After Ignis vanished, Flammer, which had been run on an even smaller scale than Yeonhwa, suffered headaches over defense-war problems.
It was one thing to temporarily bring in mercenaries to patch the gap because they had no people to participate in defense wars, but that only worked for a day or two.
Taking advantage of the moment when Flammer’s combat power had weakened, every random nobody trying to steal their castle kept rushing in, and the guild members’ fatigue began to pile up.
As that happened, everyone split into factions of “Let’s wait a little longer for Ignis” and “He disappeared without saying a single word, so what are you still expecting?” Even within their small number of members, they repeatedly divided among themselves.
Then, when “Brilliant Moon” and “Polar Bear” transferred to a rival guild, they fell below the minimum number of people needed to respond to defense wars, and just like that, they began to walk the path of decline.
No, they understood that he liked Ignis, but what were they supposed to do if he tried to imitate even this? At this rate, aren’t we really going to end up like Flammer too? Just as that sense of crisis rose, Planaria screamed.
[Guild/Planaria: What?]
[Guild/Planaria: If we keep this up]
[Guild/Planaria: Aren’t we going to get our castle taken too??????]
When Planaria imagined the worst-case scenario and asked, AuroraPatient once again thought of the worst and answered.
[Guild/AuroraPatient: I don’t think so, personally.]
[Guild/AuroraPatient: But honestly, we won’t know until we try.]
[Guild/Middle-Aged Hunter: It’s not like we have plenty of people for attack and defense wars either.]
[Guild/Middle-Aged Hunter: I think we’ll be fine for a month.]
[Guild/Middle-Aged Hunter: But starting next month, honestly, it might get a bit rough.]
At AuroraPatient’s cold diagnosis, Planaria sobbed while mashing random keys.
[Guild/Planaria: nooo ♡♡ mmmeong-eongnoeonawaa naaaaneumeuumnni]
[Guild/Planaria: I cut down my part-time hours, I said moryeononongreonn]
[Guild/Planaria: If I’m going to pull kits, I absolutely need my pension.]
“Pension” was slang referring to each guild member’s share distributed from the castle lord’s profits.
The same thought came to everyone’s mind. No matter what, they had to persuade Ignis-nim.
Their guild master had always been a little strange, but now, from the shock, he had truly become an idiot.
Even if only to bring him back, they had to find some kind of method.
And so, the method squeezed out by a group of adults in their early twenties was an extremely simple and grindy strategy.
[Guild/AuroraPatient: If you think about it rationally,]
[Guild/AuroraPatient: He told Guild Master not to bother him.]
[Guild/AuroraPatient: It’s not like he gave a restraining order to us too.]
With AuroraPatient’s miraculous logic, Farming Theory, who was one of the least-known members of Yeonhwa guild, was deployed first.
It was the so-called “Since when did you buy this field?” operation.
After even deciding the order of who would be deployed next if Farming Theory failed, Yeonhwa’s guild members dispersed, hoping their guild master would quickly recover from the shock.
***
“…”
Meanwhile, since he had finished all the main quests, Yeonjun started his return to fishing with an easy heart.
At the mail that no longer arrived, he felt both relieved and strangely complicated.
It was less the shameless, contradictory feeling of, ‘I did tell him not to send anything anymore, but is he really not sending anything?’ and more that, ever since returning to Erha Online, a name he had seen every single day had slipped right out of Yeonjun’s daily life, so he could not help feeling the empty space it left behind.
‘Did I speak too harshly?’
Being embarrassed was one thing, but it was an undeniable fact that Haesal had helped him.
He had asked him for help with quest dungeons, received items, and even gotten help filling the encyclopedia, yet he had told him never to contact him again.
No, setting all that aside, the idea that not contacting him could be the price and retaliation for the deception was ridiculous. It was not as if they were in a romantic relationship or anything.
What annoyed him even more was himself, for feeling an unacceptable sense of emptiness just because Haesal really was not contacting him.
All his goodwill toward Haesal had drained away like the tide, so he had thought nothing would be left at the bottom of that sea. He had never dreamed that regret would be sunk there.
‘It’s not like this is my first or second day playing console games…’
Could he really say it had only been a little under a week since his routine became finishing his exhausting day, logging in, recording the results of his market monitoring centered on items, checking the crops at his private house, then immediately taking his fishing rod and heading out into the field to work on the fisherman encyclopedia?
A strange weariness caught at Yeonjun’s ankles.
It was not as if this was his first time playing without interacting with a single person other than NPCs, so why did it feel this awkward?
Just as Yeonjun was about to blame the spring weather that did not suit him, wondering if he was getting sentimental from the season these days, a familiar character appeared before his eyes.
‘Why do I feel like I saw that person somewhere yesterday too?’
About twenty steps away from the spot where Yeonjun had cast his fishing rod and was waiting for the bobber to twitch, a Teran-race character with a massive presence that could not be ignored even if he tried had unfolded a chair and was sitting there.
The customization was so distinctive that he could not think he had mistaken him for someone else. The entire time Yeonjun was logged in, the man sat at a distance where his nickname was just barely visible and faint, silently holding a fishing rod, making it hard to tell whether he was away from keyboard or actually playing.
‘…’
If he was a user who was interested in him, then by now, he would have checked Yeonjun’s ID and already asked whether he was that Ignis.
Yeonjun could not erase the unpleasant feeling for a while, but soon decided to think nothing of it and not pay attention.
Just as the saying went, it was not as if he had rented out the entire field, so he had no right to demand why someone else was fishing there. He simply thought it must be someone whose order for filling the fisherman encyclopedia overlapped similarly with his own.
While Yeonjun silently played an old variety show off to one side of the client window and repeatedly cast his fishing rod and refilled his bait, at some point, as if all his bait had been used up, Yeonjun’s character folded the fishing rod and stood upright in place.
I should go to town and refill some bait for the first time in a while.
Just as Yeonjun was rustling around and trying to move through the portal, the Teran-race character who had been silently holding his position across from him ran over and initiated a trade with Yeonjun, canceling the portal movement.
“…….?”
[System: Would you like to accept Farming Theory’s trade request?]
[Yes/No]
Without even needing to think about it, Yeonjun pressed No. Who knew what someone might give him? Why would he casually accept a trade request?
When Yeonjun refused the trade request, the Teran user, as if he were the offended one, displayed a question mark.
[General/Farming Theory: ?]
Yeonjun did not back down and displayed only a question mark in return.
[General/Ignis: ?]
After an awkward silence lingered for a while, Farming Theory dropped bait onto the field floor. Items a user dropped on the field had their ownership reset, except for expensive specially configured items, so anyone could pick them up.
When Yeonjun looked back and forth between the bait that had fallen to the ground and the Teran user, the Teran user gave him a thumbs-up.
[System: Farming Theory gives Ignis a thumbs-up.]
Then he lightly moved his massive body in a quick trot and returned to the place where he had originally been lowering his bobber.
‘Huh…’
What was that?
He was bewildered, but since it would be a waste for the bait to be left on the ground and disappear because no one picked it up, Yeonjun obediently picked up the bait Farming Theory had dropped.
Instead of all kinds of miscellaneous junk items that could be caught in the lake, the fish-dragon bait that made it easier to catch fish was a difficult item to obtain because only those who had raised a special NPC’s affinity to the maximum could purchase it.
The bait itself was not especially expensive, but the qualification to buy it was so bothersome that it was the kind of awkward item where people would rather just fill the encyclopedia raw than go through all that trouble.
In any case, it was not an item he could pass over when he received it for free.
‘Should I give it back?’
No, but he had dropped it himself, and it was not such an expensive item that Yeonjun had to go out of his way to return it.
After thinking about it for a moment, Yeonjun decided to accept Farming Theory’s goodwill.
What did he look like right now, anyway? To the eyes of people who did not know who Ignis was, he was probably on the level of a useless newbie who had just hit max level, wearing old gear roughly thrown together.
He had no equipment that looked expensive, and he was holding only one fishing rod and fishing alone in such a pitiful way. Maybe he looked quite sorry. Yeonjun dismissed it as nothing serious and let it pass.
And by the time he realized that this had been a miscalculation, and that something he did not know about was happening under the surface, there were already about five users with the [Yeonhwa] mark above their heads, lingering around Yeonjun without doing anything suspicious.
“…”
That day too, as always, Yeonjun dragged his exhausted body home after successfully surviving work, washed up in a daze, finished getting ready for bed, and sat down in front of the computer.
It would be nice if he could fill entries 249 to 251 in the encyclopedia today. The one who appeared before Yeonjun, who was steadily conquering the fisherman encyclopedia in order, was Farming Theory in a different outfit from yesterday.
‘Ah.’
Farming Theory truly did nothing.
He simply maintained an awkward distance from Yeonjun and existed there.
From time to time, when Yeonjun seemed to run out of bait, he would trot over and refill him with special bait. But he did not talk to him like Haesal, send a friend request, or ask about his messenger, so there was nothing Yeonjun could complain about.
After all, fields were open to all users, and no one had the right to stop someone from even fishing in front of them.
Leave a Reply