When the screen in front of them lit up again, Lee Jihye groaned upon seeing Cheon Inho standing front and centre.
"Ugh, please tell me you left that station soon. I don't want to see his ugly face anymore."
Yoo Mia nodded, glancing over at the rest of them. "Yeah. It's a close race, but he's almost as ugly as ugly ahjussi."
Hey. He wasn't that bad-looking, was he? Kim Dokja was just… blurry. Whatever that meant.
[The constellation 'Prisoner of the Golden Headband' is snickering.]
"Gather around, everyone. I have an emergency announcement to make," Inho says, addressing the masses while surrounded by some of his lackeys including Myungoh. "Given our current situation, it looks like we'll need more people for the search party. From this point on, we won't be sharing any food with people who refuse to join the search party."
Damn it. I didn't expect there to be an additional penalty. "Could he have known that this would happen?"
Heewon looks down at her hands, mourning the loss of the food she didn't finish, while Dokja reminds her that he did tell her to eat it all.
"No, That's not possible." That's probably what Inho is thinking right now.
[You have successfully read the mind of the character 'Cheon Inho'.]
[Your understanding of the character 'Cheon Inho' has increased.]
He may be suspicious of me, but he can't be certain that I knew about the 'Food Penalty' beforehand.
"Did you know this would happen, Dokja?" Heewon asks.
'I didn't know something like this would increase my understanding of him.' Dokja thinks while looking at the scenario screens before answering Heewon. "I had a suspicion that it would happen. I thought of what the dokkaebi would do to make us suffer the most."
But I didn't expect them to add a 'Survival Penalty'.
'TWSA would definitely pull something like this, but this wasn't in the original novel. Did the contract I signed with Bihyung affect the story?' Dokja muses while looking at the 'Survival Fee' windows.
"So, in the end, it's all your fault again," Han Sooyoung taunted. "If it wasn't the contract, then it was probably because you brought all that food in."
[The constellation 'Abyssal Black Flame Dragon' says that it was definitely the fault of the incarnation 'Kim Dokja'.]
She did have a point, but Kim Dokja didn't want her to have the satisfaction of being right. The dragon too, for that matter.
He rolled his eyes. "Is it really right to blame anyone except for the dokkaebis and the Star Stream itself for any of this?"
She huffed, resting her chin on her hand and pouting. "Well, no, except for maybe the author. That paywall comment in the email they sent to you means that they definitely knew that this was about to happen."
Yoo Joonghyuk frowned at the mention of tls123, and Kim Dokja thought that was somewhat reasonable. After all, there were only two possibilities for how everything worked—either all the characters were figments of the author's imagination who were brought to life when TWSA became reality, or they were already real somehow and TWSA was a what-could-have-been situation for a possible parallel universe that suddenly collided with his.
Both of them sounded absolutely crazy, but in a world where kids talked to bugs and Kim Dokja could come back from the dead, it wasn't that far out there. Still, Yoo Joonghyuk had never been fond of existential questions in the novel, and now he was being confronted by them constantly; he must be having an unpleasant time right now.
He is soon brought out of his thoughts by Hyunsung calling his name. "What do we do now? Should we join the search party too?"
"No, we won't go above ground. That place is a death trap." Dokja replies.
"But we need to go there for food –"
Dokja cuts him off. "We'll need to find a new food source since the world around us has changed."
When everyone looks at him, silent in their confusion, Dokja looks towards the subway tracks in response.
"Dokja. Don't tell me–"
Dokja interrupts Hyunsung again, looking completely serious. "That's right. We're going monster hunting."
The party stands on the tracks, ready to set out in their hunt for food, but they're not alone. Inho stands on the platform above them, grinning.
"I guess we do need a team who will work on completing the scenario. Good luck," Inho states.
'I thought he'd lash out at us for not joining the search party, but I guess he feels reassured that I'm staying away from his group,' Dokja thinks.
[Your understanding of the character 'Cheon Inho' has increased.]
[Your understanding of the character 'Cheon Inho' has passed a threshold level.]
Now that I think about it… every time I make a favourable impression on a character, earn their trust, or guess what they're thinking, the level of understanding seems to increase. I've probably done the latter. Thanks to that, I can read his mind and know his feelings with this increased level of understanding.
[A few constellations are curious.]
Lee Hyunsung looked over at Kim Dokja. "So the understanding level that was next to my name in your [Bookmark] skill… that's the same thing as what you're talking about here, right?"
"That's right," Kim Dokja confirmed. "I don't know the exact threshold requirement for activating level two, though."
It was entirely possible that the information could be found in his skill, or even his inaccessible character profile, but he didn't think it was worth checking right now. After all, he couldn't accidentally give away important weaknesses like that if he didn't know what they were in the first place.
"Well, you were able to read his mind right off the bat," Jung Heewon mentioned as she quickly gestured towards Yoo Joonghyuk. "I'm kind of curious how high your understanding level is."
Well… about that…
"I don't know," Kim Dokja replied honestly. "I can't add him to [Bookmark]."
[Many constellations are shocked by this information.]
For maybe a second, Yoo Joonghyuk's eyes widened in surprise before he carefully schooled his expression back into something neutral. At least he didn't look angry or anything—
"Shit, that sucks," Han Sooyoung cursed. "Then again, it would be too OP if you could just use the protagonist's skills whenever you wanted."
And he was right back to looking uncomfortable. Great job, Han Sooyoung.
For a moment, Kim Dokja debated about telling them about level three and [First Person POV], but decided against it. That was a hurdle he'd have to jump later, and they might be mad at him for keeping it a secret, but the last thing he wanted was to make Yoo Joonghyuk even more uncomfortable right now.
Inho looks down at them, his smile seeming more sinister than friendly.
[The character 'Cheon Inho' is suspicious of your intentions.]
"Could you perhaps let a member of our group join your party?" Inho asks, sounding polite, but it's just more suspicious than anything else.
'Of course. There's no way he would have let us off that easily.' Dokja internally sighs.
Inho just continues. "We'd also like to know how the scenario can be cleared."
A little while later, the party has ventured further down the tunnel, and they've found multiple corpses littering the tracks. There's a scream, and it's coming from Myungoh, who has been elected to come with them.
"Corpses!" he shrieks, frightened. "S-Sangah! It's dangerous here! Hold my hand!"
"You look more scared than I am," Sangah tells him with more patience than most as the rest of the party watches on in varying states of unimpressed silence. His incompetence is baffling.
"N-No, I'm fine!" Myungoh, who is very much not fine, insists.
Nobody looked impressed with him.
"Wow, he's pathetic," Yoo Mia stated judgmentally, and she was completely correct. Han Hyungoh had never been a particularly impressive person before the apocalypse, and that fact didn't change after he managed to survive the first scenario.
Yoo Sangah sighed. "Does it make me a bad person if I wish we had left him there?"
Kim Dokja immediately shook his head. "Honestly, Sangah-ssi, I thought you had the patience of a saint for not saying that before. After all, he was definitely one of the guys who felt entitled to your time at Minosoft."
She shot him a grateful smile, and Kim Dokja felt bad for not making sure that Han Myungoh hadn't been all over her when they were forced to take him with them.
[A constellation who likes harems is disappointed.]
Good. Be disappointed.
"...Are you sure about this?" Hyunsung asks Dokja after he notices that Myungoh is hiding behind Sangah as they walk down the tracks.
"He's no threat to us. So it should be fine," Dokja replies, seemingly uncaring.
"What about you, Heewon? You haven't even fully recovered yet…" Hyunsung asks then.
"You should be worried about Gilyoung, not me," Heewon answers as she turns around to glance at him. Her hair now tied up in a bun, revealing the awful bruising on the back of her neck, even though it's lightened a bit from before. "The road ahead is dangerous. We're not just going to charge ahead, are we?"
"I've been worried about that as well," Hyunsung admits after a moment. "It might be a good idea to send Gilyoung and the women back…"
At that comment, Heewon looks annoyed. "Listen, Hyunsung. I may not be as good as you are, but I still know how to fight. I used to practice kendo."
That makes Hyunsung flustered, and as he's about to reply, Dokja interrupts. "You two must be forgetting something. A few days ago, the world we lived in changed completely. Saying women and children are physically weak is prejudice. Anyone can become strong when they increase their stats."
"Gilyoung, show them." Dokja turns to Gilyoung, who nods back at him.
Gilyoung kneels down, placing his hands on the ground. A small thread of light extends from his fingers through the ground in front of them, eventually linking up to a cockroach and startling members of the party.
"My attribute is called [Bug Collector]. I can have simple conversations with insects," Gilyoung explains.
[The character 'Lee Gilyoung' has activated the 'Interspecies Communication' skill.]
"It says there's nothing up ahead. We'll be safe for at least another hundred steps," Gilyoung explains. "Thank you for your concern, but I didn't come all the way here to be a burden to you all."
"You're definitely not a burden," Kim Dokja told him, gently patting Lee Gilyoung's head. "Your skill has saved us on a few occasions now."
Lee Gilyoung beamed at the praise, and shot a victorious glance at Shin Yoosung. She just scowled in return.
Dammit, Kim Dokja had no idea how to deal with kids. How was he supposed to make sure they got along now? They had been doing so well at the start, but now they seemed to be competing over who got the most time and praise from him, so was he the problem?
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have judged so quickly," Lee Hyunsung said apologetically to Lee Gilyoung, Yoo Sangah, and Jung Heewon, hanging his head and looking like a sad puppy.
Jung Heewon laughed and slapped his back once. "Hey, it's water under the bridge now, okay? We know you meant well and were just concerned, even if I got frustrated back then."
Her smile sharpened. "Still, do that again and we might have a problem."
Lee Hyunsung flinched back slightly, but nodded his head quickly in understanding. God, the women on his team were terrifying, Kim Dokja belatedly realized.
"Oh…sure. By the way, it looks like human corpses aren't the only corpses here. No wonder this place reeks of blood," Heewon mutters, changing the subject as Dokja pats Gilyoung on the head.
"The road ahead looks pitch black, as if there's a wall blocking the way," Sangah notes as Hyunsung reaches out to touch it.
As soon as he makes contact with the pixelated wall, they hear a loud dinging noise and a new window appears before everyone.
[A new sub scenario has arrived.]
The sub scenario is about hunting and cooking monsters to gain food, with a reward of 500 coins and an unknown penalty. Now past the wall, the party sees a ton of dead monsters littering the ground.
Tier 9 Subterranean Ground Rat
Heewon wonders who could have done this, considering the massive size of these monsters. Whoever came through here and killed all of them must have been incredibly strong themselves.
Han Sooyoung snorted. "That might as well be a rhetorical question."
Yoo Mia nodded in agreement, even though she didn't look thrilled to be taking the same side as the plagiarist. "Who else could do something that awesome other than my oppa?"
Well, they were right. Yoo Joonghyuk's combat skills were terrifying, especially at the start of the story.
[The constellation 'Nail-eating Rat' is greatly distressed by the slaughter of its rat brethren.]
[The constellation 'Prisoner of the Golden Headband' is tearing out his hair in excitement.]
Ground Rats live underground, are pack hunters, and are known to be extremely persistent in hunting their prey. It won't be easy to move about since the tunnels that connect the different stations are full of monsters.
'Who else but Yoo Joonghyuk?' Dokja mentally replies, knowing full well that there's only one person at this point who could be capable of something like this.
Hyunsung wonders if the dead Ground Rats could be used to clear the scenario, but Dokja notes that hunting was one of the clear conditions. The question now is how to cook them once they succeed in their hunt.
"Heewon, you said you were good at kendo, right?" Dokja asks, glancing at her over his shoulder.
"Well, I'm not 'good' to be exact…" Heewon states apologetically, rubbing the back of her head.
One weapon crafting montage later and everyone in the group is kitted out with a bone sword, except for Gilyoung, who has a club made out of a skull.
"It feels as if we've travelled back in time to the stone age," Heewon remarks, checking out her weapon.
"They'll need to be sharper, so try sharpening them on a rock lying around nearby." Dokja reminds them.
[You have successfully obtained weapons using your intellect.]
[A few constellations are interested in the primitiveness of humans.]
[The constellations have gifted you 100 coins.]
"You seemed clumsy but somehow managed to make yourself a fine weapon," Sangah remarks, clearly wondering how Dokja—a normal office worker until a few days ago—was able to do that.
I know what to do because TWSA had a detailed chapter on butchering monsters.
"That seems oddly specific," Yoo Joonghyuk muttered, narrowing his eyes at the screen, and Kim Dokja honestly had to agree. He had been confused back when he first read it too, wondering why that was necessary when it wasn't like the monsters even existed in the first place.
Han Sooyoung grimaced. "Godammit, I skimmed over that chapter because it was boring as fuck."
Well, that was her loss.
"Looking back at it now, it is awfully suspicious that there was basically a guide for cooking monsters and using their bones to make weapons," Kim Dokja admitted. "And, considering that the author made sure I had the text file, I wonder if tls123 knew I would need it."
Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk both glanced at him quickly, catching on to what he meant immediately—had the author written that chapter specifically so it could be used in this way?
Knowing he had to break the tense atmosphere that had settled over their group, he chuckled slightly. "Though, I have to admit, the Joonghyuk-ah from TWSA was much better at crafting weapons than I was."
Though Yoo Joonghyuk didn't seem entirely comfortable with his fictional counterpart being brought up, he scoffed and rolled his eyes slightly, almost as if to say "Of course I was."
That sunfish bastard…
"All of you have some coins left, right?" Dokja says, changing the subject instead of answering. "Invest all the coins you have into Strength, Stamina, and Agility, only leaving behind enough to pay the Survival Fee. This may sound cruel, but I don't expect all of you to survive."
There's a rustling noise coming from down the tunnel that catches the party's attention as Dokja finishes speaking. "But, still… try to keep yourselves alive, please."
Down the tunnel, a horde of Ground Rats are beginning to scurry towards them, growling and gnashing their sharp teeth. Their eyes glow in the darkness, revealing just how many are actually around. Suddenly, what Dokja has said feels all the more real.
['Sub scenario - Hunting for Food' has begun.]
Hyunsung and Heewon expertly dispatch the Ground Rats with timely strikes and slashes, blood flying with every successful hit. One gets past Heewon, only for Gilyoung to smash it in the head with his club, giving Sangah a moment of opportunity to stab it and end its life.
Dokja slices clean through a Ground Rat, turning to look at the rest of the group, impressed. 'They're not doing so bad.'
Heewon runs over, checking if he's ok before asking how many Dokja killed.
"Four," Dokja replies. Heewon clicks her tongue as she seemingly feels upset at her kill count of two, and Hyunsung resembles a golden retriever wagging his tail as he announces he killed three, to Dokja's surprise.
'I didn't use my full power, but that's only one less than me! And I've invested a fortune into my stats!'
[Name: Lee Hyunsung
Age: 28
Constellation sponsor: Master of Steel
Personal attribute: Soldier Who Turned a Blind Eye to Injustice (Common)
Exclusive skills: Bayonet lvl. 2, Camouflage lvl. 1, Patience lvl. 1, Sense of Justice lvl. 1, Weapons Proficiency lvl. 2
Stigma: Great Mountain Push lvl. 1
Overall stats: Stamina lvl. 12, Strength lvl. 9, Agility lvl. 9, Mana lvl. 6
General evaluation: Lee Hyunsung's attribute will soon evolve. The Character trusts and regards you highly. This Character's constellation sponsor is cautious of you.
*Starter Pack is currently in use.]
'Starter pack?!'
A Starter Pack is a Premium Package Incarnations can use only when the average of their overall stars is below level ten. It increases the level of each stat by one and grants Incarnations the skill 'Weapons Proficiency', which is very useful when they're starting out.
'No wonder he's so strong! It looks like Master of Steel has taken quite a liking to Hyunsung.' Dokja thinks with a face that is halfway to a pout. 'I envy him…'
[The constellation 'Master of Steel' is very proud of his incarnation.]
Lee Hyunsung's eyes widened as he noticed the changes in his stats since the last time his character profile had been used. "Wow. It's interesting that the evaluation is different now too."
At the very least, it meant that Kim Dokja could help lead his party into situations where their attributes could evolve in the best possible scenarios, but he wasn't sure how well everyone would take it.
[A few constellations are wary of how much information can be obtained by the skill 'Character Profile'.]
Yeah, he expected that. At the very least, Lee Hyunsung didn't seem to be upset about it being used now, which was good.
"Hey, for those of us who you can use it on, do you think you'd be willing to tell us what the evaluation says so we know what we need to improve?" Jung Heewon asked suddenly, looking seriously over in Kim Dokja's direction.
Lee Jihye brightened up too. "Yeah! I think it would be less awkward if we knew when you were using it, and if we give permission because we want the information too."
That was definitely possible, so Kim Dokja nodded and smiled slightly in return.
Dokja's thoughts are interrupted by Sangah questioning how to cook and eat the Ground Rats, with Dokja casually replying that they'll find a way. This causes everyone to look at him in silence.
'Hmm. Did I sound too nonchalant?' He looks away from the rest of them.
"Hey, I've always wanted to ask you this. Dokja, do you perhaps know something about the situation we're in?" Hyunsung questions while the party stands around Dokja, except for Myungoh who is pointedly hiding in the distance like the coward he is.
This is how the regressors must have felt in the novel.
'Some of them claimed that they had a hunch, or just lied, like I lied to Yoo Joonghyuk. From the reader's viewpoint, the best way to handle a situation like this was…' Dokja thinks quickly, trying to recall the multiple scenes in TWSA that cover something similar.
[The constellation 'Secretive Plotter' looks forward to your decision.]
[Several constellations are looking forward to your answer.]
A scream rings out, immediately startling the rest of the group and making them turn around. Myungoh wails as a Ground Rat suddenly grabs him by the leg and begins to drag away its prey.
…To keep putting yourself in situations where you don't have to answer any questions. Well done, Mr. Han.
"H-Help me..!!" Myungoh calls out pathetically as he's dragged along the ground, one arm outstretched towards the group while he frantically tries to dig his nails into the ground with his other hand.
[The constellation 'Secretive Plotter' nods in agreement.]
Sangah, being way too nice for her own good sometimes, reaches out with her sword for him to grab onto. Unfortunately, her action leads to her being dragged along as well.
[The constellation 'Prisoner of the Golden Headband' is upset by the near certain cliffhanger.]
The ground suddenly ripples as the Ground Rat dives into the concrete like it's water, and both Myungoh and Sangah are dragged along with it. In only a second, they've vanished. Out of the remaining members, Hyunsung is stunned as he stands there with his arm outstretched, Heewon is facepalming, and Dokja just looks unfazed as Gilyoung watches him.
"Ugh, Damn it. I just knew he'd get us into trouble…" Heewon sighs in exasperation.
Yoo Sangah grimaced. "I really should have let him go… Being stuck with him was not a pleasant experience."
Kim Dokja winced as he remembered being in that situation. It had definitely been an opportunity for him to come clean about everything, but even if he had felt the desire to do so, there was no way in hell he was telling Han Myungoh about it.
He could feel Jung Heewon's burning stare on his back and laughed awkwardly. "I know I could have said something, but…"
Yoo Joonghyuk suddenly nodded slightly. "Good choice."
Okay, Kim Dokja heard him for sure that time. Something was definitely about to go very, very wrong. Sure, Kim Dokja had taken a page out of Yoo Joonghyuk's playbook there, but that was second nature to him at this point. It was only by sheer coincidence that Han Myungoh had the misfortune of getting snatched up by a monster at that convenient moment.
[The constellation 'Nail-eating Rat' is cheering for the Ground Rats.]
[The constellation 'Abyssal Black Flame Dragon' is looking forward to a rat massacre.]
[The constellation 'Nail-eating Rat' is frightened by the constellation 'Abyssal Black Flame Dragon'.]
[The constellation 'Nail-eating Rat' has permanently left the channel █̴̯͉͎̳̱̟̙̠͚̪̼̈̅̿̀̐ͅͅ]