Chapter 186. The Protagonist of a Fairy Tale
“It’s over there.”
“...Phew. He went pretty far.”
With the Eye doll perched on my shoulder, we were heading toward the place Happy had escaped to.
“Goodness. Now that even Lady Mallyangi is absent, I suddenly feel much more uneasy.”
“Mallyangi said she’d join us as soon as she finishes her business over there.”
I sighed.
“I already sent Flying Fish for her too. It’ll probably be fine.”
Pie and Aien were both suffering from abnormal conditions.
There was no way I could take either of them on a journey right now.
Seriously.
What if one of them suddenly dropped dead in this state and just stayed dead forever?
That Misfortune that interfered with fate...
It could probably cause something like that.
They had already been unconscious in reality for three days.
I had no idea what might happen next....
Honestly, I thought that once Pie and Aien got trapped in here, Lucy Lowell or that traitor girl would return instead....
At least that didn’t happen.
Haa....
On top of that, troublesome matters had suddenly appeared with the nobles of the Empire, the Church of Light, and everything else.
Well, now that I had established a country, those kinds of problems were things I would have eventually needed to deal with anyway.
That’s how it goes when you become famous.
People start digging up your past.
I was simply going through that process now.
“...Honestly, I want to find the Chairman right now, grab him by the collar, and tell him to fix the damn system.”
From what I could tell, Chaos was someone even the Chairman couldn’t control.
Maybe I would discover otherwise if I confronted him directly.
But blindly ignoring everything else and rushing straight at the Chairman was still my last resort....
“Shadow just departed for the Empire.”
The Village Chief continued.
“He should arrive in approximately two or three days and—”
“Stop.”
I cut him off.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
My emotions were already complicated enough.
If my head became complicated too, I might really blow everything up.
And that was surely exactly what Chaos wanted.
Otherwise, there was no reason for him to do something like this while fully knowing I would lose my mind over it.
He was making me suffer like this...
And I was supposed to do something that would make him happy?
Haha.
Ha!
“...I hope that bastard Chaos exists in reality too.”
I cracked my neck.
“Then I could beat him to death.”
That fucking natural disaster....
If I ever caught him, I’d tear his limbs off.
Anyway.
For now, focus on catching Happy.
Once we caught him, we would have a better idea whether Aien and Pie could log out again.
Even though I regularly logged out to take care of their real bodies, the versions of them inside the game were still feeling discomfort.
So we had to hurry.
“You’re sure this is the right place?”
“Yes!”
Eye answered immediately.
“Strong traces of Master’s power remain in that direction!”
“Good.”
I stared ahead.
“They’d better.”
“Y-Yes!”
“....”
I sighed.
“Sorry.”
[Despite the boiling anger within you, your heart remains strangely calm!]
[Your Madness rejoices at the Adventurer’s intense killing intent!]
[Hayangi: See! Madness is destructive! I said that twenty years ago, remember?]
“You’re seriously petty.”
I frowned.
“Why are you still holding onto something like that after all this time?”
What came next was important.
I couldn’t simply kill Happy.
Even if I ended up beating him to death, it needed to be in a shonen-manga kind of way.
For example...
He realized his mistakes and chose death himself.
Or he regained his sanity at the very end and died while crying.
[Hayangi: Either way, you’re saying he should die.]
Ideally...
Yeah.
I wanted him dead.
But thinking about how much it would hurt Aien made that difficult too.
So what I wanted was for him to walk willingly toward a normal, emotional death that even Aien could accept.
Sacrificing himself for the children would probably be the best route.
And if that didn’t work...
I’d beat him up and force him to act it out.
Getting that bastard to come to his senses wouldn’t be especially difficult.
Even if his power was large enough that I couldn’t properly seize his Flow while he was in perfect condition, it was still far too much power for his vessel.
He was unstable.
And I had already caught him once.
The second time would be easier.
“That village is famous as the setting of a fairy tale.”
The Village Chief chuckled.
“To think I would actually visit a place I had only heard about in my youth.”
“Living a long life really does lead to unusual experiences.”
“...Phew.”
I looked at him.
“I’m glad I brought you along, Village Chief.”
I needed a brake.
Now that Hayangi had returned to me, I needed to be even more careful than before.
If I acted on impulse....
Well, it would probably be fun.
But right now wasn’t the time to think about fun.
“What kind of fairy tale?”
The Village Chief answered.
“They say there was once a hardworking woodcutter living in that village.”
I nodded.
“Did he drop his axe into a lake?”
“He smashed the heads of a Goblin horde that attacked the village with his axe.”
“....”
“Huh.”
I could kind of understand why the story was famous.
What kind of fairy tale started with a woodcutter exploding Goblin heads?
[You have heard the Legend of the Woodcutter!]
[Class Change Quest! ‘I’ll Split Your Skull Like This.’ can now be started!]
[You can now acquire a third subclass!]
[The unlock condition for the Achievement ‘License Collector’ has been met!]
Ever since Hayangi returned, the game had started pretending to be a game much more often.
It almost felt like I was playing something completely different.
This had been normal during the testing period.
How the hell had this game ended up like this?
Ahhh.
I really wish the Chairman would die.
“...I have a bad feeling about this.”
I stared ahead.
“This looks like it’s going to take a while.”
The instant I said that...
Flames suddenly erupted from the village.
Haha.
Fucking hell.
I looked at the Village Chief with a blank expression.
He stared back at me with equally dumbfounded eyes.
Our gazes met.
“...Goodness.”
He laughed weakly.
“Ingwang-nim, you truly possess incredible intuition.”
“I wasn’t actually predicting this when I said it....”
I sighed.
“Let’s hurry.”
This was probably the opening event for a quest or something.
Even while I was in a hurry, this damn game refused to help me.
[An evil monster horde has appeared in ‘Exwarer,’ the Village of Legends and Fairy Tales, and is tormenting the villagers!]
At least Eye seemed to have tracked the right place.
Goblin monsters had appeared in the village, trapped in vines leaking black fluid, much like the ones Happy had controlled before.
They had completely lost their minds.
They were ordinary Goblins.
But even a Rotten Root was still a Root.
Once Happy’s influence got into them, the villagers seemed completely incapable of dealing with them.
“Gasp! A d-demonkin...!”
“Yeees.”
I waved.
“The hottest rising star these days, Kim Ingwang~”
At first, the villagers had seen the Village Chief and me running toward them and assumed we were adventurers coming to help.
Then they noticed my horns.
Their faces went pale.
Come on.
I actually came to help.
That treatment was a little harsh.
“A-Anyone is fine!”
One villager begged.
“Please save our village...!”
I laughed.
“Haha. You’re saying something you’ll regret.”
The Village Chief smiled.
“It is not necessarily a bad thing, hoho.”
