Chapter 55 – Love Zone Player

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Translated by Seoulbound

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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I folded my arms, looked down, and slowly opened my mouth.

“So…”

The white-haired kid kneeling in front of me had both hands bound, his eyes trembling anxiously.

His lips twitched as if he felt wronged, but soon they were tightly shut.

I raised my head and asked Lucas and Bones.

“You brought him because it was suspicious that he was collapsed in the snow?”

“…Yes.”

To summarize the situation, it was like this.

Lucas and Bones, the two of them had gone further out to search to avoid me.

Since this vicinity was close to the zone for large monsters to approach, they hadn’t found anything special, but in the middle of it.

They said they found a small, wriggling thing between the snowfields.

Upon approaching to a distance that could be identified with the naked eye, they found a young child collapsed while holding his knee.

Normally, the two would have quickly approached to check on the child’s condition.

But because of me, the two who had a phobia of children collapsed in the snow watched the child closely with extreme alertness.

As a result, they could notice that the child was deliberately acting injured.

Even when looking around, there were no traces of being urgently chased or falling, and the child’s footprints remained neat. Crucially, when they didn’t approach further and just stared quietly, the child began to panic, which led them to judge him suspicious.

Thus, the two bound the tiny child meticulously and dragged him in front of me.

‘The early education paid off.’

Although they handled it well, the expressions of both were not quite refreshed.

Because of the learned values, they brought him for now, but their faces showed they didn’t know if this was right.

However, there was no possibility that they had misunderstood an innocent child.

Because it was clearly visible to my eyes.

[Name: Shrike

Title: One Who Evaded Strong Enemies

Zone: Love

*A player who has not unlocked the system; friend requests are unavailable.]

‘He was a Love Zone player.’

Then is he the guy sent by ‘God’?

The title ‘One Who Evaded Strong Enemies’ is a title that can be obtained when evading mid-to-large-class monsters more than ten times in a row.

Seeing him wear such a title, it seemed he had encountered many monsters on his way here, yet he managed to arrive safely from the Love Zone to here.

‘Since it has been about three months since possession, are players with titles starting to emerge?’

I didn’t know for what purpose the Love Zone player came all the way to the Cola Zone to lure NPCs.

But my cute cadets had finished their mental remodeling a long time ago, so it seemed this guy’s acting didn’t work on them.

I raised both hands and clapped twice to send applause to Lucas and Bones.

“Good job.”

Lucas flinched his shoulders, perhaps not yet used to my informal speech, but Bones, who had already grasped my true nature in the past training simulation, had a calm face.

“But, by the way…”

Lucas glanced down, looking concerned about the child he had forced to kneel, and said to me.

“No matter how I look at him, he seems like a normal child, so wasn’t we too excessive?”

“No. It was a really good decision not to approach hastily.”

Striding toward the Love Zone player and rolling up the bound fellow’s pant legs, a knife hidden in the heel of his shoe was revealed.

“Ah, no…!”

Startled at the weapon’s appearance, Lucas fumbled to take out the knife from the heel and inspect it.

The blade glinted, reflecting the sunlight shining down on the snowfield.

“It is properly sharpened. Although it isn’t surprising for a child to possess such a thing in our zone…”

Actually, just because a child had a knife, there was no reason to find it suspicious, at least in our zone.

But there was something to point out about that knife.

“It seems to look a bit different from the knives issued to boy soldiers, though.”

That was precisely the fact that it looked different from the knives handled in our zone.

Since the weapon details of each zone were different in the game as well, weapons created by different people under different conditions were bound to differ slightly.

“I suspect it might be an item from another zone.”

“An item from another zone… Then are you saying this child is from another zone?”

“Since it’s a face I haven’t seen even at the charity party, he probably crossed over from another zone.”

As the knife was found on the child’s body and talk of him possibly being a resident of another zone emerged, the team members began to buzz.

Unlike the newly appointed officers who were seeing a resident of another zone for the first time, Meursault, who must have experienced such situations a few times, asked me relatively calmly.

“What will you do?”

“Well… we should pause the search for a moment and interrogate him.”

“Interrogate?”

Meursault furrowed his brows slightly and asked as if unsatisfied.

“Surely… Lord Haydam is not going to do it himself?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if I, who am of the same age, talk to him?”

Then, the team members began to exchange glances.

…Why are they exchanging such disrespectful glances when I said I would deal with him since he’s a child and I’m also a child?

Meursault stared at me quietly for a moment, then muttered softly.

“It seems there is something you need to hear from that child.”

That fellow Meursault, he gets it immediately now.

He seemed to have realized that I needed something from my attitude of insisting on interrogation when we could just take him to the main camp.

Meursault spoke to me in a somewhat coaxing tone.

“Very well, Lord Haydam. We will set up a temporary tent for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Instead, you must not go too hard on him. He is still a child, after all.”

What?

“Well… I am also a child for now.”

“Lord Haydam… do you have a conscience?”

“You count him as a child even though he possessed a weapon, but you don’t count me as one?”

Wondering if the other guys thought the same, I looked around, and everyone was busy avoiding my eyes.

Ha, these guys.

I’ll have to run them through training simulations when we return.

* * *

In the temporarily built tent, just me and the Love Zone player Shrike.

Leaving only the two of us, the rest went out to stand guard.

The very first thing I did after the others disappeared from sight was to untie the rope binding Shrike with the confiscated knife.

Because I thought it would be better to untie him and let him lower his guard rather than keeping him bound.

Since even if he ran away in this snowfield, he would be caught and brought back in less than a few seconds anyway.

“…”

Despite being released from the binding, Shrike lay flat on the spot as if frozen, rolling his eyes to read the room.

After giving him enough time to roll his brain, I sat down on a folding chair at a slight distance from him.

“Now speak comfortably. No one is here.”

Even though I had purposely made a space to make it easy to talk, he hesitated and did not open his mouth easily.

Seeing him so completely terrified, it seemed he hadn’t come to this zone with any good intentions…

“I have no intention of harming a fellow player. So you can speak comfortably.”

When I showed false goodwill without even spitting on my mouth, the guy hesitated a bit and spoke in a crawling voice.

“Are you… Dopamine Addict?”

‘He recognizes who I am immediately.’

Since I had confirmed just a moment ago that the system hadn’t opened for this guy.

It seemed that fellow ‘God’ had talked quite a bit about me to his zone’s players.

If he had heard from ‘God’ that Dopamine Addict was in the Cola Zone, he would have easily realized I was ‘Dopamine Addict’ when Meursault called me ‘Haydam’ earlier.

Although HomeProtector was the only one I directly told that I was playing the bastard child strategy… any player could infer that much even without hearing it directly from me.

Since the guy seemed to know me, I could speak a bit more comfortably.

“For what business did a Love Zone player come all the way to the Cola Zone?”

“…!”

At my words, his eyes went wide.

“H-how did you recognize that I am a Love Zone player?”

“What? What do you mean how did I recognize you?”

I was about to add that I naturally saw it through the system, but I shut my mouth.

‘Something is strange…’

If he had heard about me, I thought he would naturally know about the system as well.

But the guy seemed genuinely surprised that I recognized his zone immediately.

‘That guy, God.’

He didn’t tell the guys in his zone about the existence of the ‘system’.

Since the system only opens for those who have a meteor, the rest of the guys would never know of its existence unless a player with a meteor told them, but still.

Come to think of it, that fellow God had once said a strange thing.

—There are quite a few players in our zone too. But they all decided to serve me.

Back then, I wondered what on earth that meant…

Is he acting like a real ‘god’ without telling them about the system?

It seemed God was scamming them using my cult leader strategy.

By making not only NPCs but even players targets of the strategy.

‘But if that’s the case, it’s a bit strange.’

If ‘God’ was using the system as if it were a ‘divine power’ without revealing it to his zone’s players.

Why did he send this player named ‘Shrike’ to me?

If I were to tell this guy about the ‘system’, his scam would be exposed, wouldn’t it?

While I stood silent thinking such thoughts, Shrike seemed to have found the answer in my silence and asked with a brightened face.

“As expected, just as the deity said, you have also received the revelation of God, right?!”

Revelation… of God?

‘What is with that eighth-grader-syndrome naming.’

Seeing him use the term ‘revelation of God’ instead of ‘system’, it seemed that fellow God really hadn’t spoken about the system.

‘By the way… the deity?’

Doesn’t that refer to a shaman?

Well… whether a ‘cult leader’ or a ‘shaman’.

That fellow ‘God’ must have created a cult in his zone and taken on the role of a shaman who receives revelations from that god.

Seeing this guy Shrike speak using extreme honorifics like ‘the deity…’, it seemed he had also been fooled.

‘Telling a guy like this that he’s being tricked would only have the opposite effect.’

If he crawled all the way to the Cola Zone in that child’s body because ‘God’ ordered him to, his faith must be considered fierce.

In any case, this guy was someone who started in the Love Zone of all places.

It meant that even if he was terrified like that now, he would still be a crazy bastard.

Since that fellow ‘God’ had carefully spouted that I had also received the ‘revelation of God’, even if I pulled items out of my inventory now or rattled off others’ information with character inspection, it wouldn’t serve as proof of the ‘system’.

In the first place, even if I told him the truth about the system, it was uncertain whether he would take it well.

It would be a relief if he didn’t take it as a plot to slander ‘God’…

Since for guys who were fooled by something like that deity, what was important wouldn’t be the ‘truth’, but rather ‘someone to lean on’.

The reason God readily sent his player to me was probably because he was confident that even if I denied the revelation of God and brought up the system, he wouldn’t easily believe it.

The picture that guy wanted was probably for me to deny their religion.

Through that, he must have intended to incite his followers to hostilely oppose me.

But there was one thing God overlooked.

I have no intention of denying the cult God created.

In the first place, the cult leader strategy was a strategy I made.

A cult that someone else worked hard to create can simply be exploited.

‘God, I will make good use of the follower you sent.’

“Um… Dopamine Addict? You did… receive the revelation of God, right?”

Looking at Shrike, who asked me cautiously as if getting a bit anxious when I remained silent for a long time.

I said with a gentle smile.

“Exactly. I am also a messenger of God who received the revelation.”