Chapter 99: Sensory Synchronization and Tactical Re-indexing

“……”

Thinking about Sephiroth caused my heart to rapidly and instantly cool down. The fact that Na Eun-hyeok’s touch had felt so identical to Sephiroth’s played a huge part in that. There was no way Na Eun-hyeok had patted my head just to tease me, but because the movement was so uncannily similar, I realized it was entirely pointless to assign any grand meaning to the gesture.

Only then did I finally pull my spoon away from the beef soup and look up at Na Eun-hyeok. He was leaning his chin on his hand, staring right back at me with a bright, steady smile. His demeanor made it look as though he was thoroughly enjoying my reaction. Of course, Na Eun-hyeok couldn’t possibly harbor such malicious intentions, so this was completely my own fault for profanely overlaying him with Sephiroth.

“It’s no big deal anyway,” I muttered.

My voice came out sounding a bit sullen, but I had a feeling Na Eun-hyeok wouldn’t misinterpret my tone anymore. Since we had been facing each other for various reasons for nearly a month now, it seemed I was slowly but surely growing accustomed to him. And just as I expected, instead of making a fuss over my reaction, Na Eun-hyeok simply offered a cool, refreshing smile.

As I picked at my food, I kept recalling the sensation of his hand touching the crown of my head. Whenever my mind threatened to wander down a dangerous path, I forcefully thought of Sephiroth instead. Inexplicably, the more I compared them, the more the two gestures felt exactly the same. Should I ask Sephiroth to pat my head later just to double-check?

Come to think of it, Na Eun-hyeok and Sephiroth shared a staggering number of similarities. Their height, physique, and even their voices were so similar that I distinctly remembered discussing it as a hot topic with my friends before. If their personalities weren’t so drastically, night-and-day different, I honestly would have suspected they were the exact same person at least once.

……Pfft. Yeah, right. As if they could actually be the same person.

“Na Eun-hyeok. Did you say you play Zelphia?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you play it a lot?”

“Pretty often.”

It wasn’t the most detailed answer, but I shook my head, reassuring myself that it was impossible. No matter how absurd the world was, Na Eun-hyeok being Sephiroth made absolutely zero sense. It was statistically more probable that I was the living reincarnation of the Buddha.

“Why do you ask all of a sudden?”

“Oh, no reason. Just, since I play Zelphia too, I thought it might be nice if we played together sometime later.”

“I’d love to. If it’s with you, Un-ha, I’m down anytime.”

Seeing Na Eun-hyeok answer with such a sweet, pure smile made me feel incredibly guilty for ever harboring such a blasphemous theory. Yeah, there was just no way. There are thoughts a human being should have, and thoughts they definitely shouldn’t.

“By the way, Un-ha-ya. Did you figure out the answer to that hint yet? ‘It’s darkest right under the lamp’?”

“Not yet.”

Right, he had thrown that sudden riddle at me, hadn’t he? As I gave a slow shake of my head, a smooth, handsome smile pulled at the corners of Na Eun-hyeok’s lips.

“Try to guess it. I’m really looking forward to you figuring it out.”

“……Ugh.”

When he put it like that, it felt like failing to guess it would be letting him down. A heavy blanket of completely unnecessary pressure instantly settled over my shoulders. Noticing my suddenly darkened expression, Na Eun-hyeok let out a light, amused laugh.

I logged into the game a bit later than usual today because it was Zelphia’s scheduled maintenance day. By the time I arrived at the capsule room right as maintenance wrapped up, the place was practically packed to maximum capacity. Marveling at the spectacle—which truly showcased the overwhelming popularity of the game—I slid inside my own capsule.

After a brief wait, the breathtaking, vivid scenery of Zelphia flooded my vision. Looking around at the landscape that had now become quite familiar, I was leisurely clearing a few story quests when a notification popped up announcing that Sephiroth had logged in.

“You’re here,” I said as he naturally grouped up with me.

Sephiroth gave a quiet nod. I mindlessly turned my gaze toward him, only to find myself staring intently. The fact that his eye level was identical to the Na Eun-hyeok I had just met in the real world suddenly felt incredibly loud. Was it because Na Eun-hyeok had patted my head earlier? It felt as though the phantom sensation was still lingering on the crown of my head.

“Hey.”

Impulsively, I called out to him.

“Do you want to try patting my head?”

At my sudden request, Sephiroth—in a rare turn of events—fell entirely silent. Given his usual loud personality, it was safe to assume he was profoundly taken aback. Of course, that flustered silence lasted for only a fraction of a second before his heavy, black-armored form took a massive step closer to me.

“Is our Beulli finally making a move and trying to seduce his hyung?”

“It’s nothing like that.”

“Like hell it isn’t. Did you really love your hyung’s head pats that much?”

Ugh…… I shouldn’t have given this absolute lunatic an opening……

I frantically whipped my body around to face away from him. I couldn’t let a momentary impulse turn me into a lifelong laughingstock for this crazy bastard.

“Ah, never mind. Forget I said anything. Just pretend you didn’t hear it.”

“What do you mean, forget it?”

“Hey!”

But as always, Sephiroth’s actions completely shattered my expectations. He extended a long arm, casually wrapping it around my waist to yank me backward. I was the one who ended up completely panicking. Wait, why the hell is he hugging my waist……! I thrashed around to break free from his iron grip, but the speed at which his large hand landed squarely on top of my head was far faster than my clumsy attempts to escape.

“Ah……!”

“There, there. It looks like our Beulli has finally decided to become his hyung’s puppy.”

“Can you stop spouting nonsense for five seconds?!”

“Beulli-ya, try barking for me. Come on, copy after your hyung. Woof!”

“You son of a……”

“Aww, our puppy is a little slow, huh? It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Whether I cursed at him or not, Sephiroth was already having the absolute time of his life teasing me. Stroking and completely messing up my hair, he looked just as thrilled and joyful as he did whenever he was successfully harvesting rare herbs. The most terrifying part of all this was that the exact same subtle, heart-fluttering warmth I had felt when Na Eun-hyeok patted my head was now radiating from the tips of Sephiroth’s fingers. There was no way this should be happening……

Wait, is the crown of my head just a massive psychological weak spot or something?

Sensing that I was about to get completely swallowed by Sephiroth’s pace, I frantically extended both arms and shoved hard against his shoulders. But because he was holding my waist with such an unyielding grip, my body barely even budged.

“Let go already.”

“Why? You’re the one who asked for head pats.”

“I told you to pretend you didn’t hear it!”

“I already heard it, so how am I supposed to un-hear it? It’s permanently wedged inside my ear canals.”

Why did it feel like this guy was flashing a beautiful, crinkling eye-smile even though his face was entirely hidden behind a helmet? Feeling the dense wave of pure mischief dripping from his tone, I shoved him one more time. Fortunately, Sephiroth smoothly let go of my waist this time.

“I logged in like two minutes ago and I’m already exhausted.”

“Really? We’re still a long way off from being exhausted.”

“We need to do something about that mouth of yours first. If you ever fall into a river, your mouth is definitely going to float right to the top.”

“Hey, if my mouth floats, that’s a win. My lower body is incredibly solid, so the rest of me is definitely sinking to the bottom.”

……I need to just stop talking to him.

I slammed my fist directly into Sephiroth’s armored arm. He didn’t even bother pretending to be hurt by the playful strike, so I simply glared at him before turning around.

“Where are you going?”

“We need to go hunt Doltech.”

“Ah. Right.”

It was true that we hadn’t been able to focus on the story quests for a while due to grinding the Battlegrounds event. We had promised to hunt down Doltech the second the event concluded. Remembering the plan, Sephiroth followed right behind me without a single word of complaint. Thud, thud. The heavy sound of our footsteps echoed softly through the digital air.

“Did you check our guild ranking for the Battlegrounds event?”

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“We clutched first place by beating Endless at the very last second. The Endless kids must be absolutely seething, right?”

“We’re a small elite group and we still crushed them. They’re probably throwing a massive fit.”

In the final event guild rankings uploaded after the update, our guild proudly secured the number one spot. Because my level was lower, the Battlegrounds points I swept up yielded a vastly superior efficiency compared to other guilds. Endless had managed to maintain the top spot purely through their sheer numbers, but they ultimately couldn’t withstand the final, aggressive push Sephiroth and I made at the buzzer.

“Do you think they’re going to make another post on the official homepage? Accusing us of using some kind of bug to farm guild points?”

“Even if they do, we can easily debunk it just by throwing the event notice layout in their faces.”

“True.”

“Well, they are a bunch of brainless idiots, so they might actually try it anyway.”

His voice was entirely laced with pure derision. Walking right behind me, Sephiroth had seamlessly bridged the gap, moving about half a step ahead of me with his wide strides.

“That’s why, Beulli-ya, we need to give those bastards a truly magnificent taste of defeat. Got it?”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t forget that we promised to go wreck their exclusive hunting grounds, right?”

“Ah. Right, we did.”

Following the false speed hack accusation, a thoroughly enraged Sephiroth had declared that he was going to systematically dismantle Endless’s monopolized farming zones. I had questioned whether a low-level player like me joining him would even make a difference, but assuming Sephiroth had a master plan, I simply went along with it. To be completely honest, fighting max-level players and actually winning was turning out to be incredibly fun. It gave a massive sense of accomplishment, and it was deeply satisfying.

“Once you clear a few more quests and level up, your damage is actually going to start piercing through their armor.”

“I suppose so, since I have true piercing damage mechanics.”

“Yeah. Looking at this hidden quest line, it seems to absolutely shower us in experience points.”

Just as Sephiroth said, clearing a single hidden quest granted a vastly superior amount of experience compared to chipping away at the standard main story quests. Of course, we hadn’t abandoned the main quests either, since their clear rewards were exceptionally lucrative—similar to our run at the Tower of Trials. I had been steadily chipping away at them on my own whenever Sephiroth was busy with other tasks or offline.

“Once your damage starts landing, you’ll be able to slice through those Endless losers all on your own.”

“Do you really think they’ll die?”

“They honestly control their characters like they’re playing with their feet, so someone of your skill level can easily murder them.”

“Hmm……”

Even so, I still wasn’t entirely confident enough to confidently claim that I could take down a max-level player all by myself.

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