Episode 50

While waiting for the loading to finish, I watched Retake try to figure out what 412 meant. It didn’t seem to have any great significance to me, but apparently he thought differently. Words like A-chip... something-or-other, error, and code entered my ears, only to vanish like melting cotton candy. I wasn’t particularly interested. At most, it was probably some game error code. It was likely the same sort of thing as the code with question marks and English letters that appeared when I got kicked off the server.

In the meantime, the loading ended and I returned to the dungeon. The first thing I saw was Abrea, who had been right in front of me, looking at me with a peculiar expression.

I quickly worked the keyboard and tried moving my character. As soon as Honey Bread’s owner returned, she moved as fluidly as flowing water, as if she had never been creaking at all.

When I started moving around wildly, Abrea took a step back. In his hand was a key I had never seen before. Watching the pure white, holy-looking light ripple around it made me think of that nameless boss. I didn’t think he’d had anything like that when we first entered the dungeon.

[Party] Retake: You’re back?

— “Looks like Honey Bread is back. One moment, please.”

When Retake saw that I had logged in, he stopped sharing various theories with his viewers, and with the sound of his keyboard clacking away, a chat message popped up.

[Party] Honey Bread: Yeah;

[Party] Honey Bread: Did we clear it?

[Party] Retake: I think we did... but it didn’t drop any items

It didn’t drop any items? I turned the camera and thoroughly searched every corner of the lounge where we had fought the boss. Just as Retake said, the refining stones that should have appeared as the clear reward were nowhere to be found, not on the floor, not in my inventory, not even if I washed my eyes and looked again.

Even if what we killed wasn’t the final boss, there should have at least been some junk items from defeating a mob... Wondering if maybe, like the boss’s invisible name or skills, the items were also set to be invisible, I went to the center of the lounge and repeatedly pressed the hotkey I had set for picking things up. But even after sweeping the floor without missing a spot, nothing appeared.

There wasn’t even a portal, which should have appeared if the dungeon had been cleared.

[Party] Honey Bread: What the fuck, we worked so hard to kill it

[Party] Honey Bread: Why won’t it give us items??

[Party] Retake: That too, but I still can’t move...

After reading that chat, I glanced sideways at the spot where Retake was sitting collapsed. Then I scurried over to him and, as if to show off, moved around at random, fully enjoying my freedom.

As I circled around him and displayed some flashy footwork, Retake’s voice came through the stream.

— “That movement is definitely mocking me right now, isn’t it?”

Of course it was.

— “Seriously, how childish...”

He had no idea I was listening, and hearing the unmistakable annoyance in his voice, as if he found me utterly insufferable, put me in a good mood. I don’t know why teasing one person like this was so much fun.

Retake spammed “ㅡㅡ” at my mischievous prank, then said he would try reconnecting and exited the game. It would take some time for him to log back in... While wondering what I should do until then, I temporarily turned off Retake’s voice as he chatted with his viewers.

The boss was gone, and in the current situation, where it was unclear whether the dungeon had been cleared, what I could do was limited. Either progress the story, or, keeping in mind the possibility that what we had painstakingly killed was the second named boss, move on to the next section.

Honestly, judging by both its appearance and its gimmicks, it was reasonable to consider the nameless boss the final named enemy. And then I remembered that Abrea had been holding a shining key earlier. Thinking it might be the object needed to move to the next section, I turned the camera toward where Abrea had been.

But Abrea, who had been there when I logged in just now, was nowhere to be seen. Adam was gone too.

Finding it strange, I looked around and even checked inside the path Omongnuni had opened. There was no trace of Abrea or Adam anywhere.

Usually, when an NPC disappeared, there was a very high chance it was because of the story. But it was rare for them to vanish like this without a word. Considering the nature of games, users inevitably had a limited field of view, so any quest would provide at least a small hint.

Perhaps the story was that someone had kidnapped Abrea, but in a hidden dungeon said to require special conditions to enter, who on earth could take away a holy knight NPC with outstanding abilities?

First of all, it was definitely not Adam. What strength would some scholar who only stared at books have to take him away? And even if he had been kidnapped in the first place, as I said earlier, no matter how thorough someone was, they were bound to leave traces inside a game.

Then where in the world did he go? After thinking it over carefully, I began to wonder if he might have gone ahead to the next area. Abrea might have said something in a speech bubble, and we simply hadn’t seen it. He had obtained that key, after all.

I considered waiting until Retake came back, but curiosity got the better of me, so I crossed the lounge and headed deeper into the map. As I moved toward the wall, a raised platform that soared high came closer. I was looking at the gold-trimmed stairs following an elegant pattern when I noticed a shadowed space behind them.

After passing the platform and entering the dark space, lights came on in the pitch-black surroundings. The candlesticks fixed to the wall had lit golden flames on their own.

There was a staircase leading to the upper floor. I moved my character and climbed straight up the now-lit stairs.

After climbing without stopping, I arrived at another lounge. And it was a hall armed with splendor incomparable to the floor below. If the lower floor where we fought the boss was a temple, this place was a banquet hall.

I casually looked around the interior and checked whether Abrea and Adam were there. But I was the only one standing there blankly. There wasn’t anything that could be called a mob, no NPCs, and it was truly silent, with nothing at all.

When I went deeper inside, something completely unexpected came into view. The moment I saw it, I was so bewildered that my hands stopped operating the keyboard.

At the end of the banquet hall was a dedicated portal that could move us to the dungeon entrance. A dedicated portal was an object prepared for user convenience because there was no function implemented to exit directly from the dungeon, forcing players to go all the way back to the dungeon entrance. In other words, the fact that a dedicated portal had appeared here meant that this place was the dungeon’s final area and its end.

I had no choice but to be flustered. In an instanced dungeon, a portal was only generated after all related story content was finished and the final boss was defeated. Seeing it here now meant we had indeed cleared the final boss, but the problem was the story.

The identity of the nameless boss hadn’t been revealed, nor had the truth Abrea was searching for. The reason I got disconnected, and even the fact that Retake had been afflicted with a status abnormality—none of it had been neatly concluded. Even the NPC who should have explained all this had disappeared.

Left alone with nothing resolved, I somehow felt creeped out. It was similar to situations often seen in horror games or movies, where only the protagonist remained.

[Party] Retake has logged in.

Just then, a notification appeared saying Retake had logged in. Glad to see it, I hurriedly went back down to the lounge where I had left Retake behind.

[Party] Retake: ? Where did you go?

[Party] Honey Bread: Abrea and the others aren’t there, right?

[Party] Retake: They aren’t, but?

[Party] Honey Bread: Come to where I am

[Party] Honey Bread: Here

[Party] Retake: Where??

[Party] Honey Bread: If you go farther in

[Party] Honey Bread: there’s a staircase to the upper floor

[Party] Retake: I’ll be right there

As I was going down the stairs, I ran into Retake, who was climbing up them in the opposite direction.

I told Retake to follow me and went back upstairs into the banquet hall where the dedicated portal was. It was only a game character, but with another person by my side, the chilling feeling retreated as if it had never been there. To think one extra person could make such a difference.

Just as I had earlier, Retake stopped dead when he saw the portal.

[Party] Retake: ???

[Party] Retake: It’s a portal?

[Party] Honey Bread: I think we did clear the boss

[Notice] Hello, this is Dusk, the world where two ends coexist.

[Party] Retake: We didn’t get the rewards, though

[Notice] An error has currently been discovered in the “Hidden Mirror Maze” where reward items do not drop even after defeating the boss.

[Notice] This issue is being fixed as quickly as possible, and Executors who have already cleared it are being sent dungeon clear reward items, including “Frost/Dew Accessory Refining Stones,” via mail.

[Notice] We apologize for the inconvenience.

[Party] Retake: We got them

[Party] Honey Bread: Hahahahaha

[Party] Honey Bread: That just got solved

[Party] Honey Bread: The NPCs suddenly disappeared too

[Party] Honey Bread: Was there any story progression?

[Party] Honey Bread: Oh, that

[Party] Honey Bread: My character

[Party] Honey Bread: moving on its own—I saw it on the stream

After seeing my question, Retake seemed to think for a long while in silence before giving a brief answer.