Chapter 69
[▶Chat Window – ON]
-??
-Huff, huff.
-Streamer, streamer... are you okay??
-Are you going to keep going like this?
-That minus-15% penalty hurts so bad. You barely cleared it the first time, too.
-Can't you just lower it to 888 or 777? It'd still be a priest record either way.
I feel like there's something about this game I'm missing.
I turned on the chat, hoping I could at least trust the wisdom of the crowd.
“I want to save Adella.”
-Adella's death in Part 1 was set in stone from the start...
-With Adella's stats, there's no way she can beat possessed Jin Chronicle one-on-oneㅠㅠ
-Can't we raise her well enough somehow?
-Absolutely not. Before WoA put up its firewall, Chinese players had cracked the app and dug through the entire Part 1 story, so we have detailed boss stats. The difference is over tenfold across every stat.
-If we're using League terms you know, it'd be like a level 1 fighting a level 10, right?
“What’s different in the second playthrough?”
It was clearly not the same world.
If I uncovered the world’s secrets, I might be able to save Adella.
-The biggest one is the stacking penalty you start with after all your stats are reduced.
-Yep, there are up to five stacks, and they reset once you reach a checkpoint.
-Five stacks, holy shitㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ So is that –75%?
-ㄴYep, you’re good at math.
-At five stacks, even with 1/1/1 bonus stats, clearing it is insanely hard.
“No, not that. You said the bosses’ patterns change, remember?”
-Who knows?
-Maybe because your damage is so low and the fight drags on, you get different patterns too?
-ㄴㄴ Some mobs have different patterns from the very first one.
-Honestly, we reset every time, so we don't know eitherㅋㅋㅋ Our stats are already reduced and it's a pain; there's no reason to do it.
Of course, most viewers hadn't even tried Nightmare difficulty.
In the end, I had no choice but to find out for myself.
“Remnant Academy looks like there’s only one building in the center of the capital, but there are actually several more buildings outside it. There’s an observatory to the south, a guard garrison to the east, and a materials warehouse and admissions office to the west.”
Daniel explained the operation just as before, without leaving out a single word.
Branch Director Gestalt listened to his plan without moving a muscle, her arms folded.
Meanwhile, Adella and I were sitting side by side on the edge of her bed.
There happened to be a crescent-shaped comb on the table, so I decided to untangle Adella’s matted hair.
To keep her from startling, I showed her the comb first, then slowly drew it through her hair from the ends at the back, smoothing it out.
Swoosh—swoosh—
“Um, NoName? What are you doing with my hair?”
“Why? Don’t you like it?”
When I stopped combing, Adella’s ears drooped.
“It’s not that I don’t like it... I mean, I guess I like it, but isn’t this a little sudden for someone I just met...? Do elves always do this to people they’ve just met?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a pretty fascinating culture, huh? I don’t exactly dislike it.”
[‘Nyangstercall’ donated 5,000 won!]
-This is allowed? Me too!!! I’m going to go brush Adella’s hair too!!!
Viewers suddenly began dropping like flies.
The chat window began to churn violently once again.
-Wow, that neckline is somethingㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Why did I spend eight whole hours every day grinding nothing but hopeless, dreamless Nightmare, yet never once think of brushing Adella’s dry, frizzy hair until it was soft, flowing, and glossy? I’ve really wasted half my life. I feel like killing myself.
-ㄴYou’re fucking insaneㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-ㄴYou demonㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Adella’s ears are cheating!
-Dad, why isn’t there any soup today? Sorry, son. Our Nabi is temporarily needed for something.
-Amdella, get over here. Everyone’s fucked tonightㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ I’ll show you Onii-chan’s full-power petting.
[▶Chat Window – OFF]
“What are you people talking about?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Should I brush behind your ears too?”
“Ah, there! Hwaa... mrrr...”
I cast the mentally hazardous chat window back into the abyss.
I hated having anyone brush my hair, but psychologically, it was remarkably soothing to have someone else’s hair under my control like this.
Adella seemed a little ticklish too, twisting her body whenever the comb touched a new spot.
She seemed to be trying her best to endure it.
This takes me back.
Hyacinth and I always brushed Niobe’s hair from either side, with her between us.
She was just as lively as Adella, so it was rare for her to come home without dust and bits of grass stuck in her hair.
The difference was that, unlike Adella, Niobe herself was the embodiment of innocence.
A girl made by selecting and piling up nothing but white sand from the beach.
A girl like the sea breeze, blowing away life’s hardships just by drawing near.
She was also my eternal friend, who had shared my childhood in my previous life with Hyacinth.
The combing abruptly stopped.
I missed Niobe terribly...
Even if I tried to push this feeling into a corner of my heart, telling myself she had nothing to do with who I was now and that it was all in my past life, it wouldn’t easily fade.
Even if it meant receiving the Demon King’s curse again, I wanted to return to the time when she was alive.
“Purr... NoName? Why did you stop all of a sudden? If you don’t brush it all the way through, it’ll tangle in the middle.”
If I stopped brushing halfway, her hair would tangle, forcing me to start over from the beginning.
If you fastened the first button of your school uniform wrong, you had to undo them all and start buttoning from the beginning.
It was all perfectly logical.
“I’ll start over from the beginning, Adella.”
* * *
[YOU DIED]
[All stats will be recalculated]
[Current penalty (3): -45%]
[NoName(NoName)]
[World of Arseria – Priest Nightmare 10/10/10]
[Stream duration - 5:01:47]
[Viewers – 5930]
“Haa... haa... hngh.”
It was the same butterfly-patterned ceiling, in the bed at the Abyss inn.
The second playthrough had reached the same conclusion as the first.
The only things that had changed were the boss-clear time, cut from three hours to one, and the fact that Adella chose suicide with a happier smile than before at the end.
Adella was still weak.
The third playthrough began with a –30% penalty.
Even knowing every route and optimally looting all the experience, we were caught while escaping the academy because we ran out of stamina.
Adella was still weak.
-It really won't work anymore.
-So close.
-It's such a shame, though.
-Since we had to hit them three times instead of twice to kill them, we were way too vulnerable to consecutive waves.
-If fifty of them chase you at a time, there’s literally no answer.
-Still, she maxed out the bonus stats even with the penalty and cleared it in one hour? Are you kidding meㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-I just got here, but her mechanics are totally pro-level.
-Pros couldn’t handle a brawl like that either, one-on-one is another story.
-ㄴEveryone’s mistaken; the streamer’s class is Priest right now.
-Do we really have to fight this desperately?
-Adella is dead... Let's let her go now.
Unless Adella became stronger than Jin Chronicle, I couldn’t save her.
But the experience gained from hunting guards was limited.
The more experience I gave her, the weaker I became in turn.
And once I moved past the sixth playthrough, I would have to carry a whopping –75% penalty.
From that point on, my struggling would be meaningless.
In fact, Adella would be the one who had to protect me.
My thoughts were a mess.
I had failed on the third playthrough; I couldn’t walk the same path again on the fourth.
But I couldn’t think of a way.
Was she truly fated to die by the system’s design alone?
I went to Adella’s room again.
“Opening the door like that without even knocking is rude, rude. Anyway, Forest Keeper, what’s your name?”
“NoName.”
“Oooh. That’s a name that really rolls off the tongue.”
“...?”
Adella said casually.
The dialogue had changed. But up to this point, nothing about the branches should have changed significantly.
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“My name. Isn’t it strange?”
“Not particularly. It’s actually familiar. Once you’ve lived in the capital long enough, you hear all sorts of shitty names, and Forest Keeper is one of the respectable ones.”
Glug, glug—
Adella drank the rest of her beer.
“Adella.”
“Why?”
“Adella.”
“Why do you keep calling me? You’re making me self-conscious. If you have something to say, just say it!”
I hadn’t been mistaken.
There was no longer any trace of incongruity in her behavior.
Maybe her body remembered that we had formed a bond in the previous playthrough and the one before that.
I had gained yet another reason not to leave Adella behind.
[‘Nyangstercall’ donated 10,000 won!]
-NoName, Adella never let me pat her, so how did you manage it? ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ