Chapter 92
In short, I ultimately failed to save Niobe.
I alone had to watch the death of the child everyone loved.
I don't even remember how many days and nights I spent begging Hyacen.
Hyacen comforted me every time, telling me it wasn't my fault, but only because he didn't know the truth.
I had once been jealous of Niobe, and the viper that killed her was none other than me.
Terrified that one momentary mistake would make her disappear from this world, I made a foolish choice.
Having robbed Niobe even of the time to say farewell to everyone, I couldn't receive a single favorable look from anyone in the imperial family when I returned carrying her corpse.
[The Fourth Princess murdered the Third Princess.]
I hated myself so much that I couldn't bear it.
At the time, as I agonized over which magic to use, the only basis I could come up with was expected value.
Since Niobe still had far more days ahead of her, I judged that even the smallest chance of saving her was worth more than one month of life.
Yes, mathematically, it was right.
But what about reality?
If you succeed, it's 1. If you fail, it's 0.
I hated myself for choosing 0.
I hated myself for judging a person's life with mere numbers.
I loathed myself for using all the happiness, comfort, and encouragement Niobe deserved to justify myself.
Perhaps that's why I became even more obsessed with knowledge.
Ignorance was a sin, and jealousy was my original sin, the one I kept turning over in my mind.
The only thing holding together my self, shattered like a broken window, was my obsession with magic.
I never wanted to feel jealousy again—or rather, I had been born with a destiny that meant I must never feel it.
I imprisoned, isolated, bound, and mercilessly beat myself within the only thing I could claim as my own.
In the presence of beings that shine with sublime radiance, awe comes before envy.
Looking back, if I lowered myself endlessly, until I was low enough to see the belly of an ant crawling across the floor, it was only natural for my jealousy to disappear.
So I gave up swordsmanship, gave up high society, and even gave up taking care of my appearance.
And around this time, a new rumor began to circulate.
[The Demon King is behind the Fourth Princess.]
Not knowing the proper way to atone, I foolishly chose to cover both ears.
“Have you made your choice...?”
“Yeah, I think I’ve more or less decided.”
I couldn't open my eyes.
What choices had they made in the same situation?
Would they defend my decision?
As my eyelids slowly lifted, the haze gradually cleared from the blurry world before me.
“Ah... why is everyone...”
The five participants were all huddled together atop a large magic circle.
It was the magic I had used to save Niobe, but instead, it had brought her life to an end.
“Why?”
The musclehead guy cleared his throat first and answered.
“Shouldn’t I take responsibility myself for the mistake I made? I have to try as far as I can. That’s what it means to be a man.”
Such an utterly simple answer left me dumbfounded.
“So we’re going around and giving our reasons? Hmm... If there had been a way to fix it for sure and I hadn’t taken it, wouldn’t I have regretted it for the rest of my life? And watching someone cling to a month of life seems cruel, too.”
Maybe I had been desperately hoping.
That my choice back then hadn’t been wrong.
One by one. Their reasons differed, but the conclusion was always the same.
“Ah, I’m last. I mean, I...”
‘Daesal’ stroked his chin, buying time to formulate his answer. He was also one of the viewers who had been there since the early days of the stream, so I knew his nickname.
“I just chose it because I want to watch for longer. Honestly, from our perspective, if NoName streamed for exactly one month and then quit, who would come to watch them? Everyone likes that they keep coming back to us without forgetting us, even if only occasionally. Ah, was that analogy a little weird?”
Daesal scratched his head after candidly revealing the thoughts he had kept to himself.
“No... It’s a fine analogy.”
“If you understand, then turn your stream on more often. Who plays one WoA game and then disappears like that? You’re leaving us hanging.”
“So what’s the right answer, NoName? You’re not trying to eliminate all of us, are you?”
-Being a manager here is tough to get
-You even have to pass the interview stage ㄷㄷ
-Why is everyone so good at talking? Weren’t you all hikikomori loners who can’t even talk to people outside?
-This isn’t outside, wake up!
-The musclehead bro even has a girlfriendㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Could be a lie.
-ㄴHe even has the authenticity emblem for using an avatar based on reality
There was no correct answer.
No matter what I chose, Niobe would never have returned.
Yet after hearing their answers, I felt the unresolved knot in my heart melt away softly, like cotton candy sinking into water.
What did it matter whether it was Ignis Velum or Glacĭs Hasta?
It had all been nothing but meaningless ranking. There was never a correct answer in magic itself.
We could only do our best to make the magic we chose in each moment the correct answer.
Estasha had done everything she could to save Niobe, and I finally decided to defend her decision.
“Yes, that’s the correct answer. I look forward to working with you, my managers.”
* * *
After the eventful broadcast, I remained in Virtual Space with the five managers and briefed them on plans for future broadcasts.
“I’m a little busy tomorrow, so I’ll start the WoA stream early Sunday afternoon.”
“At long last!”
“Boss, but are you really not going to clear Part 1 until you save Adela?”
“I want to move on to Part 2 soon and see you use 2nd Circle magic, too.”
“You all said I should try as far as I can, didn’t you?”
There might be a clue.
I had already more or less planned out a method, too.
Whether there was a worldline where Adela didn’t die remained to be seen, though.
“Please do your best with the bans. Mentioning other streamers is prohibited, no cliquing, and of course no off-topic content or spamming.”
“We know all that! How many years have we been on Twish? We know the drill!”
I looked over the five handpicked managers one by one.
Daesal in an ordinary male avatar, the musclehead guy, the cyberpunk cosplayer girl, No-Face, and the cat furry girl.
The farther down the line I went, the more their personalities overflowed—some to an excessive degree.
Since we were all gathered anyway, I might as well get recommendations for animal pajamas for the kids visiting my house tomorrow.
“Does everyone have a favorite animal, by any chance?”
“Pigs!”
Daesal shouted first.
“...?”
“You like pigs?”
“That’s an unusual preference.”
As the others murmured, Daesal shrugged and voiced his confusion.
“What, does everyone like beef? I’m Korean, so I can like pork.”
Since his answer had missed the point, I corrected my question.
“I mean not meat... just an animal you like. Like a dog or cat...”
“Weren’t you buying us meat?”
“Why would I buy you meat?”
“I thought you were asking as a kind of after-party thing... Since we got picked as managers...”
Anyway, Daesal had missed his chance to answer the question, so I asked the others for their opinions.
“Cats!”
“I like cats best, too.”
The cyberpunk girl and the furry girl answered, respectively. I could have guessed the latter without asking.
“Honey badger.”
“I like bears best.”
Those were the answers from No-Face and the musclehead man, respectively.
Honey badger... I wasn't sure what to make of that one, but surely they sold bear-shaped animal pajamas, at least?
“NoName, are you thinking about doing VTube? It hurts to see other channels siphon off views from your clips.”
In the midst of that, Daesal pointed to the videos edited from my exploits that were drawing in viewers and said this.
He expressed regret, saying that if I had opened a channel and uploaded videos myself, I’d already be famous and then some.
The point was that it was difficult to expect new viewers to find you through a single broadcast on Twish.
Just as people installed new apps infrequently, people didn’t explore other streamers’ broadcasts as much as one might think.
If I intended to stream consistently, he strongly recommended that I run a VTube channel alongside it.
Part of me didn’t want the stream to grow that big, but another part felt uneasy because I hadn’t paid back the money.
Should I upload videos after all?
But I had no idea how to find an editor or whom to hire if I did.
Ideally, I’d like to ask someone I knew.
Unlike with managers, I’d have quite a few reasons to contact an editor outside the broadcast as well.
“Anyway, good work, everyone. I’ll grant you manager privileges by the end of today, so you can head out now.”
“Yep, thanks for your hard work!”
“Um, NoName...!”
The cat beastkin shyly raised her hand and called out to me.
“Yes?”
“Could I perhaps shake your hand just once...?”
“Shake my hand?”
“It’s not every day we get to see you this close! You could call this fate, if anything... So a handshake, at least... wouldn’t that be okay?”
Well, I didn’t mind that much.
I could feel the texture of a pink paw pad hidden beneath a fluffy ball of fur.
Her eyes sparkled, and she clearly wanted to keep holding my hand for even one moment longer.
“By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, how much does an avatar like this cost?”
It was an avatar with a remarkably unusual aesthetic. From the cat’s pupils to its paw pads, claws, and even the texture and pattern of its fur, the strangely specific details made it seem beyond what could be done as a homemade project.
“Ah... this...! I-I bought it at a discount from the MetaCraft Avatar Shop! Abo... about eight million won...?”
“...?”
Apparently, the notion that furries had suspiciously large amounts of money was true after all.