Chapter 102

Chapter 102 – The Chairman Is Coming for an Inspection

People bustled around with lively expressions, while groups of adventurers walked somewhere with serious looks on their faces, as though they were pursuing some grand purpose.

There were also innocent users like me, visiting this place for the first time and looking around in fascination.

And naturally, there were plenty of merchant NPCs whose eyes gleamed as they searched for a chance to scam those users and make a tidy profit.

“Guys, I’m not screaming right now, am I? I’m not, right?!”

“It does look like you’re about to.”

“Whew... I’m seriously so excited right now that if you poured cold water on me, I think it’d evaporate the instant it touched me!”

I made it.

I finally made it!

At last!

After overcoming a long road filled with hardship and adversity—most of which I had brought upon myself—I had finally arrived!

At the Maze Forest!

It was a little unexpected to see so many merchants trying to make money here, like the businesses that crowded around the entrance of a military base, but that was fine.

By now, there probably wasn’t a single user who didn’t know that commercial districts developed like crazy in front of famous dungeons in World Gate.

This was a world where merchants had even formed endless lines in front of the Hall of Heroes.

Why would this place be any different?

Besides, if you thought about it, the Union, a power that rivaled the Empire itself, was basically a merchant alliance.

So perhaps it was only natural for there to be so many merchants in this world.

“Are you sure you’re not sick or something? Why don’t you rest for today?”

“No, I can’t. Ah... actually, maybe I should? Taking a short break before going in might be... No!”

“Fufu. In-gwang-nim is always such a pathetic human! How can one person be this indecisive?”

“Shut up! I’m nervous!”

How much time had it taken me to reach this place?

This place was less than a day away from the capital by carriage.

And yet how many months had I wasted just trying to get here?

When I remembered everything I had gone through, excitement and sadness surged together inside me so strongly that I felt like every drop of water in my body might pour out as tears.

“But neither your half nor my half is here.”

I know.

Of course I knew.

By now, I had learned that the only things you spent ages searching for only to discover right beside you were school supplies you couldn’t find until it was already time to leave for school.

Still, considering my current situation, starting from somewhere nearby and gradually clearing things one step at a time was absolutely necessary.

Even if I’m a hero, they’re watching me closely. I need to be a hundred times more careful.

There were several problems.

First, the Empire had been watching me closely from the very beginning.

And considering that I had constantly been asking them to let me enter the Maze Forest, anyone who wasn’t an idiot could easily come to the conclusion that there was something inside the Maze Forest I wanted.

A mysterious, unpredictable man who seemed to possess the power of madness wanted to enter a Maze Forest that appeared connected to the Witch of Corruption?

If I were an Imperial noble, I would have done everything possible to stop someone like that from entering too.

“We can’t just rush straight in and kill the boss. First comes leveling and farming! We need to prepare properly before going!”

“...If I didn’t know anything about the world you live in, I wouldn’t have understood even half of what you just said.”

My fight against One-Horn had brutally taught me something.

Right now, I was far weaker than I had imagined.

The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t shake the unpleasant feeling that One-Horn had been holding back against me.

It filled me with self-loathing.

And if even One-Horn was like that, then comparing myself to Paina, who had made a name for herself across the continent, or Hayang, who had spent twenty years with a Great Hero?

Not a chance.

“...Although honestly, I’m not sure you even need more farming when it comes to equipment.”

“You already have two Great Hero spears, so...”

“Two?! One! One is a javelin and the other is a stake.”

“Even if only the blade remains and there’s no shaft, it’s still a Great Hero’s spear, you know?”

The two holy spears with ridiculously long names had been handed over because Aien and the Spirit said they didn’t need them.

However, the Spear of Great Unification and the javelin I had pulled out could only be used by specific people.

Even if I gave them away, nobody else could use them.

On top of that, Jjikjjik had technically been the one to pull out the Spear of Great Unification.

So when you got right down to it, I was basically walking around with two legendary-grade weapons all by myself.

Naturally, the Empire absolutely could not stand the sight of that.

Even though there was nobody who could use them, their answer had basically been—

Confiscate them first!

One thing that still annoyed me was that even though they had already taken my belongings away, the fact that I was apparently qualified to possess two such weapons had caused the Empire to watch and criticize me even more closely.

If only that accident where the javelin flew straight back to me after I handed it over hadn’t happened, maybe my situation would have been a little better.

Now I even need permission just to cross the border... What a pain.

I didn’t know whether the Great Hero of Hope had originally come from the Empire, but apparently I couldn’t just carry the Empire’s treasures outside the country however I wanted.

...Well, it wasn’t entirely bad.

If I ever seriously decided to destroy the Empire someday, the guilt I might feel about doing it was steadily decreasing.

Really.

There wasn’t much left now.

“What do you think? Should we settle down here for a while and work on clearing the forest? We don’t know how long it’ll take.”

If I dumped all the mouse soldiers hidden inside my shadow into the forest, it might end surprisingly quickly.

But I didn’t want to do anything that would make people hate me even more.

Actually, I felt like I had reached the stage where people hated me just for breathing.

Let’s just live quietly and hope everyone eventually forgets about me.

“Hmm. Maybe that would be better.”

“We can’t wander around the Maze Forest for over a month like before. There are too many sane people with us this time.”

“What? Are you saying I’m insane? Could you not lump me in with yourself?”

“...Come on. Be honest. When there was nothing to eat, you tore monsters apart and ate them raw. Both you and me.”

“...Th-That was because of you...”

“Did I say it wasn’t?”

Back during the tester days, we had eaten all kinds of ridiculous things in the Maze Forest just to fill our stomachs.

After the badgers and goblins joined us, things had only gotten worse, not better.

And now that I had stuffed a huge number of living mice inside my shadow, I needed to regularly supply them with large quantities of food.

If I rushed into the forest like before, pressed for time, things could become disastrous.

Someone might say we could simply get food for the mice from inside the forest.

But these guys were definitely going to keep multiplying without end.

Could the monsters appearing in the Maze Forest really feed that many mouths?

If things went wrong, we might end up recreating that horrifying tragedy of cannibalism I had witnessed during the early days of raising the mouse soldiers.

Do you know how hard I worked to stop that?

Yes.

I definitely had to be careful about it.

If something like that happened again, my reputation among the others would crash, I might get thrown out of the Empire, and they might even strip me of my Hero title.

And honestly, I wouldn’t have anything to say in my defense.

“Then I’ll guide you to an inn.”

“Wow, Village Chief. You know what’s around here too?”

“Hoho. The one who ordered me to gather information is surprised by something like this? Come along.”

The Village Chief was becoming more and more terrifyingly capable.

How was I supposed to feel about this?

Originally, I had brought him along half because I wanted to make his life difficult.

But now his health had improved, and seeing him casually firing a machine gun he once couldn’t even properly handle, sometimes with something like a cigar hanging from his mouth, was honestly impressive.

And now his role in the party had grown so important that we couldn’t do without him.

Seriously...

Creak.

“Welco—?! W-Welcome, sir!”

We followed the Village Chief and slowly entered the inn.

The employee had been lazily leaning against the counter, barely glancing at us.

But the moment he saw us, he jumped in surprise and hurriedly greeted us.

Ever since the Village Chief had shown up at the Hall leading a group of people, I had realized that he had risen to a fairly high position behind the scenes.

And since he personally guided us to this place, it was probably one of the establishments under his management.

Since we had appeared without warning, I could understand why the employee was startled.

Still, there were many other adventurers here.

I really would have preferred if he hadn’t welcomed us so conspicuously.

But it had already happened.

Nothing we could do now.

“Shh.”

The Village Chief gave him a sharp look and gestured for him to stay quiet.

Only then did the employee seem to realize his mistake.

His mouth moved awkwardly several times before he finally managed to calm himself.

“Ah... I... I apologize.”

Trying to ignore the attention naturally drawn toward us by the employee’s dramatic reaction, we followed him to our rooms.

The Village Chief had probably made arrangements here beforehand, which was why he had brought us to this particular inn.

But thanks to that, another seed of suspicion began sprouting in my mind—the same mind that was basically the birthplace of conspiracy theories.

For example...

Maybe the Village Chief was thinking of ways to betray me.

Or perhaps some plan was already underway, and my arrival here was the signal that would begin it.

Thoughts filled with that sort of distrust.

...No way. The Village Chief wouldn’t do something like that.

Fortunately, I trusted him far more now.

There wasn’t really any reason not to trust him either.

“I apologize. I never imagined someone so incompetent would have been hired here.”

“It’s fine.”

We were shown into separate rooms for the women and men, with Jayoni included in one group.

I sat down on the soft bed and casually accepted the Village Chief’s apology.

Then I thought quietly for a moment.

Now that I had finally reached a reasonably stable position...

Now that I had secured some stability and a future worth looking forward to...

Wasn’t this the right time to finally inspect everything the Village Chief had built?

I found anything involving money annoying, so I had never wanted to interfere much.

Still, there was a huge difference between choosing not to interfere and simply knowing nothing.

And seriously.

I wasn’t doing this because I wanted to assert authority over the Village Chief.

Seriously.

I just needed to know where the money I earned was going.

“Village Chief. Let’s go on an inspection today.”

“...Yes.”

I had said it pretty casually.

But the Village Chief’s reaction immediately became stiff.

Was it because my tone sounded a little aggressive?

This was supposedly an organization—or whatever it had become—that had grown using my money.

Wasn’t it reasonable for me to finally want to know something about it?

There was no reason for him to get that nervous.

Unless...

Was he embarrassed because it still wasn’t ready to be shown?

Or perhaps...

There was something he absolutely couldn’t show me.

“What should I tell the others?”

“Tell them today is free time. And call Pa... Lucy separately.”

I had talked to this group so much over such a long time that I could barely remember what I had told each person anymore.

No.

More accurately, I had spent so much time talking and traveling with them back when I didn’t really value them that much, so many of those conversations hadn’t stayed in my memory.

Had I told them that Lucy was Paina or not?

I couldn’t remember.

It would be a little troublesome if I accidentally said something in front of Aien and exposed Paina’s true identity.

Seriously.

This impulsive brain of mine never helps me.

“What? Why am I the only one you called separately?”

“Lucy needs to know. What about the others? Are they complaining again?”

“They just accepted it.”

Hmm.

Aien got along pretty well with Mallang, but she didn’t seem nearly as close with Levi.

Would those three be all right hanging out together?

Before leaving, I should at least give them some spending money.

What were they supposed to do outside without even a single coin?

I couldn’t allow my kids to experience the sorrow of being broke.

“Then I’ll guide you immediately.”

“Yes.”

Though it was only a small village built mainly around merchants targeting adventurers heading into the Maze Forest, it was still located fairly close to the capital.

Because of that, it looked like a reasonably decent village.

We walked through its narrow alleys.

Splash, splash.

As we walked through a damp alley where sunlight rarely reached, I remembered the Jamani incident and asked the Village Chief about him.

“Do you know what happened to Jamani?”

“As far as I know, he eventually took his own life. The Empire lost the only captured fanatic they had been carefully managing, so there was quite a commotion for some time.”

“But weren’t those guys called Seeds still alive?”

“They were originally nothing more than the lowest-ranking combatants among the fanatics, so they didn’t know much to begin with. And when their master Jamani killed himself, every Seed they had captured supposedly died and turned to ash.”

Tap, tap.

Paina, who had been quietly listening to my conversation with the Village Chief, suddenly tapped my back and gestured for me to come closer.

Thinking she wanted to tell me something secret, I bent my head toward her.

The sound of Paina whispering right beside my ear felt strangely realistic, making me flinch a little.

I wasn’t used to things like this...

“I think... I know something about the fanatics too.”

“...That’s a strange way to say it. If you ‘think’ you know something, doesn’t that mean you don’t actually know right now?”

“I think those memories are still inside my remaining half. For some reason, words like ‘flower’ and ‘fruit’ came to mind.”

Whew.

Great.

Another weird thing had been added.

Seed.

Sprout.

Root.

Flower.

Fruit?

Were these ranks or stages?

Why couldn’t they organize things in a way that was easy to understand, like membership ranks on an internet café?

For now, I nodded at Paina to show I understood.

Then I gave a slight smile to the Village Chief, who had stopped and waited for us, and gestured for him to continue walking.

I didn’t know why Paina had deliberately hidden that conversation from him.

But if she had done it that way, she probably had a reason.

Paina hadn’t known the Village Chief for very long either.

Maybe she was still cautious around him.

“...How are the sewers these days?”

“They regularly send adventurers down there to suppress the Corruption that regenerates. Strangely enough, I’ve also heard that the outsiders have started building slime farms down there.”

“...Hmm... Slimes... When is Mallang going to undergo racial evolution...?”

Compared to the incredible progress Aien and the Village Chief had made, Mallang’s development was much slower.

Of course, if anyone tried to say Mallang was useless to the party because of that, I would have to smash their skull in.

Mallang played an incredibly important role in our party.

Our party was so unbelievably terrible at having any self-recovery skills that without Mallang, we would probably be wiped out in an instant.

“Mallang-yang has exceptional fundamentals to begin with, so her evolution is naturally much slower. Only now do I feel like the rest of us have barely managed to catch up to Mallang-yang.”

“Hmm.”

I had seen plenty of users posting things on the board like—

“Our Lime finally evolved into a Metal Slime!”

So I had assumed Mallang might evolve soon too.

Apparently, it was still a little way off.

I had even seen people shaping slimes into things that looked like anime characters.

Even though I knew Mallang would hate it, seeing those made me want to ask her to do the same.

Maybe I had simply been too impatient.

“Still, now that Mallang-yang’s master, In-gwang-nim, has become a Hero, perhaps some kind of change will happen to Mallang-yang soon as well.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Knock, knock.

After weaving our way through several alleys, we finally arrived at a shabby door at the end of a dead-end passage.

I hadn’t been expecting much, but the atmosphere of the situation itself was pretty nice.

I liked that.

What I didn’t like was the fact that secretive and probably illegal places always seemed to be hidden in dirty locations like this.

Back at the Hall, the Village Chief had shown up dressed incredibly stylishly.

What happened to that?

“Normally, only people carrying a pass are allowed through this door. Fortunately, I had passes prepared for everyone in our group, so there shouldn’t be any problem.”

“Oooh~ You’re pretty thorough, huh?”

“Hoho. We are quite thorough.”

“Hahaha! That confidence! Wow, Village Chief, now I’m really looking forward to this.”

He looked a little nervous, so I decided to lighten the mood with some casual remarks.

“Yes. Of course.”

...He was sweating.

It wasn’t working nearly as well as I had hoped.

The door opened.

And suddenly—

A portal appeared with a dramatic shimmer.

Portals like this were incredibly, incredibly rare in this game.

I had seen one once when I went to bring Dolphin and Jin with me, and I hadn’t encountered another one since then.

At this point, it seemed reasonable to assume that whoever had created this world simply didn’t like using portals like these.

Or maybe because this game had been built based on an already existing world, they couldn’t create something that hadn’t existed in the original?

That was...

What an awkward form of absurdly advanced technology.

It felt wrong to call it crude.

But calling it perfect also felt wrong.

“Would you like to visit the company first?”

“Wow, we even founded a company? Amazing. There really is a lot I don’t know.”

“Hoho. You never asked, so I ended up forgetting to mention it.”

“Right. Then let’s go take a look at this company or whatever it is first.”

It was a place unlike anything else I had seen in the game so far.

Few people knew about it.

Users didn’t know of its existence.

A mysterious place hidden behind a veil.

“I can look forward to this, right?”

“Of course.”

The Village Chief, who was always neatly dressed, seemed to be having trouble breathing.

He unfastened one button and let out a stiff breath.

Am I...

really that intimidating?

That hurts a little.

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