who’d been living in Zone 2 would remember the red warning window that had appeared five days ago, simultaneous with the explosion.
Due to the impact of the major explosion, fire attribute immunity is granted to all monsters throughout Zone 2.
Duration: 7 days.
Which meant, as of today, the effect wouldn’t wear off for another two days. If they’d seen that warning window, they probably would’ve made the clean call to retreat rather than waste mana on a fire attribute buff that would do nothing.
I watched the Players in the viewer window struggling and let my eyes go flat.
Lately there have been way too many Players from other zones showing up.
It seemed like at least two or three teams were turning up nearly every day.
The reason they’d ventured into Zone 2 was easy enough to guess.
Every single one of them is loaded up with quests.
I narrowed my eyes watching one Player get sent flying like a scrap of paper by the Ogre’s club. Just by thinking I wanted to see his status window, a small hologram panel attached itself to my view instantly. I had no interest in the specs of a low-level Player, so my gaze went straight to the “Sub-Quest” section at the very bottom.
Number of incomplete sub-quests: four.
Two of them were related to Zone 2.
It’s strange how many quests they’re handing out for other zones.
Not only the outsiders visible in the Myriad View — even the people who lived in Zone 2 were frequently being assigned quests that could only be completed by traveling to other zones.
I glanced at the far corner of the store. A few high-priced items that had recently come in were on display on the shelf there, and the timing of when the cross-zone quests had started appearing and when these items had been added lined up in a peculiar way.
From what I’d heard, the new items stocked across the five Special Supply Stations — this one included — didn’t overlap with each other, which made me wonder if the idea was to deliberately cycle Players through other zones and boost supply rates as a side effect.
It really is like someone’s running a game.
With a look of exhaustion, I shoved the last piece of sandwich into my mouth and rose from my chair, stretching lightly. I had no further interest in the main feed, which now showed nothing but a blood-soaked Ogre, so I swept it out of sight along with the other smaller screens and stepped out from behind the counter.
I passed row after row of neatly arranged shelves and came to a stop in front of the shelf tucked away in the innermost corner.
On it sat items that had absolutely nothing to do with an ordinary convenience store.
Five runestones in different colors, four pairs of communication ear cuffs, and one large pet egg.
Runestones — which granted Players new skills — had always been an exceptionally rare drop from monsters out in the field, making them extraordinarily valuable. For an item like that to appear at a Special Supply Station where anyone with enough coins could buy one, any Player would take notice. If it weren’t for the security system set specifically for this shelf, the 181-coin robbery guy would’ve made a grab for these first.
But runestones weren’t the only thing that would make a Player’s eyes light up.
Communication ear cuffs.
The silver devices, designed to hang simply over the ear, were engraved with elegant golden patterns.
By syncing a pair of the same type of ear cuffs to the same frequency, voice communication was possible at any time regardless of distance or obstacles between them. Syncing the frequencies worked in almost exactly the same way as pairing a Bluetooth device.
Maximum number of frequencies registerable on one cuff: five.
By pressing the button on the back of the cuff a certain number of times, you could send a communication request to whichever of the five registered contacts you chose.
No batteries required, high durability, and nearly impossible to damage under normal circumstances. For Players in the current world, these were genuinely essential items.
If they were going to do all this, they could’ve just made a phone into an item.
I knew it was impossible, but I grumbled about it anyway. Someone who’d been addicted to games, unable to get their hands on a phone — let alone a PC — for two solid years couldn’t help but feel the strain.
But when do these get restocked?
The runestones were too expensive to sell at all, so that was one thing — but the ear cuffs, which had started at ten pairs, were now down to four. The pet eggs, which had been three, were now just one.
Other items restocked on their own without me having to put in any orders, but for some reason, not a single additional unit of these expensive items had been added.
Were they a limited quantity with no restock planned?
In that case, that thing too…….
My gaze fell to the large pet egg sitting on the lowest shelf.
A silver base with splatters of gold, as if someone had flicked gold paint across it. The pet egg had an almost sacred quality to it, and was large enough that I’d need to wrap both arms around it just to lift it.
Altiora’s Egg Lv.0
I tapped the luminous shell with my fingertip. Tap, tap. It was so hard it would’ve passed for a plain rock if it weren’t shaped like an egg.
Once you sell too, this store will have nothing left in it but me.
Of the three pet eggs, this one was the last remaining.
It was technically classified as an item, and whatever was inside was probably a monster — but still, something alive was in there, wasn’t it.
This was the first living thing that had stayed put in this place for any meaningful length of time, given that the only visitors were Players who came and went within twenty minutes at most. I found myself unable to stop thinking about it. Maybe — even with the Mental Stability trait — I really had been feeling lonely.
Squeak, squeak.
I took the “Ultimate Clean Wet Wipe☆” item from my pocket and wiped down the surface of the egg. Products on display never gathered even a speck of dust, but it was a habit I did purely for the comfort of it.
In that moment, I put too much force into the hand holding the wipe.
“Ah! Ow….”
I’d thoughtlessly used my injured hand again. Thanks to the 181-coin guy who didn’t know his own strength, my wrist had already swollen up considerably.
Should I just use a potion?
I glanced at the shelf where the red high-grade recovery potions were displayed — then stopped myself.
The memory of a group of Players who’d come flooding in to prepare for a raid, whining about running short on potions, had made me decide not to touch the consumables unless things were truly serious.
However you looked at it, Players who had to survive each day with their lives on the line were the ones who should be using them — not someone like me, trapped in a place like this with nothing seriously dangerous likely to happen.
Though — if it hurts this much, is my bone actually cracked?
Muttering to myself, I went back to carefully wiping the egg with my uninjured hand.
Soon enough my mind settled, and I straightened up.
Beep—.
As if it had been waiting, a small alert tone sounded.
It was the signal that rang when a Player crossed the boundary line surrounding the store. Since it had only gone off once, it seemed the visitor was just one person.
The digital clock on the store wall read 9:11 PM.
The time when all monsters were strengthened to one-and-a-half times their power under the effect of “Night of Chaos.”
Any reasonable Player would be hunkered down in their own base holding their breath — but there was one regular customer who came, without fail, only at this deep hour of the night.
Someone with an air about them that was anything but ordinary, yet unfailingly kind toward me.
Not a bad person.
And on top of that — ridiculously good-looking.
To an almost irritating degree.
