A scene where those who should have been rescued came to rescue the rescuers instead.
It would have been a truly heartwarming and touching moment.
But from Arien's perspective.
"No! Run away right now!"
The situation wasn't exactly in the players' favor.
Seeing the reinforcements trying to steady their trembling hands only made it clearer.
Six inventory slaves, each armed with only a single weapon and no other gear.
And one Level 5 newbie.
That was the full extent of their forces.
The enemy was well aware of this.
However, the Devotees were tense, their eyes wide with surprise.
"That's odd. Judging by their uniforms, they're warehouse slaves, so why aren't they wearing collars?"
The Captain questioned them as if interrogating them.
No one answered his question, but the Captain's gaze soon reached a conclusion.
It was the newbie at the very back.
His vision was different from the others'.
It was the ability to see bugs.
Crackle. Crackle.
Through his eyes, the Newbie saw all sorts of unstable glitches.
Something in the air around the Newbie kept crackling, obstructing his vision.
"It's you. Did you release them with a bug?"
"Huh?"
Faced with the Captain's rapid-fire questions, the newbie looked confused, as if to say, "Huh? Me?"
"Don't even think about hiding it. I have no idea what you plan to do with those bugs, but—"
He pulled the lever on his crossbow.
Click! Whirrr!
Two weapons popped out of the crossbow.
He twirled a revolver in one hand and an automatic pistol in the other.
"That's enough. Mira, you handle the rest. I'm taking care of that guy."
"Are you sure, Captain? Aren't you playing too dangerously?"
"If we don't subdue him quickly, who knows what he'll do with that bug."
"Alright. It's been a while since we've played it dangerous. Not bad."
Mira clenched her fists together in a threatening gesture.
'I have to move!'
Arien tried desperately to move, but besides "Confusion," countless potion debuffs held her in place.
She was forced to stay behind the newbie and the slaves.
The Captain, who had maintained a defensive stance against Arien, charged forward this time.
"Where do you think you're going!"
To protect the newbie, the escaped slaves, including the middle-aged man, stepped forward.
"You lot, come play with me!"
Mira charged forward, but the freed slaves were tougher opponents than she'd expected.
"Huh?"
Three escaped slaves blocked her path with a coordinated attack.
Three spears crossed paths to block the fist she had swung out.
"Whoa! You guys are tougher than I thought. Are you really slaves, guys?"
The other escaped slaves surrounded Newbie and blocked the Captain's path.
The Captain reloaded his gun as if finding the situation laughable.
"Stun rounds."
Click! Whizz!
The Captain fired at the runaway slave players charging in from both sides.
Just then, a middle-aged man's sword strike flew toward his head.
The Captain twisted his body and delivered a kick, deflecting the sword strike right in front of him.
The middle-aged man stepped back slightly from the impact of the kick.
The Captain's gun barrel came within inches of the Newbie.
"No way!"
At that moment, a fairy clung to his gun barrel.
The Captain quickly took his finger off the trigger and aimed another pistol.
When the situation became unstoppable, the Newbie calmly played his trump card.
The necklaces in his hand all lit up at once—
the "Ticket to Hell" that had once left players in a state between life and death.
For the first time, that item became a source of power for the player.
Boom!
With a single explosion, a shockwave erupted around Newbie.
The Captain was also knocked back by the shockwave and fell.
"Wh-what...!"
Though momentarily flustered, his body remained unscathed.
"I don't know what trick you're pulling, but it's useless."
Click.
He reloaded his pistol.
"There are tens of thousands of ways to take you down... Cough!"
His eyes widened in an instant.
Wait a second
At that moment, the newbie smirked.
"I don't want to see all of those tens of thousands of ways."
"You... you!"
The Captain tried his best not to show it, but inside, he was terrified.
'Poison?'
It was then that the Captain realized the necklace Newbie had shown him wasn't the only one.
In addition to the shockwave, several debuffs had embedded themselves in his body.
To be honest, it wasn't actually that much damage.
From the perspective of a max-level player, it would likely feel like an ant bite—barely noticeable.
The problem was that it was the Captain who had taken the hit.
He possessed a fatal weakness that no other NPC had.
The problem was that no one could know about it unless they were a fellow Devotee.
No, even among Devotees, few were aware of that weakness.
The Captain stared at the newbie with a tense gaze.
The newbie was gesturing into thin air with the same calm expression as before.
'How… did you figure out my weakness?'
*
[List of Temporary Level 10 Permissions]
[View NPC Information] [Automatic Debugging Program]
[Warning: Level 10 operator permissions are granted temporarily and are subject to usage limits]
[Daily Limit: 3]
[Viewed information on NPC 'Captain Lucen']
[Used 1 time]
Newbie, who had been intently examining Captain Lucen's information, flashed a triumphant smile.
A moment ago, he shared a message with the runaway slave players he had added as friends.
[Newbie: Hey, everyone. I figured out that guy's weakness. His HP is only 100.]
[Hansel: What? Is that for real?]
The middle-aged male runaway slave—Hansel—asked in return.
[Hansel: A monster like that has the HP of a Level 1?]
[Newbie: It's for sure! Is there any way to deal with this?]
[Hansel: There are plenty of tricks for taking down low-HP foes.]
[Newbie: Come to think of it, I found a necklace like this?]
With that, Hansel checked the stats of the necklace the newbie showed him and sent a message.
[Excellent. I never thought that damn thing would actually be useful...]
Seeing Hansel's reply, the newbie grinned and nodded at them.
On top of that, thanks to the Captain's close-range attack, the situation was going exactly the way the players wanted.
"Guh!"
Captain coughed up a mouthful of blood.
"Damn..."
[Captain Lucen: 100/99]
98, 97, 96...
Captain Lucen's health began to drop by the second.
He glanced to his side.
"Ugh! These guys are way too rough! Captain, what do we do?!"
Things weren't looking good for Mira either.
Her fists collided with three spears in quick succession.
"Damn it..."
The situation turned upside down in an instant.
Desperate to turn the tide, she charged forward again.
Clang! Clang!
Hansel's sword, defending the newbie, grew sharper and sharper.
Just as a beast caged in a zoo slowly regains its wild instincts.
Slowly, yet powerfully, his sword strikes began to transform.
Hansel's sword clashed with Captain Lucen's two pistols.
"What the hell? That guy was clearly a bio-inventory…!"
"It's all thanks to your NPC arrogance. Arrogance always leads to defeat. That's why you've never been able to finish us off."
Gradually, Hansel's tone began to change as well.
No, to be precise, he was returning to his original self.
The collar, created with a bug, was so powerful that it could even alter an opponent's personality.
Consequently, the Kingdom's NPCs gradually began to let their guard down.
Originally, they had strictly monitored dangerous players, but they gradually started indiscriminately using any player they could capture—regardless of risk level—relying solely on a single collar.
Thanks to this, even a dangerous player like Hansel was being used as nothing more than a mere inventory slave.
Of course, Captain Ruchen had no way of knowing this.
He could only grasp the fact that he had been defeated.
However, he was a Devotee.
A Devotee could not be defeated by a player who was an external invader and a tyrant.
Especially not by a player possessing a dangerous bug.
"In that case, I'll eliminate every single one of your bugs before I leave!"
The debugging method Devotees use to eliminate bugs.
It was, quite simply, the expulsion of the very existence of the bug.
As he slammed his hand down on the floor, the graphics began to ripple from that spot.
Just as the scenery seemed to warp, strands of code glowing like electricity flowed out from Captain Lucen's palm.
Before anyone could stop it, the beam of code light touched Newbie's foot.
"Ugh! W-what is this?"
In that instant, Newbie felt as if he couldn't breathe.
The stream of light climbed up Newbie's entire body like a tattoo of code characters.
The code-shaped letters of light bound Newbie like ropes.
[Searching for illegal hacks]
Report a hacker.
It was the one feature that players had always feared.
Of course, since the world had changed so drastically and the admins had vanished, it was completely useless—but there was one remaining function.
That was the ability to, upon discovering a bug or error suspected of being a cheat, confine the user to a sealed space alongside a reporting NPC for a set period of time.
Normally, they would have subdued the players and eliminated the bug by other means, but now it was a case of "do or die."
"Crazy! Captain! Do you think we'll get deleted too?!"
"If it means we can fix the bug...!"
"Stop it!"
Mira was horrified.
Nevertheless, he steadfastly fulfilled his duty.
And so...
[Search Complete]
[No illegal hacks detected]
"What…?"
For a moment, Captain Lucen's mind went blank.
At the same time.
[Captain Lucen: 100/0]
"You… you… surely not…"
At the same time, his body, now at 0 HP, turned pure white and turned into a shower of light.
"Ca, Captain...! Damn it! What the hell just happened...! Well, at least it looks like he died safely!"
Mira wasn't sure whether she should be happy or not.
Fortunately, it seemed the Captain had died without any complications.
"Ugh, whatever! Bye! See you next time!"
All Mira could do now was flee.
Mira climbed out the window and fell straight down.
By the time Hansel and Newbie hurriedly looked down at the window, Mira had already vanished into the distance.
*
Having survived the chaotic battle, the two "carriage robbers" were able to enjoy a scene free of tension for the first time since they met.
Under the sky that was beginning to turn red above the carriage roof, Newbie and Arien sat looking down at the scenery.
"But I never thought you'd hijack the whole carriage just to save someone."
"I had no choice. Usually, the people who get captured end up bound by that damn necklace."
"You mean that item with that weird bug-like glitch?"
"Did you see it? I'm telling you! Since the bug is so dangerous, we have to take them all the way to the guild to dismantle it. That's why there's no other way to rescue them."
"No other way?"
"One is to teleport them, and the other is..."
She made a gesture of slitting her throat.
"Dying and respawning."
"Hearing you say that, it really does feel like we're in a game world."
"It was really tough for me at first, too. Common sense gets turned upside down every time, you know?"
She leaned in close to the newbie's face.
"Right now, that's especially true for you, Newbie."
"Ah... really?"
For a moment, the newbie scratched his head, looking embarrassed.
"Hehe, why are you so embarrassed?"
"No, well... I just don't really understand what you mean."
"The people who were rescued today weren't wearing necklaces. Plus, the items they were carrying were pretty unusual, too."
A moment of silence fell.
What is this?
Just then, she stretched.
"Ugh! Well, that doesn't matter! What matters is that we saved each other. Thanks to that, we get to enjoy this view too~. Ah!"
She pointed toward the distance.
"That's the guild."
Where she was pointing, there was a massive rectangular structure with the fiery sunset behind it.
To anyone looking at it, it felt like seeing the biggest cube in the world.
"It's your first time seeing it, isn't it?"
At her words, he flinched slightly.
'Wait a minute... first time?'
She chuckled.
"Nice to meet you, Newbie. Actually, I guess I should call you Newbie Newbie."
"How did you know?"
"Well, you're Level 5, aren't you? Plus, people who venture outside the guild are usually called 'Pilgrims.' But you've never mentioned anything about Pilgrims."
I thought I'd gotten away with it.
As expected, she'd figured it all out.
"Well… I'm sorry for lying."
"..."
For a moment, Newbie felt uneasy.
What is this? Did I do something wrong?
Just then, she suddenly hugged him tightly.
"Huh?"
"Hope has finally come to this world! Hahaha!"
The two remained embraced for a long time, casting shadows against the setting sun,
The guild was fading away like that sunset, but new hope was heading toward it.