[Days 2, the first night has passed.]
That notification woke me.
The moment I opened my eyes, I looked around. I was inside a shabby building that had nearly collapsed.
The entire place had such a desolate air that anyone trying to sleep here could only wonder when the building might come crashing down and crush them to death.
At least I had not been lying on the hard wooden floor. A rustling bundle of straw beneath my back had served admirably as a bed.
【 Base Camp[Stronghold] Information: Slums―Lower Court 】
【 Area Rank: Isolated Lawless Zone (Lv.1) 】
【 Reconstruction Rate: 17% (Debris removal and facility construction underway) 】
【 Capacity Limit: 153 / 300 】
【 Supply Status: [Danger] (Remaining drinking water and food: 3 days) 】
【 Special Effect: None currently applied 】
【 Administrator: Ash Gray(Player) 】
【 Deputy: Dario Brandon(Current Mission: Procurement of Supplies) 】
Only after seeing the status window before me could I begin to understand how the situation was progressing.
It seemed that quite a few of the slum residents had died. Only about half of them had survived.
The other conditions were not unbearably bad, and most importantly, ‘time’ itself was functioning properly.
‘That is a relief, but does it count the first night as having passed from the moment the Base Camp was unlocked?’
The first night.
It was one of the rules of the calendar system that played an extremely important role in Gray Judgment.
The player’s objective was to escape Salus before a certain point in time. Alternatively, the player could defeat the faction occupying Salus.
There were many other endings, but those two summarized the most common directions the story could take.
‘And events do not wait for the player.’
That was true of most games. Turn-based games might have been different, but real-time action games had no such mercy.
Time continued to pass even when the player did nothing. I could go to the bathroom, return to find that night had fallen, and discover that the next event had already begun.
It was a game with no concept of pausing.
……A thought suddenly occurred to me.
Only a few hours—or perhaps not even a few days—had passed since I arrived here. The situation was unbearably cruel and utterly incomprehensible.
Yet despite that, I had accepted all of these sudden events far too naturally.
As though I had always been a resident of this world.
‘No. Calm down.’
Perhaps something had gone wrong with my brain.
What if I was merely a brain in a vat? What if some deranged scientist had imprisoned me and was showing me all of this through electrical stimulation?
……Confused, I entertained one absurd thought after another. That was how chaotic the past day had been.
Whether the period since I established the Base Camp could truly be called a single ‘day’ was another matter entirely.
‘Well, even so.’
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and lightly tapped my head. Only then did everything begin to feel real.
So much had happened. It had only been a day, yet it felt as though several weeks had passed.
‘I do not think even streaming ever felt like this.’
Looking back on it now, I once again realized how precious an ordinary life had been.
Should I ever return to my original world, I would never again become angry and complain that a farming game was putting me to sleep.
‘In any case…… A day has passed now.’
There were several reasons I had come to the slums first. Liberating the first Base Camp had been one of them, but the most important reason was to secure my next companion.
“Hmm.”
However, there was a problem. When I rescued the citizens yesterday, the person I should have been able to recruit as a companion was nowhere to be found.
‘Paulo Rin…….’
The girl who could become my companion had not appeared before I closed my eyes in the Great Cavern yesterday.
Apparently, the conductor had not captured her.
“Should I begin searching for her now?”
Although a day had already passed, asking the people of the slums about her would still be the right choice.
I did not want to imagine the worst possible outcome.
‘If she is not here, I will think about it later.’
There was no way to know. Perhaps she had safely evacuated somewhere else and was enjoying a happy life.
More importantly, I had to decide what to do next.
‘Now that the slums have been reclaimed, the question is which direction I should take from here…….’
Had there been only ordinary choices, or had this been a turn-based game where each side fought in a predetermined order, I would never have agonized over it this much.
Unfortunately, the world I had entered was nothing like that.
‘Stop thinking about unpleasant possibilities.’
Self-pity would continue to surface endlessly if I indulged it. Now was the time to choose and decide what had to be done.
First, I would inspect the interior of the Base Camp and prepare for the next event while simultaneously searching for Paulo Rin.
‘Good. Everything is organized.’
What I needed to do was simple and clear. The fact remained that I ultimately had to reach the ‘ending’ of this damned game.
There was still one thing I found strange.
Whenever I used my abilities, I experienced an unsettling sensation that made me feel as though I was ‘not myself.’
Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as the feeling that someone was interfering with my will and placing words upon my tongue.
‘I still do not understand it.’
An ordinary person would never have been able to maintain their sanity in a situation like this.
Yet the simple fact that I was The Absolved allowed me to disregard such realistic laws entirely.
I found myself wondering whether this might not be an ordinary possession after all.
‘Hmm…… In any case.’
I was hungry.
Although I had possessed a character in a game world, it seemed that I could not disregard the physiological law of hunger itself.
‘What a wonderfully convenient law.’
Whenever I had found a part of the rules that could be broken, I had somehow improvised a solution. However, even that would eventually reach its limits.
It seemed especially important to remain cautious about biological needs such as these.
“Hey~ Little Fox!”
Someone lightly kicked the door open as she entered. The building looked as though it might collapse at any moment, but a familiar voice greeted me.
It was Ravenwood.
“So it is you, old woman…….”
“Indeed it is. It seems you rested comfortably.”
“How long was I asleep, old woman?”
“You must have slept through an entire day. The fog is so thick that I cannot tell whether it is day or night…….”
Ravenwood answered as though she was uncertain.
Well, according to the System, it was already the next day, so she was not wrong.
“……What are the residents doing?”
“They are working on the reconstruction. Little Fox, it seems they managed to obtain supplies from somewhere while you were asleep.”
Ravenwood answered with a casual flourish.
In matters like this, the impoverished residents of the slums truly were professionals.
‘Should I call this proof of the ruthless survival of the fittest, or the miserable remnants of a life in which everyone had to fend for themselves…….’
It did not matter either way.
What mattered was that the residents were obtaining the construction materials and daily necessities required to rebuild the village on their own.
Under normal circumstances, I, the player, would have established the Base Camp and then personally run around gathering materials.
That would have been true from the perspective of a ‘game,’ but this was reality.
‘Hmm.’
Regardless, the fact that the reconstruction was progressing without requiring my direct involvement was an extremely good sign.
At the very least, I would not have to return from every expedition with my pockets and bag stuffed full of materials.
“So, Lord Executor. What shall we do now?”
Ravenwood cackled in the sly voice of an old crone. Even the title she used for me had changed, so I answered in kind.
“Well, madam, you and I have many places to visit together, do we not? We can leave the rest to our kind and hardworking people while we go exploring, can we not?”
“Bah, you never play along with a joke. So, do you have anything in mind, Little Fox?”
“I have a plan.”
The most urgent task was to recruit another companion from this area.
There were two companions who could be recruited from the slums.
However, given the current circumstances, the conditions I knew might already have been distorted.
‘I have to stop thinking of this as a game…….’
Some aspects certainly corresponded with the game. However, judging by everything I had experienced thus far, the finer details were not entirely identical.
The creature that should originally have appeared as a boss had possessed intelligence and even had a name—William.
It bothered me slightly that the artist this time had possessed neither.
‘Did the rules simply not apply to it?’
If not, then what had happened? Had its name been stolen? Had its soul been taken?
……No matter how much I thought about it, I could not understand.
This world was undoubtedly based on the game I had played, ‘Gray Judgment.’
The place-names were the same as those in the game, and so were the characters.
Yet things I had never known also existed here. That only made it clearer that this was the same world and setting as Gray Judgment, not merely the game exactly as I had experienced it.
‘This feels strange.’
During last night’s battle, I had dismissed it as dopamine or adrenaline and had paid little attention to it. However, it felt as though my emotions had become numb.
In web novels and webtoons, protagonists sometimes had the personalities of deranged psychopaths. Some cared about nothing but efficiency, while others resembled machines utterly devoid of emotion.
‘Now that I am actually in the protagonist’s position, I am not entirely certain…….’
Whatever the truth was, one thing remained certain.
Everything I was experiencing had been steeped in unfairness from the very beginning.
I could distinctly feel malice, as though something did not want me to overcome it.
‘Whether it is a story or a game.’
What sort of damned game forced enemies to come all the way to the player’s home and wreak havoc during the tutorial?
They should at least distinguish between a place to work and a place to rest, those damned bastards.
Even a streamer turned off the broadcast and slept when it was time to sleep.
“What are you thinking about so deeply, Little Fox?”
“I know. There is a great deal on my mind. Could you give me a moment, old woman? I will straighten my clothes and come out shortly.”
“Hmm…… Very well, but do not take too long. Time in Salus has become twisted beyond recognition.”
After answering, Ravenwood opened the door and left again.
My thoughts truly were in disarray.
Who could have known that my life, perfectly ordinary only a day or two ago, would become like this?
Only now that I had found a moment to compose myself did such thoughts begin to surface.
Ah, my daily life had been wonderful precisely because it had been so ordinary.
‘Well, that is enough self-pity…….’
Time in Salus was twisted.
Those words could mean only one thing.
This was a place where no one knew what might happen or when.
The Guilty had barged into my home on the very first day, and even the Toller of Execution, the so-called boss of the first stage, had personally appeared.
‘Still, I have settled on a clear objective.’
Indeed, I had spent long enough thinking.
Whether this was a game, whether it felt real, or anything else—it was meaningless to keep discussing and contemplating such things.
From the moment I became a part of this world, those concerns had ceased to serve any purpose.
I had to build infrastructure around this place and move forward in search of my next companion.
Today, I would gather information. For now, that was the correct choice.
If I asked around about Paulo Rin, something would surely emerge.
‘I doubt it, but…….’
It would be troublesome if she had already died or escaped from the slums.
I immediately opened the door, went outside, and questioned every slum resident I could find as they worked.
“Paulo Rin? Ah, you mean that little girl. The one with beastkin blood? Let me think. I believe I saw her before all of this happened.”
“Paulo? Come to think of it, that child was always good at hiding, so I cannot say for certain. Perhaps she is somewhere nearby?”
“Oh, Lord Executor. What brings you here? Paulo? Now that you mention it, I have not heard anything about that child recently. Perhaps she left the slums.”
……Most of them said much the same thing.
None of them knew.
‘This is troublesome.’
Paulo Rin was a child who always placed the people of the slums before herself.
At least, that was how her character had been written.
‘There is no possibility that Paulo would have willingly fled the slums.’
Especially not under circumstances like these.
She would probably have tried to save even one more person.
She was a beastkin, a Cursilng(Cursilng). A cursed mongrel. Despite facing contempt from everyone around her, she still treated people with kindness.
‘What happened to her?’
Naturally, I could not help but wonder.
However, I had no way to confirm anything immediately, so my only choice was to search.
“Tell me, Little Fox. What do you intend to do now?”
Ravenwood, who had accompanied me, asked casually.
“I am going to find a person.”
“A person? Not a Cursilng?”
“Well, as you know, old woman, a Cursilng is still a person, is she not?”
“Oh…… Indeed. From that perspective, I suppose you are right. Do you have a way to find her?”
“I do not know. That is what I have to consider now.”
Although I said that, nothing readily came to mind.
No, perhaps I was overlooking something.
‘I have to consider not only the racial traits of a Cursilng, but also Paulo Rin’s personality and behavior.’
This was the slums.
Cursilngs had a tendency to live in groups or dig burrows where their families and children could stay.
If I also considered Paulo Rin’s behavior……?
‘I have the beginnings of a lead.’
Having finished thinking, I spoke to Ravenwood beside me.
“Old woman, I know where we should go. Follow me.”
“Oh, it seems something has occurred to you?”
“If I follow that scholarly way of thinking you value so highly, then it is probably exactly what you suspect.”
I agreed with Ravenwood and took the lead.