Episode 51
[Party] Jaesugang: There wasn’t
[Party] Jaesugang: I was far away to begin with, so I couldn’t see anything..
[Party] Kkulppang: What is it, then...
[Party] Kkulppang: Does the story progress if we leave?
Uh, wait. Was it really one of those things where the story progressed if we left?
I’d said it without thinking much, but it sounded pretty plausible. Whether the clear reward had been intended or bugged, it hadn’t dropped properly, but the last boss seemed to be dead for now, and the NPC’s whereabouts were unclear, so we might find out why if we left the dungeon.
I naturally moved toward the portal and clicked. Just as the message asking whether I wanted to move to the entrance popped up, Jaesugang came rushing over to me, hopping up and down as if he’d been startled out of his wits.
[Party] Jaesugang: Waiytwaiwait
[Party] Jaesugang: Waitasecwaitwaiaiaiaiai
[Party] Jaesugang: You’re leaving??>?
[Party] Kkulppang: yeah?
Was I not supposed to leave?
It felt as if someone had grabbed and tugged at the finger I’d been about to use to press the move button, like the letters had hands. He looked that desperate, so I pressed ESC and closed the system window.
[Party] Jaesugang: This is the only place we can talk like this
[Party] Jaesugang: Can’t we talk a little more before we go?
[Party] Jaesugang: You don’t even have to talk, so let’s stay a bit longer. I’ll chatter by myselfㅠ
[Party] Jaesugang: I’m going to backtrack through this map too... The map’s pretty, so at least take a few screenshots before we go
It was just chat, yet every single character looked desperate. Maybe it was because, whenever Jaesugang typed, his ridiculously nice voice automatically played in my head.
Of course, that didn’t mean I felt like staying here. Maybe it was because it had been a while since I’d tried a new dungeon, but I was tired too (though I still had the stamina to do PvP), and it wasn’t like I’d never see him again if I left (though we’d meet as enemies), and we could still chat (though I’d have to kill him), and if worse came to worst, we could talk on Kakaotalk. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do here.
More than anything, I was curious about the next part of the story. We’d poured an hour and a half into this dungeon, but nothing had been resolved. It felt uncomfortable because I wasn’t sure if the boss had died or whether we had actually cleared the dungeon, and I was also curious why Abria, who had come to this dungeon searching for the truth, had suddenly disappeared together with Adam.
[Party] Kkulppang: We can just come again later, yeah
[Party] Jaesugang: What if it’s a dungeon you can’t enter again?
[Party] Kkulppang: What percentage chance do you think there is of that?
When I asked him back, Jaesugang paused for a moment.
[Party] Jaesugang: Looking at the quality of the last boss.......it probably is a dungeon we can come back to....
[Party] Jaesugang: But aren’t you still sad?
Not at all?
We’d be able to party up again later anyway, so what was there to be sad about? Of course, I probably shouldn’t say that so directly. Jaesugang was acting like this because he liked me enough to want to stay with me longer.
While I was thinking a little about how to put it more indirectly, Jaesugang, who had terrifyingly good instincts, was already welling up with tears in chat.
[Party] Jaesugang: ㅠ
[Party] Kkulppang: lol; why are you crying
[Party] Jaesugang: Why do you think..
[Party] Kkulppang: But
[Party] Kkulppang: when
[Party] Kkulppang: I see you
[Party] Kkulppang: in the field
[Party] Kkulppang: you’re the one I’m happiest to see...
[Party] Jaesugang: That’s true
Look at him accepting it so readily.
Even though he said that, he must have felt regretful, because he stuck close beside my character and wriggled around. I could see him shifting in tiny movements forward, back, left, and right, trying to position himself as close as possible without overlapping.
[Party] Jaesugang: If you say you’re leaving, then there’s nothing I can do....... I’ll let you go..........................
[Party] Kkulppang: You look like you have a shit ton of lingering attachment
[Party] Jaesugang: ㅜ
[Party] Jaesugang: I’ll be out in the field soon tonight, so wash your neck and wait
[Party] Kkulppang: ? lol?
[Party] Kkulppang: I’m the class that uses a sword, so why
[Party] Jaesugang: Because I’m going to give you an injection in the neck
[Party] Kkulppang: Funny;
[Party] Kkulppang: You’re the one
[Party] Kkulppang: who should wash up
[Party] Kkulppang: and wait properly
[Party] Jaesugang: Don’t cause another scene at Jeopjok Base just to call me...
[Party] Kkulppang: If you show up every time I need you
[Party] Kkulppang: then I won’t have to ring the doorbell^^
Only after we’d bickered back and forth for quite a while did I start to think I really should leave. I was streaming, after all, and it didn’t seem right for me to keep dragging things out.
I moved my character wildly from side to side, signaling to Jaesugang that I was going to go now. Then Jaesugang also shook his character side to side and sent a chat. I thought it would be a farewell, but it wasn’t; it was him asking me for something.
[Party] Jaesugang: Before you go, can I try something I’ve always really wanted to do to you, Bread-nim?
[Party] Kkulppang: yeah??
[Party] Kkulppang: What is it
[Party] Jaesugang: hehe, I don’t really want to tell you...
[Party] Jaesugang: Can I try it?
I had no idea what Jaesugang wanted to try. What was there to do while in a party inside a dungeon? He must have gotten sick of healing while we were running the dungeon, and since our races were different, we probably couldn’t trade or anything like that either.
It wasn’t like he could kill me either, so I stood still, as if telling him to go ahead if he wanted. Then Jaesugang laughed in a somewhat unsettling “hehe.”
[Party] You have been kicked from the party.
[System] You have left the party that was in the middle of an instance dungeon and will be forcibly moved to the dungeon entrance in 10 seconds.
“Huh.”
He’d said it was his wish, so I’d let him, and then, in a completely unexpected way, an order to leave was issued.
[General] Kkulppang: ???
[General] Kkulppang: ????????
[General] Jaesugang: I happened to be party leader ㅎ
[General] Jaesugang: Bye-bye
Dumbfounded, I clicked on Jaesugang and stared at him while firing question marks, but the only reply I got was a farewell.
In the end, I was thrown out of the dungeon, and the loading screen came up. Wow……. He got me good. What even was that level of initiative? No matter how much I’d been planning to leave, since it happened through someone else’s will, it felt strange, like I’d been kicked out. I thought I’d gotten used to Jaesugang screwing me over in these absurd ways, but used to it, my ass. Apparently, I still had a long way to go.
Still, this much was on the cute side, so I wasn’t angry and only let out a slight empty laugh. It was very, very adorable. He’d wanted to try kicking me from the party to send me out. It was an idea that suited Jaesugang all too well. Of course, that didn’t mean I was going to let it slide.
While I was thinking about how to repay this cute humiliation, the loading finished, an alert sounded to say the quest had been updated, and a new story cutscene began playing on the screen. Come to think of it, the reason I’d been trying to leave was because of the story. Thanks to Jaesugang, I’d completely forgotten.
In the automatically playing cutscene, Kkulppang came out through the castle gate and took a step into the glass cave. After walking a few steps like that, a beeping sound I seemed to have heard a lot today rang out, and Kkulppang staggered weakly.
― ‘Go…… back…… child. You…… too…… I’ll give.’
A whispering voice echoed from somewhere, flat and at a steady pace. It had a metallic ring and came through torn apart, like a radio with poor reception.
My character, frowning as if from a headache while looking around to see whether someone was beside him, suddenly opened his eyes wide right after the noise sounded. Then, with a direction that made it look as though we were being drawn into those strangely dilated pupils, the screen immediately changed.
The view shifted to first person, and the first thing I saw was a hand wearing familiar gear planted against the white floor of the lounge we’d been in earlier. Those were definitely the Commander-in-Chief Divine Knight gloves. It seemed this was the viewpoint my character was seeing from.
As Kkulppang staggered to his feet, the screen shook unstably. The blurred vision made it feel as if I were looking ahead through a camera in poor condition.
The place Kkulppang barely managed to drag himself toward, with heavy, slow steps, was in front of Abria. Seeing that gave me a sense of déjà vu.
When my character stood before him, Abria tried to step back. And his escape route was blocked by Adam’s hand beside him. After watching this far, I realized why I’d felt that sense of déjà vu. This was the part I’d seen earlier on Jaesugang’s stream after getting disconnected from the server. I was watching it from my character’s point of view.
― ‘Don’tgoback. Iwillgiveyouhelp.’
Hearing my character’s voice—more precisely, the voice of the boss that had taken over Kkulppang’s body—Abria’s blue eyes trembled without pause. But at the words that seemed to say it would help him, he stopped backing away and slowly met my gaze head-on.
To him, Kkulppang created a familiar sphere of white light and placed it in his hand. When Abria obediently accepted the sphere, the bizarre voice spoke again, rapid-fire, in words that were hard to understand.
― ‘Godshavenointerestinchild. Becauseyouarestory.’
― ‘Don’tbelievegod.’
The sphere of light, which had only been round, began to creep and shift. Then white powdery light flowed out from my character’s body and was absorbed into the sphere.
― ‘Don’t believe in god? But god is…… god is you.’
Huh?
I opened my eyes a little wider. I’d never dreamed Abria would know the boss’s true identity. After all, he’d said nothing when the boss first appeared, and he hadn’t tried to stop us while we kept attacking the boss.
Why had he quietly let us beat up a god? A priest failing to protect a god was behavior that went against the kind of concept Dusk loved so much. The moment the boss appeared, he should have jumped up and cried, “Th-that person is!” So why?
― ‘I. amanabandonedshell. I. amnotgod. Godsdon’tknow. Myrecord.’
However, the boss whom the priest himself had affirmed was a god insisted that it was not a god.
My character, who had cut off the words there, suddenly turned his head and looked at Jaesugang, who was unable to move because of a status abnormality. Then he turned his gaze back to Abria and whispered in a voice even smaller than before.
― ‘This. isamadeshell. I. knewmyselfandwasabandoned.’
― ‘Youarelikeme…….’
The sphere of light in Abria’s hand rippled. The sphere, which had stretched and shrunk in several directions as if dancing, gradually took on a definite shape. It was the key I had seen Abria holding after I logged back in.