The moment I walked over to the counter and settled into my spot, the glass door at the store entrance opened.
The visiting customer was, as expected, the very man I’d been thinking of.
Of course. Irritating.
I looked at the familiar face of my regular customer and put on a gentle smile that was entirely at odds with what I was actually thinking.
“Welcome, Player.”
The tall man who met my gaze showed a faint smile with warm eyes. That single small action was enough to make it seem as though an invisible light had been added to shine on him alone.
Don’t smile. I’ll get attached.
A handsome man in his early-to-mid twenties — the type who, had it been before the twelve cleansings, would’ve been living his best campus life — tilted his head slightly. His brown hair, which carried the warmth of sunlight that had lingered and left, swayed lightly.
“Hello.”
Beneath the subtly downcast line of his eyes, long lashes draped prettily. The single communication ear cuff he’d bought five days ago gleamed on his ear like a rather stylish piece of jewelry.
After greeting me, the man held my gaze for a moment, then extended those characteristically long legs of his and walked deeper into the store. In time with his clean, unhurried stride, the two longswords at his left hip swayed with crisp precision.
Hm?
I was watching the man when my gaze snagged on his jacket.
It was high-grade equipment — the kind that shouldn’t wear down easily — and yet its durability had already plummeted to less than half. The jacket that had been spotless as new just five days ago was now stained with scorch marks and melted streaks.
That it still suited him so well was deeply aggravating.
Just how much grinding did you do to end up looking like that?
I swallowed the gamer slang — short for “shut up and hunt” — and quietly pulled up the man’s status window.
Every NPC at a Special Supply Station possessed the “Vision Authority (顯視의 권능)” — the ability to view any Player’s status window. My guess was that it was a provision intended to help actively recommend the most fitting items to Players who visited the Special Supply Station.
Recommending suitable items aside, I was curious just how much he’d leveled up since his last visit.
I checked the man’s status window and silently swallowed a breath.
Jeong Euijin Lv.59
— Title: He Who Walks Two Trajectories
— Strength 117
— Stamina 90
— Agility 85
— Intelligence 51
— Magic 67
— Defense 75
He really is a monster.
He’d been at level 58 just five days ago — and here he was, having climbed another level and come back. I already knew he was a relentless hunting addict who slaughtered monsters day and night, but even so, this rate of growth was enough to make your jaw drop.
The system divided Players into tiers based on their level.
Up to level 19: lower tier. Up to level 39: mid tier. Up to level 59: upper tier. Up to level 79: high tier. Up to level 99: elite tier.
To cross into the next tier, Players didn’t simply need to raise their level — they also had to clear a grueling awakening quest at the so-called “threshold interval” of the nines.
Jeong Euijin had just reached one of those threshold intervals, but there didn’t seem to be much need to worry on his behalf. Given his overwhelming rate of growth, it seemed like he’d chew through this awakening quest without breaking a sweat.
Zone 2’s number one ranking isn’t going to change anytime soon.
Without a ranking system, Players starved for information had little way of gauging each other’s strength — but for me, having spent countless hours each day peering at Zone 2 Players’ stats through the NPC-exclusive trait Myriad View, it was easy to tell who was at the top and who was at the bottom.
Well, grinding that hard is exactly why he’s drowning in coins, I suppose.
In this changed world, there were only two ways to earn coins — the currency of survival.
Complete quests to receive rewards, or take down monsters scattered throughout each zone.
In that respect, Jeong Euijin was a true Player who diligently did both.
While I was inwardly shaking my head at that, Jeong Euijin had come to a stop in front of the shelf where the runestones were displayed and was quietly deliberating. He’d done the same thing five days ago, two weeks before that, and twenty days ago when the stock first came in — and it was starting to make me curious. Of the five runestones, which one was it that had him agonizing so consistently?
That said, I couldn’t very well walk up to him and start asking warmly about this and that — so I waited quietly.
If I ended up behaving in ways that weren’t very NPC-like while dealing with a customer, that was quite a problem. The last thing I needed was a red warning window popping up saying Behave in a manner befitting an NPC of the Special Supply Station! — that kind of thing gave me a headache — so there was no point in taking the risk.
Whether he was short on coins or something else, he turned away again today with that same look of reluctance.
What Jeong Euijin had picked out was two pairs of ear cuffs, one leather bag enchanted with mid-tier subspace magic, ten expensive high-grade recovery potions, and a pile of jerky and energy bars that were easy to carry and eat on the go.
He eats nothing but this stuff.
In a place stocked with fresh food and all kinds of ready-made meals, this guy was the one and only person who ever came in and bought nothing but flavorless jerky and energy bars.
I glanced briefly at the gimbap and sandwich shelf that Jeong Euijin hadn’t even looked at, then moved the barcode scanner.
I was scanning each white-wrapped item one by one when Jeong Euijin suddenly asked,
“By any chance… do you carry runestones that nullify perception interference?”
His speech pattern alone would make you think he was well past his thirties rather than his early-to-mid twenties.
Then again, having survived two years of everything this world could throw at him, it wouldn’t be strange if he’d aged far beyond his years in that way.
“No, we don’t.”
I answered immediately, watching him carefully for a reaction. Genuine disappointment showed plainly in Jeong Euijin’s eyes.
Had he run into a monster with a perception interference trait?
I understood.
If only blurry impressions of an enemy monster’s outward appearance remained to work with, it would certainly be a headache from any Player’s perspective. Even if they tried to analyze it in preparation for a future encounter, it would amount to nothing more than half-baked information.
Then again, a monster like that makes sense. I have the Perception Interference trait myself, after all.
Many Players visited this place, but none of them remembered what I looked like. At most, they retained a vague recollection of my gender, voice, and rough build. This was the effect of Perception Interference — an exclusive trait held by every NPC, myself included.
There was only one reason the Perception Interference trait had been granted to NPCs.
To keep Players from perceiving us as people.
Players crossed the line between life and death every single day, but NPCs were sheltered within safe zones under the protection of the system and its guardians.
If Players — thrown into an utterly desolate environment with no say in the matter — were to perceive NPCs as the same kind of “people” as themselves? If they were to see that those NPCs had a safe and comfortable existence guaranteed to them, so unlike the Players’ own?
The ones who couldn’t bear the indignation of that injustice would find their target for pent-up rage all the more clearly defined.
When that happened, the system’s first-level warning wouldn’t serve as a deterrent — it would become a free pass to beat an NPC senseless once a day.
There might be an outpouring of lunatics who, exploiting the loophole of a safe zone where killing didn’t technically count, would think nothing of putting a bullet in someone’s head.
The system must have anticipated this too — which was why it threw up a warning window every time I behaved in a way unbecoming of an NPC.
…Things were different back then, though.
I quietly glanced up, thinking back to the day I’d first met Jeong Euijin two years ago. Even now, Jeong Euijin was staring straight at my face — which, due to the Perception Interference trait, would appear murky to him, like paint muddied in water.
No, that was probably the trigger.
The moment the system started warning me to know my place — as an NPC.
Swallowing a bitter smile to myself, I absentmindedly reached for a high-grade recovery potion.
“…Ugh.”
A sharp jolt of pain shot through my wrist and I reflexively bit down on my lip. The wrist that had been red and swollen since earlier in the day peeked out slightly from between my sleeve.
Damn 181-coin guy.
The moment I reached out to continue scanning items as if nothing had happened, Jeong Euijin suddenly grabbed my arm. Given his staggering strength stat, it wouldn’t have been odd for my bones to shatter on the spot — but despite the quick, abrupt motion, the grip itself was careful to a startling degree.
“What happened?”
A coldness settled over Jeong Euijin’s face as he held my wrist.
Instead of answering, I simply looked at him steadily.
The sharpness and instincts I’d observed in Jeong Euijin through Myriad View were, without question, extraordinary. If I hadn’t had the Perception Interference trait, he probably would have noticed the injury on my wrist the moment he walked in. The fact that he hadn’t caught on at all until I’d inadvertently given it away right under his nose did make his search for a perception interference nullification runestone a little more understandable.
Jeong Euijin turned a complicated look on me as I gave him no answer.
“Who did this to you? Which one?”
His voice, on the other hand, carried a displeasure so sharp it was impossible to miss — cold enough to cut.
