H-he’s cooking fermented-cabbage stew? Who? And how?!
The ingredients for it could never be found at an ordinary supply station. You had to visit a Special Supply Station just to buy chopped fermented cabbage, individually packaged vegetables, or tofu. Even then, the ingredients cost so many coins that Seokju doubted anyone actually bought them to cook with.
Besides, every Special Supply Station had already closed. Even someone who wanted the ingredients could no longer obtain them.
Could it be instant fermented-cabbage noodles?
His curiosity got the better of him, and he sniffed the air again.
No. Instant noodles could never produce a flavor this rich.
His mouth watered so badly that he nearly forgot he was using stealth. He had skipped dinner to search for Iseul’s team, and lunch had consisted of only two energy bars. There was no suppressing the hunger surging through him.
Following the smell, Kim Seokju crept toward the entrance of the furniture store.
Just then, a werewolf burst out of the building, shoving past the other monsters.
“Rrrrraaaagh—!”
With its tongue hanging out, the werewolf thrashed its head from side to side and repeatedly coughed and gagged, utterly at a loss.
“I told you it was spicy. You can’t eat this stuff.”
The irritated voice of a young man came from inside, snapping Kim Seokju back to his senses.
He had never heard that voice before.
He isn’t part of Iseul’s team.
There was a stranger inside the furniture store.
Who the hell is he?
The stew was not the only reason Seokju wanted to know.
The young man’s voice held no trace of fear despite the sheer number of werewolves gathered around him. Even now, he was casually scolding the dangerous monsters.
“Move away. You’re getting fur everywhere.”
Any ordinary Player would have been too busy worrying about being torn limb from limb to say anything of the sort.
And the young man inside was not the only strange thing.
Every one of the werewolves was acting abnormally.
After the world was transformed, the monsters that appeared seemed to follow their own rigid rules, with fixed territories and behavioral patterns. Werewolves were no exception.
Yet for some reason, they had left their usual range and crowded both inside and outside this building.
It was almost as though they had gathered to watch something inside the furniture store.
The abnormal sight left Seokju dumbfounded, but he had no time to keep thinking. More and more werewolves were gathering near the entrance, and only a few minutes remained on his stealth skill.
I don’t have time for this.
Finally remembering his original objective, Seokju quietly slipped away between the werewolves. Fortunately, he moved nimbly enough to avoid bumping into any obstacles and revealing himself.
With the dazed expression of someone under a spell, he passed the furniture store and carefully continued down the commercial complex’s main street.
Before long, he found a woman hiding inside a ruined shop and watching the street through a window.
“Iseul…!”
Seokju called her name aloud, then hurriedly clapped a hand over his mouth. Most of the werewolves had gathered around the furniture store, so thankfully, no monsters reacted to the sound.
The woman at the window, however, shot to her feet in surprise. She could not see Seokju while he was concealed, but she recognized his voice immediately.
“Seokju? Is that you?!”
Jeong Iseul’s quiet voice beyond the broken window was filled with surprise.
Knowing Seokju’s abilities well, she quickly began removing the furniture piled in front of the entrance. There was one other person inside with her, so clearing the heavy barricade did not take long.
As soon as the entrance opened, Seokju canceled his stealth and darted inside.
“What happened?! Why are you here?!”
“I should be asking you that.”
Seokju sighed wearily at Iseul’s question and looked around.
Inside the old building, where the electricity no longer worked, there was only Iseul with a sword strapped to her back and a male teammate in his early twenties clutching a spatial-storage bag tightly to his chest.
The other two members who had gone out with Iseul to secure food were nowhere to be seen.
“What happened to the other two?”
“Well…”
Iseul lowered her eyes with an awkward expression.
“Not long after we entered the commercial complex, we were attacked by werewolves. The sun hadn’t fully set yet, so I thought most of them would still be inside the buildings. But for some reason, they were all out in the street. Then…”
Remembering how differently the werewolves had behaved from their usual pattern, Iseul bowed her head.
With a heavy heart, Seokju patted her shoulder in consolation.
“What happened to them wasn’t your fault. Don’t blame yourself.”
“…What are you talking about?”
When Iseul lifted her head, her eyes were cold enough to show a hint of killing intent.
“They threw us out as bait and ran. Of course it wasn’t my fault.”
“Oh…”
“They even took the spatial-storage bag containing all the food. At this rate, we’ll be living on nothing but bottled water for a while.”
Iseul’s face twisted like a vengeful demon’s.
The younger man beside her flinched and subtly edged away, still clutching the bag filled with drinking water.
“Just wait until I catch them. I’ll crush them into powder like energy bars.”
The two men remembered how Iseul, claiming that eating was a nuisance, would crush energy bars in her bare hands and mix the powder into water.
They swallowed hard, and their knees went slightly weak.
“Anyway, is the street still the same?”
Iseul sighed and moved close to the window. The street ran in a straight line, so the view from there was limited, but Seokju could guess what she meant by “the same.”
“The werewolves are packed so tightly around the road in front of the furniture store that there’s barely room to step. Thanks to that, none of them are wandering anywhere else, but… I think we’ll have to give up on getting past them.”
“Haa… What the hell is going on?”
Iseul roughly raked a hand through her straight, shoulder-length hair and crouched on the floor.
The younger teammate, Woo Jaekyung, sank down beside her with a miserable expression.
“D-do you think we’ll make it back alive…?”
“Why worry about that? They’ll scatter once the sun comes up anyway.”
Iseul answered indifferently, but Jaekyung continued in an anxious rush.
“B-but their behavior is strange… We don’t even know why all those monsters are gathering around that building… What if they stay there? How are we supposed to get back—?”
“About that.”
Seokju cut him off.
“I think there’s a Player inside that building.”
He phrased it uncertainly, but Seokju was convinced.
There was a living, unharmed Player inside the furniture store.
Iseul stared at him, then let out a disbelieving laugh and waved him off.
“Come on. At least say something that makes sense. You think there’s a Player in there when the werewolves are that quiet?”
After hiding in this building and repeatedly checking outside, Iseul found Seokju’s claim absurd.
Whenever monsters discovered a Player, they instinctively became aggressive and tried to kill them by any means possible. They shrieked and roared, and some even made chilling, unnatural laughter.
In other words, merely listening to the monsters was usually enough to tell whether they had found a Player.
Werewolf howls in particular were loud enough to make anyone worry about their eardrums.
Yet they had remained quiet all this time. There could not possibly be anyone inside the building they surrounded.
“Do you know what I smelled when I passed by under stealth?”
Seokju’s expression, however, was more serious than ever.
“Fermented-cabbage stew. Not instant food, either. It smelled like a properly cooked stew made with deeply aged fermented cabbage and real ingredients.”
“Oh… You said you worked at a stew restaurant two years ago, didn’t you?”
Iseul replied without enthusiasm, then frowned slightly.
“Wait. You don’t seriously think the werewolves gathered there because of the stew, do you? Because if that’s what you’re saying, I’m going to get angry. I’ll flip the whole table.”
“How are you going to flip a table that doesn’t exis—? Sorry…”
Jaekyung tried to interject, but after receiving a vicious glare, he lowered his head dejectedly.
Meanwhile, Seokju continued with an expression every bit as serious as his voice.
“Ingredients you could actually cook with were only available at Special Supply Stations. You know how dangerous the areas around them were. And anyone willing to spend coins on cooking ingredients has to be incredibly powerful.”
“Powerful or not, if there were a Player in there, the werewolves wouldn’t be this quiet. And what kind of lunatic cooks stew in front of a horde of monsters?”
It was complete nonsense.
Iseul scoffed in disbelief.
Even then, Seokju’s expression did not change.
“I thought that was strange too. But now I think I understand.”
Seokju had thought about it extensively on the way there.
The unusually rich smell of the stew.
The relaxed voice of a young man coming from among the monsters.
The werewolves gathering as though they had come to watch something, and their unnaturally docile behavior.
After turning every detail over in his mind, he had arrived at a single hypothesis.
Not some ridiculous delusion, but a surprisingly plausible explanation.
“I think there’s… a monster tamer inside that building.”
Silence fell.
Iseul froze with her eyes wide open, while Jaekyung’s lips moved soundlessly as he struggled to speak.
They had heard the rumors.
Somewhere in another District, there was an extraordinary Player who controlled monsters and commanded them like servants.
Could that Player really be here?
“As soon as the sun rises, I’m going to try contacting him.”
Seokju looked back and forth between the horrified Iseul and the still-bewildered Jaekyung. His expression was solemn.
“We might finally be able to leave this place and join Eclipse.”