Chapter 71
“Grrrrr...”
What was going on? What in the world was happening?
“Do you like it?”
“Nyaaaah... My head must smell, though...? And I haven't washed today, so it's all matted...”
“It's fine. It only smells nice. It's clean.”
What was this? Before I knew it, the Forest Keeper was brushing my hair.
But it felt so good that I couldn't refuse.
I should pull away even now.
But I couldn't do that either.
“Do elves normally do this to people they just met, nya?”
“Yes.”
“I really think it's a wonderful culture worth emulating. I weally like it... Grrrr...”
At first, I wondered if I still hadn't sobered up, but my mind was perfectly clear.
To think I'd live to see the day an elf brushed my hair.
Just as bad things came one after another, good things came rolling in.
The mission Gestalt and Daniel had told us about was actually a secret mission!
Not only could we make the academy officials suffer, but that meant Adella would ultimately be the one to bring back the laurel!
“Piece of cake! You can look forward to it, Gestalt!”
“Show some respect to the branch director, Adella.”
The Forest Keeper, however, seemed to accept the completely changed mission without a care.
“I almost said something terrible by calling a bald man ignorant.”
“Nyahaha! Bald? If you look closely, even Mr. Gestalt has hair growing like peach fuzz, nya?”
What was with this elf? She looked no different from a dainty princess, but her actions and speech were rough and uninhibited, like a mercenary who had spent years on the battlefield.
I think I've found a partner I really like for the first time in a while.
NoName and I were the first to set out from Abyss.
The observatory was quite far to walk, so we had to arrive early or we wouldn't make it by mission time.
We had to avoid taking a carriage whenever possible, since there was a risk of being tracked.
I thought it was pretty harsh of Abyss to send just two ladies on such a long journey, but I supposed it was still better than nothing.
But unexpectedly, she was the taciturn type.
She never opened her mouth unless I spoke first.
I also had an obvious reason for not going out of my way to make conversation.
As a true mission operative, I should refrain from getting any more attached than this.
The only thing that mattered on a battlefield was my own life.
Even if things came down to a situation where only one of us could survive, I had to be able to abandon the other without hesitation and leave.
I'm not saying I'd betray her already, but friendship doesn't put food on the table, and with my personality, I could cut her off decisively in that situation. This mission was going to be extraordinarily difficult, after all.
I wanted to excuse the way I'd offered my head up defenselessly at the inn earlier as genuinely being because of the alcohol.
Why had I suddenly done that?!
The Imperial Capital's clock tower stood quietly in place, chiming on the hour.
Neither of us was slow on our feet, so we arrived at the observatory early.
The Forest Keeper didn't look nervous in the slightest. Had she been through this sort of thing many times?
“Aren't you bored too, nya?”
“A little.”
“Tell me about your past. It's not often you get a chance to meet an elf.”
What kind of place was the Arseria Forest, anyway?
The fantastical realm called the elves' paradise was a place outsiders could not enter.
“I was the fourth princess of my homeland.”
“A princess? You mean, an actual princess?”
Wait, wasn't this person insanely high-ranking?
She really was a princess of a nation? I'd thought there was definitely something unusual about the air around her.
The vast, palpable gap in status made my own circumstances seem shabby by comparison.
“If you're fourth, you must have a lot of older siblings, nya? Were you close with them?”
“No. I don't think we were.”
“I guess. Everyone from families with siblings always says the same thing about how they can't get close.”
I had no way to empathize since I had no family, but that's what I'd heard.
“Then are they still in that forest? Or did they come out looking for the laurel like you?”
“No, they're all dead. Except one.”
“Huh? Dead...?”
“I killed them all.”
“What kind of delusional bullshit...?! Are you a complete psycho? Was all that stuff about being a princess of a nation a lie too?!”
I was the idiot for taking the lunatic Forest Keeper's story seriously.
Still, thanks to that, I felt much less tense.
Whether her skill matched her looks was something I'd have to see for myself, though.
Time was passing fucking slowly.
It was exactly like when even falling leaves seemed to move slowly while standing watch at night.
How wonderful would it be if things looked this way during an actual battle?
In the end, unable to bear the boredom, I made up my mind and decided to tell the Forest Keeper my story.
“Do you know why I joined Abyss, nya?”
* * *
[Was the branch director the one who brought you into Abyss?]
[Well... I guess you could say that. The branch director rescued me when the guards were beating me up and brought me here. I had nowhere else to go, so I just stayed.]
Adella now spoke without hesitation even about the branch director, whom she had always kept silent about.
As expected, she was starved for someone to talk to.
Though there were some rough edges to her personality, she no longer ignored my words or let them go in one ear and out the other.
But Adella wasn't the only thing that had changed.
The guards we encountered at the observatory.
Like Adella, they too had been freed from the shackles of artificial intelligence.
Normally, the guard who came stabbing in from the far right first could be dealt with by merely obstructing his vision and kicking him over the cliff, taking him completely out of the fight.
“Ghk... How dare this bastard use cheap tricks? Don't let your guard down! The enemy is a high-ranking mage!”
One of the knights climbed up from the cliff.
Just before falling, he had cleverly thrown off his helmet.
Once his vision was clear, it seemed he'd managed to survive by using his sword as a support.
The enemies on the third playthrough were stronger than those on the second, and the enemies on the fourth were stronger than those on the third.
It wasn't because I had gotten weaker; objectively, they had become far more intelligent, cautious, and meticulous.
They didn't rashly attack just because I deliberately left an opening.
Like highly trained elite soldiers, they only swung their swords when their safety was assured.
The guards at the observatory weren't zombies or golems; they were knights with only one life to lose.
“Watch out for sword aura! We have the numbers, so keep pressing them!”
They separated Adella and me, isolating us.
It was a cowardly plan to prevent me from protecting Adella's injured leg and to use her as a hostage.
The game's difficulty was going completely insane.
I barely deflected the sword thrusting toward my neck.
I spun halfway around, using my momentum to stab the enemy attacking me from behind square in the chest with a precise fente.
Ting—
That should have been an attack powerful enough to pierce straight through his chest.
My blade snapped pathetically.
[Current penalty (3): -45%]
‘So that's how it works.’
Every physical quantity of my actions was cut in half.
It was a familiar feeling.
Like the curse that had cut my mana circuits off from my danjeon when I first logged into World of Arseria.
My mass and acceleration remained the same,
but the force carried by my sword fell short of their product.
“Now! Everyone!”
A heavy greatsword, swung with all its weight behind it, slammed into the ground and sent dust flying.
I managed to twist my body out of the way, but as a result, my range of movement became absurdly limited.
Dozens of ominous eyes flashed.
They were the eyes of predators waiting for me to make a mistake.
One knight was stabbing at me from behind. Two others had even lowered their shields and were trying to crush me with their bodies. Was this what it meant to be surrounded on all sides?
I needed a sacrifice.
Naturally, the first offering would be my own body.
I thrust my hand into the first knight's sword path.
Sshhk—
The gauntlet knocked the sword off course, and it grazed my waist, but my right arm was completely mangled instead.
In exchange, I slammed my left elbow down onto the knight's wrist, completely disarming him.
Using his center of gravity pitched forward, I grabbed the sleeve of the knight, twice my weight, and threw him over in a half-spin.
The knight, who landed headfirst in a flawless hip throw, couldn't regain consciousness.
“Grab him! He still doesn't have a weapon!”
I tried to avoid the guard flying through the air, but even after falling, he ultimately managed to grab my ankle.
With Acceleration, I could tear away even an adult man's grip.
“...!”
[Acceleration cannot be used. (0.4 seconds)]
It was still on cooldown?
This was a bad sign.
I could feel their smiles even through their concealed helmets.
I should have come up with another response if my skill was on cooldown... But after the continuous fighting, fatigue made my brain refuse to think.
A fierce strike capable of bisecting my body came flying.
Death had come right up to me.
“NoName!”
Clang—
“Adella?”
“What are you doing?! Y-you almost died! Get up, quickly!”
Adella crossed that tiny dagger in an X and barely blocked the guard's slash that was about to split my head in two.
Without even giving herself time to panic, she shoved the guard back and handed me a censer.
“I picked it up while running away from the observatory earlier! You're a priest, so you can use a weapon like this, right?”
[Corrupted Censer]
[A censer dropped by a passerby. Having absorbed the earth's demonic energy, the censer gives off an ominous aura.]
[Skill Haste 30, Ability Power +15, Healing Reduction 20%]
Skill Haste? Isn't that a pretty decent stat to have on it?
[Acceleration Lv. 2: Grants 23(20+3)% movement speed and 17.25(15+2.25)% attack speed for 5 seconds.]
[MP Cost: 50, Cooldown: 10.77(14-3.23) seconds]
“Thanks. Let's fight together.”
With Acceleration, I could make up for my weak attack power to some extent.
“No, heal me! What do you mean, you're going off alone, Forest Keeper?! Hey, hey, hey, hey, Adella's dying! Help meeeee!”