Chapter 8
One of the suspicious private rooms in the Adventurers’ Guild.
A young elf girl who had just put her Extra point into Mental Fortitude lay sprawled on the floor while her master, a cleric, spoke with a receptionist from the Adventurers’ Guild.
“From now on, please allocate stats like that in a private space.”
“Yes… I suppose we should.”
Seonghyeon looked at Suyeon, who had collapsed face-down.
Her face was bright red, cold sweat covered her body, and her palms bore marks from clenching her fists.
Suyeon glared at Seonghyeon with eyes sharp enough to shoot lasers.
Regardless, the receptionist continued her explanation with a sunny smile.
“This is the payment for the magic stones you just turned in. As for quests, pick one from the quest board, and I’ll register you for it.”
“Understood. Thank you as always, Miss Ariel.”
“You’re very welcome.”
The receptionist, Ariel, clasped her hands together and smiled, her expression gentle to match her face.
But there was one person who watched the scene with a sour look.
“Tch…”
“Hey, you’re awake? Can you walk?”
Instead of answering, Suyeon clenched her fists and pressed her lips together.
She was seething inside, debating whether to kick that wretched friend of hers,
but she’d only get it back twice as hard, and she was already entirely indebted to Seonghyeon, so she thought better of it and held back.
Even so, her frustration wouldn’t go away, so she decided not to say anything.
“If you can walk, let’s go.”
“Ugh…”
“What’s wrong?”
Suyeon gritted her teeth.
She wanted to shout, “How am I supposed to go outside in this state?” but her pride wouldn’t let her.
Instead, she swallowed her anger and lowered both legs to the floor.
“?”
But the ground wasn’t kind enough to support her trembling legs.
As she started to fall, Suyeon grabbed hold of a sturdy pillar within reach.
When she looked up after grabbing it… she realized she’d ended up clinging to Seonghyeon’s thick legs.
“Ah…”
“Can’t get up? Then say so, and I’ll carry you.”
“Ugh… I can get up!”
Suyeon grabbed Seonghyeon’s thigh and struggled to stand.
But the miracle of her trembling legs standing firmly on the ground never came.
“Oh my, Raine. You’re welcome to spend some quality time with your slave before you leave. This room is for that sort of thing, too. Just make sure you vacate within an hour, okay?”
“N-no, Ariel. It’s not like that. We’re leaving right away.”
When Ariel looked at him with her eyes half-closed, Seonghyeon waved his hands and shook his head.
Ariel gave the two of them an ambiguous smile, then left to get back to work.
The two of them were left alone in the private room, and an awkward silence settled over them.
“You… You didn’t tell her anything weird, did you?”
“I didn’t! Wow, I—honestly. Things had been going pretty well between me and her lately, too.”
“Oh~ So the two of you were having a lovey-dovey otherworldly life together, huh?”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Then who told you to buy a slave?”
“That slave is you, you know? Didn’t you see the disappointed look she gave you just now?”
“Oh, really?”
Despite all her sarcasm, Suyeon still couldn’t stand up.
Seonghyeon couldn’t just stand by while his friend strained to get up.
In the end, he took hold of the hand gripping his leg and helped Suyeon to her feet.
“What are you doing? I don’t need your help.”
“You look like you’re about to fall over. How could I not help? Wait, do you have a fever?”
“Hah… I said I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.”
Tears welled in Suyeon’s eyes as she insisted that nothing was wrong.
Maybe it was because she’d realized she’d become an elf girl in another world.
For some reason, Suyeon was finding it hard to control her emotions.
From an entirely scientific and objective perspective, Suyeon knew what was happening to her body.
A girl’s body, emotions surging strangely unlike before… something about female hormones… her weakened body and all that…
Even though she understood all of that in her head and tried to hold it back with her pride, she couldn’t stop the tears from coming.
“What, are you crying?”
“I said I’m not! I’m not crying!”
“You’re sniffling, though.”
With one knee on the floor, Suyeon wiped her tears with the back of the hand that wasn’t holding on to Seonghyeon.
But no matter how much she wiped them away, the tears kept coming, soaking only the back of her hand.
Suyeon couldn’t control her own body.
Seonghyeon patted Suyeon’s back and opened his status window.
The text visible in the hazy status window read [Emotional Overload].
Seonghyeon knelt down and hugged Suyeon tightly.
“Hey, I told you I was sorry.”
“You bastard…”
“I can’t help it. I told you I can’t free you from slavery, didn’t I? Besides, it’s already happened. You and I both died in that world and were born anew in this one. There’s no way back. If we’re going to live here, we have to follow this world’s laws.”
“Ugh… sob…”
Suyeon buried her face against Seonghyeon’s chest and cried.
Seonghyeon felt her warm tears soak his chest, but all he could do was pat her back.
Suyeon had changed.
She wasn’t the tall, lanky model student she’d been before.
His friend had been through a brutal ordeal at the hands of a slave trader and had experiences unlike his own.
In the end, she’d become someone he had to look after.
But…
Seonghyeon couldn’t just protect his friend.
The money Ariel had given them a moment ago was 100 shillings.
Even the most expensive monster part, a magic stone, had only earned them 100 shillings. That showed just how cheap surface-level monsters were.
There was no way they could survive on that. No—they could live, but it would be hard to live like decent human beings.
But…
Seonghyeon felt sympathy for Suyeon.
So he kept patting her back until the [Emotional Overload] in her status window disappeared.
Suyeon stopped crying and looked up at Seonghyeon with watery eyes.
The shameful way she’d clung to him, and this ridiculous situation.
As her overwhelming emotions subsided and calm reason returned, Suyeon gave Seonghyeon a sharp smack on the chest.
Seonghyeon didn’t insist on holding her any longer and set her down.
Because if he held her any longer… that one-percent reason he’d had for buying her might start creeping back in.
“Put me down.”
“All right.”
“We didn’t get much money, did we?”
“Uh… that’s right.”
Suyeon abruptly pushed up her sleeve and held out her gaunt arm, its handcuff still locked, toward Seonghyeon.
“Come on, hurry up and draw some blood.”
“What am I, a vampire?”
“You said my blood was worth a lot!”
“Whether it’s valuable or not, I’m not drawing your blood.”
At Seonghyeon’s firm reply, Suyeon awkwardly lowered her sleeve again.
She couldn’t keep insisting forever, after all.
“Then are we going to the dungeon?”
“Yeah. You leveled up, so we’re going to the second floor.”
“Is the second floor any better…? It’s not dark… is it?”
“The second floor isn’t that dark either. It’s still part of the surface levels. And there are floors in the Labyrinth’s middle levels where you can see the sky.”
“Uh… That’s amazing.”
Suyeon remembered that the Labyrinth’s ceiling was made up of solid hills, with no openings.
And yet, why? How?
But hadn’t she just experienced that this was a world where common sense didn’t apply?
Just seeing the status window had made her feel her emotions swing wildly, so Suyeon didn’t ask any more questions.
“So, can you walk now?”
“Yeah… more or less.”
“Good. Let’s go find a quest.”
“A quest… Right.”
Seonghyeon opened the door and left, and Suyeon walked along holding his hand.
It even occurred to her that they looked less like a master and slave and more like a father and daughter.
What could she do with such a frail body? Even though she’d turned into an elf, she hadn’t been born in an elf village.
When they returned to the lobby, it was once again filled with noisy chatter.
Seonghyeon walked over to the board covered in quest notices and began reading them.
Suyeon wanted to read them too, but she had to stand on tiptoe just to see the papers, and they were written in a human language she couldn’t read, so she quickly gave up.
“Go ahead and look for one. I can’t read them.”
“Then why don’t you sit over there? I’ll find a quest and come get you.”
“Uh… okay.”
Suyeon walked over to the spot Seonghyeon had pointed to and sat down.
As she settled onto the hard wooden chair with no backrest, a sigh escaped her.
Her friend could do everything, while she had to rely on him for everything.
Leaving aside how pathetic she felt, she couldn’t keep being indebted to the friend who’d saved her.
Thinking that, she took out the Fireball book, but she still couldn’t read it.
Which part was the subject, which was the predicate, and which was the object…
She’d figured out by talking it through with herself that Elvish had a VSO structure, but she had no idea whether human language should be read that way, too.
While she sat there looking at the Fireball book without understanding a thing, someone sat down across from her at the table.
“Little miss, why are you all alone?”
“…Yes?”
Startled to hear a language she could understand, Suyeon hiccupped and looked at the person seated across from her.
Wearing a deep hood, the elf had a face as beautiful as a statue, with lips that stood out as if painted with red lipstick.
“Th-this language—no, how…?”
“Looks like we were in a similar situation. Hello, I’m Nerissa. I’m an adventurer. And I’m a freed slave, too.”
Looking her over, Suyeon saw that she wore the sort of outfit a female thief in a game might wear. Nerissa grinned at her.
“So, how about it? Want me to set you free?”