Chapter 28. Impossible
[The Field Boss of the Labyrinth Forest, the Forgotten Great Hero Patiens of Endurance, has appeared!]
[This is an extremely powerful enemy! You are in an area where escape is impossible! Be careful of the attacks that follow!]
At least the exclamation marks are still alive.
Feeling a secret sense of relief and comfort from the cheerful and energetic feeling coming from the message window, Ingwang struggled to stand up.
About half of his body was covered in the power of madness, making him look as if he had tattoos covering his entire body.
I don't want to fight.
Having experienced an unknown bug or some strange phenomenon twice in such a short period was horrifying enough.
His senses had become disconnected, and his emotions somehow seemed amplified.
The game he had been happily enjoying had suddenly become a terrifying and frightening reality.
Normally, this would have been the moment when he went wild.
He would have charged forward without worrying about what happened afterward and simply progressed through the situation.
But now, Ingwang became even more cautious.
There has to be something.
The Chairman couldn't possibly have been unaware that there was a field boss with such an impressive title as a Great Hero.
And there was no way a character that had been developed for only a little over a month could defeat something called a Great Hero.
That was why Ingwang carefully looked around.
There might be an object somewhere in the field that functioned like an interactive trap.
There might be a hint somewhere.
Perhaps a new event would occur.
...Nothing?
All he could see were walls and floors covered with countless vein-like things giving off a faint blue light.
There was also the hole he had fallen through, but not even the slightest bit of light entered through it.
Behind the Great Hero of Endurance, Patiens, there was clearly the Witch's Artifact.
It was a spine, a part of the Witch's body, embedded in the wall and emitting a sinister aura.
Everything was laid out neatly before him.
The environment.
The enemy he had to defeat.
The treasure he had to obtain.
He could see all of it.
But he couldn't recklessly move.
“This is not something that should be given to someone as unqualified as you.”
“That's discrimination, you know. You're saying that without any fear in this day and age? Is it because you're from the old days?”
He wasn't saying those words because they carried any real meaning.
He was simply throwing out random words to buy time.
It wasn't an attempt to show arrogance, confidence, shamelessness, or composure.
Rather, he was boldly expressing the fact that he had absolutely no composure.
Pai doesn't really have any offensive abilities.
Oehorn probably won't help.
And I'm far too injured to fight...
If his subordinates were beside him, he might have felt somewhat more confident.
But aside from Pai, who had become a shadow human and could freely move through dark places, none of them were capable of coming down to the hollow where Ingwang was.
“Hey, this is too dangerous right now. Don't do this. Let's retreat for now.”
“No.”
There was supposedly a difference between the passage of time inside and outside the game.
But no matter how much of a difference there was, there was no longer enough time to start over.
This was his first and last attempt.
If he went back or failed, it would be over.
His promise to the Chairman would collapse, and Ingwang's character would completely disappear.
He had worked himself to death raising this character.
He didn't want to lose it because of a moment of hesitation.
So he steeled himself once again.
No matter what, this is still a game.
All my senses may be exactly the same as reality, but if I grit my teeth and endure it, maybe I won't actually die.
What worried him most was suffering a heart attack or mental shock from pain that might remain even after the game ended.
He thought that perhaps if he stayed extremely focused throughout the battle and constantly reminded himself that the sensations he felt in his body were fake, he would be fine.
It was a naive judgment.
But thanks to it, Ingwang managed to take one step forward.
Zzzt!
Even that single step was stopped by a transparent barrier blocking his way.
“If you will not leave by yourself… then I shall make you leave.”
There was a transparent barrier in front of him.
His senses had returned to his body, making everything heavy, painful, and difficult.
The Great Hero in front of him kept repeating the same words.
Time was running out.
He also felt as if the Chairman had tricked him.
Ingwang's emotions grew more and more intense.
He was becoming so angry that he wondered whether the power of his mind might awaken through rage rather than madness.
“No, instead of constantly telling me to leave, why don't you show me an exit and then tell me to leave? You're seriously ridiculous. How can a Great Hero have such a narrow field of vision? Where exactly am I supposed to get out from? The ceiling over there? Do you think I have wings growing out of my back? Waaah, this is really pissing me off.”
“This place is not for someone unqualified like you—”
“Ah, you're damn noisy! Are you broken? Why do you keep saying the exact same thing? Did you hide a script somewhere and just read from it? And why did your way of speaking suddenly change? Huh? Did someone tell you to talk like that?”
As Ingwang's emotions became more intense, the power of madness inside him also gradually grew.
Before he realized it, a distorted smile appeared around his mouth.
“I don't even know what kind of qualification you're talking about! But it's not just that I lack qualifications! I'm in a damn hurry, human! So give me that! Of course, if you don't want to fight, I'd like to say that I'm willing to calmly resolve this through conversation!”
“Tsk, tsk. Just when I thought you were finally speaking like a warrior.”
BOOM!
The moment her words ended, Ingwang recklessly stretched out both hands and placed them against the transparent wall.
Constant force pushed him away, accompanied by pain.
But thanks to his madness dulling his senses somewhat, he charged into the wall as if he had already given up.
Patiens, the Great Hero of Endurance, simply watched him without emotion.
She knew that no matter how many times he charged forward, he couldn't break through the wall.
Even when he struggled to grab the wall that couldn't be grabbed and pushed his head against it as if trying to force his way through, she simply watched.
“Ghhh! Give it to me!!! I need it to continue… Anyway, I need it! I said I need it!!”
He had almost said that he needed it to keep his character alive.
But he hurriedly changed his words as if there were some complicated circumstances that made it difficult for him to explain.
Yet where could there possibly be a person who had entered this place without some kind of desperate reason?
Patiens had absolutely no intention of handing over the artifact because of one or two sad stories.
However, there was someone else who would be stimulated after learning about such circumstances.
And that was where the variable appeared.
“Hey! What does that mean?! What were you going to say?”
“Continue? What are you unable to continue without that? Are you saying you'll die?”
“Huh?”
Ingwang had said those words simply to provoke the Great Hero even slightly.
But Pai and Oehorn reacted in a way he had never expected.
Oehorn didn't think there was any reason to explain anything, so he remained silent.
As for Pai, Ingwang had deliberately avoided explaining the details because he thought it would only make her anxious and worried.
So both of them were quite confused by his sudden statement.
Ingwang's thoughts became complicated.
Oehorn was one thing.
But if Pai became anxious after hearing this, he had no idea what she might do.
Yet there was no time left to persuade or calm Pai down with the test ending soon.
“Damn it!”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Ignoring their reactions as best he could, Ingwang desperately punched and slammed his entire body against something invisible.
He tried to create even the smallest opening.
If I can create even a tiny gap, I can extend my chains and grab either the Great Hero or the artifact!
Even though he was equipped with Lux Mea, an incredibly powerful weapon, the impact reaching his hands didn't disappear.
Every time he slammed his body into the wall, it felt as if his bones were breaking.
At this point, he was no longer moving because of the game or anything else.
He was moving purely because of stubbornness.
His madness became darker and denser.
Then black cracks resembling his madness began spreading across the transparent wall.
“Oh! It worked! Why is this working? Thank you, Pastiens!”
Was she going easy on him?
Perhaps his desperate appearance had softened the Great Hero's heart a little.
That was what Ingwang thought.
But the reality was slightly different.
“You! You're disappearing, aren't you?! You'll disappear without that thing, won't you?! Why?! Why didn't you tell me?!”
Pai's power of love gave a buff to the person she directed her love toward, with the strength of the buff proportional to the intensity of her feelings.
Her power of resignation applied indiscriminate debuffs and brainwashing within a certain range.
The reason Ingwang's madness had spread around him during his first battle with the Badger.
The reason he had been able to defeat opponents he should never have been able to defeat.
All of it was thanks to Pai.
Ingwang had vaguely suspected it.
But because it had always happened during battles, he had been too distracted to notice.
Pai herself was doing it unconsciously.
As a result, neither of them had realized the truth.
“What…?!”
Regardless of what the two of them knew or didn't know, what had just happened was an enormous shock to the Great Hero.
In her eyes, the power of two weak and fragile humans had created cracks in the wall she herself had created.
She knew that all three people here possessed the power of the mind.
As a user of that power herself, she also knew that it could occasionally cause truly absurd phenomena.
But she still believed there had to be a wall that could not be crossed.
“Move!”
CRACK!
However, she was a Great Hero.
No matter how surprising or incomprehensible the situation was, she reacted quickly.
Fortunately, Oehorn moved just one beat faster than her.
Oehorn swung his club with all his strength.
It struck the wall where Ingwang had created the cracks with a decisive blow.
Then he drove fragments of that wall, contaminated by Ingwang's madness, into the new wall that Patiens created.
“Do not disappear on your own. Disappear on the day I reclaim my honor and defeat you.”
“Fine!”
Then Ingwang continued his indiscriminate assault.
The weakened wall, which had been turned into fragments by his madness, collapsed.
Patiens immediately created several more layers of walls.
The standoff continued.
Little by little.
Very slowly.
Ingwang began breaking through the walls that had initially prevented him from taking even a single step.
And with each wall he destroyed, he moved slightly farther forward.
“Great Warrior! We're here! I thought we were going to die!”
“Banana! We came riding the flying banana!”
As if responding to Ingwang's gradual advance and the increasingly spreading madness around him, several of his subordinates entered through the hole he had created.
They weren't exactly in their right minds either.
Even as Patiens continued creating walls, they kept breaking.
His subordinates suddenly appeared through the ceiling.
Together with Ingwang, they filled the enormous hollow with sticky madness that dissolved into the air.
The madness began spreading into the enormous tree where Patiens resided.
Isn't this enough to prove I'm qualified?
I don't even know what qualification means, but if I've pushed a Great Hero this far, shouldn't that count for something?
Time was running out.
His anxiety was increasing.
Ingwang looked at Patiens, assuming she must be feeling something similar.
But her expression was completely peaceful.
“I retract my statement.”
Suddenly, the wall blocking Ingwang disappeared.
A clear path toward her opened.
Yet Patiens's expression didn't change at all.
Instead, Ingwang instinctively maintained an appropriate distance from her.
His years as a gamer were sending warnings through his instincts.
He could tell that an event that always occurred during high-difficulty boss fights was about to happen.
And as if responding to that instinct, Patiens gathered a tiny portion of her power in her hand.
She clenched her fist and concentrated her strength.
