At the very moment the answer to the question of why was standing right in front of him, Haesal was left momentarily speechless.
Well, because if I stayed in offline status, hyung might wonder when this guy ever logs in, and maybe, even if only for a moment, he might think about me?
If Haein had known that in truth it was not just for a moment, but for quite a long time, he would have writhed in joy and caused floor-thumping noise all over again, but since Yeonjun had no reason to say it out loud, there was no way it would reach him.
Having barely regained his senses, Haein lied calmly.
[Party/DoHaesal: Ah, lately because of guild-related stuff]
[Party/DoHaesal: I’ve been getting all kinds of inquiries]
[Party/DoHaesal: Even when I only answered roughly, the conversations kept dragging on]
[Party/DoHaesal: So I switched it for a bit to avoid that]
[Party/DoHaesal: I guess the setting just stayed on]
Since the status shown on the friend list refreshed to Online every time you logged in, it was obviously a lie.
But since whether it was true or not did not really matter, Yeonjun simply accepted it and nodded to himself.
[Party/Ignis: Is it okay now?]
Ignis-hyung worried about me!
Haein barely restrained the urge to slam his fist down onto the desk and answered calmly.
[Party/DoHaesal: Yes!]
[Party/DoHaesal: You can go in right now!]
By then, Haesal, who had already flown above Ignis’s head, sent away the white bird he had been riding and lightly landed on the ground.
Really, no matter how many times he saw it… if the character model had not been that beautiful, it would have been an elegant motion that felt burdensome.
[Party/Ignis: Let me progress it a bit]
[Party/Ignis: and I’ll go in right away]
[Party/DoHaesal: Yep!]
Muttering to himself not to think too deeply, that there was no need to assign meaning to somebody else’s trivial actions, Yeonjun clicked the NPC.
At once, the dialogue window popped up, and a long script unfolded for the sake of progression.
[Esmeralda: Wanderer, would you listen to my story?]
As it happened, Yeonjun had brought along the only acquaintance with whom he had felt an awkward distance of about one hundred thousand light-years the last time they had spoken, precisely in order to hear her story now.
[Esmeralda: Thank you. The truth is, it feels a bit hard to talk about with the people around me… You must know the rumors about me, yes?]
In the story, Esmeralda was a character holding a minor key needed to reach the final chapter.
The character herself was not especially important or remarkable, but only with the key to the drawbridge she managed could the player enter the ruins and find the clue leading to the final chapter.
And so Yeonjun, like the player, was now in the position of having to fuss around like this and win Esmeralda’s favor in order to borrow the key she held.
Though she had remained unmarried into her late thirties, as the third daughter of the richest man in the village and its most respected figure, she was burdened by the rumor that she had waited until her older sisters were married off and removed from their father’s family registry, then killed her father and seized the inheritance for herself.
But that was only a conspiracy born out of jealousy and envy toward a young woman inheriting enormous wealth. The truth was different.
There was a hidden backstory that Esmeralda had stayed by her ailing father’s side in place of the sisters who had left home, and because if she too abandoned him there would be no one left to care for him, she had remained unmarried until his dying day.
The man who finally came to marry her, though she was misunderstood as a witch who had murdered her father, was Austin.
But because he was an outsider who had happened to meet Esmeralda while wandering through the forest outside the village and had ended up promising marriage, the people around them did not look kindly on their relationship.
[Esmeralda: I can endure the bad rumors about me… things like being called a witch. But I don’t want him to go through the same thing because of me.]
[Esmeralda: Will you help the villagers understand how sincere he is?]
And the next step was the RP dungeon that recreated how the two of them had happened to meet in the forest.
[▶ Form a 2-person party and talk to Esmeralda]
[▷ Clear the RP dungeon]
Before he knew it, a brooch he had never seen before had appeared in Yeonjun’s quest-item inventory.
[Party/Ignis: I’m going in now]
[Party/DoHaesal: Yep!]
After confirming Haesal’s agreement, Yeonjun right-clicked the brooch containing the memories of Esmeralda and Austin and pressed the Enter button.
Everything around them was swallowed in black, then brightened again, and they found themselves moved to the middle of a dense forest.
Come to think of it, was this one of those dungeons where the entrant’s role was fixed as Esmeralda?
Before Yeonjun could even check, pop, the screen shifted into the playable scene and the characters each of them had been assigned were shown.
[2-Person Party]
[Austin (Ignis)]
[Esmeralda (DoHaesal)]
Hm… so it was random rather than fixed.
Moving the explorer character with healthy sun-darkened skin, Yeonjun approached Haesal.
[Party/Austin (Ignis): Let’s get this done quickly]
[Party/Esmeralda (DoHaesal): Yep!]
For some reason it felt strange that Haesal seemed to have been typing nothing but yep for a while now, but it did not really matter.
As Yeonjun started striding toward the marked direction on the map, animal monsters suited to the area began to appear: forest snakes, grizzly bears, horned deer.
All of them were, according to the setting, animals that had lost their reason under the influence of the mastermind of this chapter and had been transformed into forms resembling demonic beasts.
Austin, judging by the setting, seemed to be a character who shared an Alchemist skill set.
Without difficulty, Yeonjun checked the skills arranged on the hotkeys, then began picking off the monsters charging toward him one by one.
[System: <Acid Attack>]
A small explosion effect appeared where Yeonjun threw the reagent bottle, dealing damage to the monster.
When he glanced over toward Haesal’s side, it looked like he had been given an SH just like his own class, so it should have been an NPC-fixed setup, and yet he was practically flying all over the place.
[System: <Blown Shower>]
‘He really is good…’
Even though the values should all have been more or less fixed, he was clearing monsters at a speed that could not even be compared to the Esmeralda from the strategy video Yeonjun had briefly watched, and Yeonjun still could not quite let go of the thought that maybe solo play really was impossible here.
It was to the point that the synergy dealer SH looked like an outright DPS class.
Not to be outdone, or rather, even though he probably would be outdone, Yeonjun did not want to just stand there blankly watching, so he quickly used a dash skill and rushed in.
Haesal timed it perfectly and cast a buff skill on him.
[System: <Fair Tail>]
At once, the [Fair Wind] buff took effect, putting Ignis and Haesal into a state where they were each giving one another an attack-power bonus.
Since both of them were people more than capable of pulling their own weight, Yeonjun succeeded in clearing it in less than half the time it had taken in the video.
And he found himself impressed by the same common impression almost everyone who saw Haesal came away with.
‘How does he not get hit even once?’
Rather than spectating a play video from an observer’s point of view, running right beside him like this made the difference between Haesal and other SH players stand out even more sharply.
He really did not get hit even once.
Yeonjun clicked his tongue at the flawless control that rendered the paper-thin body, SH’s greatest weakness, completely meaningless.
‘Guess he really does have good physicals, probably because he’s a kid…’
As people get older, and as things more important than games appear in their lives, the body and mind naturally grow tired, and the fingers slow down too.
Once, Yeonjun too had a time when he could fly around like that, but that was all in the past now.
Feeling a bit envious and a bit proud despite himself, Yeonjun unconsciously lifted the corner of his mouth into a faint smile.
[Party/Austin (Ignis): Thanks to you, Haesal-nim, that ended really fast]
[Party/Austin (Ignis): Thank you]
He had thought if he did this too, it would probably go a little past midnight, but seeing that it was still only 11:40, it seemed like he would still have about thirty minutes to do something else before sleeping.
While Yeonjun was satisfied with the quick clear, Haein too was in the middle of weeping tears of emotion after striking the greatest treasure in the world.
[Austin (Ignis): Will you marry me?]
Although the NPC name for the RP was attached in front, and it was only an NPC line being delivered during the RP, still, no matter whether by his own will or someone else’s, it was a script in which Ignis was proposing to him.
And as if the developers had deliberately inserted it for comic effect, a cutscene briefly flashed by showing the actual player characters, rather than Esmeralda and Austin, holding a wedding ceremony in-game.
(T/N: Kyaaaa!)
Naturally, Haein did not miss that brief timing and succeeded in recording it.
Whether Haein did that or not, however, the only things in Yeonjun’s head were Haein’s movement and physical control, which had reached the level of pure pettiness.
[Party/Esmeralda (DoHaesal): It ended fast because hyung was good at itㅎㅎ]
[Party/Esmeralda (DoHaesal): I didn’t really do anything]
Didn’t do much, my ass.
While Yeonjun had fumbled a little at the start because Alchemist was not familiar in his hands, Haesal had already wiped out almost all the monsters by himself, and yet he was being absurdly modest.
[Party/Austin (Ignis): No]
[Party/Austin (Ignis): I didn’t do anything except follow along]
And he admired Haesal’s pettiness, the way he just would not let himself get hit even once.
If Yeonjun had been one of the monsters, he might have died suddenly of stress from sheer aggravation.
[Party/Esmeralda (DoHaesal): Hyung, that kind of modestyㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
[Party/Esmeralda (DoHaesal): At that point they call it deception]
Deception, my ass.
Letting out a small laugh, Yeonjun pressed the Exit button.
Leave a Reply