Two years had passed, but the ruins scattered throughout District 2 remained unchanged. Everywhere I looked as I walked, there were only collapsed buildings and broken debris.
It felt as though I had been dropped into the middle of an apocalypse game.
The problem is, this isn’t a game.
I surveyed my surroundings with an indifferent expression and put the last piece of jerky into my mouth. It was pleasantly salty and savory, but it still was not something I could eat as a proper meal.
I stared at the empty jerky wrapper in my hand.
Just as I expected.
Five hours had already passed since the notification announcing the destruction of the Special Supply Stations.
When several supply stations had been destroyed because of Quests in the past, every product inside them had been deleted at once. By that logic, the jerky I had just eaten should have disappeared as well.
The fact that I could still carry it around and eat it without issue meant...
The storage room I brought out, and everything inside it, belongs to me now.
A metal bracelet encircled the wrist I used to toss the wrapper onto the roadside. A small key dangled from it.
<District 2 Special Supply Station Storage Key (Bound)>
The storage key was one of the three items I had chosen to take with me.
The moment I selected it, the word “Bound” appeared beside its name, just like the items owned by Players. Even now, after the Special Supply Station had been destroyed, it continued to function perfectly.
The supply station building itself might have collapsed, but the storage room existed in a separate spatial dimension. The key was essentially the access right that connected me to it.
An infinite storage room that replenished every type of stock at midnight.
As long as I had this, I would not starve to death. It automatically restocked not only food, but consumable items such as potions and first-aid kits. Since I could also open it anywhere, the storage key was an absolute necessity.
The second item I took was a mid-grade spatial-storage bag.
There was a clear reason I chose a bag that was neither particularly expensive nor rare.
If the storage key counts as one item, then the spatial-storage bag should work the same way.
What mattered was how the System judged it.
The limit on what I could take out was based not on the physical number of objects, but on the number of entries the System recognized as possessions. Just as the storage key was treated as a single key, the spatial-storage bag would not count every object stored in the separate dimension connected to it.
Besides, I had been an NPC of the Special Supply Station.
A Player would have been sanctioned the moment they took an item without paying or shoved it into their own bag, but I had administrator privileges that allowed me to handle merchandise freely inside the store.
I had eaten products off the shelves before and even drunk expensive potions like alcohol. I already knew that my authority was not limited to making sales.
That meant when I placed merchandise into the spatial-storage bag, the System would not treat it as unauthorized removal. It would simply register the act as storing inventory with a particular item.
I exploited that loophole and shoved several items into the space beyond the bag.
I opened the leather bag slung over my shoulder and plunged my hand inside. While my arm was inside the roughly one-pyeong storage space, I pictured the object I wanted.
A stone settled neatly into my palm as though drawn there on its own.
I smiled at the red crystal engraved with golden runes.
It would’ve been a waste to leave something this expensive behind.
Five varieties of rune stones had shown no sign of selling because of their ridiculous prices.
These rune stones granted Players new personal skills. They would undoubtedly prove useful someday.
The same went for the final two pairs of communication ear cuffs I had brought along as a bonus.
Those items were not replenished once sold, so I had no choice but to stuff all of them into the spatial-storage bag and carry the entire thing out.
After carefully returning the rune stone to the bag, I released the breath that had already grown ragged.
This goddamn stamina.
After spending two years without any proper exercise, sprawled around inside a convenience store, I had ended up with such a pathetic body that even walking absentmindedly for a while left me breathless.
Though this filthy air is probably the biggest reason.
I narrowed my eyes at the empty space before me, thick with an invisible murky energy.
The ruined streets were completely different from the convenience store, where the air had always been fresh and clean. Breathing out here felt like wearing a thin mask clogged with dust.
This polluted air was probably contributing to my exhaustion just as much as my abysmal stamina.
I envied the Players.
Once their stats rose even a little, they probably stopped feeling this suffocating discomfort altogether.
Dragging my tired feet, I searched for somewhere suitable to rest. The Great Tree had blocked most of the sky for the past two years, making the sun nearly impossible to see, but that did not mean there was no sunlight at all.
I wanted to rest against a wall in the shade if possible.
I approached one of the few walls that had mostly retained its shape. My reflection appeared in a large shattered window nearby.
My narrow face was deathly pale, as though it had not seen sunlight in years. My thin white shirt, with one button left undone, and black cotton pants looked casual enough for a trip to a nearby café. With the leather bag slung over one shoulder, I looked exactly like someone heading out to work on a laptop over coffee.
It was an absurdly peaceful appearance for a world filled with ruins.
In my opinion, regardless of the clothes, I did not look particularly good at the moment. I was not hideous, but I had definitely grown thinner than I had been two years ago.
Not exercising for two years was one thing, but I belatedly regretted not taking better care of my meals.
As I stared at my reflection, my gaze shifted to something strapped to my back like a backpack.
A large egg was wrapped securely in a sling fashioned from a convenience-store employee uniform.
“Hmm... This sling really does look ridiculous.”
The third item I had selected was Altiora’s Egg.
To be honest, I had not chosen it because I needed it. I had taken it because I could not stop thinking about it.
There had not been anything else worth choosing, either.
I had packed all the rune stones and communication ear cuffs that would not be replenished into the spatial-storage bag, allowing them to be treated as a single item. Everything else in the Special Supply Station would automatically refill in the storage room at midnight, so there had been no reason to take it separately.
As a result, I had unintentionally chosen the pet egg as my final item.
No one but me could enter the storage room now, and the spatial-storage items used by Players could not accept living creatures. I had no choice but to carry it out myself.
I might’ve genuinely abandoned it if I hadn’t had a weight-reduction potion.
The only reason someone with stamina as bad as mine could carry this heavy egg around in a sling was the weight-reduction potion.
It reduced an item’s weight to one-tenth for six hours. I had never imagined it would be this useful.
I lightly stroked the pet egg, which now weighed no more than a geun of meat.
Ever since leaving the Special Supply Station, I had occasionally felt a faint vibration whenever I touched it like this.
As though it were trying to tell me it was alive.
Well... Now that I’ve brought it with me, I should take responsibility for it.
It might have been classified as an item, but there was unquestionably a living creature inside.
It could hatch into a grotesque monster or an animal incapable of understanding speech, but I had no intention of abandoning it now.
I untied the pet egg and set it down carefully, then leaned my back against the shaded wall.
After wandering without a destination for five hours, my legs already felt swollen.
Massaging them with my hands, I opened my status window. I looked past my growth values, which were filled entirely with question marks, and checked the list of Traits beneath them.
I had originally possessed five Traits.
Mental Stability, which protected me from traumatic shock and allowed me to remain rational.
Authority of Manifest Sight, which allowed me to see any status window clearly.
Myriad Aspects Map, which let me look down on any location within District 2 as though CCTV cameras had been installed across the sky.
Recognition Interference, which prevented others from perceiving my appearance clearly and made it difficult for them to recall me once they turned away.
Safe Confinement, which made it absolutely impossible for me to leave the designated safe zone.
Of those five, Recognition Interference and Safe Confinement had disappeared.
They seemed to have been deleted when the System ordered me to leave the Special Supply Station.
Now that Recognition Interference is gone, Players will be able to see me properly.
Honestly, I was not sure whether that was a good thing.
As an NPC, I could not see my own growth values. Based on the times Players had hit me over the past two years, I could only estimate that my fragile body had stats worse than those of a Level 1 Player.
Let us be generous and assume I was Level 1.
I did not even have an experience parameter, which meant I could not level up according to this world’s System.
If I had to remain Level 1 forever... then I had a serious problem.
The monsters are fine. The Players are the problem.
I raised my eyes toward the road I had traveled.
A dog-headed, bipedal monster wandered nearby, carrying a club made from a broken tree branch.
A gnoll.
It noticed me and stopped, meeting my gaze.
Unlike when it looked at other Players, there was no killing intent in its murky eyes. Instead, it stuck out its tongue, pulled its mouth into a wide grin, panted happily, and wagged its fluffy tail with surprising force.
It looked ready to rush over and place a front paw in my hand if I held it out.
And it was not only the gnolls.
During the five hours I had spent walking, not a single monster had laid a finger on me. Every species notorious for its brutality had behaved around me like a docile neighborhood dog.
Even the Minotaur Lord that had come to destroy the Special Supply Station had waved its hands at me, urging me to move away as though warning me of danger.
The way it had anxiously stamped its feet until I was far enough away, apparently worried that flying debris might hit me, had been rather funny.
Judging from everything I had seen, the monsters of this world would not harm me, regardless of whether I was inside a safe zone.
That was how powerful my Title, Friend of Chaos, truly was.
Players, however, had no way of knowing what Title I possessed.
Even if they did know, they would not care.
They’ll just see a low-Level Player who looks easy to exploit.
To Players, Level represented both a person’s chance of survival and their social rank.
Having observed survivor camps throughout District 2 with Myriad Aspects Map, I knew all too well how low-Level Players were overworked and exploited by others.
Worse, I was openly carrying an expensive pet egg on my back.
If Players gathered to steal it from me, the situation would become troublesome. The System prevented Players from forcibly taking an NPC’s possessions, so they might discover my identity in the process.
With no protection from the supply station and a body weaker than a Level 1 Player’s, avoiding contact with Players as much as possible was my safest option.
Far too many of the Players who had survived until now were completely insane.
Even if it takes longer, the best option is to keep choosing routes where I won’t encounter any Players.
I pulled an electrolyte drink from the spatial-storage bag and gulped it down.
I had stored it in the refrigerator that once held frozen-food inventory inside the storage room before transferring it to the bag. Perhaps because of that, it was still icy cold.
I drained the little that remained and tossed the empty bottle aside.
At the sound, another gnoll poked its vicious-looking head around the wall opposite me.
Krrraah—... Whine?
The savage roar instantly turned into an adorable sound the moment it saw me.
Its expression changed completely as it began panting brightly.
Ignoring the gnoll’s stare, I secured the pet egg in its sling again.
Its ears seemed to droop slightly as it whined, but my gaze was already fixed on the end of the road ahead.
Not much farther.
I stared at the faint red boundary at the end of the road.
The boundary separating the Districts was now close enough to see with the naked eye.
I need to cross into District 1.
To find my younger sibling.
But...
“What the hell is this?”
Every Player could cross the red boundary without hesitation.
Even the monsters pursuing them could pass through freely.
Yet it refused to allow me—and only me—through.
Only the location had changed.
I was still imprisoned inside District 2.
...System, you fucking bastard.