People said Koreans drew their strength from a good meal.
At least here and now, that saying seemed perfectly true. Only moments ago, everyone had been awkwardly measuring the distance between one another. Yet the instant a steaming pot of fermented-cabbage stew was placed between them, they loosened up as though they had known each other for years.
“Wow… I worked for five years at a place famous for its fermented-cabbage stew, and yours is somehow even better. What’s your secret?”
I had merely followed the recipe printed on the back of the package of cabbage meant for deeply aged fermented-cabbage stew.
“This is the first proper meal I’ve had in two years… Lee Jaeo, you are the savior of this lady’s appetite. Be proud!”
What was a savior of someone’s appetite supposed to be? Was it really impressive enough to take pride in?
“I-I’ve never had fermented-cabbage stew this good before… From now on, I’ll call you Brother Stew…”
Please don’t.
“Call me if anyone gives you trouble. I’ll settle it for one pot of stew per bastard.”
Who asked you to negotiate a deal like that?
The four of them had naturally slipped into speaking casually over the course of the meal, and their eyes were now brimming with goodwill whenever they looked at me.
Until just a few minutes ago, I had probably been little more than a strange low-Level Player who had suddenly forced his way into their group.
But now things were different.
I was someone who had shared warm rice and stew with them.
That one seemingly insignificant condition was breaking down their wariness far faster than I had expected.
‘So this is why people make such a big deal about sharing the same pot.’
Who knew the mood would change this much just because I cooked for them and ate alongside them?
Granted, that had been my intention, but the result was hardly unwelcome. At the very least, I no longer looked like some foreign contaminant that had abruptly been mixed into their team.
We were beginning to prepare to leave amid the cheerful atmosphere when—
Clack.
“Hm?”
Everyone’s ears perked up at the sound coming from somewhere nearby.
Clack. Clack.
“D-Do you hear something…?”
“I heard it too.”
When Woo Jaekyung spoke in a frightened voice, Kim Seokju placed his hands on the two hand axes hanging from his belt.
For a moment, it seemed the sound had stopped.
Then—
Clackclackclackclackclackclack!
It rattled at tremendous speed, as though demanding that someone pay attention to it.
“Aaagh!”
“A monster…?!”
I walked past the others as they tensed.
“Jaeo, it’s dangerous!”
“I’ll be fine. I’m going to see what it is, so everyone stay here.”
Kim Seokju reached out to stop me, then withdrew his hand with a small sound of realization. Apparently, he had only just remembered that if the culprit was a monster, I was unlikely to be in any danger.
The noise had already stopped, but I knew where it had come from.
It was the room where we had gathered our belongings.
The room containing the pet egg.
My concern that another Player might have broken in proved pointless. No one was inside. There were no signs that anyone had entered from outside, and nothing looked different from when we had left.
‘There’s no way all of us heard it wrong.’
I tilted my head and looked at the pet egg.
For some reason, it seemed to tilt slightly in the same direction as my head.
Was I imagining it?
I leaned my head the other way.
The pet egg wobbled in exactly the same direction.
‘…What?’
I approached the pet egg, which was behaving like a weighted toy.
On closer inspection, a tiny crack had formed across the surface of the shell. An extraordinary golden glow seeped faintly through the gap.
I stared at the source of the light visible through the crack and belatedly realized that it was the eye of something alive.
As I stood there with a rigid expression, locked in a staring contest with it, a System window appeared before me.
<Pet ‘Altiora’ will hatch soon.>
Wait.
Hatch?
‘Don’t pet eggs only hatch after a Player takes ownership of them?’
Hatching times varied, but as far as I knew, they normally emerged within a day or two of being purchased.
That rule had always applied to Players, however. It had never even occurred to me that it might work the same way after I carried the egg out myself.
Now that I had brought it with me, I fully intended to take responsibility for it.
I had merely planned to find a good Player and hand it over. I had never intended to become its owner myself.
I had not even believed that was possible.
‘At this rate, I really am going to become its owner.’
While I struggled with the unexpected situation, the golden eye inside the egg blinked rapidly at me.
I could tell just by looking at it.
The moment that thing met my gaze, it had already decided that I was its owner.
‘A name…’
If it was a bird, I could call it Chirpy. If it was a cat, Whiskers. If it was a dog, Barky…
It would have been nice if I could name it that easily, but I had no idea what kind of creature was inside the pet egg.
<Altiora’s Egg Lv.0>
Maybe I could simply derive its name from the egg’s name.
‘Altiora… Alti…’
Possessing naming instincts so terrible they could make a passerby stop and glare, I managed to come up with one abbreviation that sounded halfway respectable and spoke it aloud.
“Alt.”
In reality, I had simply taken the first part of its name. Worse, it was identical to a key familiar to anyone who had ever owned a computer.
It could hardly have been a lazier name.
<The pet’s name has been set as ‘Alt.’>
<Alt, having received its name, will now begin hatching.>
Crack—crack!
Countless fractures spread across the pet egg along with the System notifications.
“What happened? Is there a monster…?!”
The four others approached to check on the situation and witnessed the scene as well.
Then—
“Gyaaah!”
A plump, pure-white creature inside the egg hurled the shell from its head and roared.
Its chubby forelegs were raised triumphantly overhead, its mouth stretched wide open.
“…”
“…”
The creature that had hatched with such imposing majesty was an unbearably adorable snow-white baby dragon.
***
At the same time—
Jeong Uijin’s pet, the black dragon Rox, was silently watching the direction in which Alt had been born.
“Rox?”
Jeong Uijin, whose naming sense was no better than Lee Jaeo’s, called the name he had derived from Ferox’s Egg.
Although it had been less than a month since Rox hatched, the black dragon had already grown as tall as Uijin. It hovered high in the air, beating a pair of black wings nearly a meter across.
Rox continued staring unwaveringly at a single point with its crimson eyes before sending a thought directly to Uijin.
—The youngest has been born.
Jeong Uijin frowned as the black dragon’s strange voice pierced his mind.
“You can tell something like that?”
—Yes.
Apparently, pets sold by the same supply station were designated as siblings and possessed the ability to sense one another.
For reference, Rox had identified itself as the second eldest.
Jeong Uijin had a good idea which egg Rox meant by “the youngest.”
‘So that pet egg was sold.’
It had still been there when he visited the day before the Special Supply Station closed.
Who had bought it in the meantime?
‘He looked fond of it, so I deliberately left it alone…’
Jeong Uijin had more than enough coins to purchase another pet egg.
Rox had also told him that the egg remaining at the Special Supply Station was one of its siblings. Buying one more for Rox would have been effortless.
Even so, he had refrained from touching the final egg solely because of the NPC at the Special Supply Station.
Recognition Interference prevented him from identifying the man’s face, but Uijin’s sharp instincts had occasionally allowed him to sense what the NPC was looking at and what drew his attention.
Jeong Uijin erased the bitterness from his expression and raised his piercing gaze.
“If it’s your sibling, you’ll have a chance to meet someday. We have something more important to do right now.”
—I know. We must find Uijin’s benefactor.
Rox nodded, its gaze becoming every bit as solemn as Jeong Uijin’s.
—If we do not find him, Uijin will not sleep again. We must find him.
Unable to deny it, Uijin stroked the black body of Rox after it landed beside him.
Apparently pleased, the hornlike ridges protruding unevenly along Rox’s back trembled faintly.
“We’ll search every corner of the District if we have to. We must find him before tonight is over.”
Because tomorrow, he had to go slaughter the damned Minotaur Lord that had destroyed the only place where he could meet that man.
There was no telling what dangerous changes might occur because of it.
He had to find the man as quickly as possible.
Rox, a pet capable of sharing part of Jeong Uijin’s consciousness, recalled the NPC’s silhouette and voice that Uijin had passed on to it, then soared high into the sky.
Jeong Uijin turned in the opposite direction from Rox’s flight path, hoping that today would finally be the day he found the NPC.