00002 [Part 1] [Return] ------------------------------------------------------------------------=
It was a forest far removed from the clamor of the world. Beams of light filtering through the leaves illuminated surroundings that had long gone untouched by human hands. Birds flew between the trees, chirping amongst themselves. Depending on the listener, the sound could be heard as whispering or as the song of nature.
The guild hall was there. Shattered windows, paint-peeled walls, crumbling masonry, and thick cobwebs hanging everywhere—it stood there, long abandoned by human footsteps. As if waiting for someone, perhaps waiting for certain people to return, it quietly kept its place.
"It's old, but it's still here."
Karon looked up at the guild hall with deep emotion. He was a boy with striking, calm dark-red hair and golden eyes. Moreover, with the red armor covering his entire body and the sword strapped to his back rivaling his own height, he felt anything but ordinary.
Recalling the past, he walked toward the hall, then smiled with satisfaction upon seeing the plaque.
"Polaris...."
Polaris. It was a word meaning the North Star. It is said that in the days before the compass was developed, sailors always knew their direction by the North Star, which eternally held its place and shone brightly.
He and the comrades who had founded the guild with him had named the guild Polaris for that very reason. A game is a world unlike reality, where bonds can vanish into nothingness at any moment. That was why they had created this guild—to carve a mark so they could meet again anytime, even if they drifted apart. As proof, even though two years had passed since he left this world, the guild hall stood firm in its place.
"How hard it was to make the guild hall permanent... We all went three days and nights without sleep clearing quests back then...."
Objects with the permanent preservation trait were not common in this world. Among them, permanent preservation objects that players could handle were extremely limited. If it was a building object, even more so. It was a building object obtainable only through a single unique quest, and only by clearing an S-rank quest at that.
Just as he had said, Karon had once called his comrades and spent three days and nights working on the S-rank quest. Infiltrating a dragon's lair to find a legendary treasure, frantically running around to stop a war between nations, defeating a sealed sea god of the ocean—he had suffered through nothing but near-impossible problems.
"I thought I was going to die back then, but now I feel like I could do it again... Haha, would the guys curse me out for saying that?"
Returning from his reverie, he smiled to himself and opened the door. As if nothing had changed despite the two years that had passed, he stepped forward energetically, like meeting an old friend after a long time.
He was excited at the thought that his comrades, chatting amongst themselves inside, would greet him casually. He imagined his mischievous comrades might noogie him, asking if he was only returning after over two years. Since he had been in the wrong for leaving without a word, he decided he would let them squeeze him as much as his HP allowed. He thought he would apologize for the fight they had and the farewell they had been unable to make that day.
"...Right."
His excited mood went cold in an instant. The table where he remembered drinking and chatting was covered in dust. Shattered windows, a floor without a single footprint, a cobweb-covered ceiling, an extinguished stove, photos draped in dust—everything in the room made him acutely feel the passage of two years.
"I suppose it's only natural, since I quit the game without a word."
There was no one. The warmth he had clearly felt in that past moment had changed into a cold that seemed to freeze everything.
"Sigh...."
Even before entering the guild hall, he had thought that perhaps there was no one left. It had been two years. Not in reality, perhaps, but in a game, two years was a length of time in which bonds could be severed in an instant. It was far too long for his comrades to welcome him unchanged.
Even so, he had thought that if it were them, they might still be here. He didn't know what confidence this was. Perhaps it was the desperate voice of hope wishing it were so.
"Friends List."
For the first time since logging into the game, he called out a system term. Before his eyes appeared the names of all the players he had befriended until now.
"...No one."
Including the comrades who had founded the guild, none of the friends he had made during that time were logged in. He didn't know if it was simply a matter of mismatched time zones, but it was hard to stay positive. There seemed to be players whose names he couldn't even remember who had severed their friend ties. In the end, he only felt the emptiness of knowing that friends in a game were bonds easily made and easily broken.
"Well, it's my fault for not logging in all this time."
He took a breath and changed his mood. He looked around the dim room once more and turned to leave.
"I should hurry to the meeting place. At this rate, I'll be late."
Karon, having come out of the guild hall, stretched and said,
"Ah, but if I go like this, I'll probably attract a lot of attention."
The equipment he wore was all high-level gear that was difficult to obtain. Considering the levels of the people he was supposed to meet, it seemed like it would stand out. Not wanting to raise unnecessary expectations, he decided to change his equipment before arriving at the meeting place.
"I don't really know their levels, but I guess I should match roughly level 50 items. Let's see, Inventory."
He opened his inventory and checked the items he possessed. Having once been a player who made a name for himself in this world, albeit unintentionally, it was filled with expensive items.
"They're all high-level gear. Maybe I should just buy something roughly in a nearby village. But then I might be late...."
In the end, Karon chose equipment that looked relatively ordinary among what he had. Since there were no people nearby, he changed clothes via the system. The equipment he was wearing vanished one by one, converting to new gear after three seconds. Of course, if he changed manually, he could eliminate the three-second gap, but in that case, the process was complicated and took time.
"This should be fine."
They were the items with the lowest stats among his possessions. Special abilities were still attached, so they were by no means easy to obtain, but they would pass for level 50 gear to anyone looking without issue.
"Well, then... Inventory. Griffin's Flute."
Karon took out from his inventory the item needed for traveling long distances. It was a quest item he had received as payment for breaking the curse on the Griffin King. It was also an item that proved a friendly relationship with griffins.
"Yo."
When he blew the conch-like flute, before long a griffin nearby flew to the front of the hall. The griffin cried out loudly as if expressing its joy, then flapped its wings and gestured for him to climb on.
"Take me to the commercial city of Yest."
The griffin flapped its wings powerfully as if answering.