Chapter 20 – Overwhelming Victory

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Translated by Seoulbound

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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[A friend request has arrived from T-Bastard.]

[Would you like to accept?]

A friend request message arrived from T-Bastard.

Honestly, I was a bit dumbfounded.

‘After flat out rejecting my friend request?’

I wondered what kind of change of heart he had to send me a friend request.

‘Well… it’s obvious. He’s probably on the verge of death.’

Even though he held out better than I expected.

It was only natural for T-Bastard to contact me.

The strategy he was trying was none other than mine.

Since one of the strategy contents was ‘cannibalism,’ T-Bastard was highly likely to fail the strategy.

Even though it was a strategy I made, it was a strategy premised on in-game play after all.

Even I couldn’t do actual cannibalism.

‘…Why are my ears itchy?’

Anyway, I accepted T-Bastard’s friend request and sent a message.

[Dopamine Addict: Do you finally feel like talking to me now?]

Unexpectedly, T-Bastard, whom I thought would pour curses at me even on the verge of death, sent a calm message.

[T-Bastard: I don’t think I’ll be able to go kill you.]

[Dopamine Addict: What are you talking about?]

[Dopamine Addict: Did you fail the strategy?]

[T-Bastard: I couldn’t obtain food.]

[T-Bastard: Because I didn’t want to resort to cannibalism. No matter if it’s inside a game.]

[Dopamine Addict: …….]

As expected, he got stuck at cannibalism.

That was why I had sent friend requests so persistently.

If he hadn’t rejected my friend request, his life wouldn’t have been on the line.

Because.

[Would you like to request an item trade with T-Bastard?]

[Please place the items to trade on the trade window.]

Players who have mutual friend status can trade items through the inventory.

This was also the reason why I had persistently tried to send a friend request to T-Bastard.

Because it was so obvious that T-Bastard would lack food that even a guy like CornerHoney could know it.

I pushed a container of cookies left over from earlier into the trade window that popped up in front of my eyes.

[Traded Item: Cookies (15)]

And while I was waiting for T-Bastard to accept, T-Bastard’s message flew in first instead of an acceptance message.

[T-Bastard: Was trading between players… possible?]

[Dopamine Addict: Only in a mutual friend relationship. Just accept it.]

[T-Bastard: I said I would kill you, so why are you helping me?]

[Dopamine Addict: Didn’t you send a friend request for help? Just accept it.]

[T-Bastard: No! I just thought it was the end, so…]

[Dopamine Addict: If you’re not going to accept, I’m just leaving.]

[T-Bastard: …If you’re going to help me anyway, can’t you be a bit kinder?]

‘He expects too much.’

T-Bastard fell silent for a moment, then sent a message again.

[T-Bastard: I still plan to kill you once I get out of here. Will you still help me?]

[Dopamine Addict: Of course.]

I needed the meteorite item he had, but if he died here, I would have to go all the way to the Knife zone to retrieve it.

[T-Bastard: Why…?]

[T-Bastard: Why are you… someone like me…]

‘It would be troublesome if he starts having goodwill toward me here.’

I only wanted to put T-Bastard slightly in my debt, not for him to drop his murderous intent.

Even for me, if T-Bastard developed goodwill toward me, I would feel guilty when taking his item later.

For now, I felt the need to scratch him a bit.

[Dopamine Addict: Is it because you, who are already on the verge of dying, don’t seem like much of a threat to me?]

[T-Bastard: You son of a bitch]

[T-Bastard: I will definitely survive and kill you]

[Dopamine Addict: Just accept it.]

[T-Bastard has accepted the item trade.]

‘He really is high-maintenance.’

To think it took this long just to accept a single item.

[Dopamine Addict: Tell me if you need it again next time]

[T-Bastard: Let me ask you one thing]

Unexpectedly, T-Bastard, whom I thought would go silent again as soon as he received the item, asked me a question.

[T-Bastard: What would you do in a situation like this?]

[Dopamine Addict: What kind of situation do you mean by this?]

[T-Bastard: I mean a situation where you are critically injured, isolated, and cannot find anything to eat except cannibalism.]

Was he curious about what I would have done if I were in the same situation as him?

[T-Bastard: Would you have survived even by resorting to cannibalism?]

[Dopamine Addict: Even so, I wouldn’t do cannibalism.]

[T-Bastard: Are you saying you would also die while maintaining your human dignity?]

[Dopamine Addict: No?]

[T-Bastard: No? Are you saying you would have resorted to cannibalism?]

[Dopamine Addict: Since I have a body that doesn’t need to eat, I’d just hide somewhere, hold out for 10 years, and come out when the Second Apocalypse starts?]

[T-Bastard: What?]

[T-Bastard: Didn’t the strategy you posted say to kill all the residents before the Second Apocalypse comes?]

[Dopamine Addict: That was because it was a game, so I did it to kill everyone and get the title. How could I kill everyone in a ten-year-old body? It’s impossible.]

[T-Bastard: …….]

[Dopamine Addict: Did you by any chance get hurt while running around trying to kill everyone for real?]

[Dopamine Addict: But even though you said you’d kill me, you were clearing it using my strategy?]

[Dopamine Addict: Are you by any chance my fan too? Haha]

[Dopamine Addict: …Why is there no answer.]

[Dopamine Addict: Hey.]

[Dopamine Addict: Hey.]

‘This bastard went silent again.’

Should I say it was a relief that he didn’t seem like the type to die foolishly clinging to his pride?

Since he would contact me again when he was on the verge of death, I decided to leave T-Bastard alone…

‘Come to think of it, I hadn’t accepted other people’s friend requests either.’

I had only accepted HomeProtector’s friend request, and the other players’ friend requests were still unaccepted.

I thought about helping Dentist, if not the other players, since they were a newbie, but.

If they were a newbie who couldn’t even clear the lowest-difficulty Candy zone on their own, I didn’t think it would be worth nurturing them, so I didn’t accept.

If they really came to find me during the Second Apocalypse, I was willing to carry them as much as they wanted.

‘Let’s observe the other players… a bit more.’

Since the last conversation, the public chatroom had been terrifyingly quiet.

They were probably only using the 1:1 chat function after that.

Because information was valueless if shared with everyone.

It might be fine to accept the friend requests of other players and maintain a friendly relationship, but… I had no information I wanted to obtain from them anyway.

Nor did I have any intention of playing colleagues with them and getting along peacefully.

‘If this is also a game, I’ve come to want to win overwhelmingly.’

Only when they realized by now that I would act this way could I treat them as ‘equal’ players, right?

* * *

Safe Zone Love.

The user with the nickname ‘God’ stared blankly at the status window, where the acceptance notification still hadn’t arrived.

Dopamine Addict, who rarely accepted her friend request.

Although God had spoken to him in a friendly manner, claiming to be a fan, she also knew him too well precisely because she was a fan.

Somehow, she felt like she knew what Dopamine Addict was thinking right now.

‘Dopamine Addict is basically a hedonist. Seeing how he ignores friend requests… he doesn’t seem to have the slightest intention of clearing this peacefully.’

Perhaps the only saving grace was that Dopamine Addict had landed in the Cola zone rather than his main base, the Unicorn zone.

If Dopamine Addict’s zone had been Unicorn, no player would have been able to turn the tables.

Therefore, God felt greatly relieved when she learned that the place she was possessed into was the Love zone.

Because it was a zone with an environment all too suitable for displaying her abilities.

What was needed to clear this Love zone was ‘love.’

Depending on what kind of strategy was used, it could be love between a man and a woman, love between family members, fan sentiment toward an idol, or reverence toward a deity.

Among Dopamine Addict’s strategies for the Love zone, the one God referenced was the ‘Cult’ strategy.

The players who were possessed in the Love zone alongside her also knew of Dopamine Addict’s ‘cult’ strategy, so they did not follow Dopamine Addict’s strategy exactly.

The moment she saw the status window opened due to the meteorite item she had obtained by chance.

She had been confident that with just a little application of her original occupation, she could easily order the other players around as her hands and feet.

“Great Shaman, what does the god say?”

God smiled brightly as she looked at the other player who asked her that.

God’s original occupation was a shaman.

Although she was a fake shaman who hadn’t even received a divine descent, let alone being a great shaman, scamming wasn’t something just anyone could do.

God had been quick-witted since childhood.

Grasping people’s psychology and anxieties and giving them the words they needed was as easy as rolling the tongue inside her mouth.

She, who luckily succeeded in grabbing the meteorite item first in the Love zone, opened the status window.

While hiding the fact that she had a status window from the other players, she succeeded in deceiving them into thinking she was receiving revelations from the god of this world by reciting their situations or pulling items out of her inventory.

And while those players firmly believed that God was the actual Great Shaman of this world, they were constantly anxious because of the existence called Dopamine Addict.

That was why God, after declaring that she would receive a revelation about Dopamine Addict, had sent him a friend request.

One of the players asked again in anxiety.

“Did you say Dopamine Addict would help us?”

Their anxiety stemmed from the fact that ‘Dopamine Addict’ was possessed along with them.

Since they thought they wouldn’t be able to beat the all-zone clearer Dopamine Addict in survival, they seemed to want reassurance that he wouldn’t harm the possessed.

However, Dopamine Addict ignored God’s friend request.

In God’s opinion, this was by no means a good sign.

‘Dopamine Addict is not an altruistic person to begin with. That hedonist will live as he pleases here too.’

In any case, meeting Dopamine Addict would be 10 years later.

She could have lied that Dopamine Addict decided to help them to put the other players at ease as much as she wanted, but God did not do so.

“Dopamine Addict will not help us. I am told he ignored the revelation the deity bestowed.”

In a situation where most players recognized Dopamine Addict’s abilities, it was not good to make them expect his help.

Only when they also thought Dopamine Addict would not help them would they move more fiercely to survive.

Among them, a player who didn’t have very good feelings toward Dopamine Addict said in annoyance.

“That damn Dopamine Addict. Why bother caring about him when he’s just the same player as us now anyway?”

“Are you stupid? The Great Shaman told us last time. Dopamine Addict was possessed with privileges as the all-zone clearer!”

Of course, that Dopamine Addict was possessed with privileges as the all-zone clearer was merely God’s speculation.

‘But Dopamine Addict must have the all-zone clearer privilege.’

Although she didn’t know what kind of privilege it was, that was probably why he could open the status window first.

In case he might have heard something, she had formed a friendship and talked with the fellow called HomeProtector, who seemed closest to Dopamine Addict, but.

He was a pathetic human who had no thoughts other than to cling to Dopamine Addict when the Second Apocalypse struck.

‘Foolish bastard. Why would Dopamine Addict take in someone like him?’

Dopamine Addict would definitely not leave other players alone.

Especially the players who possessed meteorite items were in danger.

Since he knew there was a secret to the meteorite items, he would try to collect them all.

He was a person fully capable of harming other players for the simple reason of wanting to know what would happen if he gathered all the meteorite items.

“Dopamine Addict will not save you. So you all must prepare too, right?”

God jingled her meteorite earrings and declared as she stood before the other players.

“Go spread rumors to the people of the zone that in ten years, a messenger of the god will descend to punish nonbelievers.”

Although spreading this rumor was copying Dopamine Addict’s cult strategy.

Because of that, its effect had been proven.

The players who were disappointed that Dopamine Addict wouldn’t help them, as well as the players who had bad feelings toward Dopamine Addict.

None of them seemed to have any complaints about stepping forward to carry out the ‘cult’ strategy.

God smiled with satisfaction and continued speaking.

“It is fine to be pointed at as a crazy cult shaman for ten years. For as long as we endure the humiliation, when the Second Apocalypse strikes and monsters begin to breach the zone walls and pour in… everyone will crawl under our feet.”