It was a message I had never seen before.
I had met countless Players during my time at the Special Supply Station, but not once had anything like this appeared.
I was bewildered, yet at the same time, it also seemed perfectly natural.
In games, NPCs were not always limited to being background residents who merely supported the setting. Some played important roles, triggering specific events or assigning Quests through their interactions with Players.
The other NPCs in this world, aside from shop NPCs, also served as sparks and connecting links for countless Quests. Now that I had been released by the closure of the Special Supply Station, was my role supposed to be no different from theirs?
But…
Apparently, my role as an NPC was not all that compulsory.
After all, I was being given the choice of whether to assign a Quest.
And there’s nothing telling me what kind of Quest I have to assign, either. In that case…
I stared at the man and thought, Create a Quest.
The text in the System window changed.
<Please set the contents and reward of the Quest to be created.>
That’s a lot of freedom.
I could decide not only whether to assign a Quest, but also its contents and reward.
Are other Quest NPCs like this too?
It seemed I would have to meet other NPCs in person to find out.
For now, I shouldn’t create one recklessly.
I had been planning to avoid Players for a while. If I assigned a Quest here, anyone could tell I was an NPC.
I could not casually hand out a Quest to some clueless Player who had snuck into this place like a thief.
<Quest assignment availability notifications may be disabled.>
<Enable/Disable>
As though it had read my thoughts, the Quest creation message disappeared and was replaced by information about the notification.
If it’s giving me the option to enable it, maybe I can assign a Quest to every Player I meet.
That seemed entirely plausible.
I had no desire to see a Quest notification window every single time I encountered a Player, so naturally, I disabled it.
Once the System window vanished, I fell into thought.
The monsters I had driven outside would have crawled into nearby buildings on their own once the sun began to rise. Werewolves might have liked moonlight, but they were not particularly fond of the faint sunlight filtering through the overcast sky.
So this man had slipped in after sunrise and waited for me to wake up?
Why? What did he want?
He couldn’t have already figured out that I’m an NPC, could he?
It was not impossible.
The folding lamp and portable self-powered generator I had set up were highly useful items among Players. They were fairly expensive, and the pet egg I had taken out of its sling and placed nearby was worth even more.
Any Player would be tempted. He might have tried to steal them while I slept. If so, the same System warning that appeared when someone attempted to seize an NPC’s belongings would have exposed my identity.
While I tensed inwardly, the man carefully rose to his feet with both hands raised to shoulder height.
“I’m sorry if I startled you. I’ve never met a monster tamer before, so I got a little ahead of myself.”
“…What?”
A monster tamer? Me?
Why would I…
My confusion lasted only a moment.
I immediately realized what kind of person he thought I was.
He thinks I control the werewolves.
I did not know how long he had been watching me, but if he had seen the werewolves refusing to attack me, his conclusion was understandable.
There’s never been such a thing as a wandering NPC outside their designated area before.
Any Player who lived nearby or frequently traveled along this street would have noticed the werewolves’ abnormal behavior right away.
With a stranger sleeping peacefully in the very middle of their territory, it was not unreasonable for him to mistake me for a monster tamer.
So absurd rumors can actually be useful at times like this.
The rumors that there was a Player capable of taming monsters were true.
The details, however, had been greatly exaggerated.
People claimed the tamer could tame and control hundreds of monsters at once, turn even boss monsters into docile sheep, or have monsters bring back food every day.
I had once checked the rumored monster tamer’s status window when they visited the Special Supply Station, so I knew exactly how exaggerated those stories were.
In reality, they could only tame three monsters at once. And their control was cut in half every time they added another, so by the time they had three, it was basically like dragging around three uncontrollable children.
On top of that, although Players did not seem to know it, mental domination skills—including taming—had absolutely no effect on boss-class monsters, regardless of the Level difference. Unlike me, Players could not even inspect a monster’s status window, so they seemed willing to swallow even the wildest rumors whole.
That must be why so many people idolize monster tamers.
As I followed that thought, my eyes quietly sharpened.
…Wait. This is actually a pretty useful cover story.
Since I had failed to find a way across District 2’s boundary, I had no choice but to partially revise my plan to avoid all contact with Players inside this limited area. In that situation, the “monster tamer” identity this man had handed me was extremely useful.
Pretending to be a tamer would explain why monsters treated me favorably, and almost no one would look down on me for being low-Level. Even if I was pathetically weak, it would not matter as long as the monsters that listened to me were strong.
My mind began racing.
“Um… sir…?”
When I remained silent, lost in thought, the man finally spoke again. Only then did I stop thinking and ask indifferently,
“What do you want?”
My tone may have been blunt, but the truth was, this trespasser did not seem all that bad.
He had not realized I was an NPC.
Which meant he had not touched any of my belongings even while I was sleeping deeply enough to seem unconscious. The self-powered generator and pet egg, at the very least, were expensive enough to tempt anyone.
If he had simply waited for me to wake up, then he was already far more decent than the obnoxious Players I had dealt with before.
The man flinched at my tone, then spoke with a slightly nervous expression.
“I apologize for approaching you so suddenly, but are you traveling with anyone?”
“No. I’m alone.”
“I knew it…!”
For some reason, the man looked excited. His eyes lit up, and his voice sounded noticeably brighter.
“Would you consider traveling with us? Ah, we’re a small survivor group of about forty people.”
“That’s a lot for a small group.”
Around forty people.
I recalled the screens of the Myriad Aspects Map that I used to watch whenever I was bored at the Special Supply Station—more specifically, the surrounding area. I remembered a group of roughly forty people living together in a nearby building.
“Do you happen to live in the two-story building about three hundred meters down this street?”
“What? How did you know that…?”
So it was that group.
There was a survivor group of around forty people, but fewer than ten of them were capable of proper combat. As far as I knew, those few fighters were also responsible for gathering food. This man was probably one of them.
“I happened to hear about it while passing through. But I also heard you don’t have many fighters for a group that size…”
As I let my voice trail off, the man hurriedly began explaining himself.
“E-even so, every one of our fighters is skilled enough to be considered elite, and we have plenty of Players with useful skills! Even if a fight breaks out, we can protect you, so you don’t need to worry about that!”
Why was he being so polite?
Of course he’d want a monster tamer, but I’m alone. He’s being far too deferential.
Maybe I should test him a little.
“My Level is extremely low. I’ve been hiding alone for a long time, so I don’t have any noteworthy skills, and my stats are practically the same as a Level 1 Player’s. I probably won’t be much help.”
At the mention of my low Level, disappointment briefly darkened the man’s face. But he soon smiled kindly, as though it did not matter.
“With a taming skill, you probably never had any reason to hunt monsters yourself. We also have people in our group who earn coins exclusively through safe Quests that don’t involve combat.”
The man cleared his throat, wiped the smile from his face, and continued with a serious expression.