novelraw Chapter 68
Chapter 68
Chapter 68
The end of winter, February.
It was the time when the monsters’ rampages were finally dying down.
Perhaps the most leisurely season of the year.
Of course, that didn’t mean our tension had disappeared.
Winter had not ended yet, and the most important event had not been triggered.
But could people really live on edge all the time?
Resting was just as important as training.
Like athletes taking a break during the off-season, we too were soothing our weary bodies.
We were taking turns guarding the Northern Fortress, but since monster raids had become scarce, things weren’t so busy.
Back in the days of the Great Cataclysm, when survival was paramount, rest, hobbies, or leisure activities weren’t really considered important.
But as the world stabilized, hobbies and play began to gain importance.
In the southern great territories, even troupes and performances were beginning to emerge.
Our territory, however, was still far removed from such things.
This region remained the front line against monsters.
But recently, the atmosphere had changed a little.
Especially this winter, which had been incomparably more stable than the past ones.
With the addition of immigrants from the south, people began to enjoy various things.
For example, games.
From basics like chess and poker to board games reminiscent of BurumaX.
And the absolute king of games was none other than TRPG.
A TRPG set in the chaotic early days of the Great Cataclysm.
It began with the question: ‘What if we could directly enter the Dimensional Rifts spewing monsters and clear them ourselves?’ The goal of the game was to use a player’s chosen character to clear the Dimensional Rift prepared by the Master.
The biggest feature was that most of the characters were modeled after the big names of that era.
The structure was very simple: clear the Dimensional Rift and earn rewards. But depending on the Master’s skill, the game could be enjoyed in countless ways, giving it a very high degree of freedom.
Perhaps because monsters truly existed in this world. Or perhaps because magic was real.
In the world I had lived in before, this TRPG had been a niche pastime, but here it was a fairly popular game.
In the southern territories, many people enjoyed it.
This advanced pastime(?) had been brought to Johnson Territory through immigrants from Haken Territory, and now both natives and immigrants alike enjoyed it.
Thanks to that, the once awkward relationship between residents had become much closer than before, which was very gratifying for me.
–As expected, people grow closer when they play together.
And I too enjoyed this game.
Not only me, but also other knights of our territory.
Especially the members who played with me were holding sessions whenever we had free time these days.
“Lord Iron, Leon has arrived.”
“Really? Then the one on duty this time is… Rudick, huh. Good. This time, we’ll definitely put that cheeky brat in his place.”
“I think so too. I’ll gather the members right away.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
The Master of our group was Leon.
Eight years old.
The brain of the Black Lion Tribe.
Leon, who had even been the vice-captain of the Black Lion Mercenary Corps, was the one who had negotiated with me in Levelium when we hired the Black Lions.
Back then, Leisha had told me—
That Leon was the smartest of the Black Lions.
At first, when we had no one to be Master, we asked around and eventually found Leon. He said he wanted to do it, so I handed it over to him without much thought. Turned out, this brat was something else.
–A truly cunning little brat.
‘So, Leisha hadn’t been exaggerating.’
In a game like this, immersion heavily depended on the Master’s abilities.
And our sly brat… how should I put it? He was a natural at this.
What should I call it?
It was as if he completely grasped each character and player’s tendencies and toyed with them.
Thanks to that, we had fought five battles so far but had only won once.
And today was the sixth.
Today was the day to finally put that arrogant brat in his place.
‘Today will be different.’
–I had always said it would be different, but it never really was.
‘No, today really will be different.’
I was still an adult. I couldn’t keep losing to a kid.
I was starting to see the angles now, so today would definitely be different.
The members gathered at my private tent.
Leisha, Irene, Celine, and me.
At first, Rudick and Limond had also joined, but they eventually refused to participate, saying rolling dice and bickering with words wasn’t to their taste.
Apparently, it frustrated them when unexpected results came out because of dice.
I too sometimes thought it would be much better if I could just fight the monsters directly instead of through a character. But that was the charm of this game.
If it felt unfair, you just had to roll the dice well.
“Is everyone here? Today won’t be easy.”
And then our Master, Leon, appeared.
A cute face and cruel cunning(?)
A genius(?) strategist with a Janus-like charm.
“Are those guys here too?”
“Of course.”
“Where Leon goes—”
“We go too.”
“We protect Leon.”
“…Well, sure.”
Behind Leon stood four cute Black Lion Tribe girls guarding him like a wall.
From the left, it was Mei, Rei, Shy, and Jay, right?
They always accompanied him, guarding Leon, who enjoyed idol-like popularity among the Black Lion children.
Seeing that, Rudick had said—what kind of man was I, when even an eight-year-old had four girls around him?
–It was a painfully accurate statement.
‘No, isn’t that a bit different?’
Well, when you’re young, it’s possible.
Once he grows up, won’t he learn restraint?
–Except that, for the Lion Tribe, it was normal for one male to have multiple females.
Damn it, that wretched rabbit.
I brushed the rabbit’s words from my ears and just decided to enjoy the game.
I absolutely did not feel any sense of defeat.
“Today, be prepared. The mistakes we’ve made so far have only made us stronger.”
“That’s right, Leon. Be prepared.”
“Leon, no mercy this time.”
“No matter how much you try to scare me, Sister Leisha and Sir Irene aren’t scary at all.”
From the start, the war of nerves was no joke.
Everyone was gritting their teeth, determined to win.
–As expected, it was fierce.
To be honest, it hadn’t been like this at first.
We had started the game just to kill some time since it was our break anyway.
But that brat’s wicked strategies had a way of drawing out people’s true feelings.
Seeing normally composed Irene and even bold Leisha so riled up proved it wasn’t me being strange—it was simply that brat being unusually devious.
“Now then, choose your characters.”
In Gate Master, players each chose one of about twenty heroes to play the game.
This meant there was no need to invest much time in customizing your own character.
I’d heard that in the TRPGs of the past, people spent a lot of effort building their character settings, but this one felt a little lighter.
Still, that wasn’t bad at all, since most of the heroes in this game were modeled after real-life big names.
They were familiar figures to people.
That was also one of the reasons for this game’s popularity.
And since the heroes were based on actual figures, there was less chance of balance problems.
Even if someone complained, it could be shut down with: “But this was a real skill used back then.”
In modern times, of course, there would have been issues of portrait rights, but such things weren’t considered here.
“Leisha chooses ‘the Ancient Druid, Keisha.’”
“I, Irene, will choose ‘the Dragon Rider, Shine.’”
“Ha, just as I thought. Then I’ll choose ‘Dalli, Singer of Dreams and Hope.’”
“I, Celine, will choose ‘the Elementalist, Jonathan’…”
After choosing characters, we moved on to additional character settings.
In this party, the only one requiring extra settings was the Dragon Rider that Irene had chosen.
That was because she had to roll dice to determine her mount.
The Dragon Rider fought alongside their mount, and depending on what they got, their combat power varied drastically. This moment was a pretty important crossroads.
“Here I go.”
With an elegant motion, Irene rolled two ten-sided dice, and everyone’s eyes turned toward them.
From the black die, representing tens, came a 9. From the white die, representing ones, came a 7.
“…97!”
“A 96–97 means an Ancient Drake.”
“Perfect. I’ll take Porong as my mount!”
“Congratulations, Captain.”
“Congrats.”
A 97 out of 100—truly a great result.
After all, an Ancient Drake was stronger than most bosses.
‘Worrisome.’
But the thing was, it only mattered if she could actually use it. If not, it was just a pie in the sky.
And soon, that would become clear.
“Alright, now that the settings are finished, let’s begin right away.”
Master: A Dimensional Rift suddenly appeared in Johnson Territory, and the heroes of the land gathered before it. Keisha and Shine, along with Dalli and Jonathan. The four heroes formed a party on the spot and immediately dove into the Dimensional Rift. But alas. This rift was a maze-type rift. With corridors 2x2 wide. Unfortunately, Porong, Shine’s 3x3-sized mount, could not join in on this raid.
“What the—Leon, are you really going to keep doing this?”
Due to many of the Dragon Rider’s traits being tied to their mount, losing the mount cut their combat power to less than half.
Irene, who had just lost half her fighting power, protested to Leon, but there was no helping it.
The settings of the Dimensional Rift were finalized before characters were even chosen, leaving no room for bias.
Leon had a reason for setting the inside of the Rift to be narrow.
Until now, Irene had always chosen the Dragon Rider, and her dice luck had been absurdly good—she had never once rolled a small-sized mount.
In fact, the only time we had won a battle—the very first one—Irene had rolled an Ancient Drake. And since Leon had carelessly set the battlefield as open terrain, the Ancient Drake had wrecked him.
There was no way our cunning brat would repeat the same mistake.
So ever since then, he had always set the rift to be narrow, effectively forcing Irene’s asymmetric firepower off the battlefield.
Why did Irene stubbornly keep choosing the Dragon Rider, then?
Because if she rolled a 00, meaning 100, she could get the ultimate mount: a Dragon.
As a mount fanatic, there was no way Irene could resist.
Besides, Dragons could use polymorph to adapt even in narrow battlefields.
If she just rolled a Dragon, then no matter what battlefield Leon chose, the Dragon Rider could shine.
–That female was hopeless.
But whether aiming for that 1% chance was perseverance or just foolishness, I couldn’t say.
Normally Irene was quite smart, but whenever this game began, she turned into a fool.
Being from Haken, the so-called “homeland” of Gate Master, she should have shown skills worthy of that heritage.
For reference, the reason I never stopped Irene was because this wasn’t an actual monster subjugation battle—there was no need to go that far.
And besides, I hoped that someday she would roll under 40 and get a small-sized mount like a Raptor or Komodo Lizard, so she could finally function normally. But Irene’s dice luck was truly unbelievable.
In any case, Irene’s Dragon Rider had lost more than half her strength right at the start, and our battle was looking to be even tougher.
‘Hoo, well. That’s life.’
Except for that very first game, we had never once had a normal start, so this kind of development felt all too familiar.