Once she had refused to talk to me, there was no way I could take the initiative and do anything.
With no other choice, I returned to the Leader’s room.
And I tried to sort out the current situation in my head, at least a little.
‘No matter how you look at it, this is Under City.’
It was hard to accept, but now that I knew it wasn’t a dream, adapting took priority over my confusion.
According to the setting, this was an underground city deep beneath the thoroughly ruined surface, equipped with only the bare minimum needed for survival.
Like the player avatars in other character-collection mobile games, the character here was essentially a commander with virtually no combat ability.
In other words, if I wanted to get anything done here, I had no choice but to rely on the other Replicas, including Ariel.
‘This is the worst.’
The problem was that most of the Replicas, who were practically the city’s key personnel, were in power-saving mode due to insufficient power costs.
Even Ariel, who could at least still move, was in that state.
Was this a gacha game where you started with negative Affection?
‘This won’t be easy.’
With one elbow on the desk and a hand pressed to my forehead in despair, I briefly operated the faintly glowing panel on the desk.
This time, I selected Replica Management.
Everything about this place was vividly real from top to bottom, but touching this at least let me pretend this reality was still a game.
The equipment and progression attached to the characters were similar to how they had been before I quit, but many characters were currently locked as ‘Unavailable.’
The only active Replica was Ariel, who was practically the default character.
‘Her Affection is... just as I thought.’
The Affection levels I had put so much care into raising had mostly fallen to numbers close to zero.
Some relatively oblivious or young Replicas had Affection as high as 5, but they too were inactive and marked as unavailable.
[Available Data]
[182,405]
[Power Stones]
[52]
[High-Efficiency Batteries]
[15]
As soon as I closed the character management window, I noticed the remaining resources displayed in the upper-right corner of the panel.
I had plenty of Available Data, the resource needed to restore and repair destroyed Replicas, but Power Stones and High-Efficiency Batteries—the resources that were steadily consumed—were nearly depleted.
According to the setting, Power Stones were used to operate Under City’s facilities, while High-Efficiency Batteries were the Replicas’ power source.
Naturally, if I hadn’t logged into the game for a long time, those resources should have stopped being consumed...
‘Because this isn’t a game, right?’
As if to prove that this reality would not be so forgiving, the remaining resources told the story.
‘First, I need to gather Power Stones and batteries...’
It had been years since I quit the game, but the moment I saw those resource numbers, my gamer instincts stirred, and I rose from my seat.
The Leader, who was essentially an ordinary survivor, supposedly didn’t have very good stats. Still, I must have maxed out some trash shared weapons—not a weapon exclusive to a specific character.
As the saying went, gear made the man. If I brought those along, I could probably manage something like Stage 1-1 by myself.
So I busied myself around the Leader’s room.
When I used a key to open an old cabinet, I found a dust-covered protective suit inside.
It looked incredibly worn, as though it had gone unused for ages.
‘So this is a protective suit.’
Putting aside the sentimentality for later, I donned the protective suit and armed myself. A heavy sensation soon covered my entire body.
These were the real forms of items I had only ever seen as icons or descriptions in the game.
The strangely fascinating yet vivid sensation against my skin made me swallow dryly.
A shared weapon, crude-looking compared to the weapons exclusive to each character.
Who would have thought the junk items that popped up like garbage whenever I pulled on the equipment banner, piling up as dead stock, would be useful like this?
More importantly, this was the first time I had held a gun since my reserve training.
Armed, I began walking around and slowly getting a grasp of what this underground city was like.
Unlike the game, where I could move anywhere with a single click, I had to use my own feet to get around now.
‘Oh, so this is what it looked like.’
Scenery that had only appeared flat on a screen now unfolded in three dimensions before me. Without realizing it, I became excited and spent a long time wandering around, memorizing the place.
The restaurant I could visit in the game with Replicas who had high Affection.
Perhaps because the underground city lacked power, it was tightly shut, with the robots inside currently switched off.
There was the maintenance shop that had ceased operating, and even scrap-metal streetlights whose dim lights looked ready to go out at any second.
‘It feels like this place is about to collapse.’
The game had never been particularly bright, but the city’s atmosphere was even more bleak than it had been during the tutorial.
To think all of these changes had happened just because one player—me—had left.
Overcome by an indescribably unpleasant feeling, I unconsciously raised my right hand and lightly scratched my left arm.
I had no idea how much the resources from the very first stage could help the underground city I had developed, but I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing.
Especially not with Ariel being so uncooperative.
Readjusting my gear, I made a brief resolution and started walking aimlessly toward my destination.
And finally, I arrived.
‘The Surface Elevator.’
The Surface Elevator—the scene that appeared right before the operation start screen, and the screen where you could select a stage.
Beam weapons, memory and personality copying, and underground cities all existed in this world, yet for some reason, the elevator itself was a manual gear-driven mechanism.
I could use this to travel back and forth to the utterly ruined surface.
‘How much can I recover?’
The monsters on the surface were all mutated animals that had devoured Power Stones and High-Efficiency Batteries.
That was right.
The resources commonly used in this underground city.
A typical post-apocalyptic setting.
Something about the side effects of technological advancement and whatnot.
Well, that was a long-winded introduction, but it was simple.
Kill monsters, get resources.
‘Shall we go?’
I set the shared weapon down on the elevator floor for a moment and began turning the handle connected to the gears.
Creak, screech. The sound began to echo through the cavern.
It was so loud that even I, standing right beside the handle and turning it, wanted to cover my ears.
‘Ugh, this is exhausting.’
In the game, the character at the front would spin it with ease, but I apparently didn’t have the strength to do the same.
And turning it while wearing the protective suit had sweat streaming down my body, even though the underground city had felt cold just moments ago.
The surface, after its reality patch, was miserable in every possible way.
Bizarre grass grew wildly amid the remains of destroyed civilization, while toxic fumes drifted through the air as though it were perfectly natural.
I hid behind structures like I was doing a stealth run and slowly scouted the area.
This area corresponded to the first stage, after all.
There probably wouldn’t be any particularly formidable mobs here, but the problem was that my body wasn’t particularly formidable either.
My weapon could instantly kill mobs from the first stage, but the same was true in reverse for my body.
‘I absolutely can’t let them attack first.’
In other words, I was the classic glass-cannon build...
No, I was a paper cannon, even frailer than glass.
‘Why am I going through this?’
Though I carefully watched my surroundings, the thought slipped out of my head like a complaint.
I wasn’t originally the kind of person with much courage.
I was even less the sort to risk my life scavenging scraps like this.
And yet.
Why was I sticking my nose into this and risking my life?
I didn’t know why, but my body was already moving.
‘There.’
As I moved forward, dripping with sweat, I spotted two grotesque dogs amid the ruins of the city.
They were probably Mutated Stray Dogs, the very first trash mobs you encountered.
The lowest of the low, enemies that were easy to kill even with the characters and weapons you had just received at the start of the game.
I aimed the muzzle at them and placed my finger on the trigger.
The gun could fire automatically by default, so all I had to do was hold it down...
But for some reason, my finger would not move.
I had done plenty of target practice, but no matter how they looked, this was the first time I would be shooting an actual living creature.
I had to do it. I had to.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat. The muzzle flashes and deafening gunfire made my mind go blank for a moment.
I fired. I had done it.
One of them was struck by the bullets and sent flying in an instant, a massive hole torn through its body. The other...
Showed no sign of cowering or being intimidated. It charged straight toward the source of the gunfire—me.
Killing intent I would never encounter while living in the modern twenty-first century.
At that unmistakable killing intent, which made my entire body tingle, I froze stiff for a moment.
All I had to do was pull my index finger once.
But in an instant, that monster had already reached me.
It felt as though everything in the world had slowed down.
What came to mind at the last moment was, for some reason, not an old memory or my family’s faces...
But today.
"Leader?"
Ariel’s face—the face of the girl I had met in person in that unfamiliar place.
Someone who needed me had been disappointed in me.
Maybe I had become stubborn over that very situation.
Just as I accepted it, along with that small realization—
In a world where sound had stopped, a fist flew past.
"Yelp!"
"Do you have a death wish?!"
The sounds of the world, which had stopped along with my resignation, rose back to full volume with a familiar voice.
At the moment of death, Ariel appeared.
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