The old guard started walking again, murky tears glistening in his eyes.
"My hometown used to be a little town farther north."
"A few years ago, the barrier broke. I watched with my own eyes as a Blood Vulture carried my little granddaughter into the sky... she'd only just turned seven."
"I ran after it with everything I had, screamed with everything I had, but I couldn't save her... there was nothing I could do."
The old guard wiped the corner of his eye and shook his head with a bitter smile.
"From that day on, I understood. People at the bottom like us are born to be fodder in this Wasteland. Every extra day we live is a day gained."
"You're still young. To crawl out of a pile of corpses and stand here in one piece is already an incredible blessing."
"Don't dwell on whether you still have a home. In times like these, as long as you're still breathing, as long as you can still see tomorrow's sun, anywhere you can stay alive... is home."
As the old guard poured out his heart in those seemingly matter-of-fact words,
the entire dimly lit street fell deathly silent.
The two Third Closed Beta newbies following behind, [Don't Dream of the Day] and [Mosquitoes Faint at the Sight of Blood], had completely forgotten they were "acting."
They stared blankly at the red-eyed old NPC before them, their throats tightening.
He was just a lowly NPC in a game!
Yet the slight tremble of his lips as he spoke, the indelible despair and numbness in his eyes,
felt so real it was suffocating!
To players like them, the black fog outside was a mechanic that drained Sanity, and the monsters were walking bundles of experience and Ash Coins.
But to these