A Veteran Player is Needed in the Apocalypse

Chapter 57. Flames

“Are you really saying you can stop the Second Apocalypse… by yourself?”

OwlEyes asked in disbelief.

I answered with a lazy smile on my lips.

“Are you doubting me again?”

“Oh, no, it’s not that! I just didn’t know it was possible… Is it really part of the full Zone Conqueror’s perk to stop the Second Apocalypse?”

Of course, my perk as the full Zone Conqueror is the inheritance of the title, and I have no idea how to stop the Second Apocalypse.

But for now, there’s no way anyone could prove that I don’t have the item containing the divine revelation of ‘Meteorite Item’ in my possession.

In fact, no one but me knows what perk I received as the full Zone Conqueror.

Even a player who’s unlocked the system can only see the title ‘Friend of Luna Moon’ on my status window.

So, even if I claim that my perk as the full Zone Conqueror is the ability to stop the Second Apocalypse by gathering nine Meteorite Items, only I know whether that’s true or not.

That so-called ‘God’ of the Love Zone, who deceived other players by labeling the system as a ‘divine revelation,’ probably never imagined he’d fall victim to the same trick.

Since there’s no way for him to verify my perk, he can’t completely dismiss the possibility that my claim might be true.

In any case, we all have to survive the Second Apocalypse, so my claim to stop it must sound quite tempting to the general players.

Of course, for those players who actually possess Meteorite Items, it’s probably an unpleasant thought.

I eased up my domineering stance slightly and spoke softly.

“Whether you believe it or not is up to you. But I’m not refusing to cooperate. I just have a mission to complete, and I’m moving toward it.”

“A mission…!”

He seemed deeply impressed by the word “mission.”

His face, which had been filled with hope at the thought of easily resolving the Second Apocalypse, soon clouded over with worry, and he asked cautiously.

“Uh, but… what exactly is this object containing the divine revelation?”

“You’re a player too, so you should know. It’s the Meteorite Item.”

“The Meteorite Item? Then it must be the earring Lord God has. He said he uses it to communicate with God…”

OwlEyes fell silent, lost in thought, as if wondering how to relay this information to the God of the Love Zone.

Watching him closely, I casually threw out a question.

“By the way, why were you pretending to be injured?”

“Pardon?”

He looked up, bewildered, as if my question had caught him off guard.

“I heard you were pretending to be hurt before you got caught.”

“Ah… well…”

“It’s fine. Just be honest.”

“I was trying to catch an NPC to gather information about DopamineAddict. I failed, though…”

“You tried to take on two of them with that body?”

“Well, I planned to kill one and disable the other.”

If he hadn’t been trained early, he would’ve been in big trouble.

“But those NPCs were incredibly sharp! It was almost as if they knew what was coming…”

OwlEyes trailed off, then stared at me as if a realization had hit him.

“Now that I think about it… did you know I was coming?”

I answered without a change in expression.

“Yeah.”

“That explains why those Cola Zone NPCs were so clever…!”

“Lucky for you. If you’d harmed them, I wouldn’t have let you go so easily.”

At my words, a tense expression appeared on his pale face as if he’d just remembered he was standing in another player’s territory.

“Uh… I think I should head back now to relay this to Lord God… so we can stop the Second Apocalypse in time.”

Looks like he suspected I might not let him leave so easily.

I could interrogate him and extract more information about the Love Zone, but…

Keeping him around would only increase the chances of my identity as a player being exposed.

If he started babbling about divine revelations in front of my zone’s NPCs, things would get complicated. It’s better to send him off quickly, pretending to be generous.

I opened my inventory and pulled out an old combat ration I had in reserve.

When I produced the ration out of thin air, OwlEyes let out a small gasp of admiration.

He was impressed, but not overly surprised, likely because God had already shown off his inventory tricks to prove his special status.

I tossed the combat ration in front of OwlEyes.

It wasn’t the modern star candy-type ration, but the old military ones that tasted like boots. Still, it didn’t matter since we couldn’t taste it anyway.

“Take it. It’ll be enough to recover on your way back.”

“T-Thank you…!”

I watched him scramble to gather the combat rations, then asked in a soft voice.

“In return, I’d like to ask you one thing…”

* * *

“Is it really okay to let him go like that?”

Meursault asked as he stared at the retreating figure of OwlEyes, who looked dazed as he walked away.

“I found it odd how calm he was when he got captured. It felt like more than just a lost kid…”

“Why are you so worried? He’s just a kid.”

“…These days, I find children the scariest.”

Why is he looking at me when he says that?

“Anyway, I handled it well. I even untied him and had a conversation, and he didn’t try to harm me. Isn’t that enough? We’re here to hunt monsters, not suspicious kids.”

“Well, that’s true…”

Despite my generous handling of the situation, Meursault still seemed uneasy. However, Lucas and Bones, who had been the ones to capture the kid, looked visibly relieved.

“It’s a relief it was just a kid.”

“What kind of dumb kid comes wandering around a place like this, anyway!”

These guys would faint if they knew they almost got killed by that dumb kid.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything unusual around here besides that kid, so let’s head back.”

“Judging by the lack of signals, it looks like the other teams haven’t found the target either.”

Each team had agreed to fire a white signal flare if they spotted the large monster we were hunting.

But by the time I finished my conversation with the player from the Love Zone, there wasn’t a single flare in the sky.

This probably meant one of two things: either the warmer winter had reduced the monster population, or the monsters had learned to hide when they sensed the hunting parties coming.

Given that the winter since I took over had been anything but easy, the monsters hiding seemed like the more likely option.

If that’s the case, they’ll come out eventually to hunt for food, so we just need to wait patiently.

Still…

“It is strange that we haven’t seen a single one.”

“Is that so?”

“Not just the large ones, we haven’t encountered even a single medium or small one so far.”

All we had seen during our search was a player pretending to be a child.

This wasn’t a normal situation.

However, Meursault and the other new officers wore puzzled expressions.

“…Never mind. What’s the point of explaining this to rookies on their first hunt?”

“Aren’t you also out here for the first time…?”

“What did you say?”

“We’ll take care of cleaning up the camp!”

Lucas quickly covered Bones’ mouth, cutting off his grumbling, and hurried off to start cleaning up the temporary camp we had set up.

Watching them for a moment, Meursault turned back to me and asked again.

“Is the situation really that strange? While I haven’t been on many hunting expeditions myself, I’ve received plenty of reports. Usually, during hunts, the smaller monsters get scared and flee, which is why they aren’t seen. The other teams who searched different areas also reported finding tracks of monsters fleeing in a panic.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that too. But there are only ten of us here.”

Under normal circumstances, it would make sense that we wouldn’t see any smaller monsters.

When hundreds of heavily armed humans go out on a serious hunt, it would be strange if the sensitive monsters didn’t flee.

But now, there were barely ten of us.

We were far too small in number to scare off even medium or small-sized monsters.

“Yet the fact that so many monsters fled in a panic bothers me.”

“Hmm… Aren’t monsters usually very sensitive?”

“Right, so?”

“They probably sensed from afar that something terrifying was coming from the Zone.”

I stared at Meursault in silence for a moment.

“Was that supposed to be a joke?”

“…Hey, over there! You can’t move it like that!”

Meursault awkwardly deflected my question by pretending to help the soldiers, yelling nonsense.

Watching him fumble around, I felt a subtle chill creep over me, despite the poor quality of his joke.

‘It’s too quiet…’

This area wasn’t known for having many monsters in the first place.

Maybe I was just being paranoid.

Anyway, my goal was to check the barrier around this area, and since I had already confirmed a player from the Love Zone had crossed over, my objective was complete.

Visually, there was no sign of the blue wall I had seen in the game.

Even though a player from the Unicorn Zone had crossed over before, I had worried that maybe only that player could move between zones. But fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case.

‘But with this…’

The fact that there had been no contact from HomeProtector up until now likely meant that something had happened to him at the hands of the “God” of the Love Zone.

Of course, it could be that he’s just busy progressing through the game or suspects me and is staying quiet.

But my instinct told me something had happened to HomeProtector.

Given that this guy sent a player into my zone, he must have personally visited the closest zone, Cigarette Zone.

Not that I had any intention of rescuing HomeProtector, but I was interested in the Meteorite Item he had.

‘I need to see how that shaman reacts to the full Zone Conqueror perk.’

The most likely reaction was disbelief.

However, I had a feeling that the Love Zone players would show a bolder playstyle than expected.

Just then—

“Huh?”

One of the soldiers, who had been moving supplies, suddenly let out a dumbfounded sound as he stared off into the distant sky.

All of us with sharp senses, myself included, immediately turned our heads to look in that direction.

And soon enough, our field of vision was filled with them.

White flames decorating the sky.

“So beautiful…”

Several of the new officers, who had no real combat experience, were mesmerized by the sight before them, while Meursault and I had cold, hardened expressions.

“That’s definitely…”

The white flares, which were to be fired when a large monster was spotted.

The flares rose from the direction where Team 1, led by the Commander, had been searching in the central area.