Chapter 99

Player Highlight Video (3)

Immediately after confirming Taejeong-Taese-Beyoncé’s face in T-Bastard’s highlight video, I called Taejeong over and asked him,

“Are you really Kim Taejeong from the national team?”

Of course, it might have been a somewhat hasty and insensitive question.

But I had originally been a fan of Kim Taejeong.

There was no special reason.

He was simply the best soccer player in Korea.

I think I once said that I had been obsessed with the Premier League before moving on to gaming.

Originally, I had watched the K League. Then, when Kim Taejeong transferred overseas, I started watching the Bundesliga. After his doping scandal broke out, I switched to the Premier League.

And now that very Kim Taejeong had been transported into Safe Zone alongside me.

How could I possibly not call him over and confirm it immediately?

It did not seem as though Taejeong being a national-team druggie—no, a national-team soccer player—was some enormous secret.

Since a soccer player should have had nothing to do with my mother, I was also curious about how he had ended up being transported into this game.

‘But I never expected to hear the in-game name of that infuriating foreign player from Taejeong’s mouth.’

I have mentioned this before, but I hate foreign players.

Those bastards did not merely steal and repost my guides.

They even pretended to be the original authors, acting as though the strategies were their own creations.

And among them, there was mikisoccer.

Every time I uploaded a guide, that bastard translated it into English within a day, stamped his own signature on it, and uploaded it to an American community.

At the time, I had wondered how an American could be so fluent in Korean.

But if his real identity was Mickey Parker, a Korean American, it made sense that he could translate from Korean to English so quickly.

Naturally, I had sent mikisoccer a polite message.

I told him that it was my guide and that he should either credit the source properly or take the post down.

However, mikisoccer’s reply was concise and utterly infuriating.

[mikisoccer: eng plz]

Just so there was no misunderstanding, I had written to him in English.

He knew I was Korean, so he had deliberately said “English, please” to provoke me by implying that my English was terrible.

That was when I made up my mind.

Even if I could not stop him from stealing my guides, I would only upload strategies that a bastard like mikifucker could never imitate.

My guides had not been all that difficult back then.

But as I devised strategies so complicated that even the thief who stole them would be unable to execute them, they gradually became more convoluted and vicious.

The most recent news I had heard was that Mickey-Sucker had uploaded a guide for the Love Zone despite being unable to clear it himself, only to be mocked by the other American players.

Even that had not been enough to satisfy me.

I had always intended to get revenge on him someday.

And now I learned that he was Taejeong’s friend.

“So my friend’s in-game name is mikisoccer… Wait, hyung!”

Taejeong, who had been answering automatically, grabbed me with an utterly bewildered expression.

“I just told you that I’m Kim Taejeong, the drug cheat! Is this really the time to be asking about my friend’s in-game name?”

Honestly, I found the story about mikisoccer more interesting than Taejeong’s claim that he had never actually doped.

More importantly, if this guy truly was Kim Taejeong, he had to be at least ten years older than me.

Was it really all right to keep letting him call me hyung?

“Do you… not know who I am?”

“No. I used to be your fan.”

“You were my fan?!”

Taejeong looked at me with an even more devastated expression.

“Then… you must have been terribly disappointed in me. I know it will be difficult for you to believe anything I say, but I truly…”

“No, well. If you say you didn’t do it, then I suppose you didn’t.”

“What?!”

Taejeong became even more flustered, merely opening and closing his mouth.

I gave a quiet sigh and explained.

“Now that you’ve even been transported into a game, why would you bother hiding the fact that you used drugs? That’s why I don’t think you’re lying.”

“F-For that reason…?”

“To be honest, even when they said you had doped, I thought it came completely out of nowhere. I was more disappointed that Kim Taejeong retired instead of properly defending himself.”

“That… I’m sorry. I felt terrible because it seemed as though I had betrayed the faith of my fans…”

After muttering that, Taejeong quickly grew dejected and fell silent.

Hmm.

It was not that I had been disappointed because he had betrayed my faith.

I had merely lost interest once the incident stopped producing dopamine.

But whatever.

“That guy called Mickey-Soccer or Mickey-Sucker. He’s your friend, right?”

“Yes…”

“And his real identity is Mickey Parker, the actual professional player in the Bundesliga?”

“That’s right.”

‘So mikisoccer wasn’t merely a nickname parodying Mickey Parker. It was actually him.’

No, why would a successful professional soccer player go through the trouble of playing a game without a Korean language patch, meticulously translating the guides of some pitiful Korean player into English, and then stealing them?

“Which zone do you think that bastard is in right now?”

“What?”

Taejeong tilted his head in confusion at my question.

“Um… Mickey plays in the Bundesliga.”

“I know.”

“He lives in Germany. I don’t think there would have been any reason for him to come all the way to that convenience store and be transported here…”

Not at all.

From Taejeong’s story alone, it was easy to guess that Mickey Parker had probably been transported into this world too.

“That guy was such a devoted subscriber that he stole every one of my guides. There’s no way he didn’t see the link to the convenience store.”

“What? Even so, I don’t think someone living in Germany would fly all the way to Korea just because of that convenience store.”

“It wouldn’t have been only because of the convenience store.”

I pointed a finger at Taejeong.

“You disappeared.”

“Ah…!”

“Kim Taejeong retired years ago. If Mickey continued texting you for all that time just to make sure you were still alive, he must have been genuinely worried about you. Then you suddenly stop replying to his chats and stop reading his texts, while rumors spread through the community that the veteran players who visited the convenience store have gone missing. What do you think he would do?”

Taejeong’s eyes widened as realization dawned on him.

“D-Do you think he went there? To that convenience store?”

“There’s a high chance he did.”

The bastard had been persistent enough to steal every single one of my guides.

His obsession with confirming Taejeong’s survival must have been equally intense.

Taejeong looked worried that Mickey-Sucker might have been transported here because of him, but that was none of my concern.

All I needed to do was find the bastard who had stolen my guides and beat the hell out of him.

“What do you think he chose?”

“What?”

“What do you think Mickey-Su—Mickey Parker chose at the convenience store?”

“Um… Since Mickey is a professional athlete, he probably wouldn’t have picked any food. He doesn’t eat just anything. And of course, he wouldn’t have chosen cocaine either.”

Candy, cola, cigarettes, beer, chicken, and cocaine were all eliminated?

Then the only remaining options were Love, Unicorn, and Knife…

‘If Mickey-Sucker were in the Love Zone, what are the chances Shin Eunjo wouldn’t know about him?’

Since he stole every one of my guides, he was definitely an attention seeker.

Had he landed in the Love Zone, there was a good chance he would have ignored Shin Eunjo’s orders and done something unpredictable.

On the other hand, if he had landed in the Knife Zone, there was an even greater chance he was already dead…

While I was considering the possibilities, Taejeong cautiously spoke.

“Um… Personally, I think he probably chose the unicorn plushie.”

“A fully grown man picked a stuffed animal?”

“He’s American.”

I had no idea what being American had to do with unicorns, but if Taejeong thought Mickey had landed in the Unicorn Zone, then so be it.

“Then he must be with Dopamine Addict Two.”

“Dopamine Addict Two? Don’t tell me that’s what you call the Unicorn Zone player.”

“You don’t have to worry about Mickey-Sucker.”

“It’s Mickey-Soccer, not Mickey-Sucker… More importantly, I don’t have to worry? Even though he’s with that impersonator?”

“Yeah.”

Before it had been confirmed that Dopamine Addict Two was truly “me,” I might have suspected that Mickey-Sucker himself was Dopamine Addict Two.

But now it had been confirmed that Dopamine Addict Two was me.

There was no chance Mickey-Sucker would be running around impersonating me in the same zone as him.

Once I turned seventeen and could leave the zone, I would have to go see that bastard’s face.

“If you say so, hyung… then that’s a relief. I would feel terribly guilty if anything happened to Mickey because of me.”

“…”

What I had meant was that since he was also me, he had probably taken revenge on Mickey-Sucker the moment he found him, so I no longer needed to concern myself with it.

However, Taejeong would probably be shocked if I told him that.

Instead, I simply smiled.

“Still, are you really just going to overlook the possibility that I was a drug cheat?”

“Yeah.”

I was only uninterested because the incident had already given me all the dopamine it could years ago.

Yet Taejeong looked at me with immense emotion.

A soccer player I had once admired was looking at me with an expression like that.

It felt…

Great!

***

Feeling great was one thing.

Now it was time to properly resolve the matter involving Daphne.

The Commander knew that Daphne was a player and believed that I was a regressor as well, so he did not seem especially shocked.

I was slightly worried about Meursault, but because of her denial of reality, her faith in me—or perhaps I should call it religious devotion—had only grown stronger.

She was completely convinced that I would somehow resolve everything and continued living as usual.

Even in the game, although Meursault fell into despair after Daphne died, she continued working resolutely to defend the zone.

I had no idea how long she would have endured in that state, since she was poisoned to death not long afterward.

In any case, while Meursault somehow kept living after Daphne’s death, Anton was different.

Even in the game, Anton was an NPC who died shortly after Daphne.

That meant the person currently in the most dangerous mental state was not Meursault, but Anton.

For that reason, I had come to visit Anton, who was now hospitalized.

It seemed Anton truly had attempted to kill himself the moment he heard the news of Daphne’s death.

Thick rope marks still remained around his neck.

His face was a complete mess from how much he had cried.

Even his white hair, which was normally combed back neatly, was disheveled.

Anton stared at me with eyes full of resentment.

“Are you satisfied now…?”

His hands trembled as they gripped the hospital bedding.

“You have made quite a fool of this old man.”

Hmm.

Apparently, he believed that Daphne’s death had been my doing.

“So your true objective lay elsewhere after all. While I was distracted by your serpent’s tongue and failed to watch over Lady Daphne, you carried out such a scheme… You are truly clever. Truly cruel. Lady Daphne genuinely trusted you… Had I known this would happen, I would have divorced her from His Excellency with my own hands and sent her far away.”

I stood quietly and listened to Anton pour out his resentment.

His words were not unbearable, and I needed to hear his honest feelings.

Anton coughed several times.

He looked so exhausted and weary that he seemed ready to die at any moment.

Nevertheless, as though he still had something left to say, he quietly asked,

“How far do you intend to take your revenge?”

When I tilted my head slightly as if I did not understand, Anton continued.

“How far will this revenge go… and whom will it reach? Daphne, who stole His Excellency from Luna Moon? His Excellency, who married Daphne despite already having a child? The pro-Hayden officers who failed to stop the marriage despite knowing that he and Luna Moon were lovers? The pro-Daphne officers who drove Luna Moon away for Lady Daphne’s sake? Could it be… Could it…”

Anton’s voice trembled, and his face filled with fear.

“Is my son also… Is Plato also among the targets of your revenge?”

“You’re asking whether Plato is one of my targets?”

“Lord Haydam, please…!”

I had only repeated the question lightly, but Anton went deathly pale.

He practically leaped out of the hospital bed and prostrated himself before me.

“Not Plato… Please, spare that child. I always feared something like this might happen someday, so I deliberately raised him without showing him affection. He is a pitiful child. Please, could you let this end with my life? Could you spare the children? Plato respects you so much… He admires you more than anyone…!”

Ah.

‘Now I understand why he tried to kill himself.’

Since he believed that I had killed Daphne for revenge, he naturally assumed I would come for him as well.

He must have thought that if he died first, my revenge would not extend to Plato.

Or at least, he had hoped it would not.

I looked down at Anton, who was prostrating himself before me, and fell into thought.

‘What should I do…?’

If Anton seemed utterly devastated, I had originally planned to tell him that Daphne had actually been possessed by a player and was no longer the same Daphne he had cherished and raised.

Of course, if Anton replied that Lady Daphne was still Lady Daphne even if someone possessed her, I would not have had much of an answer.

And unlike Meursault, Anton had comparatively little faith in me.

Simply telling him that I would somehow save Daphne would not work on him.

‘I should at least tell him that I wasn’t the one who killed Daphne.’

But revenge…

What should I do about the revenge?

Could I tell him here that I had no intention of taking revenge?

The moment I promised not to take revenge on Plato, what guarantee was there that Anton would not feel reassured and kill himself afterward?

I needed Anton alive.

I had already killed Josef.

I could not afford to lose Anton as well.

Meursault seemed stable for the moment, but there was no telling when she might break.

And if Anton died, Plato would suffer as well.

In that case…

“I think you’ve misunderstood something.”

When I finally spoke, Anton raised his head and looked up at me.

At some point, he had started crying again.

His face was covered in tears.

“I wasn’t the one who killed Lady Daphne. And I have no intention of killing Plato either.”

Anton stared at me with a mixture of distrust and confusion.

“Then… why did Lady Daphne…?”

“I don’t know either. That’s what we need to uncover from now on.”

Anton fell silent with a deeply thoughtful expression.

Then he cautiously opened his mouth.

“You truly… weren’t attempting to take revenge?”

I immediately denied it.

“I am going to take revenge. I returned for the sake of revenge.”

Anton stood up in considerable confusion.

“W-What do you mean? You clearly said just now that you wouldn’t kill Plato…!”

“I won’t kill him.”

“Then are you saying Plato is not a target of your revenge?”

“No. Plato is included too.”

“What in the world have you been saying since earlier?!”

Apparently believing that I was mocking him yet again, Anton raised his voice.

I extended one hand in a gesture telling him to be quiet, then declared,

“The target of my revenge is this zone.”

Anton furrowed his brow as though doubting his own ears.

“…What did you say?”

“This zone killed my mother, forced me to grow up as an orphan, and eventually made me return here with my own two feet. I’m going to take revenge on it.”

“What does it even mean to take revenge on a zone?”

I raised one corner of my mouth in a faint smile.

“I’m going to become the Commander.”

“…Pardon?”

Rather than looking surprised, Anton appeared unable to understand the intention behind my words.

“Of course you will… won’t you?”

Judging by his reaction, he seemed to be thinking that since I was the Commander’s sole heir, who else could possibly inherit the position?

I kindly elaborated.

“I mean that I have no intention of quietly waiting for Father to hand it down to me.”

“W-What do you mean…?”

“Anton.”

I pointed a finger toward the sky.

“I’m going to usurp the position of Commander.”