It was only at eleven that Jeong Uijin returned to the hideout and sensed unfamiliar presences filling both the villa and its surroundings.
More people came than I expected.
When Eclipse’s leader had proposed gathering District 2’s factions into an alliance, Uijin had not thought much of it. The words “entry into the Main Quest” and “First Sequence” seemed to have instilled a considerable sense of urgency even in their carefree leader, but Uijin had no attention to spare for any of that.
I couldn’t find him in the end.
He clenched his teeth, afraid a despairing sigh might escape him. Even that gesture alone seemed intimidating enough to the people standing nearby, and their hushed whispers vanished in an instant.
Uijin went over the blurry silhouette and vivid voice of the faceless NPC again and again, as though reminding himself that he could not afford to forget even the smallest detail.
He’s alive. He has to be.
Not so much as a handful of black ash had been found where the Special Supply Station once stood.
He was an NPC, yet nothing like an NPC. He must have found some way to escape before the Special Supply Station was destroyed.
…Uijin wanted to believe that.
He had to believe it.
“Jeong Uijin.”
As he climbed the stairs with his face cold and dark, he encountered Yoonji Huh coming down as though she had gone out to meet him. Unlike him, she appeared unusually excited, as though something good had happened.
“You must have found a useful Player.”
“How did you know?”
“There’s no face easier to read than yours.”
At his curt reply, Yoonji’s expression turned sour.
She rubbed her cheek for no particular reason, then proudly squared her shoulders and thrust out her chest.
“I found a monster tamer, no less.”
“A monster tamer? The Player everyone’s been talking about came here?”
“No, that one is from District 4. A boss monster descended there too, just like here. There’s no way they could have made it all the way to us.”
Yoonji waved a hand and broke into a broad grin.
“Not that one. A different tamer came.”
Uijin remained expressionless, showing no surprise. Deflated, Yoonji twitched her lips and smacked them in disappointment.
Uijin normally showed so little emotion that he seemed almost emotionally barren, but today it appeared even worse than usual.
Still, Yoonji had plenty left to boast about.
“The form of his skill is a little unusual, but I can guarantee it. He’s even more useful than that famous monster tamer.”
She was so excited as she spoke that she had apparently forgotten they were standing on a staircase and was practically bouncing in place.
“He’s basically catnip! Cat grass! Silver vine! A walking tube of treats!”
“…What are those? Monster names?”
“What do you know about anything?”
Yoonji gave him a genuinely exasperated look.
Judging by how often conversations failed like this, the bastard must have spent all his time shut in his room playing games before the world went to hell.
Thinking of it that way, Yoonji found it a little easier to understand why Uijin was so obsessed with monster hunting and Quests.
Her gaze suddenly filled with pity, she followed closely behind Uijin as he ignored her and continued upstairs.
“Monsters become completely docile the moment they meet him. And get this—it’s a passive skill, so he doesn’t need to gather Mana and prepare to activate it like other people do. There doesn’t seem to be any limit to the number of monsters that become tame, either. Apparently, his energy drains faster in proportion to the number affected, but that’s something we can manage when assigning him.”
Uijin glanced back at Yoonji as she rattled off the explanation and swallowed the sigh rising in his throat.
She’s certainly excited.
His own thoughts were a complete mess, and the tightness in his chest had been driving him mad for two days straight, yet Yoonji kept chattering cheerfully without knowing anything about his situation.
Then again, he had never told her what the Special Supply Station NPC meant to him. There was no way she could understand his complicated state of mind.
When they reached the third floor, Yoonji blocked the staircase leading higher and grinned.
“Well? Do you want to meet him?”
Uijin pushed her aside with weary eyes. Anyone else would not even have considered trying to move Yoonji with her high Strength stat, but Uijin shifted her out of the way with ease and opened the path to the stairs.
“You can handle him however you see fit. I’m not interested.”
“Oh, come on. At least meet him once—”
—Uijin.
The telepathic thought that suddenly pierced his mind made Uijin whip his head around.
His eyes, clouded by exhaustion and emptiness, instantly came alive.
Striding toward the corridor window, Uijin saw Rox’s crimson eyes as the dragon hovered in the air at his eye level.
“How did it go?”
He asked with hope, but Rox lightly shook his head, which looked as though it had been fashioned from the black night sky.
—I’m sorry.
The weakness Uijin had shaken off engulfed him again. His eyes darkened in an instant, and his hand tightened against the windowsill.
He had hoped Rox might find the NPC in another District, but it seemed that hope had been futile after all.
Rox looked at him with eyes as dark as his own, clearly feeling sorry for him, then abruptly raised his head.
—But something is strange.
Rox’s crimson, vertically slit reptilian eyes flashed as he scanned the villa.
—I sense the youngest. He is in the hideout.
“What?”
Rox had been hovering motionlessly while looking around, but now he landed beneath the building and began examining the Players one by one.
—He is close. He is here. I am certain.
His telepathic voice rang with conviction, and urgency filled each of his heavy, thudding steps. The people below stirred at the appearance of such a rare pet—especially one that was a dragon as tall as a person.
“Why? What did Rox say?”
Only Uijin could hear Rox’s telepathic thoughts, so Yoonji had no idea what was happening.
“He says one of his siblings is here.”
“A sibling?”
Yoonji looked puzzled, then exclaimed. Her cheeks reddened slightly.
“Come to think of it, that man had a small white dragon sitting on his head. Unlike Rox, it was incredibly cute and looked like cotton candy.”
Apparently hearing her, Rox shot upward from outside the villa as though leaping into the air. He fixed Yoonji with a terrifying glare from his crimson eyes.
—Guide me. The youngest. Where?
Rox seemed desperate to meet his sibling.
Uijin had no siblings, so he found it difficult to understand Rox’s excitement, but for the dragon’s sake, he decided he had no choice but to meet this supposed monster tamer.
I already dislike him.
Uijin did not care in the slightest what sort of skill the monster tamer possessed or how capable he was.
Whether such a person existed or not, Uijin would still be the one to hunt down and kill the Minotaur Lord that had destroyed the Special Supply Station.
The man possessed an unusual skill that could not create any synergy with Uijin, so he had intended to leave Yoonji to make whatever use of him she could.
But if the man had Rox’s younger sibling as his pet, that changed matters.
Rox’s younger sibling was the pet that had remained at the Special Supply Station until the very end. It had been practically the only living creature capable of easing that NPC’s loneliness, even slightly.
Even if the Player had paid the proper price for it, the NPC must have felt as though his own pet had been taken from him.
The thought that the System would have forced him to say nothing and hand over the pet egg with a smile only made the tightness in Uijin’s chest worse.
Having already developed an aversion to a monster tamer he had never even met, Uijin motioned for Yoonji to lead the way.
“Take me to the monster tamer.”
“Oh. Right. This way.”
Yoonji had blocked the stairs to the fourth floor in the first place because she intended to make Uijin meet him, so she immediately started down the corridor.
The sight of Uijin, surrounded by an inexplicable killing intent, and the black dragon flying outside the windows at the same pace was profoundly threatening.
The people in the corridor moved aside on their own, while those inside the rooms cautiously poked their heads out and followed Uijin with their eyes.
At last, Yoonji and Uijin stopped before a metal door at the far end of the corridor.
Scratch! Scrape, scrape—!
A sharp sound came repeatedly from inside as something clawed at the door.
Yoonji looked puzzled and was just about to knock when—
“All right. I’ll open it. I said I’ll open it.”
The door suddenly flew open from within.
“Kyraaaah—!”
A tiny white dragon let out a long, roaring cry, shot between Yoonji and Uijin, and hurtled out through the window.
“Huh?”
Then a young man appeared, his skin nearly as white as the dragon’s.
“…Jeong Uijin?”
The instant the young man spoke Uijin’s name, the dark atmosphere that had seemed to press down on everything around them transformed completely.