003. JRPG Cliché.
“A-are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think I’m fine, but do you live nearby? How far is your village from here?”
“If you go straight down this road, you’ll find it. I’ll guide you. Oh, and my name is Yanne.”
“Yanne? That’s a nice name. I’m called Jinwoo.”
I gave her only my given name, omitting my family name, and immediately tried to get up and head to the village.
However, the girl named Yanne fidgeted restlessly like a cat desperate to pee.
“If you need to use the bathroom, go ahead. I’ll wait.”
“No, that’s not it. We can’t just leave the goblins like that. You have to cut off their left ears and pull out the poison sacs under their chins. I heard those fetch money.”
So she hadn’t been desperate for the bathroom; she’d been anxious about leaving valuable things behind.
As Yanne said, it seemed best to grab anything that looked like it could be worth some money.
So I searched the three goblin corpses and found four dirt-caked coins.
Other than that, there was nothing else that looked valuable.
The coins seemed to be copper ones, but since I didn’t know their value, I pocketed them for now.
I cut off the goblins’ left ears with my dagger, then sliced open their jaws to find the poison sacs underneath.
*Damn it…*
Maybe because the game was so realistic, the act of cutting under the goblins’ jaws and pulling out the poison sacs was utterly revolting.
It wasn’t red blood but green, yet the stench was still horrific—work I never wanted to do again.
Fighting back the urge to vomit from the rotting stench, I managed to extract what appeared to be a poison sac soaked in green blood.
Then Yanne held out a wide tree leaf from somewhere.
When I placed the poison sac on the leaf, Yanne carefully wrapped it in several layers of leaves.
“They say one of these poison sacs is worth half a silver.”
Having secured the goblin poison sacs, Yanne seemed relieved and started walking ahead.
We roughly washed up at a stream along the way, and after about ten minutes of walking, a village came into sight.
“Over there is Honey Mushroom Village, where I live.”
It was a village with around twenty wooden houses, surrounded by a wooden fence.
“Yanne! Did you go pick honey mushrooms alone again? Oh, wait, is that a goblin ear you’re holding?”
A guard in his forties manning the village entrance asked, eyeing me warily.
“Yes. I caught them on the way here.”
“Oho! You don’t appear to be injured; that is fortunate. Please, enter. Those who can fight are always welcome. As there is no tavern or inn, you may stay at the chief’s house—that largest one over there. Welcome to Honey Mushroom Village!”
Passing the welcoming guard and entering the village, Yanne cautiously spoke up.
“Um, Jinwoo-nim. Could you perhaps stay at my house instead?”
“Is there a problem with the chief’s house? Do they charge too much for lodging or something?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just… I need the money.”
“Huh?”
So she wasn’t the simple girl cliché, but the money-grubbing thief girl cliché?
“Fine. I’ll stay at your place. But since I should still let the chief know I’m staying in the village, I’ll stop by there first.”
When I went to the biggest house, an elderly couple welcomed me, saying they were glad I had come to the village, and offered to let me stay at their home.
“Actually, I’ve decided to stay at Yanne’s house.”
“Hmph. That wench has a sly streak. Do as you please.”
The chief and his wife immediately turned away, as if they had lost interest.
***
“Is this a bed?”
It was a sleeping space made by forming a rectangle with wooden planks and stuffing it full of straw and grass—an eco-friendly bed you might call nature-friendly.
Yanne, who had shown me where I’d sleep, turned red as if embarrassed, which made me wonder how much I should pay for lodging.
“What about your parents?”
“They passed away in the winter.”
Now I couldn’t bring myself to complain about the poor bedding.
“Yanne! Did an adventurer come to your house?”
“Which road did you come by?”
Perhaps having finished their work, villagers trickled into Yanne’s house one or two at a time, and they all brought something with them.
Since this wasn’t a village that outsiders visited often, the people came bearing gifts to hear news from the outside.
Yanne accepted and collected what the people brought, and only then did I think I understood why she had asked me to stay at her house.
Her goal wasn’t the lodging fee, but the items people would bring.
The problem was that I knew even less about the situation here than they did.
“I am a mage who has just completed my training in the Tower. Because of that, I have no outside news to share.”
“A-A mage? Then, could you perhaps use healing magic?”
I couldn’t use healing magic, but trusting in my healing buff, I said that I could.
“Then, could you please take a look at my father?”
“It wouldn’t be difficult to take a look.”
“I… um… the money for the treatment…”
“Let’s see the patients first and talk later. I know the circumstances of a remote mountain village, so don’t worry.”
It was a realism-oriented game where quest windows didn’t pop up, so I couldn’t tell if this was a quest or not.
But quests like “Save or heal someone in trouble!” were common, so I decided to treat them for now.
When I spoke as if money wasn’t important, sick people from the village flocked in.
There was someone who looked like they had a herniated disc just by glancing at them, and someone so emaciated from a severe illness that they looked on the verge of death.
These kinds of chronic diseases weren’t things that could be cured in one go.
But since this was a game, dramatic recovery might be possible, so I applied healing buffs to everyone.
“Ooh! It’s the light of magic!”
The patients and their guardians alike exclaimed in admiration as the light scattered and sank into the patients’ bodies.
Magic really was all about the visuals!
That was the magic cliché!
“Sir Mage. I know my father’s illness is too deep to be cured. However, I am satisfied that I was able to show him to you and have him receive healing magic.”
The guard in his forties who had been watching the entrance placed two silver coins before me. Here was the reason why magic had to look outstanding and impressive.
Because they could see it with their own eyes, it had the effect of earning their trust.
The others brought money if they had it, or cloth and grain if they didn’t.
When I said I’d cast the magic once more before leaving tomorrow, they all returned happily.
Watching their joyful expressions, I felt quite good myself.
“Sir Mage. Please have this honey water.”
After seeing all the patients off, I sat on the bed, and Yanne brought me some honey water.
“Honey water? Is honey common around here?”
“Yes. The mushrooms I picked today are honey mushrooms.”
“Ah, so that’s why the village is called Honey Mushroom Village.”
Yanne cut off the caps of the honey mushrooms and chopped the stems into pieces before my eyes, then squeezed the stems in a cloth, and sweet honey dripped out drop by drop.
I dipped my finger in the honey and tasted it. Compared to honey harvested from flowers, it was less sticky and sweet, but it was definitely honey.
“Are these honey mushrooms the village’s specialty?”
“Yes. The village is named Honey Mushroom Village because those honey mushrooms grow on that mountain.”
“Really? But why did you go pick them alone? Is there a reason?”
“Well… Goblins know about honey mushrooms too, so when harvest season comes, goblins and people fight over them. Because of that, the honey mushroom patch assigned to our family was taken over by goblins.”
To reclaim the stolen patch, they’d have to fight the goblins, but the village didn’t seem to have the strength for that.
“So, I’ve been sneaking there alone bit by bit. That’s how I ended up being chased by goblins. If I can somehow make it back to the village entrance, the goblins will retreat.”
She looked to be about ten years old now, and it was heartbreaking that she had to risk her life just to survive.
She seemed to be living an adult’s life far too soon.
*With circumstances like these, is this how the cliché quest where she follows me happens?*
I had to check.
“Take everything the villagers brought. That should cover the lodging fee, right?”
“Huh? All of it? There are even two silver coins.”
“Yeah. I don’t need it. What I want more than that is food.”
I gave Yanne the dirt-caked coins I’d taken from the goblins’ pockets.
“Ah, just a moment.”
Yanne ran out with the coins and items, bought a flat loaf of bread, and returned with something that looked like a watery porridge or soup made with wheat.
Looking at the meager food laid out on the table, I wondered if a game really needed to be this realistic.
Still, tearing off pieces of the flat bread and dipping them in the soup wasn’t bad.
Dipping it in honey and eating it with the soup filled my mouth with the savory scent of oats and the sweetness of the honey, making for quite a delicacy in its own way.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
“I already ate my portion for today.”
Skinny arms and legs, and messy sackcloth-like clothes.
Thinking about how she’d just bought the bread for me, I wondered if Yanne would have had a proper dinner if I weren’t here.
She probably would have eaten nothing but the leftover mushrooms after squeezing out the honey.
I deliberately left some bread and soup for Yanne, then lay down on the straw bed to sleep.
***
*[Ding-dong! You have played for 7 hours and 20 minutes. Your bodily reactions are normal, and everything is stable.]*
The manual had said that if you log out while sleeping and log back in, you will reconnect at the same time.
Checking the clock and calculating, the time inside the game was at a 3:1 ratio with real time.
The reason the secretary had emphasized 8 hours seemed to be because that equaled 24 hours in-game.
Since they were telling us not to connect for more than a day in game time, the calculations seemed easy enough.
“But putting everything else aside, this game is way too realistic.”
I could still feel the oat bread in my mouth, and thinking about how my left arm had been hurt, I rubbed it.
The game’s sense of realism was extraordinary.
Since this was my first playthrough, I wrote up a report on the testing situation and sent it, and just in case, I contacted the secretary.
“Excuse me, Director. I saw in the game manual that we could receive help with things like food and weapons; how do we get that?”
“Ah, you’ve already tried the food and combat?”
“Yes. I sent the combat-related details in the report. It’s so realistic that the pain feels completely real. It was pretty tough. I think there should be an option to adjust the sensitivity for feeling this kind of pain.”
“I see. I’ll check the report and speak with the development team. As for food, we probably can’t upgrade the entire world on that side, so we’ll put cooking utensils and seasonings in your inventory.”
“Oh, so you’re saying I need to cook if I want to eat something tasty in the game.”
“Yes. It’s unavoidable since it’s still the beta version.”
“Well, if you can do that much, it should be fine. Then I’ll send what I need in a report as well.”
The realism of killing goblins and rummaging through their flesh had been tremendous, so cooking was probably implemented just as realistically.
Since I might end up in the restaurant business after being a game tester, that kind of cooking play didn’t seem bad at all.
After sending the report with my requests, it was time to live my real life.
I told my parents that I had quit being a pro gamer and gotten a job at the company “Changing.”
Since being a new game tester was top secret, I was told not to tell even my family, so I said I had joined as a regular employee.
My mother was overjoyed that I had joined the global conglomerate Changing, and she seemed especially happy because I told her it had nothing to do with games.
I slept soundly and ate a solid meal.
Then, after working out at the gym, I prepared to get back in the capsule.
***
“Hmm. Park Jinwoo started in a remote forest. They say he called after sending the report; does that mean he’s suspicious?”
Illon Busker asked the secretary on the screen while looking over Park Jinwoo’s translated report.
“No. He hasn’t caught on at all. He believes that place is inside the game.”