novelraw Chapter 263: After Story #3 — Low-Temperature Burn (2)
Chapter 263: After Story #3 — Low-Temperature Burn (2)
Back when I used to play online games, there was a kind of user who went around killing everyone, you and me included.
What they called a “random PKer.”
Usually, with time, they’d either get buried under a faction and get weeded out fast.
Or they’d get absorbed into a faction and become an ordinary user (with a pretty filthy personality).
That was the fate of a random PKer.
When I was young, I couldn’t understand why the hell that bastard acted like that. Why he bullied other users who were just playing normally. Why he attacked decent people. I just couldn’t understand it.
But now I know.
⋮
- Stop Dante Hiakapo!!
- S-s-stop him! Turn all the cannons!!
- Deploy the protective barriers to the maximum!
After flying up to around 500 meters, I looked down at the surface of the water.
For three days now, I’d been smashing every island I could see and sweeping it all up.
In the western sea, word had spread, and Sub-king Garlok’s faction had gathered—something like 150 people—just to stop me.
As a result, the island got huge too.
It was wide enough that you could call it an island anywhere you went.
The countless soldiers gathered on it stirred up ominous killing intent toward me, across sea, sky, and land.
- Competitiveness↑ Constellations, set the stage!
- Curse♠ Constellations, put debuffs on him!
- Auspice□ Constellations, start gambling with the Black Darkness Constellation⚉! If we make a huge darkness, we can catch him!
♠ Minor Blindness
♠ Minor Accuracy Reduction
♠ Minor Vulnerability
♠ Minor Sensory Disruption
♠ Minor Corrosion
♠ Minor Soul Fracture
♠ Minor Impact Paralysis
♠ Minor Elemental Resistance Reduction
♠ Minor Nerve Dulling
⋮
More than twenty debuffs being applied to my body in real time.
And the users on the other side boosted their strength to where one could match a thousand.
- Ocean Constellations水, you have to shove that bastard into the sea!
At that moment, I opened my eyes.
『 Summon Spectrometer 』
A gigantic crystal prism appeared in the sky to my left.
My light resonated with it and covered the sea in seven colors—no, in over thirty kinds of light, including light that wasn’t visible to the eye.
In an instant, the battle situation flipped.
< The power of Radiant Constellation⁺₊⋆ deletes 15 types of debuffs. >
Most of the weakened debuffs were removed.
< The power of Curse♠, Auspice□, and Black Darkness⚉ is weakened. >
The power of every enemy Constellation that touched the light got broken off.
Now it was time to fight.
- H-he’s comingggggg!!!
The mages spread barriers.
The cannons’ muzzles spat fire.
Constellations flew up—but I didn’t move in response.
I simply locked my thumb and index finger together and raised them high.
You didn’t really do anything wrong.
But it was time to be punished.
『 Punishment from Heaven 』
Ttaak-!
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-KWANG—!!!
From the sky above the clouds, light fell straight down, drawing a vertical cylinder.
Like a bombing run, like a laser beam, it swept over the island and the players.
The area became a hellscape.
“Kwaaaagh!”
“Ugh! Ah! Are you insane?!”
“Hey! Hey! Just run!!”
But around then, Robin, who’d been waiting, and the new Dante-faction islands I’d captured on the way here popped out from everywhere and bound them up—so the situation instantly turned into a one-sided slaughter.
< Star Runes acquired: 34,777,189 >
Yes! This was it.
Why does a random PKer do random PKing?
Because it’s fun like this.
It’s a game anyway, right? Kill all the weak bastards!
< Star Runes in possession: 63,680,642 >
Meanwhile.
Something ridiculous happened too.
“This is absurd—do you still not get the situation? Does what you’re facing right now look like the old Robin to you? Huh?!”
“Open your eyes and look properly. Look at who Dante hyungnim’s closest aide is. Don’t you know your futures change depending on how I talk to Dante hyungnim? You all want to end your End Ocean life and go home?”
...What the hell is that idiot doing?
“Hey. Hey, you tactless people. Wake up. Wake up. What, Garlok? Balthazar? You’re still stuck in the old era. How long do you think that crappy, low-level Hard-difficulty power struggle is going to keep working?”
“The era changed. Do you think Dante hyungnim is going to deal with trash like you one by one? No way. So you guys have to look good to me.”
“So depending on how I recite your names to Dante hyungnim, it decides whether you’ll be able to open your eyes tomorrow or not. In other words, I’m the ‘only person’ holding your lifeline. Consider it an honor and bow your heads low—”
Smack!!
“Ughk!”
I cracked Robin in the back of the head.
“What are you doing?”
“Ah, w-why...!”
“What are you doing, you little shit. Why are you using me to throw your weight around.”
“I-I can! I’m the closest aide serving hyungnim! If I look that high up, hyungnim will look way higher too...!”
“Oh, really?”
“No, everyone’s watching, so please let me keep my image...!”
It was unbelievable.
I understood what he was saying. He wasn’t wrong.
But did this bastard completely forget he’d tried to kill me at first?
‘This isn’t ordinary shamelessness.’
Still, I understood why a guy with no strength survived for ten years and ended up in Balthazar’s faction.
Weak people have weak people’s tools.
And Robin did handle annoying things for me (collecting Star Runes and paying tribute, and so on), so I’d let it slide.
But what was even more absurd was that when I hit him like that—
“Ah, I’m so f*cking jealous of that bastard Robin.... He must really be close with Dante-nim.”
“This is why a person has to be lucky....”
Everyone actually admired Robin.
‘...This is ridiculous.’
Around then, my blue pigeon Ran flew in from far away and gave me this advice.
“How about returning to the Overworld for a moment.”
“Why? I got hooked on the fun of collecting money. And it feels like Balthazar and Garlok are going to react soon, too.”
As I kept random PKing, I could feel Garlok and Balthazar gradually getting cornered psychologically.
At first, they started with
Then it shifted to
Then it even softened into things like
“Unsettling incidents have begun surfacing one after another in the Empire.”
“Like what?”
“Three or four [Constellations] suddenly disappeared, and an entire border count’s territory vanished.”
My eyes narrowed.
Constellations disappearing wasn’t something that happened commonly.
“Is that, by any chance, a 100-series curse?”
“We don’t know yet, but it seems like it.”
If it was, I needed to confirm it.
< ⧉ Logging out of [End Ocean]. >
***
Once upon a time, Rebecca was the kind of person who wanted the whole world to adjust itself to her.
A princess who only felt better when every small thing went exactly the way she wanted.
She was noble.
And for someone noble, being accommodated was natural.
Because it was natural, she got angry when people couldn’t accommodate her.
So she often got angry at many people.
But—
Why was it....
Since when was it?
- It’s an assignment. Kill Professor Dante.
- Elize. Sit.
Was it when Elize didn’t listen to her and knelt in front of that man?
- Princess Rebecca.
- In my house, take off your shoes.
Or was it when she went to him to try and get along, and from the start he ordered her to take off her shoes?
- How about you respect me a little more? Do something about that controlling side of yours.
- .......
- Me. Sure, right now you’re treating me like total trash, but I’m a princess of a kingdom. Do I have to report even when I pee to you, too?
Or was it then—when he tried to control her at every turn?
- Professor. Are you in your right mind?
- No. I won’t do gambling or anything like that, something that goes against faith!
- ......No, seriously, why is she so damn self-centered??
Or was it from when he forced her to gamble, even as she prayed every day saying she’d become clergy?
“.......”
At some point.
At some point when it became natural—
Rebecca no longer wanted the world to bend to her will.
Maybe....
Elize not killing him.
Taking off shoes in ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) someone else’s house.
Being controlled by someone’s obsessive interest wherever she went.
Touching a bad thing she’d been afraid to try because she’d never done it before....
...Maybe it was because it was pretty... not bad....
“.......”
But the Dante of now was different.
“Let’s go. Our princess.”
He opened the car door for her every single time.
“Aren’t you hungry? I was thinking of reserving a famous restaurant nearby. If you don’t like it, I’ll cancel.”
He always carefully watched her mood.
“If you need personal time, call for me when you need me.”
He always put the choice in her hands.
“......Honey.”
So one night.
Rebecca tried making a request like this.
“Why? My princess.”
“I’m a total pervert X.”
“Yeah.”
“I got curious how far you can accommodate me.”
“I see. What should we try.”
“Kiss my toes.”
Dante bent down without hesitation and pressed his lips down.
Rebecca pulled her toes back right in front of him.
His head lifted slowly, and their eyes met.
“.......”
“.......”
As the silence continued,
Rebecca covered her face.
A sigh rose up from the depths of her soul and spilled out. ‘Haa.......’
“Why? My princess. Did I do something wrong?”
“......This isn’t it.”
“What is it.”
“......This isn’t what I wanted.”
“If you tell me what’s lacking, I’ll try to adjust myself to you.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“......You have no problem.”
The problem was her.
After that, Rebecca abandoned her husband.
Not throwing him out far away—she just ordered him to stay comfortably in one corner of the room.
Then Dante knelt and asked why she was doing this, what he’d done wrong in our relationship, and so on, but that only made Rebecca’s heart hurt more.
In the end, it was because the face was the same.
“Don’t whine.”
“Okay.”
But seeing him like that made Rebecca even more disappointed.
At the same time, she grew impatient.
“.......”
So one day, Rebecca put on a disguise no one could recognize and headed for the academy’s professor building.
‘Huh? It’s the princess.’
‘She’s wearing a totally crappy disguise....’
Then, with the weather good, in a park, she found Eve, wearing suspenders, studying alone.
Her heart clenched for a moment, but she decided to watch quietly.
But even by evening, Eve was alone.
When she saw her return to the mansion and slip inside, there was no one coming out to greet her.
Now that the 「Master of Mana」 had effectively reached a level where she could read the mana of the entire space,
Rebecca surveyed the inside of the professor mansion.
There were only two people.
Eve and Adele.
Then where had ‘he’ gone?
After that, Rebecca roamed all over Hiaka in that “disguise no one could recognize,” but—
‘Huh? It’s the princess.’
‘Huh? That’s Princess Rebecca.’
Regretfully, she couldn’t find the ‘real Dante’ anywhere.
Then an opportunity came.
“Princess. A single outsider-use slot opened up on Kreutz’s 「Revelation↑」. Do you need it?”
Layme abruptly asked her about a big event.
“Only one slot.”
“They say it’s 200,000 Hika.”
“I’ll pay. Do it. But under someone else’s name.”
「Revelation↑」, one of the three books of providence, is a book that finds a way to reach a certain conclusion.
Rebecca wrote and submitted these letters into it.
「 A way to meet Dante Hiakapo. 」
Then the revelation† arrived.
“...It says to take the Empire-bound plane at 3 p.m. on May 27?”
When is May 27?
[ 5/27 (Thu) ]
It was today.
What time is it now?
[ 14:25 ]
Rebecca sprang to her feet.
“Sir Layme! Sir Layme!!”