The Final Boss Has Returned – Episode 17
[Faction Members: 6]
[Leader: Khalid (Level 463/NPC)]
[Loyalty: 100/100]
[Available Funds: 1,000 Gold]
[Currently under surveillance and pressure from the Lawless Port!]
[Members' external activities outside Argan Village are restricted.]
[Faction expansion is restricted.]
The reason I frowned after checking the additional window was simple.
I had roughly guessed the state the Black Ring Society would be in based on the information I’d acquainted myself with beforehand, but the situation was far more serious than I had imagined.
‘Isn’t this just a shiny apricot?’
Surveillance and pressure from the Lawless Port!
Faction expansion restricted, too!
On top of that, the high-level NPCs over level 400 that I’d finally gotten my hands on—Khalid and the black mages—couldn’t even operate outside!
It was truly a pie in the sky!
“Since I’ve received your oath of loyalty, let me ask a question. What do you mean by surveillance from the Lawless Port?”
The situation of the Black Ring Society was direr than I had anticipated based on the information I’d obtained!
To my question, born from that situation, Khalid cleared his throat and began his tale.
“That is a story from over ten years ago.”
The moment Khalid’s story began, a video rose in my vision.
Lawless Port Granado!
In the video, urban warfare was unfolding in a massive city against the backdrop of surging waves.
A fearsome clash between pirates flashing guns and blades and black mages hurling dark magic!
Explosions and smoke billowed from all over the city center.
And right at their vanguard was him.
The young man with an eyepatch over his left eye—Pirate King Drake!
With a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other, Drake flashed about everywhere from the front lines, wielding his aura-laden cutlass and firing his gun, ruthlessly slaughtering the black mages.
The urban warfare ended in the pirate crew’s victory.
Standing atop the corpses of the black mages, Drake shouted loudly in the blood-drenched plaza of Granado.
[Lawless Port Granado now falls under my rule—Pirate King Drake’s!]
[Black Ring Society, you foul, detestable black mages! How dare you refuse my generous terms of surrender! For that crime, I shall claim all your lives!]
And so Granado fell into the Pirate King’s clutches, and the Pirate King returned to his base in the Pirate Archipelago while appointing his subordinate as Granado’s lord, developing the city into a harbor.
“Granado had been the Black Ring Society’s stronghold for over a thousand years. We could not simply hand such a Granado over to that scoundrel known as the Pirate King. So when he appeared with his fleet in the waters off Granado and sent an envoy pushing humiliating conditions while demanding our surrender, we resolved to fight to the death, and as you can see, this is the result.”
The video shut off the moment Khalid finished speaking.
“But now that the Contractor has personally descended by the Demon God’s command, it is time to collect the ten-year-old blood debt from those lawless pirate scoundrels!”
[A quest has been generated!]
[Revival of the Black Ring Society]
[Rank: Legendary]
[Master of the Lawless Port and the Pirate Archipelago, the Lion of the Blue Waves, Conqueror of the Eastern Sea. Pirate King Drake!]
[Ten years ago, the Pirate King’s greed coveted Granado, which had become a coastal city due to the aftermath of the Great Upheaval, and finally birthed a clash with the Black Ring Society.]
[Following the battle for the fate of the Lawless Port, the Black Ring Society lost its former glory and fell into ruin. The six black mages who barely survived the Pirate King’s grasp disguised themselves as village elders of Argan Village and have barely eked out an existence until now.]
[You are the Demon God’s Contractor who has appeared before them for the first time in two thousand years.]
[Lead them to reclaim the Lawless Port that fell into the pirates’ clutches, break the arrogant Pirate King’s nose, and announce to the entire continent that the Black Ring Society has revived.]
[Completion Condition]
[Occupy Lawless Port Granado]
The contents of the quest that appeared so shockingly were stunning.
‘Is this a difficulty that even makes sense right now?’
Even I, who had been through every possible hardship, was left speechless.
Conquer Lawless Port Granado!
It might be called “conquest,” but it essentially meant taking six black mages and me to wage war against a massive city called the Lawless Port and win.
This was impossible.
Maybe if it were me from six years ago, who had ascended to the position of leader of the Iron-Blood Alliance commanding numerous users and NPCs, but for the current me, who had nothing but my own body in the game, it was an impossible difficulty.
No matter how much of a linked quest it was, for it to suddenly jump to such a crazy difficulty at the second stage was the first time in my gaming life, where I’d experienced all sorts of bizarre things.
[The quest cannot be refused.]
[You have accepted the quest.]
What was even more absurd was that I wasn’t even given the choice to refuse this quest.
[The Demon God of Darkness looks at you and smiles.]
[The Demon God of Darkness sponsors you 1,000 points.]
With the Demon God’s message, I logged out right there on the spot.
I had to find a strategy to clear the quest. I had to find a way.
* * *
Revival of the Black Ring Society!
That quest, which told me to wage war against the Lawless Port with six black mages, was tantamount to telling me to commit suicide.
The moment I, having logged out of the capsule, spoke of the absurd quest contents, Team Leader Lee’s face stiffened severely and he called someone.
When the person Team Leader Lee had called finally arrived at the top-floor conference room of the Content Hub building, I couldn’t help but be surprised.
“It’s been a while, Drakan-nim.”
A beauty with neatly cropped dark blue hair and an elegant impression, and the very person who had recruited me to Jeil E&M.
It was because Executive Director Sin Hayeon, a third-generation chaebol of the Jeil Group, had personally appeared here.
The moment Sin Hayeon appeared in the conference room, a heavy silence fell over the dedicated support team, including Team Leader Lee.
Sin Hayeon looked around the conference room and smiled brightly.
“Who would have thought you’d bring such visible results as a Legendary-grade quest so soon after signing the contract? It seems the contract with Drakan-nim was indeed a wise choice.”
“That’s not what’s important right now. What’s important is a solution.”
The quest I had received was indeed a large-scale quest.
The problem was that I couldn’t see any way to clear such a massive quest right now.
No matter how much my level had risen, I was only in the early level 100s.
With such a low level and no guild backup, waging war against a metropolis with six black mages no matter how high-level they were, and even winning, was an objective with zero chance of success by common sense or objective standards.
Sin Hayeon smiled upon seeing my serious expression.
“Why are you worrying about that at all?”
“You’re not joking with me right now, are you?”
I furrowed my brow.
I couldn’t understand her behavior.
I had received a quest with an absurd objective, yet she wore an attitude of utter leisure.
Sin Hayeon smiled faintly as she looked at my expression.
“Don’t forget.”
Sin Hayeon’s smile deepened as she looked at my face.
“That I am always by your side.”
Sin Hayeon took a step closer to me.
“And those words mean the same thing as saying the Jeil Group always stands behind you.”
The moment Sin Hayeon said that, a thrill ran through my head.
The Jeil Group was behind me!
The power of a major conglomerate that I had slightly forgotten until now began to feel vividly real.
Chaebol, the power holders of the real world, the very embodiment of the establishment!
Them being behind me meant, in other words, that I could borrow their near-infinite real-world power.
“Rankers? Named Players? Large guilds? Media play? Items? Broadcasts? Tell me whatever you need.”
Sin Hayeon drew close to me and whispered in a sweet voice.
“No matter what your requirements are, everything you wish for will come true.”
That she would make everything come true as I spoke.
It was something that might come out of a fairy tale, but Sin Hayeon’s expression as she said it held nothing but genuine seriousness.
I looked at Sin Hayeon and thought.
‘There was still something I was thinking about wrong!’
That’s right.
I had been thinking wrong.
Even though the times had changed, I was still trapped in the playstyle from six years ago.
A quest inside the game must be solved inside the game!
Those thoughts had been dominating my mind.
The very concept of clearing an in-game quest using real-world power was a foreign one to me.
And for good reason—six years ago, the concept of management didn’t even exist, and at best, you sent gameplay videos to cable broadcast stations or uploaded screenshots to the Ard Forum.
There was almost no solving quests by actively dragging external, out-of-game means into the game like this.
Back then, the way to solve large-scale quests was solely to muster people by mobilizing your in-game connections and influence—guilds, colleagues, NPCs, friendly factions, and so on.
The only exceptional case was pouring money I’d borrowed in real life into the game because of the Conqueror Quest?
But that was a truly exceptional case, and even that had ended in failure.
Anyway, there were almost no users who actively mobilized external means such as real-world wealth and power to solve quests like now.
Ard Saga was a game that implemented a virtual reality so perfect it could be called another world, indistinguishable from reality, but six years ago, it was still a game at the end of the day.
And there was an unspoken agreement that game matters should end inside the game.
Even six years ago, there was interaction between the real world and the game world through the Ard Forum and cable game broadcasts, but the two were explicitly separated.
What happened in the game stayed in the game; what happened in reality stayed in reality.
That had been common sense six years ago, and I had unconsciously thought the same way.
So it was only natural, in a way, that I held such a bias.
But that fixed notion had been shattered just moments ago.
Sin Hayeon had awakened me to it.
Now is different from six years ago!
Unlike the previous game, Ard Saga Second had seen the appearance of a real-time internet broadcasting platform called Ard Live, the activation of SNS, and the emergence of user management, causing the market scale to grow incomparably larger than in the past. The real world and the game world were interacting and influencing each other far more actively than six years ago.
And by now, the real world and the game world were no longer two separate worlds, but had become one world influencing each other.
It was an era where real-world affairs affected the game, and in-game affairs were resolved by mobilizing real-world means.
The unspoken rule that in-game matters should end in the game had been shattered long ago!
I engraved that fact—the new rule that governed the present—into my mind.
Moreover, behind me stood both her and the Jeil Group.
No matter how impossible the quest, if I mobilized real-world power, there was a chance of victory.
So say what you want!
My heart, which had been racing like crazy at the quest’s difficulty and contents, settled down, and my head, which had been burning hot, began to cool.
I smiled coldly.