Chapter 102

Seventeen Years Old (2)

For a moment, we stared blankly at the aircraft hovering over our heads.

A sleek vessel suspended beneath something resembling a massive balloon.

And a unicorn carved into its bow.

Anyone who had played Safe Zone would recognize it immediately.

It was unmistakably an airship from the Unicorn Zone.

Stay-at-home Wifey was the first to speak.

“Is that… that bastard’s doing?”

He looked extremely wary of the airship.

I had deliberately refrained from telling Stay-at-home Wifey and the others that the player from the Unicorn Zone was a “real” Dopamine Addict just like me.

I wanted everyone else to remain sufficiently wary of him.

The Fake Dopamine Addict was someone who had orchestrated a mass possession incident to obtain dopamine. Even if he had behaved himself for the past six years, there was no telling what kind of unpredictable stunt he might pull.

‘The fact that he sent an airship into my zone like this is already proof that he isn’t normal.’

However, after coming to a stop overhead, the airship remained strangely silent.

Almost as though it were inviting us to climb aboard.

“Do you think he’s on there too?”

Stay-at-home Wifey asked again, so I answered,

“It must have been sent from the Unicorn Zone. But I don’t know whether he’s on board.”

If he had come personally, there was no way that attention seeker would remain this quiet.

I turned at the sound of a metallic click and saw Taejeong loading his gun.

Following the direction of Taejeong’s barrel, I looked up at the airship again.

It remained completely unresponsive.

“The timing is almost too perfect….”

An airship from another zone had entered my territory without warning, so Taejeong’s reaction was the correct one.

However, I had only thought about extorting an airship from the Fake Dopamine Addict a few minutes ago.

Rather than feeling threatened, I simply found the coincidence amusing.

At that moment, something began climbing up my back.

“Luna, it’s dangerous.”

Ignoring my warning, Luna climbed all the way onto my head and stared up at the airship.

[Wow! What is that? It’s so cool!]

Hmm.

I had shown her plenty of impressive things over the past six years, yet an airship was enough to amaze her?

Then again, although the individual skills of our soldiers had improved, our zone was still severely lacking in scientific technology.

I had handed the hoverboard I took from the Fake Dopamine Addict to the Director of Research and told him to study it and create something based on it.

Apparently, the hoverboard used some kind of room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor.

‘I vaguely remember that causing quite a stir in the other world at one point.’

In any case, the Director said it was a substance that couldn’t be reproduced with our zone’s technology.

He warned that recklessly tampering with it might even prevent the hoverboard from functioning properly, so I got it back without gaining anything.

That airship might look like an ordinary ship on the outside, but it was probably a highly sophisticated mechanical system equipped with autonomous flight AI.

And yet he had casually parked it over my zone.

Even now, the airship remained silent, as though no one was aboard.

“Captain!”

The Players who had gone out scouting noticed the airship and hurried back to camp.

I waved to signal that everything was fine, then turned toward Stay-at-home Wifey and Taejeong.

[Meow!]

Luna slid off my head, and I caught her with both hands before speaking.

“Loner, you’re coming up with me.”

“We’re going aboard?”

“He was considerate enough to park it over our heads and invite us aboard, so we should oblige. And Luna, you….”

I was about to tell her to wait below, but Luna immediately hid inside the ring.

At some point, she had realized that I never took the ring off in my daily life.

Whenever she sensed that I was about to tell her to stay behind, she hid inside it first.

‘How am I supposed to treat separation anxiety in a companion-type pet…?’

I had initially kept wearing the ring because of the doubled effect from the Luna Moon’s Friend title, but now it had simply become a habit.

I could leave the entire ring behind, but Luna’s separation anxiety was partly my fault for failing to give her enough security in the beginning….

“…Luna’s coming too. Taejeong, stay here and keep watch. If we don’t return within thirty minutes, shoot that thing down.”

“You want me to shoot it down while you are still inside?”

“Yeah.”

I took the hoverboard out of my inventory and smiled at Taejeong.

“Something like that won’t kill me.”

“Hyung-nim… you truly are incredible!”

“You crazy bastards, I’ll die! If you’re going to shoot it down, let me get off first—hey!”

I grabbed Stay-at-home Wifey by the back of the neck as he shoved his head between Taejeong and me, then climbed onto the hoverboard.

“The thirty minutes start now. Explain the situation to the Players.”

“Yes, sir!”

The airship was parked directly above the barracks, so we didn’t need to climb very high on the hoverboard.

‘No one’s on the deck.’

On a normal ship, crew members would have been standing on deck.

But this vessel only resembled a ship on the outside.

It was, ultimately, an airship.

Its navigation system would be located below deck.

I threw Stay-at-home Wifey onto the ship first.

Having grown accustomed to this kind of treatment, he landed neatly on the deck.

After landing beside him, I reached out and stopped him from drawing his gun.

“No matter how urgent things get, don’t shoot.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want my airship getting scratched.”

“You’ve already decided it belongs to you?”

The airship had arrived at the perfect time, just when I needed transportation.

Even if the Fake Dopamine Addict hadn’t sent it with the intention of giving it to me, I was going to seize it.

Anything that entered my zone belonged to me.

There was another reason I had told him not to shoot.

“And bullets don’t work on people from the Unicorn Zone.”

“That’s true.”

The people of the Unicorn Zone surrounded themselves with magnetic shields, so ordinary bullets couldn’t harm them.

The strategy was to disable the magnetic shields using a powerful electrical shock….

‘Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that I obtained the Snow Giant’s ability.’

When I lost consciousness after absorbing the Snow Giant’s power, it was none other than the Fake Dopamine Addict who found me and prompted Stay-at-home Wifey to rescue me.

The Snow Giant’s power allowed me to control the weather, create blizzards, split the sky, and call down lightning.

With sufficient control, it was an ability with a favorable matchup that could disable all the Unicorn Zone’s magnetic shields at once.

The fact that I was rescued with the Fake Dopamine Addict’s help immediately after acquiring that power couldn’t have been a coincidence.

There was no way someone who had already played through the game at least twice was unaware of supernatural abilities.

‘Why did he allow me to obtain that power?’

Put simply, he might have been raising an opponent for himself to make the game more entertaining.

Still, something about it bothered me.

Of course, regardless of what he was thinking, I could simply strike this airship with lightning and shut down its magnetic shield if necessary.

The magnetic shields could deflect bullets, but they couldn’t stop direct physical attacks from blades or blunt weapons.

If we fought at close range, all I had to do was kill them before they killed me.

I had grown tired of fighting nothing but monsters for years, so this was perfect.

When I drew my collapsible baton, Stay-at-home Wifey returned his gun to his waist and drew a knife instead.

He tightened his grip on the knife and asked with a tense expression,

“But… what if it’s a trap?”

“There’s a high chance it is.”

“You came up here even though you knew it might be a trap?!”

“Wouldn’t it be stranger not to step on a trap when one’s been placed in front of you?”

“That makes no sense.”

Stay-at-home Wifey shook his head, and I frowned.

“Go back down if you’re scared.”

“Who said I’m scared?”

He pulled down the goggles resting on his forehead.

“I got addicted to dopamine after following you around too. I’m going in.”

Should I say he had really grown up?

“Let’s head down first.”

At the rear of the deck, I saw stairs leading to the interior where the navigation system was likely located.

Before descending, I shone a light down the stairs and saw a door at the bottom.

Stay-at-home Wifey immediately started walking down without caution.

I considered stopping him, but changed my mind.

In the past, I would have criticized him for charging ahead without thinking, but he had become a Player capable of handling his own share of the work.

‘He must know that door uses a biometric recognition system.’

However, Stay-at-home Wifey casually shattered my expectations.

[Verifying access authorization.]

[Identity cannot be confirmed.]

[Activating defense system.]

“What the hell?!”

The moment he approached the door, the defense system activated and concealed guns emerged from the walls.

Startled, Stay-at-home Wifey fell backward onto the stairs.

‘That idiot.’

He probably wouldn’t die even if I let him take a few shots, but I didn’t want us wasting energy at the entrance.

I quickly lunged forward, blocked the barrels, and shouted in a low voice,

“Check my access authorization again!”

[Reconfirming access authorization….]

[Scan complete.]

[Player Dopamine Addict. Entry authorized.]

The Unicorn airship operated through biometric recognition.

In other words, it scanned the passenger’s information and granted different levels of authority based on their status.

Unless someone was a registered crew member of the airship, they wouldn’t even be able to open that small door.

There was only one reason I had confidently announced that I would seize the vessel despite knowing that.

I was the Dopamine Addict.

If this airship belonged to that Fake Dopamine Addict, then someone with the same name as him was effectively already registered aboard it.

After confirming that the door had opened safely, I looked down at Stay-at-home Wifey, who was still sitting on the stairs, with disappointment.

“It’s only been six years since you were possessed, and you’ve already forgotten what this airship is?”

Stay-at-home Wifey shouted indignantly,

“I told you when we first met! You and those follower bastards of yours were the only ones who ever cleared the Unicorn Zone!”

Now that he mentioned it, I vaguely remembered him saying that.

The posts uploaded to the community hadn’t included minor setting details like the airship operating through biometric recognition.

“Stay behind me and follow quietly if you don’t know.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can’t?”

“We don’t know what kind of devices the Unicorn Zone player installed here! Even you don’t know everything, so it makes more sense for me, the ‘healer,’ to go first.”

“There isn’t a single party that puts the healer in front… but, well… you’re not an ordinary ‘healer,’ so I suppose it’s fine.”

As Stay-at-home Wifey wished, I let him take the lead and entered through the door.

A long corridor stretched out before us.

The corridor was silent, and I couldn’t sense anyone nearby.

“Luna.”

When I called quietly, Luna answered from inside the ring.

[I can’t sense any other Meteors.]

The Unicorn Zone’s Meteor was the island itself, so there was naturally no way she could sense it here.

I had checked in case someone other than the man from the Unicorn Zone was involved, but it seemed no other master player had anything to do with this.

For reference, I had decided to call players who unlocked their systems using Meteors “master players,” while Players like Stay-at-home Wifey and Taejeong were “sub-players.”

“If the airship’s layout is the same as it was in the game, the control room should be straight ahead.”

“I’ll go first.”

Stay-at-home Wifey cautiously crossed the corridor.

However, instead of walking all the way to the control room door, he stopped and looked back at me.

It seemed he had at least learned enough to predict that the same biometric recognition system would be installed there.

The fact that I found such a minor improvement admirable really said something about me.

“I’ll open the door.”

Opening the door itself wouldn’t be difficult.

But since we had no idea what might be lurking inside, I warned Stay-at-home Wifey before approaching it.

[Verifying access authorization.]

[Scan complete.]

[Player Dopamine Addict. Welcome.]

The control room door opened so easily that it felt absurd.

I had braced myself for something unknown to leap out from inside, but the room was completely empty.

Only mechanical devices that looked as though they belonged inside a space battleship greeted us.

“Whoa!”

Stay-at-home Wifey was the one who shouted.

“Holy shit! They recreated it even better than in the game!”

Of course they did.

This was reality.

While Stay-at-home Wifey excitedly looked around the control room, I stared at the enormous screen at the front.

A single message appeared against the pitch-black display.

[Automatic navigation in progress…]

‘Did he send an empty ship?’

Had he known that I would be leaving for the other zones around this time and sent me the airship?

There didn’t appear to be any immediate danger, so I relaxed my stance.

Stay-at-home Wifey asked me with an excited expression,

“Can I sit there?”

He pointed at the captain’s chair.

It certainly looked tempting.

“Go ahead.”

The moment I gave him permission, Stay-at-home Wifey eagerly sat in the captain’s seat.

“This is fucking awesome.”

Nothing happened when he sat down, so it seemed no particular trap had been installed there.

Completely unaware that I was using him as a guinea pig, Stay-at-home Wifey began touching various controls from the captain’s seat.

Suddenly, the screen displaying Automatic navigation in progress switched off with a flash.

A new image appeared.

—Hello, Dopamine Addict.

On the screen, the Fake Dopamine Addict smiled at us.