A Veteran Player is Needed in the Apocalypse

Chapter 1 - Dopamine Addict



Chapter 1 Dopamine Addict

Dopamine.

An excitatory neurotransmitter.

Also known as the happiness hormone.

I was a dopamine addict.

I first started getting dopamine through hobbies.

Idols, rock bands, the Premier League, Three Kingdoms…

When I could no longer get dopamine from hobbies, I started exercising.

When I could no longer get dopamine from extreme sports like martial arts and parkour…

I turned to online games, where there were no real-world constraints.

‘I didn’t actually want to start gaming, but…’

Gaming might have been the easiest way to get dopamine.

But whenever I thought of gaming, I’d remember my mom who couldn’t even contact me, so I deliberately avoided it.

But, as they say, a thief who learns late is the most terrifying.

As I searched for more difficult and cruel, high-stimulus games, I ended up playing all sorts of apocalypse-themed games.

The one that gave me high stimulation for the longest period was a game called .

The reason I could enjoy for so long wasn’t anything else.

First, to explain the game’s background.

Due to a meteorite that hit Earth in the past, the Ice Age began, leading to the end of most of humanity.

After some time, when the interglacial period arrived, the surviving humans built their own ‘safe zones’ to live in.

There are nine safe zones called Candy, Cola, Cigarettes, Beer, Chicken, Cocaine, Knife, Love, and Unicorn.

Players can choose their starting zone from eight safe zones, excluding Knife.

Once the starting zone is decided, the player wakes up in the body of a 10-year-old child from that zone.

The player, who receives a revelation about the second apocalypse and wakes up, must prepare for the end from that point on.

This preparation period is really important.

Because, on the day the player turns 20 in that zone…

The ‘second apocalypse’ begins.

What the player does before the second apocalypse is entirely up to them, but depending on what they do, a dead ending can occur even before the apocalypse arrives.

It’s a preparation period, a growth period, and could be considered phase 1 of the game.

Anyway, if you survive until you turn 20 and safely (?) face the apocalypse, it then turns into a survival game against people from other zones.

This part is the highlight of the game.

It’s revealed that starting from a low-difficulty safe zone isn’t necessarily good.

This is because the stats of characters starting from high-difficulty safe zones are much higher.

Moreover, the people from the undisclosed Knife zone are completely insane and try to kill survivors from lower difficulty zones on sight.

Only Love and Unicorn have higher difficulty than Knife, so if you start from a lower difficulty zone, you must first build up your combat skills.

Anyway, is a game with very high player freedom.

The difficulty and content change drastically depending on which safe zone you start from, so I was able to enjoy this game for a long time.

But that ends today.

I have seen the endings of all the safe zones.

Even the hidden zone, Knife.

 

[ Dopamine Addict ] Hidden Safe Zone ‘Knife’ Starting Strategy

 

As soon as I posted the last strategy on the community, comments started coming in.

 

HomeProtector: That psychopathic den was a starting zone? No wonder it had a difficulty rating despite being an unselectable zone.

 

HomeProtector, being the unemployed guy he is, is always the fastest to comment.

 

HomeProtector: But those guys kill kids and women without discrimination. Can you even start in a place like that?

└CouchPotatoHoney: Read the strategy before asking, damn it.

 

CouchPotatoHoney, who always posted abusive comments, usually got his comments deleted, but I decided to leave this one alone this time.

 

HomeProtector: Crazy; I’m reading it now, but what is this? How can a strategy involve starting by wiping out the residents?

 

How many comments is this guy going to post alone?

 

Impossibro: You have to kill all the residents from the start, but the difficulty is lower than Love and Unicorn???

└SafeZone8: It’s a widely accepted theory that those two zones have higher difficulty because of their specific starting scenarios.

└HomeProtector: Impossibro probably hasn’t tried the Love and Unicorn strategies.

FWord: But how did you open the hidden zone?

└DopamineAddict: It’s simple, just see the endings of all eight other zones.

└CouchPotatoHoney: It might be simple for you, damn it.

└DopamineAddict: Didn’t I post the strategies for the other eight zones too?

└CouchPotatoHoney: Were those strategies made to be followed?? Are you insane?

└DopamineAddict: I’m going to block you.

 

I blocked CouchPotatoHoney, and then others started comforting me.

 

HomeProtector: Your strategies are indeed tough. This latest one too. Starting as a 10-year-old and killing all the residents, seriously?

SafeZone8: Dopamine Addict’s strategies are just for funㅋㅋ

 

…This is a bit shocking.

I’ve been uploading these strategies diligently, hoping more people would enjoy .

But they were just reading them for fun.

‘Are my strategies really that difficult?’

Becoming the successor of a warlord who rules the zone or becoming the zone’s idol doesn’t seem that hard, does it?

Just as I was about to fall into deep thought, another comment was posted.

 

TaejongTaejoBeyonce: Thank you always for the great strategies, hyung!!

 

Well, at least this person expressed gratitude.

So there are people who find my strategies helpful.

But considering the nickname, this person is probably older than me yet always calls me hyung.

Anyway.

There’s no more content to enjoy.

This is the end of for me.

“What should I do now…”

My blood dopamine level is already dropping.

I need to find new stimulation.

‘But first, I need to eat something.’

It’s been a long time since I ate properly, being so immersed in the game.

I went outside to find something simple to eat.

A new convenience store had opened in front of my house.

There wasn’t a convenience store here until recently…

Had I been gaming for that long?

‘Anyway, it’s something new.’

New hobbies, new games, anything new creates dopamine.

I entered the new convenience store as if possessed.

But the newly opened convenience store didn’t look like the ones I was familiar with.

‘…What the?’

The first thing I saw upon entering was the candy display.

Unlike other convenience stores with various types of candy, this display was filled with rugged-looking lollipops.

Next to it was a beverage fridge filled with unlabelled bottles of cola.

‘I’ve never seen a fridge placed in the middle of the store rather than against the wall.’

Beyond the cola fridge were shelves of cigarettes, a beer fridge, chicken boxes, flour divided into clear bags, a knife section, condoms…

Staring blankly at the unicorn plushies piled up on the last shelf, I suddenly came to my senses.

‘This… this is a safe zone.’

Was this an Apocalypse Safe Zone-themed convenience store?

‘No. Let’s think rationally.’

isn’t a big enough game to do collaborations.

‘It’s more believable that the store owner is an addict of Safe Zone and placed the orders like this.’

Still, trying to run a business with just nine items is quite a bold idea.

Feeling sympathetic towards a fellow game lover, I took pictures of the convenience store interior and posted them on the community.

A newly opened store, if it spread among game fans, might help a bit.

 

[ Dopamine Addict ] A Convenience Store Set Up by a Safe Zone Addict

 

HomeProtector: What’s this place? Where is it? Message me.

 

I immediately sent a message with the address of the next building to HomeProtector, who quickly appeared asking for the location, and then I took a cola from the fridge and walked to the counter.

The sight of bottled cola after so long made me crave the fizz in my throat since the moment I spotted the fridge.

As I approached the counter with the cola, the clerk smiled at me and asked,

“Is it just the cola?”

“Uh? Ah, yes.”

“An excellent choice.”

…Was he being sarcastic about taking so many photos just to buy a cola?

But the clerk’s smile didn’t seem insincere.

“Come closer.”

The clerk, holding a heavy-looking barcode scanner, said this, so I approached with the cola. Sensing something off, I opened my mouth.

“Hey, this cola doesn’t have a barcode…”

The next moment.

Thud!

The clerk struck my head with the barcode scanner, and I lost consciousness.

 

* * *

 

Thud, thud, thud.

I woke up with a start at the sound of the ground shaking and got up.

Thud, thud, thud.

It was the sound of dozens of soldiers marching in unison.

I unknowingly stared at the dozens of soldiers marching in line beside me.

A familiar scene, and yet a strange sensation.

As I hurriedly felt my body, I quickly realized that my hands and feet had shrunk.

Yes, just like a ten-year-old child.

“…No way.”

‘No way, no way.’

Denying reality, I checked the clothes I was wearing and the symbol on the chest.

It was an adult military uniform roughly cut to fit a child’s body, and on the chest was a symbol of two cola bottles crossed.

 

The symbol of the warlord ruling the Cola safe zone in the game .

“This is insane.”

The biting cold and the murky air.

The rhythmic footsteps of the soldiers marching in the distance.

This sensation was definitely not a dream or a hallucination.

I had apparently…

Become a character in the game -

“What the hell!!”

Startled by a sudden curse from below, I looked down.

On the wooden box I was sitting on, there was another child, around ten years old, pulling his hair out and screaming.

“No way, did I get possessed in that goddamn Safe Zone game?! This is fucking insane!”

…Apparently.

I wasn’t the only one who had become a character in this game.

 


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